Throughout the war, the King and Queen provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories, and troops. The King visited military forces abroad in France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944, and the Low Countries in October 1944. Their high public profile and apparently indefatigable determination secured their place as symbols of national resistance. At a social function in 1944, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Alan Brooke, revealed that every time he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery he thought he was after his job. The King replied: "You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!"