The Making Of The British Army (57 page)

Singapore was the biggest capitulation in the army’s history. And it
was all the more dismaying for the lack of any determined defence. As the Japanese were about to launch their attack across the straits Churchill had frantically signalled Wavell, whose command by then included the whole of South-East Asia,

They were not, and they did not. And so on 15 February 1942 the honour of the army was forfeited – to be redeemed at some as yet unforeseeable place and time. And if the fall of Singapore would not have quite the far-reaching consequences of the surrender at Yorktown 161 years earlier, it had the same stupefying effect in London. Combined with the news which soon began to follow from Burma, where the Japanese, invading through Thailand (and French Indo-China), were pushing back all before them, it made the new CIGS, Brooke (appointed in December), confide to his diary: ‘Burma news now bad. Cannot work out why troops are not fighting better. If the army cannot fight better than it is doing at present we shall deserve to lose our Empire.’

One man, at least, knew why the troops were not fighting better. Lieutenant-General William (Bill) Slim, who in the First World War had worn the same cap badge as Montgomery (the Royal Warwickshire Regiment) before transferring to the Gurkhas, had been placed in command of the scratch Burma Corps as it reeled before the Japanese. Later he would command 14th Army (the ‘Forgotten Army’, as its men took a rum pride in calling themselves) which finally halted the Japanese on the Indian border and in turn took the fighting back to them in the jungles of Burma – and beat them. In his account of the campaign,
Defeat into Victory
, Slim describes the tactical lessons of the long retreat from Burma, which he used as the foundations for retraining the army. First, he wrote, the jungle itself was neither impenetrable nor unfriendly, and the Japanese had no innate
superiority. He told his logistical troops that there were no non-combatants in jungle warfare: they, too, must fight in their own defence. He told his infantry and supporting arms that offensive patrolling was the key to mastery in the jungle, and that having Japanese parties to the rear of their positions did not mean that they were surrounded: it was the Japanese who were surrounded. Trying to hold long, continuous lines was futile, he concluded, just as frontal attacks ought rarely to be made, and never on narrow fronts. He was certain that tanks could be used in any country except swamp, but that they should not be scattered about in penny-packets. ‘When the Japanese have the initiative they are formidable,’ he warned, ‘but their cohesion is seriously threatened when they lose it: mobility off-road, surprise and offensive action seizes the initiative.’

Slim was soon training 14th Army along these lines. It was a predominantly Indian army, with an increasing number of East and West African units, but there were British regiments in every brigade, and the Forgotten Army’s doctrine would have a profound effect on shaping that of the post-war army, not least in the emphasis on preparing for dispersed, independent operations, on resilience and initiative in commanders, and on physical toughness and field discipline in their troops. Although Slim was regarded by some as a ‘sepoy general’, as Wellington had at first been, his success in the hard-fought defensive battles of Imphal and Kohima on the Indian border and his conduct of the successful counter-offensive brought him in the end to Whitehall, where in 1949 he would take over as CIGS from Montgomery for four crucial years of post-war retrenchment and the beginnings of withdrawal from empire.
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His views, disseminated both during his time as CIGS and through his subsequent lectures and essays, had enormous influence on the post-war generation of officers.
Defeat into Victory
, published in 1956, is still one of the most widely read books of any on the prescribed list of the Defence Academy, speaking as it does to every rank from lieutenant to four-star general. Neither victory in the Falklands in 1982 nor the narrow margin of success achieved in Afghanistan in 2006–7 would have been possible without the realization of Slim’s vision of the army, based on ‘the high quality of the
individual soldier, his morale, toughness, and discipline, his acceptance of hardship, and his ability to move on his own feet and to look after himself.’ And, indeed, Slim’s own style of command – including as it did so many of Wellington’s best qualities – became one of the two models for commanders of the late twentieth century (and continues to inspire in the early years of the twenty-first). In
Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45
(2008) Sir Max Hastings describes him thus:

The alternative model of command was – and remains – of course Montgomery, although he is not nearly as popular a model now as he was in the 1970s and 1980s at the height of the Cold War, when the British Army of the Rhine was everything. ‘Monty’, as he became (semi-) affectionately known, was not the first choice of general to take over command of 8th Army when Auchinleck was sacked in August 1942 (he was, in fact, earmarked for command in Operation Torch, the Anglo – US landings in Vichy North Africa later that year). Churchill, despite Brooke’s misgivings, had wanted ‘Strafer’ Gott, the 45-year-old commander of XIII Corps and veteran of the fighting in North Africa, but Gott was killed when the aircraft in which he was travelling back from Cairo to his desert headquarters was shot down.

The trouble with Montgomery was that he upset almost everyone he met. He had been very outspoken after Dunkirk and could hardly be civil to Auchinleck when the latter was GOC Southern Command (and his superior) during the invasion scare. But Montgomery’s mastery of training, which had paid such dividends during the retreat to Dunkirk, continued to impress, and so he was sent to the desert in the middle of August 1942 although he had not seen action in two years – something which, on top of the resentment felt by the old desert hands at having ‘the Auk’ removed, did not seem to augur well.
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Montgomery’s impact was, however, immediate and profound. In its see-saw of advances and retreats 8th Army had come to rest near El Alamein, long recognized as a good place for positional defence.
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There were a number of promontories which offered good observation and, crucially, the front was narrow (only some 35 miles) and could not be outflanked either in the north, where it met the sea, or in the south, where the Qattara depression was impassable to tanks. Indeed, Auchinleck had already stopped Rommel in his tracks here in July. Desperately short of fuel at the end of an over-extended supply line, Rommel’s German and Italian forces had then dug in.

Montgomery had already grasped the operational reality by the time he took command. Knowing from Ultra
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intercepts that Rommel would renew the attack, and where, he immediately reinforced the Alam el Halfa ridge to the south-east, brought the hitherto separate headquarters of 8th Army and the Desert Air Force together to create unity of effort – one of the fundamental principles of war – and, in a stroke of high drama to impress on the army his character and intent, ordered all plans for further withdrawal to be burned, telling his staff that ‘If we cannot stay here alive then let us stay here dead.’ But this of itself might not have been enough to turn the tide of defeat in the minds of the men of 8th Army if he had not also held out the promise – indeed, the cocksure certainty – of victory. Immediately on taking command he gathered together the officers of his headquarters and addressed them from the steps of his caravan. He told them of the need to change, and what he wanted; what he would not tolerate, what he would do. ‘The great point to remember,’ he concluded, ‘is that we are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all. It will be quite easy. There is no doubt about it.’

Within a fortnight Rommel struck, and 8th Army sent him reeling back from Alam el Halfa ridge as easily as Montgomery had said they would. Churchill wondered why he did not follow up at once in a counter-attack, but in his own mind Montgomery still had work to do. For one thing, his promised new tanks (250 American Shermans,
superior to anything Rommel possessed) had not yet arrived; and Montgomery was not a man to take needless risks – certainly not at this stage of his reputation-making. Despite Churchill’s increasing urging – almost goading – he stood his ground until he was ready. And he was not ready for a month and more.

The extraordinary thing about Alamein was that in essentials it was a battle that looked like those of 1917. Rommel had known that Montgomery would attack at some stage – Alam el Halfa had been meant as a ‘spoiling attack’ – and had strengthened his own defences formidably, laying half a million mines, mainly anti-tank but with some anti-personnel mines to deter clearing, and deep belts of barbed wire. With no scope for outflanking, 8th Army would have to mount a frontal attack. And with a frontage of a mere 35 miles Montgomery would be able to achieve only limited tactical surprise as to the point of main effort – where he intended breaking through – and very little surprise as to anything else beyond the actual hour and day. In fact, as the weeks passed, so the certainty of the imminence of the attack could only increase. But, rather like the preliminaries to the Somme, the delay gave the British and imperial forces useful time for training and rest, while Rommel’s men laboured to strengthen the defences without respite, for the Desert Air Force was able to pound them day and night and harass their long supply line to the point where the prodigious logistic effort yielded only the most marginal benefit. Nor was their leader with them: after eighteen months’ campaigning Rommel’s health was suffering, and in late September he took sick leave in Italy and Germany, leaving the army under command of Lieutenant-General Georg Stumme. The new commander was not in good spirits, having undergone a court martial after the Russians captured secret documents at Stalingrad, a loss for which Hitler blamed him personally. Nor was he in good health; he would die of a heart attack when Montgomery’s offensive opened.

But perhaps the greatest difference between Alamein and 1916 or 1917 was that tactical victory by 8th Army here could clearly precipitate a strategic defeat for the Axis: Rommel’s troops were numerically inferior, his allies – the Italians – were weak, his supply was inadequate, and he had no reserves. Breakthrough at El Alamein could set in motion a chain of events which would throw the Germans and Italians out of North Africa – especially given that Operation Torch, the Anglo-US landings in Morocco and Algeria, Vichy territory, were to begin in
November. That the Germans
could
indeed be evicted from the Western Desert 8th Army understood because Montgomery went round every unit before Alamein and told them so, in no uncertain terms. And for the most part they believed him.

The dominating factor in the coming battle would be the minefields, up to 5 miles deep. Getting through them was the equivalent of crossing no-man’s-land in 1916–17. And then there were the German tanks, waiting to learn where 8th Army’s tanks would break through, in order to swoop like raptors to pick them off as they emerged from the cleared minefield lanes. Montgomery knew that until enough panzers were destroyed Rommel would remain a force to be reckoned with, especially in the open country of the break-out which would strongly favour the German armour – and especially the much-feared 88 mm anti-tank gun.
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And he knew exactly what the coming battle would entail: a frontal attack and a duel of armour – in the words of General Sir David Fraser, writing from direct experience of the war, ‘a battle of attrition, needing perfect preparation, moral force and persistence unto death. It could never be cheap in materiel or human life.’
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