Montgomery: Britain's Best General

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Danger, old boy, danger, old boy.

Welcome to We Have Ways and Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, Best in the West, episode two.

And as you all know, by now, well, if you've listened to the first one of these, what we're doing is we're teeing up a fantastic final head-to-head battle between the best generals in the West for We Have Ways Fest, Funf, putting the fun into Funf next month in September, September 12th to 14th, where we will be finally wrestling this to the ground who the greatest generals of the Second World War were.

But voting's already open, isn't it?

Yeah, if you so if you go to the patreon, if you go to our patreon, we have ways to make you talk, patron, you will see right now Ronald Adam is on 1%,

Harold Alexander's on 24%, the Orc, 1%,

Alan Brooks, 7.

Miles Dempsey, 1%.

Miles Dempsey only 1%, I think is a surprise.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Richard Gale, Windy on 5%.

Percy Hobart on 5%.

Brian Horrocks on 4%, which is interesting because he's sort of famous, Horrocks, isn't he?

Thanks to Edward Fox, largely.

Richard McCreary, nothing.

Well, this is why we need to spend a bit of time with him.

Exactly.

Manny on 27%, Leslie Moore's head on 1%.

Richard O'Connor on 6%.

Guy Simmons on 2%.

And Tuca on 15%, which I think has got a lot to do with your...

It's getting in.

It's getting through.

It's getting through.

It's your advocacy from previous years, Jim, I think, that's done that for us Tuca.

But basically, what we're doing, we're trying to canter through brief biographies on what we think of these people and then leave it to you to vote.

And then, as I said, come to We Have Ways Fest and watch this finally be put to bed once and for all.

So no one need to argue about who the best generals are ever again.

That's the idea, isn't it, Jim?

We'll all know.

Clear, everyone will know.

Close that particular book, move on to something else.

Clarity of thought is absolutely essential.

Absolutely.

In the last episode, we looked at Ronald Allen, Alexander, Auchinleck, Brooke, Dempsey Gale, and Hobart, Pussy Hobart.

But now we start with another H.

Lieutenant General, Sabran Horrocks.

Horrocks is, I think, he's another one of these imperial types, isn't he?

He's born in India.

He's an army kid.

His dad's a gunner.

He goes to Uppingham and then he goes to Sandhurst.

And bang on time.

He's born in 1895.

Bang on time for the First World War in the Middlesex Regiment.

Machine Gun Corps.

That's right.

Yes.

So that's interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, becomes a sapper.

Then he's gassed in 1917 at 3rd EAP and then goes to the Meese Machine Gun Corps.

And, you know, he has a good First World War with a military cross and all that sort of thing.

But then, you know, he's another one of these people.

What do I do now?

The Machine Gun Corps corps disbanded after the First World War.

And what he does then is extraordinary.

Exactly.

Yeah, Paris Olympics, 1924, modern pentathlon.

I know.

There you are.

That is the chariots of fire year.

He's just not sprinting.

Well, he is sprinting, but he's in pentathlon.

Yeah, but he's in the background somewhere, isn't he?

Lobbying something

as they're running around.

Oh, geez, aren't mine.

But he goes to the staff college, go to Camberley.

So, you know, he's on his way up and through the army.

And again, someone else who's an instructor at the staff college and if you you know listen to our last episode a lot of these people have not only trained there that but they've taught there I mean it's the other thing everyone knows everyone the British Army might be one of the larger one of the armies in the interwar years in the world because it's a big imperial army but everyone at this level knows everyone else yeah but like Dempsey he's only a half colonel in 1939 he's a battalion commander nothing more he's not a general you know again so yep in Monty's third div so with the Middlesex Regiment second battalion so Monty gets to see him yeah Yeah.

Sees how he operates.

And likes to cut a gym.

Likes the fact that Horrocks doesn't quibble.

He's not a belly acre.

Yeah.

But rather than sort of being sort of incubated under Monty's watch fly in Britain, in England, he's sent to the Middle East in 1941 and with a brigade command.

So 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, which after all, because of his sort of...

Indian Army background.

Exactly.

That's the sort of reasonable sort of situation to find himself in.

But then he's, I mean, it's interesting, because Horrocks is wounded at least twice, isn't he, during the war?

Yeah, very badly.

Very badly.

Yeah, wounded in the chest during Operation Crusader in November 1941, fighting the Italians, escapes, rejoins 8th Army, and then is promoted to Major General.

So this is clearly, he's clearly one of the sort of coming men in 8th Army.

And he's now got a bit of experience, you know, he's been in France in 1940, he's done Dunkirk, he's now been in the early years of the Desert War and survived.

Yeah.

And when he's promoted to Major General, he gets given command of 9th Armour Division, which is quite odd because he's an infantryman.

He has no experience of armor whatsoever.

Yeah.

I mean, this is meteoric, isn't it?

Because he's a, as you said, he's a battalion commander in 1940.

In 1942, he's promoted to Lieutenant General and is commander of 13 Corps under Monty in August 1942.

And that is, that is absolute, that is meteoric, isn't it?

Yes.

And the reason he gets in is because Monty is absolutely sick to back teeth of all the belly acres, doesn't like them, gets rid of a whole load of them.

There's a sort of clear out of eighth army top command.

And he thinks, well, I remember Horrocks.

He was a jolly good chap.

He did what I told him to when we were in third div.

He'd be the man.

I mean, it's interesting, though, he doesn't get any higher than Lieutenant General.

No.

I mean, it's still pretty high, to be fair.

Although, as soon as he gets there, he's defending Alam Halfa Ridge and does so, and does a pretty good job, to be fair.

Yeah.

Then he's offered 10 core, which is the Corps de Chasse, the sort of cavalry people, but he declines, doesn't he?

Which I think is very interesting because he thinks, I don't know enough about armour.

And I don't want to cock it up and ruin my career.

But also, that's very Monty, though, isn't it?

In the end, if someone thinks they can't do something, Monty would rather know that than then say, yeah, I'll give it a go, sir.

Well, he just thinks he needs a bit of a, you know, to see how it all works first.

Yeah.

He does then get given 10 Corps later in the year.

Dempsey comes into 13 Corps.

We talked about Dempsey in the last episode.

And is there to the end of the fighting in North Africa, isn't he?

Yeah, but he really fluffs it at the Wadiakar at the beginning of April 1943.

This is where the 4th Indian Division have outflanked the Italian 1st Army, which is what used to be the Panzer Army Africa under Rommel, but it's had one of its kind of sort of name changes.

The whole point is that they've outflanked them, cut in behind them, and the opportunity is there for 10th Corps to storm through.

And they're very slow getting going.

Instead of going at kind of 10 in the morning, 9 in the morning, it's not till 2 in the afternoon or something that they finally get going.

By which point, the Italians have retreated and the kind of moment has passed.

So he absolutely fluffs that.

He then gets transferred to Command 9 Corps temporarily in 1st Army because 8th Army has been put on hold at Infeiderville on the eastern side of Tunisia.

So he gets transferred into First Army and it is his corps that launches Operation Strike, but it is not his concept.

It's Tuca's concept, Operation Strike.

But he does benefit from the dramatic success of Operation Strike.

There's no question about it.

But he then gets very, very badly wounded.

He's strafed, isn't he?

Yep.

So he's in a very bad way.

Basically means he's sort of on hold, isn't he, for a little while, then comes back in Northwest Europe.

It basically...

comes back after he's recovered is brought in to replace um bucknell yeah who's commanding 30 corps bucknell's fired for being slow

Operation Blue Coat, the end of the very beginning of August.

Yeah, which I think Blue Coat goes quite well, really.

So that seems, I think that's a little unfair.

Yeah, it was a bit sticky.

But it's Dempsey, Saxon, not Monty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The door is held open once again for Horrocks.

And he then runs 30 Corps to the end of the war, northern Germany.

And I think we all know.

It does very well.

You know, you can't hold Waddy Yakura against him forever.

No, and or Market Garden, because I think the thing we've reflected on is actually 30 Corps are relatively quick, given what's being asked of them.

Also the state they're in by that stage of the war.

This This is not the start of Normandy, September of 1944.

If your guard's armoured, is it?

Much more attrited than you at your prime.

And then, you know, he's involved in all those big slugging matches in the winter of 44, 45, particularly bad winter, and, you know, gets all the way to the end of the war.

Yeah, and he's liked.

You know, everyone likes him.

He's approachable.

He's warm.

He's got a sense of humour.

You know, he's clearly got a bit of personal charisma.

I remember Stanley Christofferson really rated him, really liked him, thought he was terrific.

And he's got a, you know, he's got a terrific frontline presence.

You know, he's a very visible commander.

He goes and talks to the troops.

You know, he's not a kind of chateau general by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, and if people want to sort of get beyond Edward Fox's turn as him in the British 25, people want to get sort of proper whiff of him, he had a TV series explaining how things worked.

You know, and he sat there, it's all on YouTube, and he sat there going, right, so obviously this was a rather sticky day and all that sort of thing with maps and charts and all models and all that sort of thing.

You know,

he was very good, very competent, very good.

I mean, you wouldn't ever say he was a sort of great tactician, a great thinker, or anything like that.

He's famous, isn't he, because of a bridge too far and because of his TV series and because of his books and because Monty called him Jorrox.

It's not because of his immense talent.

I mean, he's very, very good.

He's not top rate, is he?

No, and I think...

Well, he's a good corps commander, isn't he?

But he would never be an army commander.

No.

Why isn't he going beyond Lieutenant General?

Because that's his level.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

General Sir Richard Dick McCreary, who's got nil pois at the time of recording.

Well, go for it, Jim.

He's a remarkable guy.

He is supremely competent, this guy, in a number of different roles.

So he's young, 1898.

He does get into the First World War, gets commissioned into the 12th Royal Lancers in 1916, serves on the Western Front, does very well, wounded in action in 1917, warded the MC, leading patrols under fire, develops early expertise in cavalry, maneuver, reconnaissance.

You know, and this translates very well into armoured warfare later on.

Right, right.

Between the wars and obviously into the Second World War.

And, you know, as you say he's a he's another of these guys he's just you know ticks all the boxes you know he's been in the british army of the rhine he's been in india he's done staff college tick tick tick um he served brigade major major of the second cavalry brigade then in mechanized units um and by the outbreak of the second world war he's already even though he's still very young he's only 41 he's considered one of the army's most capable cavalry to armor transitional officers yeah because they know they need them and so if you're specializing that you've got a bright career ahead of you haven't you yep he's a a staff officer in the BEF in 1940, but then is involved more directly in the rearguard and evacuation operations.

Do you remember all those forces that get made, MAC force and all the rest of it?

So suddenly it's kind of staff suddenly having to kind of hold a front.

So he's involved in that.

Then he goes over to North Africa

and again, becomes a brilliant staff officer.

So he understands about planning.

He's meticulous, all the rest of it.

He serves under Neil Ritchie.

He's a key planner for Operation Crusader, which after all is a great success when it happens in November, December 1941.

this is one of the eras is under General Cunningham as Army Commander.

Takes over 8th Armoured Brigade, then 7th Armoured Division, serves under Montgomery and 8th Army, commands a corps later in the North African.

But

he is chief of staff to Alexander in Tunisia.

So he's suddenly seen the kind of top level.

He's seen absolutely the top.

He sees how this army group commander works.

I mean, to be chief of staff to Alexander at that time is a really, really plump post.

And then he gets promoted to command 10 Corps during the Italian campaign.

So this is Salerno and Operation Avalanche.

So it's very well under Mark Clark, very collegiately, very good as coalition commander.

Yes, he's been a staff officer, but he's also seen tons of action as well by this point.

He is very well placed to be given a corps of his own.

He understands how a commander corps works.

He understands about armoured warfare.

He understands about combined arms warfare.

And he's very successful as a 10 Corps commander.

You know, this is Operation Avalanche, invasion of Salerno, landings at Salerno in September 1943, all the way up through that very tricky stuff.

He's in the 5th Army, so he's in American Army, British, you know, two-division, sometimes three-division corps.

He's on the lower half of the Gustav line.

You know, this is first and the Bernhard line.

So, this is Monte Camino and all that kind of stuff in November, December 1943.

Then it's the Garigliano front down on the southern end of, you know, the southwestern end of the front.

Eventually, he gets promoted to 8th Army Commander when Lisa is moved, bumped upstairs to the Far East and does it very, very well.

I mean, you know, he is Army Commander during Operation Grapeshot, the 1945, Spring 1945 offensive.

You know, breaks through the Grophick Line defenses, crosses the River Poe, advances up the Alps.

You know, he's really seriously good.

He could easily have been Army Group Commander rather than Clark.

He is supremely competent, deserves to be far better known than he is.

Even some of our more dedicated listeners might not be able to direct you towards who he was.

You know what I mean?

We do run into these names occasionally, and particularly even more on the American side, we think never heard of it.

General Corlett or some people like that.

Who are they now?

Who are they now?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, you know, he's right up there as among the very best, most competent senior commanders that the British have in the Second World War.

And

his range of jobs and tasks and talents is, you know, he's super bright.

And he accepts the German surrender in Italy on the 2nd of May.

So it's him taking that surrender.

Yeah, he's pretty good.

He deserves more than no percent.

No percent.

God.

Well, maybe he doesn't, because, you know, now we're on to Monty.

Manny.

In lots of ways.

I mean, we've talked about Manny a lot on the podcast.

I think what's really interesting is that there is a mold emerging, isn't there, of the kind of people that get to the top of the British Army.

And Monty's completely typical of this.

You know, he's born in the 1880s.

1887.

He's Anglo-Irish.

His dad's a vicar.

Becomes Bishop of Tasmania.

Briefly lived next to the Oval Crooket Ground.

Yep.

And he goes to St.

Paul's, which was in Hammersmith, and then to Sandhurst.

In his memoir, he tells all these stories about how I came last in my class at Sandhurst and all this sort of thing.

But you know, the records of that don't exist.

They were lost.

So there's no way of actually checking.

I remember talking to a historian at Sandhurst.

He's going, well, well, you know, I think that might be Monty saying, look, you know, I was brilliant but misunderstood.

I was a maverick like Ulysses S.

Grant.

Exactly.

I'm a maverick, exactly.

And, you know, there's a story of him burning setting fire to someone's britches or something.

His shirttails.

Shirttails, isn't it?

That's right.

In a sort of prank.

Yeah, I mean, what could be more fun?

Well, you know, it's hijinks, isn't it?

And he ends up in the Warwickshires, and then the First World War comes.

So this is the thing, like all of these people.

But Monty's First World War experience is very interesting, isn't it?

Because...

He's shot in the chest.

Yeah, shot in the chest.

Early in October of 1914.

The guy who goes out to go and get in, the sergeant is killed on top of him.

And the sniper, the rifleman shooting at them, fires loads more rounds at them and into the pair of them.

And, you know, he thinks he's he's going to die.

He's rescued and recovers.

But basically, he can't go to the front.

He can't be a frontline soldier anymore.

It's deemed.

His health isn't up to it.

So he gets into staff positions because he loves the army.

He particularly starts to love the army once there's some fighting because what's the interesting thing about Monty?

He really loves the fighting.

And he understands how the British Army works, sort of under the bonnet, doesn't he?

He understands the planning.

And again, we come back to planning, training, discipline, the sort of axiomatic stuff.

Staff Corridor Camberley, late service instructor.

But he commands the 1st Battalion of the World World Wars Regiment in action in Palestine during the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 39.

Yeah, yeah.

Writes the infantry manual as well at one point in the 30s.

He's very tied into what the army thinking is.

If he doesn't like you, he's abrasive.

If he does like you, he's not.

What it comes down to, isn't it?

The people who think he's abrasive basically because he doesn't rate them.

And the people who think he's great, it's because he rates them.

It's quite simple.

It's quite simple.

It's a transactional thing with Montgomery, isn't it?

On some level.

He's called back from Palestine when war breaks out.

He has a moment on the ship where he has pneumonia or something and thinks he's not going to be able to get himself together and be healthy enough to go to work in France, but recovers.

Yep.

And he loses his wife as well, which is a great tragedy.

Yes, loses his wife to sepsis or something.

You know, she's bitten by an insect and they amputate her leg and she dies anyway.

And she was a bohemian and an artist and Percy Hobart's sister, interestingly.

And so he's got this whole hinterland of sort of artistic-y people that he hung out with who found him hilarious.

Yep.

And wasn't really reflected in his Desert Island discs.

No.

But basically, he has a good BEF campaign.

Very good BF campaign.

And where he, I mean, he is the standout divisional commander because he executes this 50-mile route march overnight, 45-mile route march overnight, the whole division leapfrogging behind to fill the gap of the vacating Belgians.

And it saves the day.

I mean, you know, there's absolutely no question about this.

An incredible feat.

And, okay, he's got lots of planners and other people and staff and all the rest of it to do it, but it comes down from the top.

It filters down from the top and you know it's a brilliant operation and i don't think there's many people in the bf who could have done that no brooke of course uh who's his direct boss in france recognizes this in him and sees that although monty's sort of tricky to handle so he's given two corps and then southeastern command preparing for invasion but basically combing through the army and bringing up to scratch is what it comes down to isn't it And he's also earmarked for First Army, isn't he?

Yeah.

First of all, it's going to be some guy who's something like Steibitz or something like that.

I can't remember his name is.

Someone sort of German sounding.

Then he's not thought right.

Then it's Alexander.

Then Alexander gets moved to Commander-in-Chief of Middle East.

So then it's Monty.

He's third choice.

Then he gets moved over to Eighth Army.

So then it's Anderson.

So Anderson is actually fourth choice.

Yeah.

But basically, his big break comes when Auckinlech's removed and Gott is shot down, killed.

And Monty ends up with Alex as his actual boss.

with the job of getting hold of 8th Army and turning it round, getting it ready to fight the battle it's going to have to fight at 2nd Al Alamein.

You know, I think one of the problems with Monty is after the war, he says, well, it was all my idea and I wasn't I brilliant.

But actually what he's quite good at is taking suggestions and taking other people's ideas on board.

Queue you back to an earlier bit where Alexander kind of puts him right for Operation Supercharger, which is the second half of the Alamein battle plan.

Yeah.

But, you know, he does very, very well.

You know, it is he who is transforming 8th Army and their morale and self-belief is just so important.

And what he understands absolutely instinctively, what can be expected from his men.

You know, he, as a tactician, I think he's okay.

I mean, he's no great shakes.

But so what?

What he is brilliant at is he understands the strategic picture.

He knows how to get what he wants and get what he wants done.

And he's a brilliant operational commander.

And frankly, in the Second World War, by this point, where they're not going to lose, operational commanders is what you really want.

You know, it's all very well having flair, but what you really want is people that can manage their resources, whether it be mechanical or human, as well as possible.

And he's exceptional in this.

He does very well in Sicily.

It is him who says, uh-uh, this plan ain't working.

And let's face it, you know, above him are Eisenhower and Beadle-Smith and Alex and Patton and various other people.

And he's the one who says, and Tedder and Cunningham and all these senior commanders.

And he's the one who actually says, these are the issues we need to bear when we're thinking about the plan.

This cannot fail.

That has to supersede all other considerations.

It doesn't matter.

You know, obviously, we want to win in two weeks, but it doesn't really matter.

What really matters is that this doesn't fail.

That's our start point.

Work backwards.

And that's our plan.

And it's very successful.

You know, Sicily is taken in 36 days.

And yes, okay, they get a bit bogged down in the Catania plane and all the rest of it.

Who cares?

It doesn't matter.

The point is, they're going to win.

It is going to be a triumph.

It is going to knock Italy out of the war, all the rest of it.

He then does perfectly well in Italy in very difficult circumstances.

I mean, it's not his finest moment, but that's nothing to do with him.

You know, he does as well as he could possibly have expected.

His big thing, though, is the planning for Overlord because it is a team effort.

It's tri-service.

It is international, but the buck stops with him.

The buck, I suppose, stops with Eisenhower, but it is not his plan, but he is giving the shape and direction to it.

And I totally disagree with Carlo Deste, who wrote an entire book about the Normandy campaign, about how bad his plan was.

His plan is the best possible plan that could have been put in place for the Sick for June 1944.

Yeah.

Far none.

And

I'm just not having it.

There is no alternative to that point of view.

Yeah.

Oh, and his ability to then adapt when it isn't working and all that.

He is actually far more flexible than even he gives himself credit for.

Yeah, I think so.

And, you know, Normandy is won in 77 days, not 90, which was what was predicted.

It is a monstrous victory.

I mean, you know, two German armies completely smashed.

I mean, okay, a few remnants get through the fallaise gap.

Who cares?

I mean, the point is,

it is a walloping victory.

And he is one of the chief architects of that.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, and his management of the rest of the 21st Army Group, where at the end of the war, Britain has to have a seat at the top table.

They have to minimise casualties, but they have to be really absolutely at the forefront of all the major actions.

His part in that is a masterpiece.

Tick, yes, they do have a seat at the top table.

Tick, they do get the first unconditional surrender in Northwest Europe.

Tick, they do have huge swaves

under his direct command.

Tick, he does have huge influence.

So, you know, hats off.

And you can say, oh, well, you know, Patton got across the Rhine quicker than, you know, with less fuss and the rest of it.

Balls to that.

You know, Vasty was a brilliant plan.

Plunder was a brilliant plan.

And, you know, all his major operations enhance British military power for the post-war rather than detracting.

That is his remit.

Who did the Germans come to surrender to first?

Quite.

Yep.

Rest of case.

So he's exceptionally good.

Okay.

Well, we need to take a quick break.

Before we do our last couple of candidates.

And I mean, you know, there's some strong views there.

And go and vote.

Please do.

We'll see you in a moment.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk Best to the West, episode two of six.

There's a lot of this stuff to get through as you're probably realizing.

Yep.

So I'm afraid we're going to have to rattle through the next three.

But it's important that you do Alexander and Monty in a big way because they're huge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Moore's head, Jim.

Well, he is, again, he's extremely competent.

I mean, you can't really, but what he does, I guess, the most famous of all the Australian generals.

Yeah.

But you know, you cannot escape the fact that Australia's contribution is less than Britain's in terms of numbers because it's a smaller country.

And also he's only in the West for a very small bit.

You know, actually his greatest efforts really come in the Far East.

You know, when we do the best in the Pacific, best of Aries, whatever we want to call it, you know, he's going to have to go in again, I think.

I mean, the Australian effort is also tempered by the politics of the collapse of Singapore and all this sort of stuff, and Australia turning to the Americas, as it were, as a result.

You've got to love it.

His mantra, no one ever won a battle by sitting in their foxhole.

You've got to love that.

And

he's the commanding officer for the Siege of Tobruk, which resists all efforts by the Germans and Italians to throw in the towel.

And he's pretty darn good in the Battle of Alamein as well.

I mean, it is the Australians who do the breakthrough in the north.

That unlocks the whole position.

You know, so it's the Aussies.

So, you know, he's pretty good.

Yeah.

And what he's good at is aggressive patrolling.

He's good at combined arms.

I mean, again, it's combined arms attack.

It's the thing, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's done the First World War and he's been wounded and he's kind of got his DSO.

And, you know.

I do like his nickname, though.

Ming the Merciless.

Yeah.

But no, it's not for his brutality.

That's for he's keen on turnout.

But, you know, he can't seriously be considered as the best in the West because he's out of the picture by 1942.

Okay.

So that's all we've got time for for him.

Sorry, mate, but it's Fair Dinkum.

It's Fair Dinkum, mate.

Well, and now we've got Dick O'Connor.

Now, he is a key player.

I think he's one of the, you know, he would have been an Army Group commander, I'm sure.

And he absolutely would have commanded 8th Army.

But, you know, he goes and gets captured.

But, okay, let's go back to him.

Born in 1889, Srinagar, Kashmir, British India.

You know, here we go.

Yeah, Wellington College, Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of the Cameronian Scottish Rifles, 1909.

He's right there at the start in 1914.

Seas action, First Battle of the Eat, Somme Aras.

Battalion command, awarded the military cross, DSO, five mentions in dispatches, ends the war as brigade major.

So he gains operational planning experience alongside frontline command.

So, you know, that puts him in very good position.

You know, again, you know, in between the war, he staffed College Camberley, blah, blah, blah.

Serves India, Egypt, Middle East, holds battalion and brigade commands, promoted colonel in 1935, brigadier.

1938 during the Arab Revolt.

So he's in place in the Middle East.

Yeah.

And at the outbreak of war, he's appointed general officer commanding of the 7th Infantry Division.

But anyway, he's in France in 1940.

Demonstrates flexibility in maneuver and ability to coordinate rearguard actions.

So another huge tick.

But after returning home from France, he's then promoted to Lieutenant General quite early on.

Yeah.

You know, so he's again, EMR, sent out to Egypt, commander of the Western Desert Force under General Sir Archibald Wavell's Middle East Command.

And it's only two divisions, 7th Armoured and the 4th Indian Division, plus a few sort of you know, supporting engineers and artillery and all the rest of it.

And he absolutely whips the Italians' ass.

Yeah.

Operation Compass, December 1940, absolutely jot columns, you know, this is maneuver warfare, mechanized warfare in the desert, runs absolute rings around the Italians, defeats two entire armies, puts 133,000 out of 170,000 in the bag.

I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary.

Gets all the way through Sarneg to El Agela by April 1941.

By which point Rommel's there and, you know, he's got his overextended

lines of supply.

You know, the problem is, is just at the point where he really has an opportunity to kick the embryonic Deutsche Afrika Corps into the, into the touch, a load of his troops get withdrawn for Greece in March 1941.

So at the moment of highest momentum, when he really could have cleaned up Libya once and for all, his forces are reduced.

And at that same time, him and Philip Niem, they're captured.

They actually actually accidentally drive into Roeblock and they're captured.

And suddenly at a trice, you know, one of the most successful, brilliant, experienced commanders that Britain has who's absolutely got it.

He understands all arms warfare.

He understands mobile warfare.

You know, he's our very own Rommel.

Gets put in the bag, which is terrible.

And he spends the next couple of years in a prison of war camp near Florence.

constantly trying to escape, does escape at the Italian armistice.

You know, the doors are getting, you know, the guards just go.

And he makes his way back through the Apennines to reach Allied lines via Switzerland.

Incredible.

And returns to duty.

Yeah.

And in early 1944, with his strength recovered, he's appointed GOC of General Officer Commanding of VIII Corps, which is going to be part of the Second Army, Bimbo Dempsey's Second Army.

You know, he could have, should have been commanding that army.

I mean, you know, Dempsey's really, really good, but the writing is on the wall for that to be a Connor's.

There's no reason why not.

The only reason why not is because he spent two years in a prisoner war camp.

You know, but just think where he could have been.

I i mean he he he's a brilliant commander and his performance in normandy is exceptional you know he's brilliant in epsom brilliant in goodwood i think brilliant in blue coat you know it is blue coat after all that is the great breakthrough for british second army and it is it's a two corps front it's 30 corps on the uh on the eastern left side o'connor's eight corps on the west and right hand side and it is eight corps that goes something like 16 miles on the first day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely wipes the the floor compared to vertical, which is, of course, what leads to Butnell being sacked and Horrocks taking over.

He doesn't really put a foot wrong.

Yeah.

And then again, he's there till the end in Germany that liberates Brussels, holds the northern flank of the Battle of the Bulge.

He's part of plunder.

You know, I think it is really interesting, isn't it?

Because as you were saying earlier on, you know, you need to be in the right place, right time.

You were saying that about McCreevy, you know, that you've got to be in the right place at the right time.

Basically, if you're in post when you're winning, you're going to go to the top.

And O'Connor's problem is, is he just disappears, essentially, from the cogs.

I think more power to him for keeping up to speed and getting...

I mean, he just slots straight back into 8 Corps.

He gets it.

And this is kind of frustrating with him because of what might have been.

But even so, despite those two years as a POW, just think about what he's done.

He's been in the Middle East.

He's been in France in 1940.

He's done a very good job in 1940, you know, albeit part of the BEF that has to evacuate from Dunkirk, but he does.

He then does an outstanding, a truly remarkable effort.

It's one of the great British achievements of the war, a force of 36,000 men to overrun two armies of 170,000 men.

That's something that not even the Germans do.

It's not even what, you know, the Japanese, even Japanese don't barely do that.

It's exceptional.

Then he comes back and he just doesn't really put a foot wrong at all in Northwest Europe.

So he's there, he's in Europe, he's in the Middle East, he's in North Africa, then has the personal courage to get out and escape and get back to the lines, but he's still there at the end doing a superb job.

You know, he's he's one of the great generals that we've never you know army commanders that we've not had and and he really deserves very serious contention he's an outstanding commander and i put him above pretty much all the others you know the the the mcrereary's and dempseys i think i think he's i do think he's in a different caliber okay after all we're being inclusive of our dominions colleagues yep friends and allies our next candidate is general guy simmons of course simmons simmons i don't know how to run i you know you know what i don't know And I think it's a name I've only ever read rather than heard anyone say out loud.

Isn't that interesting?

Because I always kind of think with a wire be Simons.

Yeah, I don't know.

Anyway, now he's one of the real youngsters in this bunch.

He's born in 1903, which means he doesn't have the First World War in his career.

He's British.

Emigrates to Canada as a 16-year-old, doesn't he?

Yeah, from Berryston Edmonds.

He's a product of Canadian military system.

So Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, graduating in 1925.

Hasn't served in in the First World War, too young.

No, exactly.

So that's quite an interesting time to join the army if you're Canadian, isn't it?

Maybe you think, well, we won't be doing that again.

Thanks very much.

We'd rather not, if it's all the same to you.

He's interesting, isn't he?

So he's a gunner.

He's another artilleryman.

And he's sharp.

He's analytical.

He's got a strong work ethic.

And sort of in between the wars, although it sort of doesn't really count as in between the wars, this is just his career because he's not a wartime soldier who's, you know, a brevet major who's been busted back down to whatever.

You know, it's this thing of he's got various artillery postings in canada in britain he comes to camberley to the staff college which is of course where he gets to know everyone and gets to see the sort of temperature in the british army and he's interested in mechanization mobile warfare theory so he's keeping up with the the coming thinking and then again Here we go, he becomes an instructor.

So I think what's so interesting about so many of these people who could go through this interwar period of new thinking and modernization is that a lot of them, like, they drink the milk and then they distribute it themselves, if you see what I mean.

They then spread the word.

At the outbreak of the war, he's in the Canadian 1st Infantry Division as a general staff officer.

And, of course, they come to Britain, don't they?

And they're there forever waiting for something to do.

Bad run of things for the Canadians in that regard.

He's involved in the planning for Sicily.

And then the big job comes in.

So he gets the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for Husky.

And, you know, he does well there.

And, I mean, basically, the stuff the Canadians do in Sicily is absolutely incredible, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

It's very impressive.

Acero and all the rest of of it and Leon Forte and Agira.

A wild terrain and incredible things that they do.

And then he's in early 44, he gets the two Canadian Corps job back in Britain, which is for the invasion of Northwest Europe.

But they're going to be the sort of

fundamental apart of the invasion as anyone else, the Canadians.

They're not a bolt-on in any way.

And he runs Canadian II Corps' battle of Operation Totalize, which is using all sorts of new ideas, APCs and stuff for kangaroos, which are are defrocked priests, you know, the self-propelled gun without the gun.

He's really, really pushing hard to try and...

He's innovative, isn't he?

Yeah.

He's willing to sort of think outside the box, try and do things in a slightly different way.

And although some of his tactics are a little bit controversial, you know, for the most part, they're pretty effective.

Yeah.

And the other thing is, his is a more political command.

These Duke generals also have their own governments to sort of answer to and accommodate, depending on how the battle's going.

And, you know, the Canadians, of course, they're all volunteers.

There's been resistance to conscription anyway.

They're not going to conscript French Canadians, for instance.

There's a tension in running a Canadian army in Normandy under British command.

There is a political aspect to the job that I think is part of what Simmons is also having to deal with at the same time.

It can't be forgotten.

You know, that's why he's innovating.

He's trying to save the lives of his men a lot of the time.

You know, if you've got guys in APCs, they're not blundering around in the night trying to keep up the tanks, the tanks, you know, getting left behind or the tanks separated for the infantry.

It's about taking care of people and making sure things run properly.

And I think there's that little grain of the political element of his command in what he's doing.

Yep.

And he does get a little, he gets a little whiff of army command because Harry Crowar is out of the action for a bit in the autumn of 1944.

So he's briefly kind of commanding it during all that Schellt campaign.

You know, he's the first Canadian Army commander.

So he then reverts back to Two Corps.

But I mean, he has a terrible temper, doesn't he?

He's bad-tempered.

So his men don't love him.

No.

They respect him.

Yeah, I think his temper might be because he's really clever and no one is...

His frustration of having to explain things to people don't quite get it.

I think it probably comes from that, doesn't it?

Yes, you bloody fool.

Yeah, exactly.

You bloody fools.

Another very, very clever general is the last of our best in the West.

And this is a particular favourite of yours, Jim.

And someone I'm very, very interested in, which is Lieutenant General Sir Francis Ivan Sims Tuker.

Yes.

A born tucker.

Changes his name for some reason.

Quite interesting.

He's Imperial, born in Tobago, goes to school in Brighton, then goes to Sandhurst just before the First World War and goes into the Gurkhas via the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1914.

So finds himself in India.

He fights in all sorts of sort of bordery stuff.

The Kookie Punitive Expedition in the Assam Hills, not far from where, you know, the battles that then come in in the 40s in Burma.

And he's a thinker.

He's a terrific intellectual.

He's a very learned man.

He's a great reader.

He's a great tactician.

He knows his Hannibal.

He knows his great wars.

He's a very, very dedicated student of warfare.

He's also a very talented artist and actually nearly gives up Frozen Tower of the Army in the 1920s to become a professional artist.

Decides not to,

stays in the Indian Army, but finds it very frustrating because he's just thinking, what's the future of warfare?

What's it going to be like?

What can we do?

How can we be innovative?

How can we get a steal or march on any of our future enemies?

And no one's really interested.

Well, and also the Indian Army is never going to have to do any of that.

The Indian Army's job is border policing.

Well, yes, except that, you know, he can see the writing on the the wall because, you know, he's learned and reads papers and listens to the news and all the rest of it.

So he writes lots of articles under pseudonyms and things.

And he's actually running the staff college at Quetta and

started the war.

And I think the big thing about him is he's very clinical.

He's very future forward thinking.

You know, when he comes over, before he takes over command of 4th Indian Division, he's posted to the front.

And, you know, it's he who points out the kind of idiocy of the Gazala line, for example, and says, you know, this is crazy.

You just need to do this because X, Y, Z, you know, if you just reinforce to Brooke, you know, Rommel can't, can't isolate that.

He has to confront it and then you'll beat him.

Um, whereas, you know, if you have a line, you're strung out with all these boxes and stuff.

You're stuck where you are.

And literally, everything that he suggests, he's right about.

He's a meticulous trainer.

And he trains his men, not just only in conventional, you know, ground warfare, but mountain warfare.

They're all super fit.

They know how to kind of do different things, you know, whether it's dusty plains, whether it's desert, whether it's mountains.

He puts them to their task in the Matmartha Hills and the out back in the Marath line.

His big moment is at the Wadi Akarit, which Horrocks fails to exploit when his men, he says, well, I can go get up these mountains and turn the Italian line, and they do.

And as we said before, you know, Operation Strike is his concept.

And this is so successful, it's no longer famous because it happens so completely according to plan.

And that's because the planning of it, the clarity of what everyone has to do is so clear that it can't possibly fail.

And he's absolutely spot on in Italy.

I'm a huge admirer.

I think, you know, his, you know, like O'Connor, he's, you know, he's the great British Army commander that we never had.

I mean, you know, had you given him command of 8th Army in 1942, it could have been, you know, it could have been him commanding.

But he's ill, you know.

Yeah, well, he's ill.

And I think that, you know, is he ill because of the stress of it?

I think probably yes.

No, he has rheumatoid arthritis.

I know, but you know what I mean.

Or he's tired and that's why it can get him.

I think probably part of his problem, the reason he doesn't ascend to such a lofty height in wartime, is that he's not very good at disagreeing with people and coping with disagreement, and certainly, you know, doesn't really suffer fools, even fools higher rank than him, is the problem.

That may be the impediment to Tuca's army career is that he's that he is so brilliant.

But no, it's very interesting.

After the war, he's involved in, you know, he wrote an amazing book about partition and about reorganising the Indian army into two armies.

He was the architect of that.

Yeah, yes, he was.

He is quite clearly an absolutely brilliant man.

His clarity of thought, his understanding of what the troops can do is comparable to Monty, I I think.

You know, that limitations and how far you can push them.

His clarity to kind of read a situation and a position and work out what needs to be done.

His forward thinking, his embracing of modernity and all the possibilities that modern warfare can bring an army commander and bring a command, I think is, you know, he's very perceptive on that front.

His, you know, what stops him from being the very best of the West is that he doesn't achieve high command, that he gets ill at absolutely the wrong moment.

Had he not got ill at Casino, had Casino been a great victory, which it could have been, you know, he'd have ended up commanding a call.

It could have been him in charge of eighth army rather than McCreary.

You know, who knows?

Anyway, those are this episode's best in the West Duke candidates.

And don't forget to go to the Patreon and vote.

So that was, of course, Horrocks, McCreary, Monty, O'Connor, Simmons, and Tuka.

And there's some people we've not included.

For instance, General Wavell has not come up, has he?

Well, famous but not included.

Field Marshall Gaut.

Jumbo Wilson, Oliver Lees.

I mean, if you've listened to our recent Bourber episodes, you know what we think of Oliver Lees.

Poor old Freiberg.

Well, just because they all got sacked, or they didn't do very well, really.

I mean, Wilson did pretty well, actually, but he was a staff officer.

And, you know, he's not going to be above Brooke, is he?

So you can't include him.

Then a few honourable mentions.

Yeah.

Hastings is made.

Yep.

Sidney Kirkman.

Edward Spears, of course, who did very well in, you know, had an interesting war in 1940.

General Sir Adrian Carton DeWayette, who people always say, why don't you do a thing about him?

Because he's quite clearly bonkers.

Yeah, I know.

Well, we should do it one day.

Alan Adair, Pitt Roberts, all these big names.

Ginger Hawksworth, you know.

What we want you to do, though, ladies and gentlemen, we want to vote on the Patreon.

And what we want is a top three of Duke from you, Jim.

What's your top three, Duke?

My top three would be Alex Monty O'Connor.

Okay.

Mine would be.

Well, Marnie.

I'm going to go.

Here we go.

Monty, Brooke, Percy Hobart.

You can't not have Alex.

I'm not having Alex.

If I've got Brooke and Monty, as far as I can tell, they're the dream team.

And

supplying the hardware, Percy Hobart.

But basically, so Hobart obviously is my wild card.

So basically, we'd like you to vote and come to that kind of conclusion yourselves for us.

And we will be talking about the Americans in our next episode of We Have Ways to Make You Talk best in the West.

So we'll see you then.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.

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