These things the observer easily saw or soon discovered in the new Army Commander, for he was an easy book to read, without obscurities or entanglements in thought or behaviour. Later, one learnt that, although quite ruthless in disposing of senior officers who did not suit him, he was far from cold-hearted and was always ready to help those who he considered deserved helping. Several of his staff stuck to him for the remainder of the war, which still had nearly three years to run.
Though severely self-disciplined, Montgomery was neither narrow-minded nor a frowning sober-sides. He laughed readily and his spirit was buoyant. He was no old-fashioned martinet and was tolerant in matters of dress and formal discipline. On his first visit to the New Zealanders, he said on arrival at General Freyberg’s headquarters: T notice your soldiers don’t salute.’ Freyberg replied: ‘Wave to them, sir, and they’ll wave back.’ Monty did so.
Thus Bernard Montgomery, though not apparently gifted by nature with those qualities that win the spontaneous affection of soldiers for a popular hero, was equipped, through his own efforts, with other qualities which stimulated immense respect, solid confidence and, before long, strong personal loyalty. He found Eighth Army something of a brotherhood and himself entered into the brotherhood. He came to command the Army and himself became its most ardent comrade and champion.
As time went on a note of genuine affection crept into all that Montgomery uttered to those under his command. Like Napoleon’s mes enfants, his troops became ‘my soldiers’. He spoke in terms of ‘we’ and ‘us’ and ‘our’. At the end of the campaign he declared in glowing terms:
My admiration for your wonderful fighting qualities… I doubt if our Empire has ever possessed such a wonderful fighting machine as Eighth Army; you have made it a household word all over the world.
The way to Montgomery’s heart, therefore, was to be a fighting soldier. He dearly loved a ‘warrior’. Such men as Bernard Freyberg, the ‘old war horse’, Douglas Graham, ‘that great little warrior’, ‘Bolo’ Whistler, ‘perhaps the best fighting brigadier in the British Army’, John Harding, ‘that little tiger’, and the lion-hearted John Currie — these men won his approbation. He believed in youth, because youth can stand physical rigours, has not yet learnt caution and is willing to learn and obey. He personally appointed everyone down to lieutenant-colonel’s command and some of the battalion commanders he appointed were only in their twenties. His one frailty in this sphere was that he would not have men who had independent minds and would not conform to his own.
As a commander, perhaps no one has paid a higher tribute to him than Oliver Leese, whom he summoned from England to command 30th Corps. ‘Monty,’ he said, speaking to the author, ‘could be a most difficult and even exasperating man to anyone parallel or senior to him, but as a commander to serve under on the battlefield, it’s Monty for my money any day. He made things easy for you. His orders were simple, clear and straightforward and he never asked you to do anything beyond your resources.’ Wimberley, the Scot, found him ‘magnificent’ to serve under. The commanders of the Dominion divisions were united in paying tribute to his stimulus.
All these things were hidden, however, to the soldiers of Eighth Army when Monty arrived, with untanned knees, on 13 August. Many had heard of his name, but very few indeed knew anything about him. The sum of popular knowledge was that, when he gave lectures or held conferences in England, notices were displayed ordering ‘No smoking, no coughing’. The general attitude was: Who is this fellow Monty? The old desert hands were thoroughly sceptical of all newcomers, of all who still had pink arms and knees and did not ‘know the form’. They were a world and a brotherhood to themselves and a long apprenticeship was expected before a newcomer was accepted as a fellow-craftsman.
Despite what Mr Churchill said and others have repeated, it is far from true that there was any uneasiness, any ‘bewilderment’ among regimental officers and men before the arrival of Alexander and Montgomery. That existed only among the more senior ranks. The morale of Eighth Army was always sound, their pride was high and they had no consciousness of fallibility either in themselves or their commander.
But they had ‘flogged’ up and down the same piece of desert so often that they wondered whether the process was ever likely to stop. What Montgomery did, in time, was to implant in their breasts an absolute certitude of victory and to transform an assembly of loose components into an articulated fighting machine. Even the old desert hands, who were not impressed by the arrival of a new commander from England, began before long to realize that the military machine was being properly run at last.
Almost the very first act of General Alexander on taking over GHQ was to put a stop to all talk or thought of any further withdrawal by Eighth Army. Unlike his predecessor, he appreciated that, if the Alamein position was lost, the whole Delta was ipso facto lost. But, as recorded in his dispatch: ‘It was fairly well known that, in the last resort, the Army would retreat again, in accordance with the theory that it must be kept in being.’ He, therefore, sent instructions to Montgomery to make it known to all ranks that there were to be no further withdrawals and that the Army would fight where it stood.
Montgomery lost no time in putting into effect, with all that crisp emphasis of which he was capable, a policy with which he was so much in agreement. ‘We stay here alive or we stay here dead,’ he said. A sigh of relief went up from the whole Army. Morshead, the Australians’ commander, said: ‘Thank God!’
To give emphasis to this decision, Montgomery ordered all withdrawal plans to be burnt and all non-operational vehicles to be sent away into the back areas, so that, as a New Zealand officer put it, ‘We couldn’t run away even if we wanted to.’[12] The new Army commander immediately toured the desert, seeing the ground and sizing up officers and men. Wherever he went he blew through the August heat of the desert a cold, sharp, stimulating breeze. Kippenberger, the New Zealander, records:
He called, unannounced, a few days after his arrival. He talked sharply and curtly, without any soft words, asked some searching questions, met the battalion commanders and left me feeling very much stimulated.[13]
One of the correctives that Montgomery very soon applied, to the satisfaction of all commanders, was to make it clear that there was to be no more ‘mucking about with divisions’. There was to be no more talk of ‘battle groups’ and ‘Jock columns’. Though chronologically out of place, it will be convenient if we quote here a letter that he sent out and signed personally to all corps commanders on 29 September. In this he wrote:
A cardinal point in my policy is that divisions shall retain their identities and their esprit de corps, and that they shall not be split up into bits and pieces which never see this parent formation. Whenever it is possible, divisions must fight as divisions and under their own commanders.
There will be occasions when a Corps commander will require to resort to a special grouping within the Corps in order to deal with a particular and definite problem. Such groupings may necessitate brigades and units being detached from their own divisions and being placed under the operational command of other divisions; this detachment from the parent division will be regarded as temporary and for a definite period; when the situation which necessitated such grouping has been dealt with, the brigades and/or units will return to their own divisions.
Proceeding, he put a stop to the frequent switching of units from one formation to another. They were to have a permanent loyalty to one parent division. We shall see in a later chapter how, in the same letter, he reviewed the order of battle and personally decided the composition of each division.
At the desert headquarters, which he took over from Auchinleck, Montgomery was signally fortunate to find a particularly able set of staff officers, who were to serve him brilliantly. To Francis (‘Freddie’) de Guingand, the BGS Eighth Army, he gave a new status as ‘Chief of Staff’, which was not at that time the recognized practice in the British Army, the commander being expected to do a good deal of staff
and executive co-ordination himself. Under the new system Montgomery channelled everything through his Chief of Staff. It was fortunate for him that de Guingand not only knew his man already but also that he had a quick brain and a capacity for shouldering an enormous burden of work. He was also on excellent terms of understanding with Coningham’s Senior Air Staff Officer, Air Commodore George Beamish.
As his chief administrative officer Montgomery retained the equally able Brian Robertson and as his Chief Engineer the brilliant F. H. Kisch. For his senior artillery officer (BRA), however, he sent home for Sidney Kirkman. Harry Arkwright was his Senior Staff Officer for armour. Bill Williams (his distinguished Intelligence Officer), Miles Graham, Charles Richardson and Hugh Mainwaring were others of this brilliant team.
Montgomery’s impact was felt not only by Eighth Army, but also by the Army’s great brother-in-arms, the Western Desert Air Force. They found that he brought with him ‘a remarkably keen, clear and vigorous appreciation of the part that could be played by air forces in a land battle’. He immediately moved Eighth Army HQ from the middle of the desert, where it had existed in discomfort, to a position alongside Coningham’s HQ by the white sea shore at Burg el Arab. Tedder wrote home: ‘It was very refreshing to see at Eighth Army Advanced HQ the embryo of a real operations room copied direct from our own.’ Thus began an association that was to grow ever closer and closer, making Eighth Army and the Desert Air Force one cohesive power, unmatched in comradeship and identity of purpose.
Alexander himself also set up a small tented headquarters on the sea shore alongside them and closely followed all developments.
HORROCKS AND LEESE
Two other generals, of Montgomery’s selection, were summoned from England as Corps commanders. The first of these was Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, who came to command the 13th. Horrocks was a man whose physical appearance very much belied his military qualities. Silver-haired, clean-shaven, classically featured, one would take him for a judge, a bishop or a don. He was, however, very much a fighting soldier. Eisenhower, when lunching with the author in Venice, said that he thought Horrocks the outstanding British general under Montgomery.
Not all his junior generals liked him, but nearly all acknowledged the extraordinary quality ‘Jorrocks’ had of radiating confidence wherever he went and his great gift of ‘putting things over’ lucidly. ‘Pip’ Roberts, who commanded the celebrated 22nd Armoured Brigade, testifies that merely to see Horrocks drive by gave an immediate stimulus to troops.
Some ten weeks later — only three weeks before Alamein and thus recorded here somewhat out of sequence — Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, Bt, arrived from England to take over the difficult 30th Corps command in the north. A tall and stalwart figure, he looked the traditional guardsman and was one. Energetic, inquiring and wanting to see things for himself at first hand, he was at the same time composed and relaxed, imperturbable under stress, had an easy and friendly manner, could laugh and joke with anyone and made one feel that everything was under control. He thus evoked a strong feeling of confidence in his divisional generals, to whom he was as much a leader of a team as he was a commander.
Like Horrocks, Leese had commanded an armoured division at home — the Guards’ Armoured Division — and was the first infantryman to command armour. He was a familiar figure in the forward areas in his open car, which he often drove himself (very fast), in the manner of a man unburdened with cares; whereas Monty, as he sat beside John Poston (his most celebrated liaison officer), usually appeared wrapped-up and concentrated.
Leese, upon whom an exacting task was laid, was one of the great successes of Alamein. Montgomery’s selection of him was a very shrewd one, for his tact, easy good manners and understanding of ‘difficult’ people were qualities needed in a command that included three Dominion divisions of very dissimilar characters. Without their willing co-operation, the Battle of Alamein could never have been fought, but he quickly won their confidence.
Being a fellow-guardsman, Leese already knew ‘Tiny’ Freyberg, commander of the New Zealanders; he had met Dan Pienaar, the South African, and well understood his Afrikaaner propensity for being ‘difficult’ at awkward moments. The only one unknown to him was the Australian, Leslie Morshead, but he won his allegiance at once. With the Highland Division there were no ‘difficult’ people and they found him ‘magnificent’ to serve under.
All were profoundly relieved when, from the start, Leese made it clear that their divisions would remain inviolate in the coming battle. With his arrival, there was an entirely new spirit in 30th Corps and the objections, questionings and ‘bellyaching’ about orders passed quietly away. ‘Rickie’ Richards, the able commander of 23rd Armoured Brigade and a very experienced old desert hand, said of Leese[14]: ‘I always knew exactly what I had to do with Oliver. His orders were always very clear and he knew what was within my reach — a terrific contrast to what had gone before!’
Leese, like Montgomery, was fortunate in his staff. As the head of it was his BGS, George Walsh, a quiet and able gunner officer who won the confidence of the Dominion contingent; it was to him that they went with all their problems. Leese was equally fortunate in his Corps artillery commander, Brigadier M. E. Dennis, who manipulated a massive volume of artillery with an apparent ease that matched his cheerful equanimity in times of crisis.
LUMSDEN
We now come to the third of the Corps commanders in Eighth Army and a much more controversial character — Herbert Lumsden.
Soon after Montgomery’s arrival in the desert, 10th Corps, a defunct formation headquarters, was resuscitated. It was initially an all-armour corps and was intended by Montgomery to act, in his own phrase, as a corps de chasse. Lumsden, previously commander of 1st Armoured Division, was appointed to command it.
Lumsden was a cavalryman (though originally he had been a gunner). He had first made a name for himself during the difficult withdrawal from Louvain to Dunkirk, when he had commanded the armoured cars of 12th Lancers with considerable skill. Since then he had risen rapidly, perhaps a little too rapidly. He was tall, dark and crisply good-looking. He had a fine bearing and presence and was always extremely well turned out. He was an exceptionally fine horseman and had ridden in the Grand National. He was gifted with one of the quickest of minds and had been an instructor at the Staff College. He was a strict disciplinarian, severe when conducting training, sharp in his rebukes.
In action, his severity slipped from him like a cloak. He encouraged and did not chide. He had a flair for being in the right place at the right time and his presence was a stimulus to everyone. He was quite fearless. He had considerable charm, attracted strong loyalties and to such men as Raymond Briggs was ‘the very model of a born soldier’.
There are, however, those who say that Lumsden’s handling of 1st Armoured Division during the withdrawal from Gazala was not all that it should have been. There are those who suggest other shortcomings. He was perhaps too strong-minded and tenacious of his own views. He was on bad terms with Alec Gatehouse, one of his own divisional commanders. He was on bad terms with Frey-berg. More seriously, he was not on good terms with the Army Commander. He was outspoken in his disagreement with Montgomery’s plan for the battle, believing that the armoured divisions, which he was required to command, were by that plan committed to too rash an enterprise.
His disagreement with Montgomery led to his downfall after Alamein, but he will always be remembered for his fine qualities and his able leadership in the earlier days. He was killed later in the war when serving as Mr Churchill’s representative with the American forces in the Far East.
THE ROMMEL COMPLEX
Although the new generals out from England admired the spirit and quality that they found in Eighth Army, they, and a great many others also, were shocked by one dangerous germ that was then running in its veins. This was the extraordinary fact that, to the British soldier, the only general whose name was ‘familiar in his mouth as household words’ was t
hat of the enemy commander and not their own. Every soldier knew of Rommel, but few knew the names of their own generals.
This, of course, was a thoroughly bad condition. A ‘Rommel complex’, mysterious in its origins, had been built up. In a campaign waged without fierce hates, he was regarded in much the same way as the admired captain of an opposing cricket team. He was a ‘decent chap’. He played a clean game. He visited the wounded British prisoners of war. Wherever one went, whether in the forward areas or the back, Rommel was spoken of as though he were a wizard. There were some who believed, and still believe that this dangerous seed had been deliberately inseminated by German agents and fifth columnists, of whom there were plenty in Egypt, partly to create an ‘inferiority complex’ in Eighth Army and partly to prepare the Egyptians for Rommel’s arrival.
A British officer, dining in Cairo at just about this time, with others of the same uniform, in the house of a wealthy Coptic Egyptian, believed to be very pro-British, was horrified when the conversation turned to ardent admiration of Rommel, in which the other British officers joined. Unable to contain himself after several minutes of this, he broke out: ‘This is quite ridiculous and we really ought not to be talking in this sort of way. Rommel is no more than a competent corps commander. We have beaten him once before and we shall certainly do so again.’
He had no answer but a painful and guilty silence.
Auchinleck had tried to stop this Rommel cult by the issue of an order, but it had had no effect. There was, therefore, every justification for the policy that the new commander of Eighth Army deliberately adopted. Montgomery set out to make his name and person familiar to all his troops. He adopted the Australian ‘slouch’ hat, covered with various cap-badges, and later exchanged it for the black beret of the Royal Tank Regiment, to which he attached their cap-badge as well as his own general officer’s gold-thread badge.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 7