Alanbrooke, Pound and British Strategy
By CAPTAIN S. W. ROSKILL, RN (Retired)
ALTHOUGH a private diary kept by a man who ,n participated in great events may be a valu- able contribution to history, it is unlikely, even —.after the entries have been linked together by a .chain of continuous narrative, that it will present a balanced account of the events discussed. To take one example of the dangers of trying to build history on such a foundation, Lord Alan- brooke asserts that, in the summer of 1940, 'the Home Fleet ... had little intention of coming south of the Wash' to deal with the invasion threat. The remark was probably based on the Admiralty order (quoted in The War at Sea, 'Vol. I, p. 252) that Admiral Forbes's heavy ships should not move into the southern North Sea 'unless the enemy used his major warships to support an expedition': but the order continued by saying that If the enemy did so our own heavy ships are to engage them at the earliest oppor- tunity.' Moreover, the instructions issued by the Admiralty on May 28 make abundantly plain the dispositions which all ships in home waters (not only the Home Fleet) were to take up. They were 'to cover the area Wash to Newhaven as a whole'; they were if possible to 'attack before the de- parture (of the enemy expedition)'; and if they failed in that purpose they were 'to intercept ... on passage' or to 'attack at the point of arrival.' To implement these plans a considerable 'striking force' of four destroyer flotillas (thirty-six ships) with cruiser support was assembled in the Nore Command, and was kept there until the threat of invasion diminished in the late summer. These plans and the measures taken to implement them show that, taken by themselves, Lord Alan- brooke's diary entries and Sir Arthur Bryant's connecting narrative are highly misleading.
Lord Alanbrooke also repeatedly refers to the British strategy of landing in North Africa in order to reopen the Mediterranean as 'my strategy.' Possibly what he meant was 'the strategy which I favour'; but the claim to have originated it must surely go too far, for the recommendations and decisions were always arrived at after long .discussion in the Chiefs of Staff Committee, where as chairman Lord Alan- brooke was, after all, only primus inter pares. In fact, the maritime strategy in question (which Sir Julian Corbett defined many years ago as 'landing the Army to surprise the enemy in theatres of our own choice') was always favoured by Admiral Pound and the Naval staff; and even though no claim could fairly be made that they were the sole originators, it is certain that they, and also the Prime Minister, could justly claim as big a share as Lord Alanbrooke.
To turn to the impression • which the Alan- brooke diaries give of Admiral Pound, it could, -with some reason, be argued that with increasing age and disabilities he might live been wise to lay down his burden after he had borne the formidable strains of the first two years; but one factor which militated against that was Churchill's confidence in and affection for the old Admiral. Lord Alanbrooke and Sir Arthur Bryant set out the former's methods of dealing with the Prime Minister's brilliant volatility in great detail. But in fact Pound had his own way of coping with the same. problem. Before an en- counter with Churchill he invariably briefed a novice to the effect that he should never oppose the great man in the early stages. The reasons were two. Firstly, because it only angered him, and, secondly, because it was virtually impossible to defeat him in open argument. Pound used to wait until the hurricane of rhetoric had passed, and then speak non-committally until he had ascertained the full implications of any move urged by the Prime Minister. By such means did he prevent 'many mistakes being made—as did Lord Alanbrooke, though apparently more by argument and less by subtlety. The assessment of Admiral Pound's contribution to victory is made all the harder by the fact that he was, basically, a modest and humble man. He kept no diaries, and his letters are comparatively few and dealt almost exclusively with current prob- lems. Only very rarely did he reveal his inner- most feelings. What is certain is that the picture of• the First Sea Lord which the uninformed reader will gain from The Turn of the Tide is so distorted as to be almost a caricature. Nor does Lord Alanbrooke's belated comment (p. 721) re- ferring to him as a 'very gallant man ... and a grand colleague' suffice to eliminate the effect of his earlier 'unkind criticisms.'
The confidence of the reader in Sir Arthur Bryant's book must, finally, be vitiated by the really formidable number of inaccuracies on the maritime side of the war. To give a few examples, on p. 218 there are three mis-statements regard- ing the anti-invasion measures of 1940, including the old one about eighty barges being sunk by the RAF in Ostend on September 13 (actually a misprint or mistranslation in the `Fiihrer Con- ferences' for eight). The Mediterranean Fleet did not 'withdraw to the safety of the Red Sea' at the time of the retreat to Alamein. The actual dispositions of the fleet are given in The War at Sea, Vol. II, pp. 73-74. The account of events in the Indian Ocean in April, 1942, is seriously mis- leading, for Nagumo's carriers never came west of Ceylon after the attack on Colombo—though Admiral Layton at Colombo anticipated that they would do so and warned Somerville accordingly. Finally, though this historian holds no brief for Admiral E. J. King, USN, who was notoriously difficult to deal with, the repeated accusations of what amounts to bad faith would be hard to substantiate and should not be lightly made; and the whole perspective of events in the Pacific can only justify what many Americans have always said—namely, that Britain cared too little about that theatre, and has since remained lamentably ignorant regarding what King made possible there.
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