Thruster Rommel's gifts as a commander were those of a
hunter rather than a chess-player. In action he was always. so to speak, well up with hounds, and in his diaries he displays for his own troops a brusque, unsentimental affection and an intolerance of slug- gishness which are a close counterpart of an efficient huntsman's attitude to his pack. For a stout-hearted enemy he feels the same ungrudging respect that a huntsman feels for a straight- necked fox. But the point about Rommel was that as a hunter he was brilliant, with a sure flair which always, though often narrowly, justified the risks he took. In France in 1940, and again in the Desert, he was often out of touch with every- one except the leading unit he happened to be with. No chess- playing general could have won games of which he had only a pawn's eye view.
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