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

by Richard Mead

  With all best wishes

  Yours sincerely

  Brian Urquhart.

  Many others also expressed their views directly to Daphne, including Angela Fox, a personal friend and also the mother of Edward Fox. She saw the press preview and wrote that she was ‘stunned by the lies, & totally inaccurate portrayal by Dirk Bogarde. It is pretty clear to me that, having read the script, he should simply have turned it down.’ As it happened, Bogarde was soon afterwards to be completely taken aback by the outpouring of criticism. In some distress he wrote a letter to Attenborough which was couched, in the words of his biographer John Coldstream, ‘in venomous terms’. He felt strongly that he had been betrayed by the director and one rather sad outcome to the affair was that the relationship between them, hitherto one of the friendliest, was never to be the same again.

  Attenborough himself recognized very clearly the controversy that had been stirred up, addressing the issue in a subsequent interview: ‘Of course it is a tremendous responsibility, a daunting responsibility and the chances are you get it wrong because the degree of potential error, as in the battle itself, is enormous.’ But he then went on to say: ‘Provided you are not cheap, provided you are not meretricious, provided that you are not crude in the search for effect, then you can hold your head up and say “In my judgement, in my knowledge, what I presented was true.”’5 In this case the portrayal was not true and, whilst Attenborough cannot be accused of being cheap or crude, if it was being done for the purposes of box office success then ‘meretricious’ might not be an inappropriate description.

  A Bridge Too Far did lasting damage to Boy’s reputation, since it will be how he is remembered to all except the dwindling number of people who actually knew him, or who are keenly interested in either military history or the life of Daphne herself. The damage cannot easily be undone. Daphne always refused to see the film and would not even discuss it once the immediate furore had died down.

  Daphne lived for just over twenty-four years after Boy’s death, becoming a Dame of the British Empire, continuing her successful writing career in Kilmarth and having the pleasure of seeing her grandchildren grow up. She never thought of marrying again. Whilst she had never been a religious person, she always felt that she and Boy would be reunited. In 1979 she wrote to his cousin Denys, who had been living for many years in New Zealand: ‘I can tell you that I always believe that I shall be met by my beloved Tommy in a celestial boat of his own design, who will lean over to pull me aboard, saying “Come on, darling, what a time you have taken, I’ve been waiting for ages!” And off we will sail into a heavenly sunrise, not sunset.’6

  Chapter 32

  Retrospective

  As a soldier, sportsman, courtier and the husband of one of the twentieth century’s most popular novelists, Boy’s reputation stood high in his lifetime and for a while at least he was a household name. History, however, has increasingly judged him on the back of one short episode which went badly wrong and has tended to ignore his qualities and achievements, which were considerable.

  Boy was born to be a soldier. From the time he entered Sandhurst at the end of 1914 he excelled in his profession, developing into an outstanding regimental officer in both war and peace, widely respected by his subordinates and highly regarded by his superiors for setting and maintaining the highest standards. Whilst he was terrifying to those who failed to achieve his own standards – his flashes of temper were legendary, but they were just that, as swift to subside as to flare up – he would never ask anyone to do something which he himself could not. He was a strong team builder, with the knack of inspiring great personal loyalty and even affection: John Davies, who served as his Adjutant in the 1930s and went on to command the 4th Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in North-West Europe, said later that his two years with Boy were the happiest in his army life, and similar sentiments were echoed by his staffs at every formation he commanded during the War and at SEAC. He was certainly ambitious, but his ambition was on the whole a facet of his desire that every unit or formation in which he was involved should be the best. His sense of duty was unerring.

  Throughout his army career Boy presented one face to his immediate friends and colleagues and another to the wider world. The latter sometimes interpreted the seemingly effortless ease with which he conducted himself as arrogance and his attention to dress as vanity. There were elements of both in his personality, but the first was unintentional, a product of his education and his membership of a famous regiment, and the second the consequence not only of a pride in his personal appearance, but also of adherence to his own high standards. Because of this veneer he could seem intimidating to his subordinates, pushy to his peer group and patronizing to his allies, notably the Americans. Those who were allowed beneath the veneer spoke subsequently of his kindness and generosity: Brian Urquhart said that he found his loyalty and friendship, especially when one was in difficulties, both touching and extremely effective.

  The monument to Boy’s achievement is Britain’s Airborne Forces. Those who assert that these were already in existence when he was appointed to command the Airborne Division in 1941, and that he does not therefore deserve the title ‘Father of the Airborne Forces’, are missing the point: without him, those forces might well have had a very short life. He has been derided by some as a political general, whose only value was in the high level contacts he had made before the War. It was just these contacts which, in the face of opposition from some of the Army establishment and outright hostility from the RAF, enabled Boy to marshal the support necessary to keep the young but fragile organization alive until it could be deployed in force. He had the enormously valuable backing of Brooke, the most influential soldier of the day, but he had to work for this. At the end of 1942 there was a real possibility that the whole airborne project would be severely truncated, but Boy hung on sufficiently long for it to be not only saved but enlarged. The beret of the Parachute Regiment and the wings of the Army Air Corps remain the visible symbols of his achievement.

  Boy was no intellectual soldier in the manner of Ridgway or Taylor, both of whom went on to reach the highest position in the US Army. He was, however, not totally lacking in imagination. There is a remarkable document in the Imperial War Museum, dating from 1942, in which Boy uses the device of an Airborne Division medical officer’s dream to set out his thoughts for the future of airborne warfare. In the dream, the officer hears a noise far above his head and, looking up, sees strange machines hovering above him, ‘big streamlined things, like very large tanks, with hardly any wings.’ He climbs aboard one of them and it takes off, rising rapidly from the ground, propelled by horizontal propellers. He also sees inside another of the machines, with stretchers along one side of it and a mobile operating theatre on board. He hears one of the commanders talking about the antiquated Horsas, now museum pieces: ‘ “Why on earth they did not design a machine so that a motor car or a gun could be driven in or out of it beats me,” said the voice, “the first Airborne Commander must have been a slow sort of fellow. That original loading ramp can never have worked.”’ This is an extraordinary glimpse of the future, with Boy predicting the use of helicopters, which hardly existed at the time and were certainly not being used for warfare. It is also nicely self-deprecating.

  Back in the real world, it all went wrong for Boy when he and the other airborne leaders overreached themselves. They were carried away by the success of the landings in Normandy, believing that they could deploy in ever larger numbers. In so doing they forgot some of the basic principles of airborne warfare, particularly that the biggest possible force should be landed in the shortest possible time as close as possible to its objectives and that, once the surprise which was their hallmark had been achieved, the lightly armed soldiers should be assured of artillery or air support and relieved as quickly as possible. Operation ‘Market Garden’ was a bridge too far in metaphorical as well as literal terms.

  It was also the beginning of the end for Boy as a sold
ier. Whilst he never saw the operation as a failure for the airborne troops, maintaining for the rest of his life that they had done all that was asked of them, he was deeply affected by the fate of 1 Airborne Division and realized that he was at least partially responsible for it. From that time on, his appetite for command ebbed away, with the result that his career in the post-War Army could go little further. For the next three years, important though his appointments might have been, he was in fact just marking time.

  The counterpoint to Boy’s career was his marriage to Daphne, but from 1940 onwards the two spheres of career and marriage barely touched. From the outset this was a different Boy, one who would probably have astonished those who knew him in his other life. When in good form, he could be relaxed, casual and very funny. On the other hand, this was a weaker man than the public one, a man who used his wife from the outset as something of an emotional prop, who needed comfort after his nightmares and soothing over his frustrations. Because they did not live together, there was little real friction between career and marriage until the breakdown in 1957, which came as much of a shock to her as to him, but in spite of their physical separation, underneath it all their family and friends were convinced that Boy and Daphne adored one another. Moreover, she was extremely proud of him and he was her greatest fan.

  Boy’s reputation has taken a serious turn for the worse over the last twenty-five years. Successive historians have included him amongst the villains of ‘Market Garden’, whilst A Bridge Too Far dealt a major and largely unjustified blow. Few if any historians have taken the trouble to evaluate his part in the operation analytically, indeed there has been a general acceptance of criticisms which have been often repeated but which do not always stand up to scrutiny. He certainly cannot be absolved from a significant level of responsibility, but he does not deserve to be castigated above all others.

  There was an element of pathos about the end of Boy’s life, but those who knew him well have always preferred to remember him in his prime. After his death Mark Henniker wrote a letter to the editor of the Guards Magazine, in which he described his arrival at Storey’s Gate in November 1941 to join the ‘Dungeon Party’:

  At that time the fortunes of Britain were at a low ebb. Everywhere our forces seemed to meet with reverses. There seemed to be nothing that we in Britain could do about it. The threat of invasion had not passed; Commanders were inclined to be defensively minded; and a great body of the Forces were fed-up, ill-equipped and badly turned out.

  Here, however, I found a man who at our first meeting spoke of the attack; and the prominent part that Airborne Forces would take in it. Here he was: tall, erect, immaculately dressed, looking you straight in the eye; he was filled with fire, enthusiasm, energy and a magical charm that cast its spell over everyone …

  If ever there were a man sans peur et sans reproche, ‘Boy’ Browning was that man.

  Boy’s father, Freddie Browning, at the time of his marriage to Nancy

  Boy, or Tommy, as a baby with his mother, Nancy

  Boy’s uncle, Admiral Sir Montague Browning, in 1926

  Tommy during the prep school years

  Tommy keeping wicket at West Downs

  Tommy at Eton

  Boy in late 1917, just after receiving the Croix de Guerre

  Boy wearing his England international athletics shirt

  Boy as Adjutant of the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, with his HQ officers and NCOs

  The Adjutant – a caricature from the RMC Magazine & Record. ( Copyright Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst)

  Boy with the Senior Under Officers at Sandhurst

  Daphne in 1930, shortly before her first meeting with Boy

  Boy and Daphne relaxing on ‘Yggy’

  The officers of HQ 128 Brigade, with Gordon Walch second from the left in the front row

  Boy on his visit to the United States in July/August 1942

  Churchill’s visit to the Airborne Division in April 1942

  Boy accompanies King George VI on an inspection of 1 Airborne Division in March 1944

  Boy and Sosabowski

  Boy in late 1944, shortly before leaving for South-East Asia Command

  Boy and Daphne, with Kits, Tessa and Flavia, at Menabilly during one of his rare wartime leaves

  The Top Team at SEAC – Slim, Wheeler, Mountbatten, Power, Park and Boy

  ‘Supremo’ confers with his Chief of Staff

  Boy takes the VE-Day parade in Kandy, due to Mountbatten’s indisposition

  The signatures of Numata and Boy on the Japanese surrender document

  The CIGS visits Singapore –Brooke, Dempsey, Park and Boy stand to the right of Mountbatten, with Christison to the immediate left, two away from Leclerc

  A portrait by Dorothy Wilding of Daphne in the late 1940s

  Boy with Tessa and his sister Grace at Brian Johnston’s wedding in April 1948

  Restless of Plyn

  Jeanne d’Arc

  Ygdrasil II

  Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh aboard Fanny Rosa at Cowes, Boy with his back to the camera

  The Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, wearing Boy’s full dress sash

  Kits, Tessa and Flavia – Christmas 1950

  Boy with Margot Fonteyn

  Boy in attendance on Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in Malta

  The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh drive with Boy and Mike Parker from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace after the accession

  Boy and Daphne sailing on Jeanne d’Arc after his retirement

  Boy in the 1960s

  Appendix 1

  Letter from Lieut.-General F. A. M. BROWNING C.B., D.S.O.

  26th September, 1944

  To:-

  Major-General R. E. Urquhart, D.S.O., Commander, 1st. Airborne Division.

  Commander, 30 Corps is sending you a letter from himself and his Corps expressing their unstinted admiration and gratitude for the gallant part played by the 1st Airborne Division in the 2nd Army’s drive to cross the Rhine.

  He will explain to you, and in his expression of opinion I absolutely concur, that without the action of the 1st Airborne Division in tying up, pinning down, and destroying in large numbers the German forces in the ARNHEM area, the crossing of the Waal, the capture of the bridges at Nijmegen and, above all, the advance from the bridgehead, would have been quite impossible.

  I am intensely proud of the magnificent fight put up by your Division. With you, I deeply regret the sacrifice that has been entailed in the Division which I had the honour to raise originally.

  I do not hesitate to say that the operation, taken as a whole, has done more to speed up the war and further disrupt the already disorganized German Army than any other action up to date. In fact, none other than an Airborne Operation could possibly have achieved the result.

  (Sgd.) F. A. M. Browning,

  Lieut.-General, Commander, British Airborne Corps

  Appendix 2

  Letter of 24 November, 1944 to Lieutenant-General Sir Ronald Weeks, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff

  Sir,

  I have the honour to bring the following facts to your notice with regard to Major-General St. Sosabowski, Commander 1st Polish Parachute Brigade Group during operation ‘MARKET.’

  During the weeks previous to operation ‘MARKET,’ a period which entailed detailed planning for three other possible operations, the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade Group formed part of the force envisaged.

  Both during this period and, in fact, ever since the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade Group was mobilised in July, Major-General Sosabowski proved himself to be extremely difficult to work with. The ‘difficulty’ was apparent not only to commanders under whom he was planning but also to staff officers of the other airborne formations concerned.

  During this period he gave me the very distinct impression that he was raising objections and causing difficulties as he did not feel that his brigade was fully ready for battle. When the brigade was first mobil
ised I made it absolutely clear to this officer, and in no uncertain terms, that I was the sole judge of the efficiency of his brigade and it was merely his duty to get them ready and train them with all the determination of which he was capable.

  It became apparent during this training period that, capable soldier as this officer undoubtedly is, he was unable to adapt himself to the level of a parachute brigade commander, which requires intimate and direct command of his battalions. He left too much to his Chief of Staff and attempted to treat his parachute brigade as if it were a much higher and bigger formation.