BOOKS

The rise of a soldier's soldier

Max Hastings

TEMPLER: TIGER OF MALAYA by John Cloake

Harrap, £14.95

Field-Marshal Sir Gerald Templer achieved celebrity in his later years for his enthusiasm in engaging London burglars and muggers in single combat. But many years before, that glittering hooded eye and curling lip had created a legend in, the British Army for ruthless tenacity of pur- pose, accompanied by one-liners to match.

To a subordinate in Malaya: 'Do you know Colonel Snooks? No? You should get to know him — he's your replacement.' Templer's biographer claims that one is apochryphal; not so his steely comment to Lady Spence at the inauguration of Sir Basil's frightful Knightsbridge Barracks: It's a pity your husband gave so much of his work to his students.'

Templer was a martinet, a man of narrow but exceptionally clear vision, for- ever identified with the successful struggle against communist guerrilla forces in Malaya in the early 1950s. Few careers that ended at the summit of the British army can have remained unpropitious for so long. He was born in September 1898, the son of an Ulster Protestant army officer, though Templer never thought of himself as Irish. He detested his schooldays at Wellington, though his headmaster wrote with characteristic pedagogic ignorance or deceit on his departure: 'He has had an honourable and happy career here.'

While he was a fine athlete, sensitivity about his skinny frame caused him in early army days to line his puttees with folded socks to thicken his calves. He was com- missioned into the Royal Irish Fusiliers at the end of 1917, but a series of accidents and illnesses kept him away from the front for much of the rest of the war. To his lasting regret, he was denied any opportun- ity to distinguish himself. Yet even a relatively brief experience of France caused him nightmares ever afterwards.

In the shrunken army between the wars, Templer's progress stagnated in a fashion that would have driven mad any moderate- ly ambitious man in another age. 'How long have you been commanding this platoon?', demanded a visiting general in 1928. 'Eleven years, sir', replied Templer. He achieved a captaincy in December that year only by transferring to the Loyals, a regiment he disliked. In Templer's first staff job, a malicious GSOI submitted a personal report recommending that he should retire from the army. He became an acting unpaid major only in 1935, and scrapped advancement to colonel in 1940 when he went to France as an intelligence officer at Gort's headquarters with the BEF.

Always a quick, highly-strung man who chain-smoked cigarettes and visibly lived on his nerves, Templer at last found his qualities recognised amid the crisis that followed Dunkirk. He was sent to see the American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, to demonstrate the passionate personal commitment of a British officer to con- tinuing the struggle. The dreadful Kennedy was not impressed: 'Young man, England will be invaded in a few weeks' time and your country will have its neck wrung by Hitler like a chicken.' Templer always wondered whether his report to higher authority on this encounter inspired Chur- chill's later speech.

He was never a Zionist, but oddly enough several attempts were made by a leading British Jew, Sigmund Gestetner, to recruit him to create a Jewish army in Palestine — the last with War Office blessing in 1941. Templer declined these advances, and gained rapid promotion to command a division in April 1942. Here, he suffered one of the many bizarre acci- dents that landmarked his career. He stage-managed a strafing demonstration at which a ghastly error caused a Hurricane pilot to machine-gun the audience of VIPs, killing 27 and wounding 68, including Templer himself.

In divisional command, Templer 're- vealed the ruthless grip and uncompromis- ing pursuit of efficiency that was to stamp his performance as a general. Asked to award the cups at the end of a shooting competition, to the embarrassment of the officers around him, he announced brutally that there would be no presentation: 'I think the whole performance is lousy.' He took a rifle himself, lay down on the firing point and made a better score than the top contestant. He then departed to his car declaring that there would be time to award cups when his men could outshoot their divisional commander.

By 1943, Templer was presiding over II Corps, still in England. He volunteered to drop a step in rank if he could be found a battlefield command. He was briefly given I division, in North Africa preparing to go to Italy, then rushed forward to take over 56 Division in October 1943 when its commander was injured. In the months that followed, above all at Anzio, Templer laid the foundations of his reputation as an outstandingly forceful leader. Some sub- ordinates who incurred his wrath much disliked him. He was intolerant of human frailty, and compared the British soldier of the second world war most unfavourably with his counterpart in the first, above all in willingness to endure hardship and sacrifice. He believed the death penalty was essential for some cases of cowardice and mutiny, and was furious when Alexan- der declined to support his request for a clutch of exemplary executions.

But at a period when ruthless drivers of men were in short supply among British divisional and corps commanders, there was no doubt of Templer's value. It was a bitter blow when yet another accident abruptly ended his battlefield career: a jeep collision with a truck broke his back.

To Templer's disgust, when he returned to duty in March 1945, the only job on offer was the Directorate of British Milit- ary Government in Germany. It was in this role that he ended the war and spent the first phase of peace. After a spell as Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office, he seriously considered resignation from the army to start a new career as a fruit farmer.

But in December 1951, following the murder of the British High Commissioner in Malaya by communist terrorists, Tem- pler suddenly found himself nominated by the British Government to become Sir Henry Gurney's successor. He was flown to Ottawa, where Churchill in his last Premiership was holding talks with the Canadians. Templer was already asleep in his bed at Government House when he found himself roused to be told he was to be Director of Operations, charged with sweeping powers to counter the communist threat that seemed close to gaining control of Malaya.

At lunch the following day, to Templer's irritation he was called upon to speak. Your Excellencies, Prime Minister', he said. 'I know nothing about this job. I can promise nothing except that I will do my best.' Then he sat down abruptly. Chur- chill said: 'I have heard better speeches. I have also heard longer speeches. There is my man of action — not of words'. He raised his glass: 'To you, General, the glory'.

In the years that followed Templer's success in Malaya, the legend grew that he discovered a formula that might have forestalled the Americans' defeat in Indo- china, had they chosen to employ it. This is unreasonable. In Malaya Chin Peng con- trolled a communist guerrilla force never more than 5,000 strong. The communist superpowers never gave the Malayan CTs any hint of the overwhelming support they granted to Ho Chi Minh. Underlying all Templer's success in Malaya was an established British commitment to Malayan independence. Malaya's chief citizens had the most powerful possible motive to assist in the defeat of Chin Peng — victory 'would secure their own inheri- tance, Yet all this said, there is no doubt Templer and his subordinates in Malaya revealed a sensitivity in handling local °Pinion and a grasp of military realities Which their American counterparts proved unable to match through all the long years of the Vietnam war. It was Templer who wrote in December 1952: 'The shooting Side of the business is only 25% of the trouble and the other 75% lies in getting the people of this country behind us.' He Picked first-class subordinates. He quickly grasped the need to build a new rela- tionship between the civil population and the police. He identified the critical im- Portance of intelligence, in which of all Military arts the British have revealed a surprisingly frequent genius. Soon after his arrival, Templer was aPPalled to discover that a prominent local British club still excluded all Malays. He forced the committee's resignation, and its replacement by a new body which intro- duced multi-racial membership. He sought to galvanise the habits of military head- quarters, still working a four-and-a-half- clay week. He identified the importance of unproving labour conditions on the rubber Plantations. He abandoned the large-scale Military sweeps of the jungle for terrorists, and focussed effort upon small unit opera- tions, often mounted by helicopter. His determination to impose his will quickly became apparent. He personally visited areas plagued by terrorist incidents, to declare draconian punitive curfews: 'You're a lot of bastards', he told the leaders of one such community contemp- tuously. 'But you'll find out that I can be an even bigger one.' The effect of his words was not entirely destroyed by his interpreter, who informed the audience that while none of their mothers had been married to their fathers, the same misfor- tune afflicted the High Commissioner also.

John Cloake's biography is in many ways so thorough and thoughtful that it is disappointing to say that he is at his least convincing discussing Templer's role in Malaya. He has closely studied the man's doings, but he seems uneasy discussing the problems of counter-insurgency, the suc- cesses and failure of other guerrilla cam- paigns, to set Templer's policy in context. The book is much stronger as a human study than a military one. For a man who was in so many ways a soldier's soldier, Templer's instinct for the social and political problems of Malaya seems remarkable. 'What this country needs is a middle class,' he declared. And he set himself with some success to bring the Malayan merchant class, their political development stifled by colonial rule, out of the bazaars and into dormitory suburbs.

Templer's contribution in Malaya was inspirational and organisational. When he left the country in May 1954, the commun- ists were not yet broken, but the framework had been laid for their defeat. Visitors were descending from all over the anti-communist world to view the model Templer had created. It is sad to continue Cloake's narrative, and to be reminded of the anti-climaxes and disappointments that beset Templer's career thereafter. He was promised com- mand of the British army in Germany, but this was suddenly denied him, probably because of political sensitivities roused during his time there in 1945. Although he became CIGS, his innate conservatism and scorn for politicians, and to a lesser extent his distaste for the press, crippled his effectiveness.

He quickly made clear his dislike of peremptory summonses to the office of his minister: 'Tell the bugger to wait.' He was compelled to preside over large and painful reductions in the size of the army, and changes in the defence hierarchy inspired by Lord Mountbatten, of which he pro- foundly disapproved. The author does not discuss how far Templer must share res- ponsibility for the military shortcomings of the Suez operation, which almost matched the political ones. But the outcome, Tem- pler wrote witheringly later, 'disgusted me with the conduct of public affairs in this country, whether on the Cabinet level or in the House of Commons.

The principal achievement of Templer's retirement was his almost single-handed creation of the National Army Museum. This is a splendid memorial, but it is doubtful whether its creation merits 27 pages of his biography. More engaging and revealing are the anecdotes of Templer's frightful directness, which persisted to the end of his life. An old friend came to see him to plead the cause of an offspring whom, he suggested to Templer, was not entirely the useless wastrel he appeared. The Field-Marshal would have none of it: 'Let's face it, old chap: you've got a dud on your hands,' he told the hapless father.

Cloake writes: 'The father thought for a moment, then appeared visibly relieved. "By God, Gerald, I believe you're right" was his reaction,' Yes, well, perhaps. Professional ogres tend to become more beloved the greater the distance between themselves and direct control over the destinies of the belover. Templer was a hard man. He was competent rather than brilliant, yet carried to the highest ranks by dynamism, sound instincts and a powerful core of common sense. With his own gift of terseness, he might have found his biogra- phy a trifle overwritten and overblown, and he would certainly have deplored the modern biographer's vogue for referring to him throughout as 'Gerald' rather than 'Templer'. 'Overfamiliar, old cock', he might have said.

Templer was the sort of sharp, no- nonsense professional of whom too few have reached the summit of the British army since the war. The ability to rub along with politicians has become a far more important talent for aspirants to high command than a grasp of brutal realities on the battlefield.