The two dust clouds rose like rival spirits over the Sicilian hills.

One flew the Union Jack.
The other flew the Stars and Stripes.

Both were headed for the same target: the port city of Messina.

Whoever reached it first would be crowned the victor of the Sicilian campaign.
Whoever arrived second would spend the rest of the war choking on that humiliation.

It was August 17th, 1943.

George S. Patton sat in the front seat of his command car, one hand braced on the windshield frame, the other stabbing forward.

“Faster,” he snapped at his driver. “I don’t care if the wheels fall off. Get us into that damn city.”

Somewhere on a parallel road, Bernard Law Montgomery was doing the same thing in his own clipped, British way.

“Keep going, man. We must be in Messina first,” Montgomery urged. “We will not let the colonials beat us.”

Exhausted soldiers stumbled forward on both sides. Not because German troops were pressing them hard—the Axis in Sicily was already halfway out the door—but because their generals were racing each other.

The Germans were now just the obstacle.

The real enemy, for each man, was the one wearing the other uniform.

The Making of a Rivalry

To understand why they pushed so hard, you have to understand who Bernard Montgomery was in 1943.

He wasn’t just a British general.

He was the British general.

The savior of El Alamein. The man who, in the eyes of Britain, had broken Rommel and turned the whole war around.

For three long years, the Union Jack had retreated.

Dunkirk
Greece
Crete
Singapore
Tobruk

One disaster after another, across three continents.

Then came El Alamein in October 1942.

Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army, reorganized it, planned meticulously, and—crucially—refused to attack until everything was ready. When he finally moved, he did it with overwhelming artillery and armor. The British won their first clear land victory of the war.

Churchill called it not the beginning of the end, but “the end of the beginning.”

Monty became a hero.
He cultivated that image relentlessly.

He wore a trademark black beret with two cap badges. He issued personal bulletins to his troops. He posed with a scruffy dog at his side. He loved journalists and they loved him. The British press turned him into a legend: methodical, cautious, always right.

Meanwhile, George S. Patton had done some of the hardest work of the war… with almost none of the glory.

In February 1943, at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, American forces had taken a beating. Inexperienced U.S. troops had been mauled by German panzers. Thousands killed, wounded or captured. Equipment abandoned. Morale shaken.

It was exactly what the British feared: the Americans weren’t ready.

Patton was given the job no one envied: take over II Corps and fix it.

He did it the only way he knew how—through discipline like a hammer blow.

Uniform and equipment inspections
Strict enforcement of orders
Relief of officers who wouldn’t or couldn’t lead
Relentless training under live-fire conditions

Within weeks, the II Corps looked and fought like a different army. The same green soldiers who’d broken under fire at Kasserine were now standing and fighting.

But when North Africa was finally won, who got the headlines?

Montgomery, the victor of El Alamein, the star of the desert war.

Patton, the man who’d saved the American reputation, was mostly a footnote: “strong disciplinarian,” “aggressive subordinate,” “colorful character.”

He saw the British papers.
He heard Monty’s interviews.
He read comments hinting that the British had carried the burden while Americans “learned how to fight.”

Patton seethed.

Stealing Sicily

Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, was supposed to be the first great Allied step into Europe, a showcase of Anglo-American cooperation.

On paper, the original plan was balanced.

U.S. Seventh Army (Patton) would land in the west, seize key cities, and drive northeast.
British Eighth Army (Montgomery) would land in the southeast and drive northwest.
Both would converge near Messina. Shared glory.

Montgomery hated it.

He insisted both armies were too spread out. The island’s road network was poor. If they split their efforts, he argued, they’d each be too weak to break German defenses.

His “solution”: concentrate the main effort on his sector.

Rewrite the plan so:

Eighth Army makes the primary drive along the eastern coastal road to Messina.
Seventh Army’s job is reduced to protecting his left flank.

He took his objections over the heads of American field commanders and appealed directly to Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, juggling fragile Allied politics, gave him what he wanted.

The plan was rewritten.

In that single stroke, Montgomery had turned Patton’s army from an equal partner into a shield for his own.

Patton was livid.

He complained to his staff that Monty had “stolen the show before opening night.” But he saluted and followed orders.

For a while.

When Plans Collide With Reality

Montgomery landed his troops on the southeast beaches of Sicily and moved north. According to his script, they were supposed to punch through, seize Catania, and motor along the east coast toward Messina.

The Germans and Italians had other ideas.

They’d fortified the Catania plain heavily. Mines, artillery, cleverly sited defenses using rivers and ridges. Every yard had to be bought.

Day after day, the Eighth Army fought but made little progress. Attacks stalled. Casualties rose. Vehicles bogged down. The “quick thrust” toward Messina turned into a grinding slugging match.

Monty blamed:

The terrain
The unexpectedly tenacious German defense
The Americans for “not diverting enough pressure”

He did not blame his own insistence on being the main thrust.

Meanwhile, on his flank, Patton was guarding with far more force than necessary. He had an entire army essentially sitting in a waiting room while Monty bashed his head against a wall.

Patton saw an opening.

He went to General Harold Alexander, the British commander of all ground forces in Sicily, with a bold suggestion.

“Let me go west,” Patton proposed. “Give me permission to take Palermo.”

It wasn’t in the plan. But Alexander knew the plan was failing and that something needed to break the stalemate.

He said yes.

Patton unleashed the Seventh Army.

Patton Takes the Spotlight

In three days, Patton’s columns roared across the island’s western half.

They covered more than 100 miles of rough, mountainous roads. They outmaneuvered scattered Italian resistance, brushed aside light German rear guards, and rolled into Palermo on July 22nd.

Towns along the way were liberated so fast that some German units didn’t even realize the front had passed them by.

It was exactly the kind of dashing, decisive action that made headlines.

And it did.

American newspapers splashed “PATTON TAKES PALERMO” on the front page. Photos of the hard-charging general standing in a captured Sicilian city ran side by side with stories about Monty’s slow, costly grind near Catania.

For the first time, the world saw George S. Patton as a major figure.

Montgomery saw something else:

Patton stealing his war.

He complained up the chain that Palermo didn’t matter, that the real objective was Messina. He called Patton a showoff, a glory hunter.

But the damage was done.

Patton had turned a flank-guarding assignment into a triumph. He’d exposed how narrow and inflexible Montgomery’s approach looked by contrast.

And he wasn’t finished.

After Palermo fell, Patton wheeled his army east. Now both Allied forces were aiming toward the same target: Messina.

The race had begun.

Racing to Messina

From late July to mid-August, eastern Sicily became the stage for a very personal drama.

Montgomery, still fighting German positions along the east coast, launched amphibious flanking operations, trying to leapfrog blocks and blow through roadblocks. Progress remained slow and bloody.

Patton, coming from the west and north, used his own creative solutions. He ordered daring coastal landings behind German positions, flung units along narrow mountain roads, and accepted risks a cautious commander would have avoided.

Both men were in a hurry.
Not just to defeat the Germans.

To beat each other.

Patton drove his men brutally hard. Marches stretched into the night. Exhaustion became as dangerous as enemy fire. He believed that being second into Messina was worse than losing a battle elsewhere.

On August 16th, Patton’s Third Infantry Division reached Messina’s outskirts. German demolition teams had already blown bridges and evacuated most of their forces across the strait to mainland Italy.

The city was a mostly empty prize now… but a prize all the same.

Patton’s troops pushed through what little resistance remained. By dawn on August 17th, American soldiers were entering Messina’s main square. Engineers hurriedly tossed up small American flags.

Hours later, when Montgomery’s vanguard arrived from the south, they found Messina already in Allied hands—but under American control.

Patton staged it with relish.

He put on his polished helmet, stood in a visible place, and greeted the arriving British officers with oversweet courtesy.

“So glad you could make it, gentlemen,” his tone implied. “We’ve been waiting.”

Montgomery did not come himself.

He sent deputies. He would not give Patton the satisfaction of seeing him arrive second.

Everyone knew what had happened.

Operationally, the campaign was a success. The Germans had evacuated many troops, but Sicily was in Allied hands.

Politically, in the Allied pecking order, something else had shifted.

The Americans had proven they were no longer junior partners.

And George S. Patton had beaten Bernard Montgomery in a straight race.

The Slaps That Almost Ended Him

For Patton, Messina was the high point of 1943.

The low point came immediately after.

During the campaign, Patton visited aid stations at the front. In two separate incidents, he encountered soldiers suffering from combat exhaustion—what we would now call PTSD.

They weren’t bleeding. They weren’t visibly wounded. They were shaking, sobbing, unable to return to the line.

To Patton, who believed courage was a choice and fear something to be conquered by will, this looked like cowardice.

He slapped one soldier across the face. A week later, he did the same to another. He cursed them. Told them to get back to the front. Accused them of failing their country.

Medical staff were appalled.
Word reached Eisenhower.

At first, Eisenhower tried to keep it quiet. He reprimanded Patton privately, ordered him to apologize personally to the soldiers, the doctors, and eventually, to every division in his army.

But secrets rarely stay secret.

When the story broke in the American press, there was an explosion.

Editorials called for Patton’s removal. Congressmen demanded court-martial. Families of soldiers asked why a general would attack someone who had already suffered enough.

Patton was almost finished.

Eisenhower saved him—but at a price. He kept Patton in theater, but his name was politically toxic. When it came time to select commanders for the invasion of France, Ike couldn’t afford to put Patton in front.

Montgomery got chosen as ground commander for D-Day.

Patton was given a different role:

Commander of a fictitious army.

Monty’s Finest Hour… and Patton’s Absence

On June 6th, 1944, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

Montgomery, as ground commander, directed British, Canadian and American armies in the initial phase.

Patton, the most aggressive field commander in the Allied roster, stayed in England, commanding the First U.S. Army Group—an army that existed mostly on maps, in radio traffic, and in the imagination of German intelligence.

Dummy camps with inflatable tanks. Officers sending fake messages. Double agents whispering about a fierce, tank-loving American general completely devoted to Patton’s “army.”

It was one of history’s greatest deception operations.

It still chafed.

Montgomery had what Patton had wanted his entire life. The big stage. The big command. The title. Patton was an actor miming a war for the benefit of German eavesdroppers.

Meanwhile, on the real beaches and in the hedgerows, Montgomery’s style showed its limits.

He had promised Khan would fall on D-Day.

It held out for over a month.

He launched multiple operations—Epsom, Charnwood, Goodwood—bloody set-piece battles that chewed up German armor but made little ground. British and Canadian forces suffered heavy casualties. Normand’s landscape turned into a maze of shell holes and wreckage.

Montgomery blamed:

The bocage country (which was awful)
The strength of German Panzer divisions
The Americans for not pressing hard enough in their own sectors

He did not question his own cautious, grinding style.

Then, in late July, the Americans broke through at St. Lô.

Operation Cobra punched a hole in the German lines. Tanks poured through. Once again, there was a need for a fast, merciless exploitation.

This time Patton didn’t have to sit and watch.

On August 1st, Third Army was activated in France.

Patton was back.

The Great Chase

What followed has entered every serious history of the war: Patton’s sweep across France.

Within weeks, Third Army was racing east and north, covering distances that stunned even German staff officers. Town after town flashed past—Avranches, Angers, Orléans, Reims.

They liberated so fast, rear units could barely keep up.

While Monty’s forces still wrestled for every village around Caen, Patton was halfway to the German border.

It wasn’t simply showmanship. His fast advance cut off German escape routes, helped close the Falaise pocket, and hurried the collapse of German positions in France.

Montgomery watched with growing resentment.

He argued Patton was getting priority in supplies. He suggested the Americans were good at pursuit, but not at “set piece” battles. He insisted that his slogging approach had fixed the Germans long enough for Patton’s race to have meaning.

There was some truth in that.

But public perception was simpler:

Montgomery—stalled in Normandy.
Patton—ripping across France.

In the court of public opinion, the balance between them was shifting.

And the argument over “how to end the war” was about to make things worse.

One Thrust or Many?

By September 1944, Allied armies stood near the German border.

So did a pile of questions:

How do you drive into Germany?
Where do you focus your strength?
Who gets priority in supplies, fuel, and ammo?

Montgomery had a clear answer: Give it all to him.

His plan: One massive thrust through the Netherlands, across the Lower Rhine, straight into the Ruhr and beyond. Cut Germany in half. End the war in 1944.

American forces? Provide flanks and support.

Patton had a clear answer too: Broad-front.

He argued that Third Army could cross the Rhine in the south, while other American and British forces advanced along their own axes. Multiple penetrations would stretch German defenses and prevent them from massing.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one Monty,” he might as well have said.

Eisenhower, as usual, chose compromise. Broad front overall—but Montgomery got priority for one big operation:

Market Garden.

Market Garden: Montgomery’s Gamble

September 17th, 1944.

Sky filled with parachutes.

British, American and Polish paratroopers dropped behind German lines in the Netherlands to seize bridges over major rivers. On the ground, British XXX Corps would race up a single highway—“Hell’s Highway”—to relieve them.

It was daring. It was imaginative.

It was also fragile as glass.

Everything had to go right: weather, timing, intelligence. It didn’t.

German armored units were stronger than expected.
The highway became a nightmare of traffic jams and ambushes.
The bridge at Arnhem—“the bridge too far”—held out heroically but could not be relieved in time.

Of 10,000 British paratroopers who landed near Arnhem, fewer than 2,000 escaped. The rest were dead, wounded, or captured.

Market Garden failed.

Montgomery called it “90% successful.”

Others called it what it was: a costly strategic failure.

Supplies that might have kept Patton’s army moving into Germany during September had been poured into a plan that didn’t deliver.

Patton, whose tanks sat idle for lack of fuel while this airborne spectacle took center stage, was vindicated. He believed the war might have ended months earlier if he’d been allowed to advance in the south instead of feeding Montgomery’s ambition in the north.

But the rivalry was not finished yet.

The Bulge: Who Saved Whom?

In December 1944, the Germans shocked everyone.

They launched a massive offensive through the Ardennes, smashing into thin American lines in the snow-covered forests of Belgium and Luxembourg.

The Battle of the Bulge was chaos: units cut off, weather grounding Allied aircraft, command and control confused.

Eisenhower reacted quickly:

Gave Montgomery temporary command of American forces north of the German penetration.
Told Patton to pivot Third Army north and attack the southern shoulder of the Bulge.

What Patton accomplished next was staggering.

He turned three divisions 90 degrees in winter, marched them over frozen roads, and launched an attack in 48 hours. Mobility on this scale was supposed to take weeks. His troops relieved Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne and remnants of other units had held out in dire conditions.

Montgomery organized the northern defense and eventual counterattack well enough. His forces did their part.

Then, on January 7th, 1945, he held a press conference.

And nearly blew the alliance apart.

Montgomery stood before reporters and, in measured tones, described how American forces had been “in some disarray” and how, when he took over, he “tidied up” the situation and brought order. He implied that his leadership had prevented disaster.

He barely mentioned Patton.

He barely mentioned the 101st Airborne’s stand at Bastogne.

To American ears, it sounded like Monty was taking credit for their blood.

The US press exploded. Patton cursed him in private and in his diary. Omar Bradley was so angry he told Eisenhower he would never serve under Montgomery again.

Eisenhower had to soothe bruised egos and issue clarifications.

But he never forgot what that press conference revealed: Montgomery’s instinct, in crisis, was to save his own reputation first.

The Rhine: Another Race

As Allied armies reached the Rhine in early 1945, Montgomery once again prepared a massive, carefully planned crossing. Codenamed Plunder, it featured:

Weeks of staging
A huge artillery barrage
Amphibious assaults
Airborne drops

It was, in Monty’s style, a set piece.

Meanwhile, the Americans did what they always seemed to do around him:

They moved fast.

On March 7th, elements of the US 9th Armored Division reached the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen… and found it still standing, damaged but usable.

They rushed across.

A bridgehead was created on the east bank of the Rhine—without elaborate planning, without weeks of preparation.

On March 22nd, Patton’s Third Army crossed the Rhine near Oppenheim using pontoon bridges and assault boats, catching the Germans off guard.

He called Bradley that night, reportedly saying, “Brad, for God’s sake, tell the world we’re across. I don’t want Monty claiming the whole bloody show.”

Montgomery’s grand crossing at Wesel went ahead on March 23–24th. It was technically brilliant, executed with overwhelming forces.

But the press couldn’t resist the narrative:

British: huge, meticulously planned operation.
Americans: “Oh, we’re already across… twice.”

Again, Patton had upstaged him.

Legacy: Who Won?

After the war, the rivalry didn’t die.

Patton was killed in December 1945 after a car accident in Germany. He never got to write his own defense or correct other people’s accounts.

Montgomery lived into the 1970s.

He wrote memoirs.
Gave interviews.
Shaped his story.

In those memoirs, Monty dismissed Patton as “good for pursuit” but not for “major operations.” He praised his own steadiness and minimized his failures. He argued that his contributions had been misunderstood.

Patton’s diaries, published later, described Montgomery as “a tired little man” who would have been fired in any army but the British.

But history has a way of settling accounts.

Today:

Montgomery is remembered as a capable, sometimes brilliant defensive and set-piece general with serious flaws in ego and imagination. El Alamein was a real achievement. So was his role in the Bulge. But Khan, Market Garden and that infamous press conference stain his record.
Patton is remembered as one of America’s greatest battlefield commanders—aggressive, sometimes reckless, prone to serious personal errors (the slapping incidents cannot be excused), but repeatedly right about what needed to be done and capable of making it happen with breathtaking speed.

Montgomery spent the war with more influence, political clout, and control over strategy. He commanded more often, shaped plans more frequently, and won the PR battle for much of the conflict.

Patton, when he got the ball, ran further with it.

Sicily.
France.
The Bulge.
The Rhine.

Every time he was given freedom of action, terrain and enemies disappeared beneath his tracks.

The race to Messina in August 1943 was just the first lap in a conflict between two men that would echo through every major decision for the rest of the war.

On that dusty Sicilian morning, as American troops raised flags over Messina and British officers arrived, shielded from Patton’s grin by polite ceremony, something deeper shifted.

The world saw that the American Army was not a junior partner anymore.

And everyone—especially Bernard Montgomery—saw that George S. Patton, flaws and all, was not someone you sidelined without a cost.

The general who died young became the legend. The general who lived long spent decades arguing with history.

History, quietly, made up its mind.