BOOKS

Not entirely as other men

John Hackett

Monty Nigel Hamilton (Hamish Hamilton pp. 870, £12) Monty, for most of the millions of people to whom he was later to become an object of almost spell-bound admiration, could not be said really to have existed before the autumn of the year 1942. It was then that he seemed suddenly to spring forth, un heralded and unknown, fully armed, mature and at peak performance, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, to start a victorious advance at Alamein which would end in Berlin. Nigel Hamilton's book is an exploration of the process by which this came about. It should come as a surprise to many. Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein is without doubt the outstanding military personality to emerge from Britain in this century, some would say the most notable in the English-speaking world — even perhaps outside it. Wherever his position might come to stabilise in the public eye in course of time, he has already inspired reactions ranging from starry-eyed admiration to the most hostile criticism and is likely to remain a controversial figure for a good while yet. This rather long book, which takes us up to the end of the battle of El Alamein in the first volume of what is to be a complete biography, furnishes abundant material upon which to base an opinion.

No one who knew Monty (let alone those who did not) can judge him with complete impartiality. This reviewer, who had served in various parts of the Middle East for seven years before Monty came out to command 8th Army, first heard of him when, as a British officer in the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force during the Palestine troubles of 1939, he came under Monty's divisional command and received a circular addressed to all officers. It explained that the development of the mind was important and the Divisional Commander had found that to this end the reading of books was helpful. A list of books that might help was appended. My own reaction (in which I was probably not alone) was that these were books'you had already read and would thank no General for pressing upon you, or books you had not read and were unlikely to read because some General told you to. I next heard of him a couple of years later, at the Staff College in Haifa, where Charles Richardson was a newly-arrived instructor, recently with the BEF at Dunkirk. Charles pre sented to us an image of a calm, competent, professional General commanding the 3rd Division, and then in the last stage the 2nd Corps, who was keeping his head when many about him were losing theirs. This was impressive but I hardly thought, in our private war in the Middle East, that he would ever come our way.

As a member of a founder regiment in 7th Armoured Division! was in the desert when Monty arrived in the following year, to command 8th Army, and shared the suspicions of many another old sweat when this newcomer began to throw his weight about.

Later! got to know him well and became, in an odd relationship, something of a Monty man. The account of events in the Middle East in this book, and Monty's impact on them, will be read by very many with fascination, as the reader meets hosts of old friends in a full and detailed narrative of events in that theatre, which to so many of us was almost the home front.

Monty, by his own choice, was a professional in an occupation, the British Army, into which young men tended to drift in order to enjoy an agreeable and privileged life as unmistakable amateurs in an atmosphere generally hostile to professionalism. His early upbringing was harsh. His father, the Bishop of Tasmania, left the management Of six children in the hands of a sternly disciplinarian mother. It was a far from happy childhood. From the time young Bernard was too old to be beaten any more, he sought to build a relationship of trust and affection with a mother who seemed completely indifferent to him and made no response. Much of the less admirable side of Monty's character in later life can be traced to the rejection of her youngest son by Maud Montgomery.

He never showed signs of wanting to be anything other than a soldier. Academically he was not particularly gifted and passed out low from Sandhurst, having also shown signs of irresponsibility, and even cruelty, on an occasion which put his military career in jeopardy.

From the time he was commissioned in 1908 he set out, with single-minded concentration, to master his chosen profession. Some of the most illuminating passages of this book are those dealing with his experiences in World War I, in which he was not only awarded a DSO at the age of 27 (the Military Cross had not yet been invented) but showed a truly striking capacity for the development and application of training method. Wounded in 1914, he then filled, apparently with some competence, a series of General Staff appointments, to end up the war as GS01 of a division. The plentiful quotations to be found here, of papers of all sorts from his own pen in these staff appointments, throw a very clear light upon the capacity and interest of a man whose restless onward pressure would take him to the top of his profession and to a dominant position in the Second World War.

After the first war the British Army reverted for the most part to 'proper soldiering'. In such an atmosphere Monty's dogged pursuit of professional excellence hardly made him popular.

The marriage of this awkward and rather forbidding little soldier to a deeply loved woman of warmth, sensibility and charm, seemed quite likely to make him really human. Her tragic death from septicaemia, in 1937, took away the one person who might have softened some of Monty's asperities, turned his gaze outside himself, shown him that there was more to living than professional excellence and saved him from the perversities which were later to mar a brilliant career.

As the Second World War approached, his professional drive, with what seemed to many a manic insistence on unattainable standards, together with an almost wilful disregard of the opinions of others, more than once threatened his career prospects.

The absence of a humanising and restraining element in Monty's domestic background was now giving free rein to the asperity, the tactlessness, the blindly singleminded professional military approach which made him an awkward subordinate and a well-nigh impossible colleague.

The outbreak of World War II nonetheless found him GOC of 3 Div., a position he owed not only to his high reputation as a trainer and tactical commander of troops, but also, at least in part, to the protection of the man who was now to be his Corps Commander in France and was to remain his guide and mentor, Alan Brooke.

In the campaign which led to Dunkirk, Gort's behaviour as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF has attracted as much criticism as there has been praise for Monty's handling of 3 Div., an oasis of order in what was almost a desert of confusion. A firm grasp of essentials, with foresight and a clear view of what had to be faced and how through training at all levels it could be met, followed by calmness, confidence and ruthlessness in execution — these were already and were to remain the hallmarks of Monty's performance in command.

Promoted to command 5 Corps in England, Monty's abrasive reversal of the coastal defence policy of his predecessor, Auchinleck, was an augury of the later disparagement of that outstanding man, a person bigger and better in so many ways than he was, which would bring Monty into much disfavour. There was no doubt, however, that the ruthlessness of his doctrine, the awe-inspiring drive which he applied to its dissemination, and his insistence on the need in training and command to apply it, were badly needed in Britain at that phase of the war. The orders which flowed so copiously from his own pen, from which the author here quotes abundantly, are in their lucidity and thoroughness impressive memorials to his military professionalism. His dynamic passage through command of 12 Corps, and then of SouthEastern Command, accompanied by a ruthless weeding out of the incompetents, was a process of preparation for what lay ahead in the months to come, not only for thousands of officers and men but also for Monty himself.

When Auchinleck, who was a magnificent person but a poor chooser of subordinates, was dismissed from Command-inChief in the Middle Eastern theatre, with Rommel only a few score miles from the Nile delta, and a new commander had also to be found for 8th Army (since Strafer Gott, who had been appointed to the Army Command, was killed in air crash), Alan Brooke managed to persuade Churchill to accept Monty as Commander of the 8th Army (though Churchill would have prefered Jumbo Wilson) and Alexander came in as C-in-C. The timing, for Monty, was perfect. He was absolutely ready.

as C-in-C. The timing, for Monty, was perfect. He was absoluely ready.

From the time of his arrival he certainly stirred us up, and there is no doubt that we needed it. Divisions, in the desert, had almost ceased to exist. We fought a mobile war, up and down, in smaller groups, in so-called Jock-Columns and the like. The jovial 11th Hussar armoured car maxim, 'When in doubt, East with a touch of South', went far to sum up our outlook. When Monty arrived, very few of the humbler folk in the desert had ever heard of him. Old hands watched in awe as he rode roughshod over entrenched prejudice. First of all, the refusal to withdraw any further from where we were, and the orders to destroy any contingency plans that suggested it, were a tonic. The defensive battle we then fought and won created a new mood.

Monty chose his own men and on the whole was a good chooser, making his mind up quickly with no attempt to soften his opinions. Useless people were useless, and that was that: they were a menace and had to go. They went. Some of us in the desert worried about whether Freddie de Guingond would get by or be fired at the very start. Happily he got by. Monty knew him already and Freddie had not been long enough at 8th Army to be tainted with the bad old ways. I was later surprised to hear him speak of Freddie, just before the Reichswald battle, rather less than generously, and later still he was to behave unkindly to someone who had served him well, but under pressure he clOve to Freddie all the same.

There was a considerable and surprising gift for friendship in this unquiet soldier, particularly with younger men. There were strong bonds between him and his ADCs, even with one who reckoned after two days that he could stand it no longer but stayed on and learnt to love Master and to be killed, as other ADCs were, in his service. There are letters in this book which show deep and sincere affection, just as there are those, and much other evidence besides, which show the harshness and lack of charity. There is no doubt now that Monty fought the battle of Alam el Haifa in the right way and that the idea was his to force the German armour up to attack his own, rather than to go out and meet it. Far from owing anything to his predecessor's plans I doubt whether Monty even read them. His refusal to exploit was also probably correct, although we in the 4th Armoured Brigade of 7th Armoured Division in the South could not at first believe it, and were very hard to persuade to stay put as the enemy withdrew, and not follow up. Monty's plan for the re-equipment, re-organisation and training of 8th Army for the offensive battle that was to follow, Alamein, could scarcely have been bettered. The deception plan (largely due to Charles Richardson) which drew the attention of the German armour southwards was a great success. Monty's own change of plan when a break through, as originally planned, to be followed by armoured exploitation, was frustrated, Showed a masterly grasp of battlefield command. The 'crumbling battle', as it was then fought, was in the end successful, though only after hard fighting. The disappointment, of course, lay in the performance of the armour. Monty was never really happy with Lumsden as Commander of his 'Corps de Chasse', the 10th Corps. The appointment was something of a concession to the old desert hands, a confidencebuilding gesture, and it was not a success, though argument about whether the armour in the battle of Alamein was being asked to do too much or was only inclined to do too little will still go on.

What raises little or no comment in this account of the battle of Alamein is that, if not a tactical failure, it was in the event an incomplete success. Monty's mandate was to destroy the Axis forces and, as he stood tapping the map at Alamein, 'to do it here!' In the event, Rommel was not destroyed. He managed to withdraw a very considerable force some 2,000 miles before he was cornered. This, ironically, furnished the opportunity for a wholly unconvenanted strategic victory which would have been impossible if Alamein had been the total tactical success expected of it. Hitler was now offered a temptation he could never iesist: to reinforce weakness. If Rommel had been destroyed at Alamein there would have been nothing to reinforce. The huge masses of material and the great numbers of men sent across the Mediterranean, running the gauntlet of our Air Force and submarines, only to end up for the most part either sunk or in allied hands, could have been more profitably used elsewhere.

Judged only as a biography (and a first volume at that) this book is too long. Its Length can be justified for the student of the military art, professional or lay, by the abundance of examples it contains of Monty's military writing. Policy directives, operation orders, training instructions, comment, injunction and advice flowed from him in huge quantity, almost all of it from his own pen, whatever his level of staff employment or command at the time. They are well illustrated here. Their clarity and authority are apparent, from the time he was writing as a very junior staff officer early in the First World War to when he became an army commander in the Second. The author of this book wisely refrains from critical comment upon their military content. He is not a professional soldier and is occasionally guilty of errors which Monty, as an instructor at a staff college, would never have allowed. These are not the only errors: `Lumsden prevaricated': Lumsden had his faults, and delaying response to urgent communications may have been among them, but he was not deceitful. Procrastinate', of course: that old howler.

On, another page, 'epithet' appears where 'epitaph is meant, though neither is appropriate. A more serious fault is one of balance. In earlier chapters the author, whose fondness for the Field Marshal in his lifetime seems to have been reciprocated in a singularly happy relationship, is so dazzled by the splendour of the man he writes about that the reader rather wonders whether uncritical adulation is all he can look forward to. As the author moves on into his material a more realistic tone emerges. This would have been a better book if the first chapters had been written last.