Monty and Rommel

Description

There was rarely a quiet moment in the Ypres area, which witnessed near-continuous fighting, from October 1914 to October 1918. Monty was dangerously wounded in Méteren in 1914, and from 1917–18 he planned operations as a staff officer with IX Corps in the battlefields east of Ypres. Within the Ypres salient are the villages of Gheluvelt and Messines, where Adolf Hitler fought, and Ploegsteert, where Lt.- Colonel Winston Churchill’s battalion (6/Royal Scots Fusiliers) was stationed between January and May 1916.

Named after a river that most British troops never got to see, the Somme battlefields witnessed Monty’s presence twice. Initially, during the ‘Great Push’ of 1916, whose slow progress is charted here, Bernard’s 104th Brigade fought in the area of Trônes Wood, Malz Horn Farm, and Guillemont. His advance with 47th Division in 1918 is also shown, including Happy Valley, where his brigade paraded in 1916, but which his division attacked in 1918.