BERNARD LAW MONTGOMERY, Field Marshall and 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG, GCB, DSO, PC, DL, born on this date (d: 3/17/1976), nicknamed “Monty“, was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the Second World War.

Bernard and his brother Harold were educated at The King’s School, Canterbury. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery attended St Paul’s School and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for rowdiness and violence. On graduation in 1908 he was commissioned into the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant, and first saw overseas service later that year in India. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910, and in 1912 became adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment at Shorncliffe Army Camp.

Montgomery is as vaunted a war hero as any other in British history, and his exploits are numerous and storied. Nevertheless, rumors about the sexuality of the man who won the battle of El Alamein in 1942, turning the tide of the war in north Africa, have persistantly circulated.

As early as 1976 – five years after his death – one earlier biographer, Lord Chalfont, noted his “predilection for the company of young men”. Montgomery’s only son, Viscount David Montgomery, dismissed the new claim as being “absurd, appalling, and complete psychobabble”.

Another biographer, Alistair Horne, author of The Lonely Leader, commented: “This sounds to me like Hamilton is rehashing his old work for a tabloid readership. I served under Montgomery in the Middle East and I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever of repressed, or any other kind, of homosexuality.”

But Prof Hamilton, who was befriended by the field marshal at age 11 and knew him well for the last 20 years of his life, has no doubt of the nature of Monty’s feelings. “These were quasi love affairs. He became really passionately involved with these young men – and then, more and more, boys, who he would call ‘my sons’. They were nothing of the kind, of course, but in his own personality he would frame them in this way.

“I myself have more than 100 very loving letters from him. My relationship with him wasn’t sexual, in the sense that it wasn’t acted upon, but I had been through enough years at British boarding schools to know what kind of enormous affection and feeling he had for me.

“And I wasn’t alone, this was a consistent pattern in Monty’s life.” One boy was Lucien Treub, Montgomery’s “little Swiss friend”, who met him at 12, and told Hamilton how the general would bathe him personally and rub him down so he would not catch cold. “I’ve interviewed him several times and he was quite clear he didn’t feel there was any molesting going on, but it’s a tricky area,” Prof Hamilton said.