Biography - At the age of two, Bernard moved to Tasmania with his parents for twelve years. His upbringing was spartan, but he was well loved by his father and his mother, who were strict, although he was rebellious by nature and unmalleable.
In 1901, the family left Tasmania for home. Bernard, now fourteen, went to the St Pauls School, which, some forty years on he would select for his Overlord Headquarters. In an academic school he, at first, did not excel and dawdled and dreamed, while being more interested in sports.
Bernard decided, he claimed in later years, principally to annoy his mother, to enter the army instead of the church and with much hard work, he entered Sandhurst in January 1907. He stood just 5'7'' tall and weighed 138 pounds. His mother, continuously frugal with the family finances allowed him considerably less than his colleagues.
Montgomery was retarded six months for a prank which seriously injured another cadet at Sandhurst. He received his first commission in July 1908, butwas rejected for service in the Indian Army. Instead he selected the Royal Warwickshire regiment and was posted off to India in December 1908 anyway. While his fellows were playing at polo and chasing women, Montgomery dedicated himself to mastering his profession. By 1913, Monty was glad to return home and to have failed for the Indian Army.

In the last remaining months of peace, Montgomery came under a officer who encouraged his ambition and broadened his understanding of real soldiering, Captain Lefroy who had just returned from Staff College, but who was to die later in the war. When war broke out, Monty was a full lieutenant and twenty-six.
Shortly thereafter, the Warwickshires found themselves caught up in the general retreat from Mons at the end of August, counter-attacking the Germans at Le Cateau. Throughout the war Montgomery experienced the horrendous conditions of the trenches and experienced first-hand the lack of training the British Army had for a modern war.
Although he was wounded in 1914, through the lung, and despite the medical staff's opinion that he would not survive, he did so. He remained a pipesmoker, but the old wound made him forbid any other smoking in his presence. During this same action at Méteren, Montgomery earned the DSO, a high distinction for a junior officer, and - after four months recuperation from his wound - transferred to the staff. He was swiftly promoted to Brigade Major and attached to one of the new units of Kitchener's volunteer army.
Through a quirk of logistics, Montgomery's 104 brigade was not on the front at the start of the Somme and he was spared that initial horror, but he later served at the Somme line three times. This futile battle would influence him later in his career, as he strove to avoid unnecessary casualties.

Montgomery, in 1917, was promoted to G-2, a staff officer of the 33rd Division, then in rapid succession to G-2 Ops of IX Corps, a key role in part of the Second Army commanded by General Sir Hubert Plumer. Plumer was one of the few commanders on the Western front who learnt its lessons, he concentrated on specific targets and obtainable objectives instead of suicidal mass attacks of infantry. In 1917, a sixty-six page training document issued from Montgomery's hand, the first of many. This was followed by the initial success and eventual failure of the Passchendaele offensive.
In March 1918, General Ludendorff launched his last gasp offensive, and came very close to punching through the Allied lines. Montgomery's IX Corps was ordered to hold a key bridge which had it fallen would have secured Ludendorff's victory. But it did not fall, although the victory cost the corps 27,000 casualties. One battalion of the Devons was reported 'exterminated almost to a man'. But the Germans were held and the tide turned for the last time.
Montgomery was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel at the age of thirty, and into the position of Chief Of Staff of a division. His commander believed in delegating all the execution of orders to his Chief of Staff, as the Germans did, and he thus learnt a vital lesson he was to implement in force during the Second World War.
In October 1918, Montgomery's 47th Division took part in the victorious Allied advance as the defeated enemy rolled back towards Germany. But he noted, that despite being beaten, hungry and in retreat that the German military machine was still very much the professional.

Once the war ended, a chance meeting got him a place at Staff college even though he thoroughly disapproved of the 'old boy network' of advancement. At the college, among those officers whom he disliked, who took no active part in trying to improve the Army despite the enormous bloodletting of the war, he met Alan Brooke, a man destined to be a long time friend and colleague. Another man met at the Staff College was Freddie de Guinard who was to join Monty in his key years of command. The third friend, he found at the College was working on the antidotes to the massacres on the Western Front and after disagreement on first principles they became close friends at the very end of their lives, with Monty belatedly praising Liddell Hart as Britain's outstanding military thinker. The main dispute between the two men came from the use of armour and what role it should play in any future war.
Unfortunately, those same plans of Liddell Hart's formed the basis for the Panzer forces of General Heinz Guderian. However, mainly because Monty was neither revolutionary nor radical, he was not sidelined in the deeply conventional Army of the 1920's or even discharged, although he was a reformer.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Army was narrow and restrictive with virtually no contact with their foreign counterparts especially the Americans, who after they had grabbed the laurels from the Victory parade after coming in at the end of the war had retreated into isolationism, abandoning Europe to its own ends.
Suddenly at the age of thirty-eight, Montgomery, always the worker, fell in love with a beautiful seventeen year old blonde called Betty Anderson. He pursued her, despite being rejected twice. Then at a party in Lenk he discovered a second Betty, an army widow called Mrs Carver. With commendable dexterity, Monty switched fronts and his attention and married Betty Carver on 27th July 1927. A year later, his son David was born. Betty had two sons from her previous marriage, both of whom went on to become regular officers. Her brother Patrick, was also in the army and would have a significant impact on Monty in his inventive genius with armour. Betty widened Monty's life to include the arts and peace, something he wasn't used to after twenty plus years of batchelorhood.
Following his marriage, Montgomery was given the command of a battalion of the Warwickshires and sent to a patch of India known as the 'Sloth Belt'. His commander had little interest in training for modern warfare and drilled his troops continuously on parade ground marches. Only an early appointment to be chief instructor at the Quetta Staff College saved Monty from a potentially disastrous conflict with his superiors. The Three years Monty spent at Quetta are reckoned by his brother to be among the happiest of his life, despite the terrible earthquake which claimed 30,000 dead and enforced one of only two separations from Betty. During this time, he read widely and his tactical concept of war matured, The softening influence of Betty made him more amenable and therefore popular with his students.

In May 1937, the Montgomerys retu