Monty's Visit to Vimy Ridge.

Nice one Owen. There is also a shot of Hitler on Vimy Ridge in 1940, taken almost in the same spot.

 

Great pics Owen! Paul, do you have a link to that photo perchance?

 

here it is, down towards the bottom of the first page

Steve

 

I am visiting Vimy later this year with my Bury Grammar School group and may try to identify 'Monty's Grave'. Interestingly I have found an account of a Bury Grammar school French trip that visited Vimy Ridge...in 1938.
Incidentally there was a completely ludicrous story in a Toronto Newspaper a while back stating that while most other Allied war memorials were destroyed in the Second World War(completely untrue) Hitler placed a Waffen SS guard on Vimy Ridge (total fantasy)! It's worth trying to find this barmy story on Google or similar. Letters from Great War Forum members to the editor went unanswered as far as I know.

 

I am visiting Vimy later this year with my Bury Grammar School group and may try to identify 'Monty's Grave'. Interestingly I have found an account of a Bury Grammar school French trip that visited Vimy Ridge...in 1938.
Incidentally there was a completely ludicrous story in a Toronto Newspaper a while back stating that while most other Allied war memorials were destroyed in the Second World War(completely untrue) Hitler placed a Waffen SS guard on Vimy Ridge (total fantasy)! It's worth trying to find this barmy story on Google or similar. Letters from Great War Forum members to the editor went unanswered as far as I know.

Mark,

That story about the Waffen SS guard, which I too believe is completely erroneous, has been spread around quite widely and seems now to be the official version. I'm not sure if records are available which would refute that account.

 

Interesting to see where this particular 'urban legend' originated. I have done a quick 'Google' trawl and the story appears on various sites quoted verbatim and uncritically from the original ludicrously inaccurate article by one Ron Haggard in the 'Toronto Star'. Apparently all Australian graves from World War One were destroyed by the Nazis! Did this chap just make this nonsense up? If not where did he get his information from? In my experience trying to find the original of these things is very difficult. The general rule is: 'you can always find an earlier example'.

 

The outfit Montgomery is wearing was sent to him by Lt Gen Nye when VCIGs with he following poem:

We've dispatched pour la guerre a Mackintosh pair
of trousers and jacket express.
They are coming by air, and are sent to you care,
of the bishop of Southwark no less.
So wherever you go from Pescara to Po.
Through mud and morasses and ditches,
you undoubedtly ought to be braced by the thought,
that the church has laid hands on your breeches,
According to Moss the outfitting Bros.
twon't matter so stout is their fibre.
if you happen to trip and go arse over tip
like Horatius into the Tiber,
and you'll find so we hope
when you call on the pope
that his blessings more readily given
on learning the news your Mackintosh trews
were brought down by a bishiop from heaven.

 

while on a tour , the guide told us the german officers use to sit in TYNE COT
and eat their lunch ..so much for destroying monuments .

 

Do you think it was a very 'personal' pilgimage?

Monty was deployed to France with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. On 13 October 1914, during the First Battle of Ypres, he was shot by a sniper at the village of Meteren. With the bullet passing through his right lung, the wound was so critical that a grave was dug in preparation for his death, but he recovered.

In his memoirs, Monty said:

"My life was saved that day by a soldier of my platoon. I had fallen in the open and lay still hoping to avoid further attention from the Germans. But a soldier ran to me and began to put a field dressing on my wound; he was shot through the head by a sniper and collapsed on top of me. The sniper continued to fire at us and I got a second wound in the knee; the soldier received many bullets intended for me. No further attempt was made by my platoon to rescue us; indeed, it was presumed we were both dead. When it was dark the stretcher-bearers came to carry us in; the soldier was dead and I was in a bad way."

Monty was promoted to Captain and awarded the DSO.

The article is from the 'Bulletin' the Journal of the Military Historical society November 1979. Titled The Rescue of Field Marshall Lord Montgomery and was made available to the society by Colonel (Retd) A.V. Tennuci, the Curator of the RAMC Historical Museum

No. 9350 Pte. H W Jackson, RAMC, was a member of 21 Field Ambulance attached to 21 Infantry Brigade, 7th Division.

"...on 13th October 1914 Captain Phillips, our company officer, and myself started off for a position held by a unit of our infantry some distance away. It was dark when we got there and heavy firing was taking place. Hand to hand fighting had been going on for hours in the open and the unit's officer was one of the casualties but no-one could venture out in daylight to find out if he was still alive. It had been raining and the ground was very wet. After a short talk, Captain Phillips decided to make a quick run through enemy fire to a haystack where and infantry NCO would be waiting. Our troops in the trenches were told to hold their fire. I followed Captain Phillips to the haystack. The infantry NCO indicated where we were going to pick up the officer. All three of us crawled behind one another, occasionally stopping and laying quite flat out on the ground until firing had eased up. During one of these stops I stretched my right arm out and my fingers touched something, which I pulled towards me. I have often thought what a strange thing to do under the circumstances. It was a ladder and as we had no stretcher, each time we moved I pulled along with me. On reaching the ground where the action had taken place, we spread out keeping sight of each other to try and find the officer. It was sometime afterwards that I looked towards Captain Phillips and saw him raise his arm. I crawled over to him, pulling the ladder with me, and the infantry NCO joined us. Captain Phillips had found the wounded officer, who was still alive but in a serious condition. We placed him on the ladder and started to move back along the ground with our officer and the NCO at the top part and myself at the foot of the ladder. After some time and covering quite a bit of ground they stopped and whispered down to me to pull the ladder away when the word was given, which I did. I crawled towards them and they had now got the seriously injured officer laying on the inside of a greatcoat. We raised him from the ground and quickly made for the stretcher bearers who were waiting to take him from us... After two or three hours on our way back the same night, the first Battle of Ypres began to flare up, which was to last for three weeks. On 4 November 1914, what was left of the immortal division was reinforced and when the place on Menin road which we had been using came under heavy shell fire, one of the many casualties I saw was Captain Phillips, whose brave deeds were never known during the first Battle of Ypres.

Little did I know that the officer we rescued was Field Marshall Lord Montgomery of Alamein, who many years later, by strange coincidence, confirmed he was the seriously wounded officer we brought in when he was Lieutenant Montgomery of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment..."

Monty undoutedly owed his life to the bravery and sacrifice of the soldier from his platoon and those of the 21st Field Ambulance.

Does anyone know the name, etc. of the soldier in question from his platoon?

Best,

Steve.

 

47 listed on CWGC for 13th October and four for 14th October.

 

Wills - you are quite correct with the poem by the DCIGS Nye - after Monty had asked for them to be sent out at the onset of a dreadfull winter at the River Sangro in Italy in November of '43 when he was complaining about the cold at night sleeping in his caravan - it's hardly likely that he would be wearing that outfit in September in France which - as I understand it - the weather might be rainy but not bone chilling cold - winters in Italy start in September with the monsoons and head downhill even on the coasts..great for skiers in the mountains but not a soldier sitting in a freezing Tank - or anyone in a slit trench...
Cheers