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The day Monty came to tea.
“Put something on nice for tea dear, Lamb Roast would be grand if you can get a leg, he likes lamb I think, and when the gardener gets here tell him the roses need trimming. That was dad’s farewell to mum as he went off to his duties at Aldershot. It was a warm glorious English summer mornings and the bumble bees were flying low over the grass humming loudly being heavily laden with pollen; that was the summer of 1964 and I guess I was about 6 and a half years old.
Later that afternoon I was playing in the flower beds with my collection of Britain’s soldiers, when a wiry old man with a rugged looking face appeared over the gate, I can still distinctively remember the slightly high pitched voice and pointy nose; he transfixed me with his sharp beady eyes, as if looking into my soul. “Young man I would slip out through the daisies if I were you, and counter attack from the rear,” the stranger suggested, or words to that effect,then, “Is your daddy home?” “No sir” I replied, “are you the gardener because daddy would like you to trim the roses.” The stranger let out a raucous laugh, “I was wondering what I might do when I retire young man.” This was my first of many conversations with the great Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery.
It’s quite ironic, not many people know that Monty spent his teenage years in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, as his father was the Bishop of Hobart, nor did I know in 1964, that in 1985 I would become a resident of Yolla, Tasmania, Australia myself, and live but a mere 340km from Hobart.
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August 31st, 2008, 01:34 PM
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