The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  Lettice arrived on 8 March. It was just as well, as another near disaster now took place. On 17 March Dick suffered what he described in his diary as a bad attack of cardiac asthma, but was more likely a mild heart attack. Admitted to the same hospital as Michael, he was quickly and effectively treated, but it was over two weeks before he was discharged, though at least he had been allowed to see Michael, whose only pleasure now was being read to. Michael died on 11 April. After a brief break at Mount Cook, Dick and Lettice flew to California, where they were helped to recover from their bitter experience by an extended stay at the McCreery Ranch.

  Sadly for Dick and Lettice their family problems were not over and this time the trouble involved their youngest son. Charles had taken his degree in 1964 and very shortly afterwards formed a close association with Dr Celia Green’s Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford. Like many academic charitable institutions, it was short of finance. It employed a professional fundraiser, but Dick and Lettice were approached to be patrons and accepted. Lettice, however, took an immediate dislike to Dr Green and, in Charles’s opinion, effectively sabotaged the fundraising effort. He also believed that she and Dick were complicit in unsubstantiated allegations of drugtaking made against him, which began to circulate at the same time and which he considered slanderous. He reacted strongly and his relationship with his parents became so strained that there was little further contact between them. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Dick, Lettice and Charles were all desperately upset.

  With more time on his hands, Dick decided to move ahead with a new project. His controversial article in the Twelfth Royal Lancers’ Journal had elicited the suggestion from one publisher that he should write a book about his career. At the time he was much preoccupied and took no action, but in late 1965, having sought advice from Pat Stewart, the author of the 12th Lancers’ history, he wrote to Dick Hull, now Chief of the Defence Staff, asking how he might go about looking at the war diaries of the various formations with which he had been associated, as they were not available to the public. Hull pointed him in the right direction and he received permission to study the diaries on condition that he should submit any draft for publication to the Ministry of Defence for clearance, that he should not quote verbatim from any document and that he should not even acknowledge that access to the documents had been permitted.

  Early in the New Year Dick began work on the war diaries and at the same time established contact with A. M. Heath, the literary agency. He was greatly encouraged by a lunch with Cyrus Brooks of the agency and by June had sent him three chapters, the first on his time as GSO1 to Alexander from 1938 to 1940, harking back also to his earlier career, the second on the last battle in Italy, and the third continuing on to cover the period in Austria. He was dismayed to receive a reply returning his script and telling him that the content of the first two chapters was too technical for the general reader and that the third lacked human interest. There was an oblique suggestion that he might try to arouse the interest of a specialist military publisher, but it was clear that Heath would not be interested. Dick stopped work immediately, but in the late summer of 1967 he determined to try again, taking on a secretary to type a redrafted chapter on the last battle. He told a number of his friends what he was intending, but as it turned out he was sadly unable to take the project any further.

  During 1967, at the age of 69, Dick’s health began to give cause for concern. He developed glaucoma in his right eye, although it was not deteriorating, and he confided to friends that he felt exhausted after driving to Newbury, spending a long day there as a steward and then driving back home again during the short winter days, and was thinking of resigning. During the first fortnight in October he felt particularly unwell, experiencing tingling in his fingertips and having occasional breathing difficulties, although his blood pressure seemed to be under control. He booked in for a full check-up at King Edward VII’s Hospital and three days beforehand he and Lettice went up to London for Sarah’s birthday on the next day, when the two of them, Sarah and Hugo had a happy lunch. That evening Willoughby Norrie said that he was in excellent form at a cocktail party at the Hyde Park Hotel, but in the early hours of 18 October he suffered a fatal heart attack in bed at the flat.7

  Dick’s funeral was held at Sherborne Abbey, with pallbearers from the 9th/12th Lancers and the 14th/20th Hussars, both regiments later also providing trumpeters to sound the Last Post and the Reveille for his memorial service. As a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath he was entitled to have this held in Westminster Abbey and it took place on 9 November, attended by representatives of the Queen, the Queen Mother, the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Windsor, as well as hundreds of friends and admirers. The obituaries were full of tributes and a flood of condolence letters arrived for Lettice.

  Chapter 30

  Postscript

  Dick spent just under half of his life in the Army and it is as ‘one of those rare soldiers who are both exceptionally fine staff officers and fine commanders in the field’1 that he should be remembered. Even Montgomery rated him highly as a staff officer, while John Dill wrote congratulating Dick on his KCB: ‘Alex is a braver person even than I thought when he let you go.’2 However, it was as a field commander in wartime that he really excelled. From the moment Dick landed at Salerno he was in his element, first as a corps commander on the beaches, over the rivers and across the mountains and then as the leader who turned a dispirited army into the highly effective force which achieved one of the most complete victories of the war. The Battle for the River Po should be taught at all military academies and staff colleges as an example of a brilliant plan and a faultless execution. It brought together all the ingredients for victory – meticulous preparation, focused all-arms training, excellent intelligence and reconnaissance, deception and surprise, concentration of force and the use of air power. It emphatically refuted an assertion by Montgomery at the time of Operation Avalanche that Dick did not understand infantry divisions, while his use of armour was not bettered by any British general of the War.

  In his memorial address in Westminster Abbey, Victor Pike, the Bishop of Sherborne and former Chaplain-General to the Forces, summed up the qualities which had carried Dick through:

  His sense of duty and integrity were of the highest order. Everyone who served with him knew that he was incapable of doing anything mean, underhand or dirty. His views and his orders were always clear and forthright and were always expressed with a quiet sincerity which impressed those who he led with confidence. He loathed pomp and was embarrassed by praise and although he had to carry high rank he never allowed it to separate him from his officers and men. He was one of those unusual men to whom is given the rare gift of being leader and servant at the same time.

  Bishop Pike might have said something else which he knew well, that Dick was sustained by a great faith. He never made an issue of it, but belief in God was an abiding element of his life and he encouraged anyone who could help to instil it in others, notably the army chaplains, whom he always made a point of meeting when visiting units. As he had done before the last battle in Italy, he read the Bible whenever he needed to have his faith recharged and it was one source of the moral courage to which so many referred after his death. His physical courage he appears to have been born with. His visits to the front line were often terrifying to his ADCs, who knew that they would have to appear as insouciant of danger as he was.

  Dick was not an easy man to get to know and some never penetrated below the surface, which might seem forbidding at first sight. Mike Carver, for example, who served under him in Germany and was later Chief of the General Staff himself, thought he was an aloof commander, who had difficulty in making human contact with his subordinates. By contrast all those who worked closely with him spoke of his friendship, once given never withdrawn, his kindness and his humanity. He did not suffer fools gladly and was intolerant of loose thinking and lack of effort, but he would always support those who d
id their best.

  Dick’s honesty, another characteristic frequently mentioned, did not always work to his advantage. Forthright, even outspoken, his unwillingness to compromise over what he thought was the right course of action got him into serious trouble with Auchinleck and nearly did so with Clark. The latter, accustomed to the American tradition of unquestioning obedience, found Dick’s challenges to his orders intensely irritating, but on the Garigliano in particular Dick’s preferred plan would probably have forced the Germans back from the Winter Line four months before it eventually happened. Dick’s insistence on standing up to Montgomery in 1942 almost certainly had an impact on his later career, when the field marshal vetoed his appointments first as VCIGS and then to the top job in Germany.

  He was not perfect. He had a terrific temper: those who knew him well could spot the signs beforehand, generally in the form of a particular smile, but it took many by surprise, especially when it was accompanied by uncharacteristically ripe language. It always blew over very quickly, however, and he never harboured a grudge. Later in life the temper appeared much less frequently, but he was more inclined to moodiness. The other failing to which many referred was his public speaking, so poor that many who did not know him thought of him, like Dorman-Smith at Staff College, as ‘Dreary McCreery’, a major error of judgement.

  Intensely serious in a professional environment, even described on occasion as ‘austere’ or even ‘ascetic’, when he was with family, friends and close colleagues he could demonstrate a tremendous sense of humour, occasionally collapsing into incontrollable laughter when something ridiculous tickled his imagination. He was an excellent host: although he never smoked and drank alcohol rarely and then in small quantities, he was hospitality itself to others. As a father of young children, he showed a great aptitude for inventing and telling stories and proved in later life to have two skills which many would have found quite unusual in such an otherwise masculine character – cooking and flower arranging.

  With the exceptions of his nearly disastrous injury in the Great War, his sacking by Auchinleck, speedily remedied, and his differences with Clark, Dick’s career was smooth and unblemished. His personal life, on the other hand, was marred by conflict and tragedy, the acrimonious separation of his parents, the killing of his brother Bob, the erratic behaviour and the early death of his father and the suicide of his brother Jack being followed much later in life by the differences with his oldest and youngest children and the premature death of Michael in distressing circumstances. Against this background, it should really be no surprise that, when the choice needed to be made between the Army and family, he came down on the side of the latter. It denied Great Britain the further services of a great soldier, but Dick, that most ‘scientific’ of men, for once followed his heart rather than his head. There is no evidence that he ever regretted it.

  Because the Italian campaign was subordinated in its last year to the events in north-west Europe, because he left the Army early and because he never blew his own trumpet, Dick never became a household name. He was not forgotten, however, in one household. Of the eight Windsor Grey horses which pulled the Gold State Coach in the Queen’s coronation in 1953, five were named after distinguished naval and military commanders of the Second World War. They were Eisenhower, Tedder, Cunningham,3 Tovey,4 and McCreery.

  Appendix I

  Hugh’s Little Ambush

  by Hugh Vivian Smith

  After the immediate crisis at Salerno, the Corps Commander one morning said to me – ‘come on’ – (for what purpose I had no idea). I found myself sitting in the back of a Dingo (the Corps Commander sitting beside the driver). I had a map marked with the Order of Battle and dispositions of 10 Corps, and with the Corps signal code etc.

  The Dingo was between two armoured cars and the Corps Commander, once seated, gave manually the order to proceed. This we did till, within a fairly short time, the Corps Commander gave the signal to halt. So far all was well and we alighted leaving my map behind (‘leave that b———thing behind, we don’t want that.’)

  We then peered through binoculars back towards the beaches. Suddenly there was a deafening explosion and the leading armoured car went up in flames: then the rear armoured car received similar treatment. We lay down on the ground – I saw the Dingo frantically trying to turn round – unsuccessfully. After being joined by one officer and one O.R. who were fortunate enough to have been out of their cars, we remained where we were for a short period. Then the Corps Commander said ‘Come on, I am going to run for it’; this being, of course, something of a hop, skip and jump operation. Shortly after we started, I saw a bullet strike in the sand between us. I said ‘Look out Sir’ and the reply was ‘What’s the good of looking out you b——- fool? Come on’, then ‘Which way shall I go?’

  ‘Into the low ground, Sir’ I said: and this although wearing a beret deriving from the Guards Armoured Division. This we did and after some exertions landed up on a road encumbered by stinking cattle corpses. We then walked; but our tranquillity was soon disturbed by a Messerschmidt flying low and distributing fire over the countryside. The Corps Commander ‘Why didn’t you fire back, Hugh?’ I said with a sense of shame, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but the magazine has dropped off the tommy gun.’ The Corps Commander’s comment on this was ‘My God, we are a couple of b——-fine soldiers, aren’t we?’

  We eventually returned to Corps Headquarters idyllically situated in an apple orchard. There General Alex was walking about waiting. I, myself, was covered with sweat and dust and had twisted an ankle, but the Corps Commander was just as though he had washed and shaved, and entered directly into a discussion with General Alex.

  Appendix II

  The Refusal at the Ditch

  by Major General Mat Abraham

  ‘Perugia’ had been captured in Italy and was primarily a pleasant hack. It was a great surprise, one day, when General Dick put him at a small ditch on the way back from the morning ride. Of course the horse refused, digging in his toes and peering down, at the very edge of the water. ‘Oh you little Pigg-ah’ shouted the illustrious rider, digging in heels and applying aids and retreating for a further try. The ADCs waited dutifully. In due course the second charge took place. The ditch was assaulted at a brisk pace. Again it stood its ground. Again horse and rider came to an abrupt stop on its lip. Again there was a flow of equestrian expletive, and the unaccustomed application, this time, of stick. The great will which had got the 8th Army over the River Po was simply going to get this horse over this ditch. The ditch crossing operation was therefore repeated with added determination, but absolutely the same result.

  Mechanized aids were now needed and George (Brown) was told to go and fetch a lunging rein. When this arrived one of us pulled, the other flailed behind the horse, and the General applied manifold aids, blows, kicks and willpower to the animal itself. We re-approached the ditch, pulling, flailing, shouting and riding as only a great horseman could ride. Surely we must prevail. ‘Go on you little Pigg-ah’ urged the rider. But no. Defeat. Absolute defeat resulted, and for the moment all looked at the unaccustomed scene of disarray. To our surprise the great man dismounted and, sending the horse away, retreated some dozen steps himself in order to get a run at the ditch on foot. He lolloped towards it, dot & carry one, on his one good, one lame feet and seemed to be gathering momentum satisfactorily. All was set to get at least the rider over the ditch and to get us to our overdue breakfast! But alas the unbreakable laws of dynamics demand a certain product of weight multiplied by speed if an object is to be propelled a certain distance. And if these are lacking the object will not travel the distance. No man can alter that, even an Army Commander rushing on foot towards a small irrigation ditch from an inadequate distance, at an inadequate velocity. Oh dear! Oh dear! To our utter astonishment the Great Man came to an abrupt halt as the horse had, and just about in the same place. A step further and he would have been in the muddy water. There was a moment of silence, as if the world held
its breath, and then, with a distinct twinkle, Dick McCreery looked up and said ‘My God, now I’ve gone and refused myself’!

  Abbreviations

  AA Anti-Aircraft

  AAI Allied Armies in Italy

  AA&QMG Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General

  ACIGS Assistant Chief of the Imperial General Staff

  ADC Aide-de-Camp

  AFHQ Allied Forces Headquarters

  AFV Armoured Fighting Vehicles

  AGRA Army Group Royal Artillery

  AGRE Army Group Royal Engineers

  AOC Air Officer Commanding

  AOC-in-C Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief

  AVRE Assault Vehicle Royal Engineers

  BAOR British Army of the Rhine

  BEF British Expeditionary Force

  BGS Brigadier General Staff

  BTA British Troops in Austria

  BVH Blackmore Vale Hunt

  CAO Chief Administrative Officer

  CAS Chief of the Air Staff

  CB Companion of the Order of the Bath

  CDRCU Committee to Defeat Revisionism for Communist Unity

  CGS Chief of the General Staff

  CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff

  CIL Corpo Italiano di Liberazione

  C-in-C Commander-in-Chief

  CO Commanding Officer

  COS Chief of Staff

  CRE Chief Royal Engineer

  DA&QMG Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster-General

  DCGS Deputy Chief of the General Staff