General ‘Boy': The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning

by Richard Mead

  43 Division, with 2 Armoured Division, formed IV Corps, which had been chosen to act as the Home Forces strategic reserve, its role being described in its first operational order as ‘delivery of the decisive counter-attack which can only be effected by mobile and ruthless action.’ Corps exercises began in the late summer. In the brigade itself, training was focused on battle drill and street-fighting practice, whilst night patrols were introduced and reconnaissance parties sent out into neighbouring Suffolk and Essex. Equipment was still woefully short and Boy ordered Walch to buy up all the motor cycles available for sale locally to provide some additional mobility.

  If Boy was totally at home in this new environment and, indeed, pleased to be carrying out at last what he considered was a role to match his talents, Daphne was at something of a loss, as well as being effectively homeless. Although the children were spending much of the time at Rousham with their grandmother, she was reluctant to live there herself. However, no separate accommodation was provided for the brigade commander, who was expected to live in the mess at Tatmore Place and, from mid-August, at a new HQ at Kingswaldenbury. She thought that she should at least be near at hand and Boy’s batman Johnson3 was instructed to look for a suitable billet for the family.

  According to Brian Urquhart, Johnson was a man of few words, indeed he only ever heard him utter one word, ‘Sir’, used with ‘infinite expressiveness’ ‘Sir’ affirmative, ‘Sir’ questioning, ‘Sir’ enthusiastic, ‘Sir’ grateful, ‘Sir’ acknowledging, and so on.4 On this occasion, Johnson must have plumbed hidden depths of volubility, as he succeeded in persuading the owners of Langley End, a large Lutyens house near Hitchin, to accept Daphne, Tessa, Flavia and the nanny as paying guests. Christopher and Paddy Puxley were both in their early 40s and were themselves childless. Christopher was notionally a gentleman-farmer, but in practice did very little other than read and play the piano, although he was a member of the Home Guard. They welcomed Daphne and the two girls with open arms, Paddy becoming an immediate favourite with the latter. Their stay initially was quite brief, as Daphne was pregnant again and decided that it would be only fair to the Puxleys if she moved out when the birth was imminent. She took the lease on another nearby house, Clouds Hill, in October and her longed-for son, Christian, was born on 3 November.

  Relations between Daphne and Boy were starting to show signs of strain, largely because he was extremely busy and would come back to Langley End or Clouds Hill at the weekends tired and very often fraught. The war was not going well and he was highly critical of the War Office and some of the higher commanders. Moreover, in addition to the shortages of equipment still plaguing him, there were frequent frustrations involved in dealing with the civilian population, whom he often found obstructive.

  In company he was often much more relaxed. The Harrison family, who owned the building in which brigade HQ was situated, boasted six beautiful daughters who were popular not only with the HQ staff, becoming known as the ‘Brigade Butterflies’, but also with their commander. Boy was quite capable of being an entertaining member of any social gathering and would give demonstrations of his own party piece, a Cossack dance executed with considerable brio. He was also rather better with his two daughters at this stage than was Daphne, readily entering their games. It was his wife who suffered the brunt of his frustration.

  As always he was showing yet another face to his subordinates, for whom he continued to set a high example. John Collins, who was in charge of the brigade signals section, said that ‘he inspired unusual loyalty – partly for his fierce rejection of any outside interference with his command … chiefly for his self-confidence, complete calm and decisiveness … we subalterns looked on him with awe: we realized his humour and humanity, but, frankly, we generally preferred his more magnificent qualities.’5

  He also continued to find favour with his superiors. His divisional commander, Major General Val Pollok, wrote that the way in which the brigade responded to his command was inspiring, although his tactical judgement was sounder than his administrative and that he was apt to dash in where angels fear to tread. He recommended Boy for divisional command and Lieutenant Generals Nosworthy at IV Corps and Williams at Eastern Command broadly concurred, although they both felt that he needed more time.

  In November 1940, 43 Division moved again. There had been a change in the leadership of Home Forces during the summer, with Alan Brooke replacing Edmund Ironside as Commander-in-Chief. The latter had kept his mobile reserve north of London, where in theory it could strike at landings in East Anglia as well as along the Channel coast. Brooke was convinced that any invasion would come on the shortest route from France and that his best equipped formations should be positioned to meet it. The division was thus moved to the eastern end of Kent, 128 Brigade being given responsibility for the coast of the Isle of Thanet between Whitstable and the North Foreland, with Brigade HQ located at Sarre, between Canterbury and Margate. The division now came under the command of XII Corps and it was of no small advantage to Boy that the corps commander was Andrew Thorne, a longstanding supporter.

  Boy left Hertfordshire a week after his son was born and, although he was back for a week over Christmas, with invasion still a real possibility he had few subsequent opportunities to return to Clouds Hill. On the other hand, he was reluctant to bring the family into the part of the country most exposed to attack. It was with some relief to both him and Daphne, therefore, that she received an invitation from the Puxleys to return to Langley End when her lease expired in January 1941. From this time onwards she and Boy led an increasingly detached life which, had they but known it, would last for another eighteen years. In his absence she turned increasingly for comfort to Christopher Puxley, a handsome and engaging companion who was always there. She was also writing again, this time a historical romance which took its title from the place where she and Boy had honeymooned, Frenchman’s Creek. She required time and solitude to do this, which she was only able to do thanks to the ministrations of the Puxleys, the nanny and nurse-maid.

  On the other side of London, Boy was continuing to attract favourable attention. Pollok once again recommended him for a divisional command, strongly endorsed this time by both Thorne and Williams, giving as an alternative recommendation that he be considered for a training appointment as a major general. It was, in fact, in the latter role that he was initially considered for promotion and, indeed, selected to be Inspector of Infantry. It is possible to detect Brooke’s hand in this appointment, which was being made to replace Major General Charles Loyd, who was becoming the C-in-C’s Chief of Staff. In the event, it was almost certainly a good thing for Boy that it never took place, notwithstanding that his promotion to acting major general would have come nine months earlier than it eventually did. The duties of Inspector of Infantry, largely confined to advising on aspects of training, devoid of power and with no troops to command, would have driven him mad. As it was, another opportunity emerged and the appointment was rescinded.

  The new posting was as Commander of 24 Guards Brigade Group. Brigade groups were divisions in miniature, operating independently, in most cases with much the same infantry component as a standard brigade, but with their own field regiment and anti-tank battery, engineering field company, field ambulance, ordnance field park and other supporting units. On 19 February Boy left Sarre, along a road lined by the cheering men of 128 Brigade, and travelled directly to his new HQ at Addington Golf Club in South London, where he took over from Brigadier the Hon. William Fraser, a fellow Grenadier and an old friend, with whom he had served in the 3rd Battalion ten years earlier.

  Whilst 24 Guards Brigade Group was not a division, it was the next best thing and much to Boy’s liking. There was no Grenadier unit, but there were the 1st Battalions of the Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards, with a relatively high proportion of regulars. The first two of these had gone with the brigade to Norway in March 1940 for the forlorn campaign in that country and as a result had experience of active service. There w
as also an additional infantry unit, the 2nd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment. There were not one, but two field regiments and two antitank batteries, so it was a powerful little force. Its task was to defend London from an attack from the south, for which purpose it was concentrated in the Wimbledon–Purley–Norwood triangle.

  Once again good fortune smiled on Boy, as his immediate superior, the GOC London District, was none other than his namesake and one-time commanding officer, ‘Boy’ Sergison-Brooke. Boy was also in luck with his Brigade Major, yet another Grenadier. George Gordon Lennox, known to all as Geordie, had been at Sandhurst during Boy’s time as Adjutant and had won the King’s Medal. He had also served with his new brigade commander in the 3rd Battalion. Notwithstanding the fact that his new chief staff officer had passed Staff College and was already well-known to him, Boy summoned Walch to instruct Gordon Lennox on how he liked to have his HQ run. Walch quickly established that Gordon Lennox knew exactly what to do and departed as soon as decently possible after a gin and a lunch.

  During the spring, summer and autumn of 1941 there was a long series of exercises, starting with one in Ashdown Forest in early March for the whole brigade group, with the Irish Guards as the enemy, moving on through the rest of that month and April to four consecutive London District exercises, carried out not only in Kent and Sussex, but also in the Thames Valley. Also involved were 20 and 30 Guards Brigades, the latter commanded by Boy’s old friend, Alan Adair. One feature of the exercises involved counter-measures against landings by parachute and glider-borne troops.

  By May the focus had switched to working in conjunction with the neighbouring IV Corps to the south and XII Corps to the south-east. At the latter, Thorne had been relieved by an officer not at the time well-known to Boy, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery came up to Addington to visit the brigade group HQ and, when he left, requested Boy to find an officer to serve on his staff from his battalion of the Warwickshires, Monty’s old regiment. Boy duly asked the CO to make a recommendation and the officer was promptly despatched to Monty’s HQ at Sevenoaks. Three weeks later he was returned with a complaint that he did not know how to write staff letters properly. Boy was furious, making the comment that he believed in leading officers not sacking them. It was not the best start to what would become in due course a key relationship, but a better understanding was reached when the brigade group played the enemy in XII Corps’ Exercise ‘Morebinge’ in August.

  There was more to Boy’s life than exercises. He kept his subordinate commanders on their toes by conducting surprise inspections. On one occasion he found that one of the battalion HQs was unguarded. Ordering Edward Ford, one of his staff officers, to collect all the papers he could lay his hands on and bring them back to Brigade HQ, he then summoned the luckless CO and showed him the evidence of his slackness. Typically for Boy, after he had vented his considerable wrath, he invited the man to stay on for a glass of sherry. He had to manage the local Home Guard with a lighter touch: in the predominantly middle-class area of South London, its members were often solicitors, insurance brokers and even judges, some of whom became friends in later life. By this time the Home Guard at least had rifles, but was woefully short of other equipment and was forced to resort to a strange collection of cheap but ineffective weapons. It had nevertheless to be fitted in to the overall defence plan.

  There were other duties as well, one of them distinctly unusual. On 4 and 5 August, Boy was a member of a court martial convened by Sergison-Brooke to try Josef Jacobs, a German spy who had landed in Huntingdonshire by parachute on the night of 31 January/1 February, but had injured himself and attracted attention by firing his revolver. After being found guilty, Jacobs was put before a firing squad on 14 August at the Tower of London, the last ever person to be executed there.

  There was little time for relaxation as the Blitz continued throughout the winter into spring 1942 and on 16 April the area was particularly heavily hit, with the whole HQ staff out all night fighting fires locally. The site of the HQ on a large golf course did, however, tempt a number of the staff to bring their clubs with them and play whenever work permitted. Boy never took up golf, but enjoyed going round with his bow and arrow, matching his flights against their shots. He had kept in practice at Tatton Place and Kingswaldenbury, where he used to impress his officers with his feats of archery.

  The visits to Langley End became fewer, although he managed to take a week’s leave in mid-August, spent with Daphne on a boat trip on the Ouse. She had been seriously ill with pneumonia during the early spring, following a severe bout of flu, and remained weak for some time afterwards, although she managed to resume writing Frenchman’s Creek in May and had the novel finished by early July, helped by having the children packed off to their grandmother Nancy at Rousham. She had by now become infatuated with Christopher Puxley, whose calm sympathy stood in contrast to Boy, who always seemed to arrive tired and keen to vent the frustrations which he was unable to express at work. Daphne’s relationship with Puxley up to this point was emotional rather than physical, but the very effort of concealing her feelings added to her stress when Boy was around.

  As Boy’s professional life prospered, his private life suffered and a change was about to take place which would exacerbate the divisions between the two. It was very clear by now that Alan Brooke wholly approved of Boy. In this he was almost certainly encouraged by his cousin, the GOC London District, who was one of only a handful of people in whom the C-in-C Home Forces was able to confide wholeheartedly. The two of them dined together frequently and it is very likely that Sergison-Brooke, as a long-time supporter of Boy’s, strongly advanced his case for a divisional command.

  The case may have been strengthened by Boy’s performance in Exercise ‘Bumper’, the largest Home Forces exercise to that date, involving a quarter of a million troops in twelve divisions and three independent brigades, including Boy’s. Brooke himself was in overall control, with his HQ in Oxford, whilst the exercise covered a vast area in the east and south-east of England and ran from 29 September to 3 October. 24 Guards Brigade Group formed part of Southern Command’s forces, under Harold Alexander, and it was attached to 4 Division6 for much of the exercise.

  On the night of 30 October, the brigade group was ordered to cross the Thames in order to support a divisional attack on the flank of Eastern Command, the ‘enemy’ army. Boy commandeered a number of London buses to augment his transport and, using Chelsea Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge and the Blackwall Tunnel, managed to establish his troops in a secure position before Eastern Command had realized that they were there. His target was the HQ of II Corps and, on the next day, he ordered Charles Larking, one of his liaison officers, to pass through the enemy lines and, wearing an umpire’s white armband, penetrate the HQ and establish the enemy positions on the map. When Larking expressed surprise at this deception, Boy simply said ‘ruse de guerre’ and ordered him to get on with it.

  Armed with this vital information, Boy attacked on 1 October and captured the II Corps HQ. With half of Eastern Command’s forces now utterly directionless, the exercise would have been brought to a complete and premature halt, but the Chief Umpire decided, ‘reluctantly’ according to the brigade group’s war diary, that it should be withdrawn. It was, nevertheless, a considerable feat.

  Later that month Boy’s immediate future was settled. Brooke’s diary on 22 October 1941 reads: ‘Picked up Bertie Brooke at his flat and took him down to 24 Guards Brigade Group to watch a demonstration by Browning of attacks on tanks. A first class show, very well staged and full of useful lessons. I am arranging to have it made into an instructional film which ought to be useful. Also informed Browning that he had been selected for command of the Airborne Division, and what I wanted him to do about it.’7

  Less than a fortnight later, on 3 November, Boy reported to GHQ Home Forces. He did, however, leave behind him at 24th Guards Brigade Group one enduring reminder of his stay, the formation sign. As an independent entity, it
was entitled to one of its own and he was asked to suggest a design. He proposed his own family crest, a pair of wings in red on a blue background, the colours of the Brigade of Guards. It was to survive for nearly sixty years.8

  Chapter 11

  Pegasus (1941–1942)

  Boy has often been called ‘The Father of the Airborne Forces’. It is certainly true that he took this important new branch of Britain’s armed services from infancy to maturity in three short years, but he was not present at the conception. The real father was the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who had been greatly impressed by the German glider and parachute landings in Holland and Belgium on 10 May 1940, and particularly by the glider-borne coup de main at Fort Eben Emael. On 6 June, two days after the last British soldier was picked up from the beaches at Dunkirk, he sent a minute to his Chief Staff Officer, Major-General Hastings Ismay, outlining a number of measures for taking the offensive back to the Germans, including ‘Deployment of parachute troops on a scale equal to five thousand’. This was followed by a further minute on 22 June, asking for a plan from the War Office.

  Churchill was doomed to disappointment in the short term. Whilst activity began immediately with the opening of the Central Landing School (shortly afterwards renamed the Central Landing Establishment or CLE) at Ringway, Manchester and the allocation of No. 2 Commando to parachute duties, it became apparent very quickly that his target of 5,000 troops was unlikely to be achieved for at least another twelve months, the major constraints being the availability of aircraft for training and the complete lack of military gliders. The main opposition came from the RAF which, not unnaturally, considered that its priorities were first to defend the country from invasion through Fighter Command and secondly to take the war to the Germans through Bomber Command. The supply of both trained pilots and suitable aircraft were constrained by this policy, which was driven from the very top of the Air Staff. The only aircraft which the RAF was prepared to make available for parachuting and glider-towing were a few obsolete and unsuitable Whitley bombers, whilst not until September 1940 was an initial order placed for 400 Hotspur training gliders, with deliveries to commence in the following spring.