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Major Brian Urquhart

Discussion in 'Western Europe 1943 - 1945' started by bronk7, Oct 1, 2015.

  1. bronk7

    bronk7 Well-Known Member

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    well, I'm, surprised September went by without the usual Market Garden ''conflict''.....it being September and having fantastic MG weather, I grabbed my Nijmegen-US 82nd and Guards Armored Division book which I miraculously spotted out of hundreds of books in the discount section...and in the first few pages it had a picture of the Major and a small paragraph about him.....my questions are 1. was Major Urquhart vindicated for his intelligence assessment of the German forces pre MG?? ....2.did Monty or others ever concede that the Major was right, ''apologize'', etc etc?? I want to concentrate on the Major and his assessment

    '''Well, the thing went very seriously wrong and I then realized what I hadn’t realized before, that these generals and great commanders and politicians who were so admired during the war were actually just like everyone else. They were vain, they were ambitious, they very often made extremely faulty judgments. I had not thought of that before; I had always thought that they were kind of super-people and I must say that the feeling has remained with me for the rest of my life. I never again trusted famous, glamorous leaders to resist vanity and ambition and make the right, mature decision, and get it right''' Major Urquhart
     
  2. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake Member

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    1 No.
    2. No.

    The episode did not seem to harm Urquhart's career as he went on to have a distinguished diplomatic career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Urquhart
     
  3. bronk7

    bronk7 Well-Known Member

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    thank you Sheldrake....I'm sure someone has posted this before, but these ''military'' men are not robots but human, as I think the Major states in his quote.....they will, did, and do make mistakes...
     

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