r/BeAmazed • u/HallowedAndHarrowed • 12h ago

History WW2 British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery could be abrasive, but had a caring side. He married a widow whose husband had died in WW1 and treated her sons as his own, after she died also. He is pictured with step-son Richard, who thrilled Montgomery, by escaping from a POW camp.

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u/BeAmazed-ModBot Subreddit Bot 12h ago

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u/HallowedAndHarrowed 12h ago

His wife got infected by an insect bite, by the way and died as he held her in his arms.

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u/BobMonroeFanClub 11h ago

She's buried in Burnham On Sea in Somerset.

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u/SameIdea70 4h ago

What was the nature of her passing, was the infection a freak accident or a common occurrence, what type of bug was it.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

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70

u/Jackdaw68 10h ago

The true story of his step sons capture in North Africa, internment in an Italian POW camp and his journey through occupied Italy on foot (after Italy switched sides), to meet back up with the British forces is told brilliantly in the book ‘Where the hell have you been’ written by Monty’s step grandson, Tom Carver.

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u/Deffiant 10h ago

I recently finished his book and was quite the journey as you could imagine

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u/ysgall 9h ago

For step-father and step-son there is a strong family resemblance!

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u/VenusianPlateau 7h ago

The son's dad and Montgomery were eskimo brothers.

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u/twec21 6h ago

Funny history story time: in the lead up to D-Day, the allies had all sorts of disinformation efforts going on to get the Germans to think anything besides "the allies are about to hit Normandy". One of them had a straight up lookalike pretending to be Monty in North Africa, I think it was Casablanca, where they knew there were German spies. Did the whole 9 yards, dude had aides, traveled under his name, other generals saluting him, the works.

Until it came happy hour. When the German spies noticed "Monty" was getting word slurring, knee walking, absolutely shit faced, they realized pretty quickly this wasn't the FAMOUSLY teetotaling Montgomery

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u/Intelligent_Box_8247 11h ago

men can do that without any trouble...

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u/drakesdrum 2h ago

What's amazing?