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I agree, and personally, I'm not impressed by either.  To me, the watershed moment for my dislike for Patton was when he slapped a troop and berated him for "merely" having stress due to combat.

Regarding Halsey, I grudingly admire him.  My reservation re: him has to do with him chasing Ozawa's carriers and abandoning his post off Samar.

And I have absolutely no admiration for Stalin.

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I think there was a lot of political influence from different quarters behind the appointment of both. I always had a great deal of respect for General Eisenhower who must have had a hard time keeping them in check. You mentioned that he threatened Monty with the sack & I believe he also did the same with Patton. I read that Monty didn't think much of Ike's capabilities as a general due to lack of experience in the field but he repected him for his organisational skills which were more important in his position as Supreme Allied Commander. They apparently got on very well considering Monty's prickly nature.

As for Monty's reputation of caring for his men, he might well have done & he undoubtedly inspired the 'Desert Rats' in North Africa who are still loyal to him today. This didn't stop him being completely ruthless with their lives at times & if I recall correctly my father-in-law & his colleagues didn't have the same affection or trust for him. Unfortunately it's to late too ask him to confirm than now as he passed away some years ago. The man they did trust was their immediate commander, Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks. http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/cgi-bin/uk/1118.html
Father-in-law was very impressed with Edward Fox's portrayal of him in the film "A Bridge too Far" & said he had captured his character perfectly. He also looked very much like him.

PS. Thanks for the link.

The battle off Samar was truly and epic event.  Because of Halsey's irresponsibility, you have a small screen of DD's and DE's going against a formidable surface fleet of BB's CA's and CL's which included none other than the IJN Yamato.  It should have been a totally one sided slaughter.  The planes from the CVE's only had amrament for bombarding shore installations and that's all their pilots were skilled for.  It truly was an amazing event of epic portportions.  Just amazing.

Heck, the Samuel B Roberts was a Destroyer Escort, underpowered, underarmed, intended for antisubmarine duty only.  She charged headlong  against Japanese cruisers and battleships.  Amazing!  And she was ONLY joined by the Johnston and Hoel, both destroyers.  The other DE's and DD's maintained their screens around the CVE's.  So you had 2 destroyers and 1 destroyer escort charging into about a dozen very large Japanese warships.

Once the pilots from the CVE's ran out of ammunition, they began doing dry runs to harass the Japanese ships.

Please forgive the acronyms:

BB - battleship
CA - cruiser
CL - light cruiser
CVE - escort carrier
DD - destroyer
DE - destroyer escort