Son of British military leader who forged unlikely friendship, dies at 91

Two fathers fought against each other in World War II, commanding opposing armies across the deserts of North Africa. Each was a general who bore the title of field marshal: Bernard Montgomery, the British military leader who led Allied forces to victory at the second battle of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942; and his German counterpart, Erwin Rommel, known as the “Desert Fox.”

Years later, after the smoke of war had cleared and the generals had died, their sons formed an unlikely peacetime alliance. Each of them — David Montgomery and Manfred Rommel — was his father’s only son. Both were born in 1928, served briefly in the military and had successful careers. They also shared parallel personal histories that perhaps only they could fully understand.

“We first met in 1979 when he came on an official visit to Britain,” Montgomery told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in 2013. “We were the same age, to within three months. We were the only sons of famous, opposing generals. We had a great deal in common.”

Rommel spent almost 22 years as the mayor of Stuttgart, Germany, charting a progressive path marked by reconciliation and support for the city’s Jewish and immigrant communities. He died in 2013 at 84.

Montgomery, who inherited his father’s title of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein when Field Marshal Montgomery died in 1976, was an engineer and business executive and later a member of the British Parliament. He died Jan. 8 at age 91; his family announced his death with a notice in the Telegraph without providing further details.

Montgomery also co-wrote a book about his father, who drove Erwin Rommel’s forces across the desert from Egypt to Tunisia before forcing them to surrender in 1943, and later led Allied ground forces during the D-Day invasion of 1944.

“I remain convinced that as a general, both in the desert and in northwest Europe, my father was the right man at the right time in the right place,” Montgomery wrote in “The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944-45” (1994). He added, however, that the praise lavished on his war hero father “had its effect on his character,” resulting in “friction and irritation” with his only son.