# Verifying a quote attributed to Field Marshal Montgomery **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 17, 2012, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verifying-a-quote-attributed-to-field-marshal-montgomery/625387 "2012-06-17T01:28:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verifying-a-quote-attributed-to-field-marshal-montgomery/625387/21 "2012-06-26T04:41:36Z")
Sicily? Metz? Yeah I don’t think the record bears out your assertion. It is telling that having been promoted to an Army commander in 1943 he rose no further and saw subordinates be promoted over his head, like Bradley. Clearly the powers that be thought of him as at best an Army commander. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verifying-a-quote-attributed-to-field-marshal-montgomery/625387/22 "2012-06-26T12:07:45Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > I’m sorry, but I think you are totally wrong. He may have been known as "Blood and Guts’ but like his 19th century equivalent, William Tecumseh Sherman, he was always looking to maneuver and save his men’s lives. And they appreciated him for that, although other things they didn’t like. One person from the war department visiting American troops in the hospital noted that his soldiers would always say they were in the Third Army or they were with Patton. Nobody said that about Bradley or Hodges. We should not move alway for too long from the OP to talk about Patton but I believe you are the one that is wrong. You only have to look back to the Sicilian campaign when Patton was an Army Commander and Bradley a Corps commander under him. Patton got it into his head he had to “race” the 8th Army to Messina - forced Bradley and Truscott to bull ahead irrespective of casualties to do so and then when they could have walked in, compounded everthing by ordering they hold back to allow Patton to make a triumphal entry to the city. When he did so the place was still under shell fire from the mainland and he got more men killed in a short lived parade that was broken up by further shell fire. (see “Bradley Commentaries” and “From Algiers to Anzio” as references. Or what about the slapping incidents earlier in the same campaign that Ike forced him to apologise for commenting, “I am well aware of the necessity for hardness and toughness on the battlefield … but this does not excuse brutality, abuse of the sick nor the exhibition of uncontrolled fits of temper in front of subordinates.” Sorry, but Patton was mentally unstable and widely hated. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verifying-a-quote-attributed-to-field-marshal-montgomery/625387/23 "2012-06-26T13:09:51Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > And I’ve deleted the quote – if it’s from an online encyclopedia, link to it, folks. Why? It’s a quote isn’t it, in the quote section? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verifying-a-quote-attributed-to-field-marshal-montgomery/625387.md?page=1)