7027 - Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's Signed Wartime Personal Messages to the Eighth Army and 21 Army Group — "Forward to Victory": A Near-Complete Archive from El Alamein to the Defeat of Germany, 1942-1945

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's Signed Wartime Personal Messages to the Eighth Army and 21 Army Group — "Forward to Victory": A Near-Complete Archive from El Alamein to the Defeat of Germany, 1942-1945 Exceptional archive of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s signed wartime “Personal Messages” to the Eighth Army and 21 Army Group, an almost complete and deeply historic collection tracing Montgomery’s command from the desert crisis before El Alamein through the defeat of Germany and the aftermath of victory in Europe. Comprising Montgomery’s stirring battle messages, a privately printed presentation volume, and related material, the archive preserves the voice of Britain’s most celebrated field commander at the very moments his armies helped alter the course of World War II. The archive includes 39 items signed by Montgomery, including 16 of the 17 Eighth Army messages collected in Forward to Victory—with two additional rare Eighth Army messages not in the book—followed by a near-complete run of signed 21 Army Group messages. Most were signed during the war, with a few signed in postwar years; three messages are also duplicated within the collection. The Eighth Army sequence opens with Montgomery’s exceedingly rare August 31, 1942 “Special Message to Officers and Men of Eighth Army,” issued during the desert battle against Rommel at Alam el Halfa, boldly declaring: “The Eighth Army bars the way,” and vowing, “there will be no withdrawal and no surrender.” It continues with his October 23, 1942 message before El Alamein, in which Montgomery announces: “We are ready now. The battle which is now about to begin will be one of the decisive battles of history. It will be the turning point of the war.” With characteristic directness, he tells his men that victory will depend on their determination “to fight and to kill—and finally, to win.” From there, the archive follows the Eighth Army’s relentless advance across North Africa. In his Christmas 1942 message, Montgomery reflects that “it is wonderful what has been achieved since the 23rd October,” while his January 12, 1943 message before Tripoli declares: “Nothing has stopped us since the battle of Egypt began…Nothing will stop us now.” After Tripoli’s capture, Montgomery hailed the 1,400-mile pursuit from Alamein as “probably without parallel in history.” His March 1943 messages are especially vivid, describing the enemy as “caught like a rat in a trap,” promising to give Rommel “a very ‘bloody nose,’” and exhorting the Eighth Army: “Forward to Tunis! Drive the enemy into the sea!” The North African campaign culminates in Montgomery’s May 14, 1943 message, celebrating the enemy’s complete removal from Africa: “There was no Dunkirk on the beaches of Tunisia,” he writes, adding that it would be a lifelong honor to say, “I marched and fought with the Eighth Army.” The archive then carries forward into Sicily and Italy, with Montgomery’s July 10, 1943 message announcing that “the time has now come to carry the war into Italy,” and his September 2, 1943 message calling the Eighth Army “the first troops of the Allied Armies to land on the mainland of the continent of Europe.” In his final January 1, 1944 farewell to the Eighth Army, Montgomery writes movingly: “I am leaving officers and men who have been my comrades during months of hard and victorious fighting… I will miss you more than I can say.” The 21 Army Group material is equally compelling, beginning with Montgomery’s June 5, 1944 message on the eve of D-Day: “The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe.” He describes the coming invasion as “the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history,” and by June 10 could report that the Allied armies had secured “a good and firm lodgehead on the mainland of France.” His subsequent Normandy messages trace the hard-won development of the campaign: Cherbourg in the west, Caen in the east, “and much territory in between,” followed by the decisive destruction of German forces in the “Normandy pocket,” which Montgomery called “definite, complete and decisive.” The archive then follows the Allied advance through France, Belgium, Holland, and into Germany. In September 1944, Montgomery writes that the Allies “stand at the door of Germany,” proclaiming the triumphant cry: “Forward into Germany.” His February 7, 1945 message presents the campaign in boxing terms: “we now come to the last and final round; and we want, and will go for, the knock-out blow.” On March 23, as the Rhine crossing began, he urges: “Over the Rhine, then, let us go.” The sequence culminates in Montgomery’s May 8, 1945 V-E Day message, a dignified tribute to sacrifice and Allied unity: “We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.” The archive is filled out by a hardbound privately-print