He saw action in the First World War, where he was seriously wounded. During the Second World War he commanded the Eighth Army from August 1942 in the Western Desert until the final Allied victory in Tunisia. This command included the Battle of El Alamein, a turning point in the Western Desert Campaign. He subsequently commanded the Eighth Army in Sicily and Italy.
He was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord from the initial landings until after the Battle of Normandy. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the campaign in North West Europe. As such he was the principal field commander for the failed airborne attempt to bridge the Rhine at Arnhem and the Allied Rhine crossing. On 4 May 1945 he took the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath in northern Germany. After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
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Brilliant World War II field marshal. Great Britain's most famous commander of World War II, Bernard Montgomery would end the war with the rank of Field Marshall. Montgomery's most famous action came in 1942, when he led the British Eighth Army in expelling General Erwin Rommel and the German Afrika Corps out of North Africa. He also led the British forces during the Normandy Invasion, but received a lot of criticism for his slowness in taking the French town of Caen. Montgomery also blundered Operation Market-Garden, the attempt to establish an allied bridge-head across the Rhine River. Montgomery claimed to have won the Battle of the Bulge (much to the Americans' disbelief), but in reality, he had little or nothing to do with the battle at all. He died in 1976.