I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE Read online

  I suppose it is a sense of the ludicrous which has carried the British Army through its long history of trials and misfortunes. Certainly this was so in the early days of the First World War.

  I remember the day in 1914 when having managed to enlist at the age of seventeen I was told to report to the Hotel Cedi, in the Strand, for further orders. Arriving there I found a motley assortment of men ranging from near-schoolboys to grizzled veterans, and from taxi-drivers to City magnates. With memories of Mr. Jenkinson fresh in my head I pictured a fierce Sergeant-major with waxed moustaches reeling off my daily list of military duties, but in response to my question the man next me, who wore a monocle and a suit from Savile Row, said: “It’s the jolly old pay day. Biff along, old bean, and collect your seven bob.” Seeing me hesitate he added, “If I were you I’d push in right away before the boodle runs out.”

  So I edged my way to the front and gave my name to the N.C.O. who sat at the pay table. As I walked away with my seven shillings, I noticed that some of the men who had been in front of me were drawing a second pay pocket at one of the other tables.

  I heard a youth who looked like a harrow boy say to another: “I got three packets. Wot abaht you?”

  “Four,” said the other. “Wot siy we ’op it and join up agin somewhere else?”

  A tall, bored-looking officer called for silence.

  “Now look here, you fellers, you’re in the Army now. It’s a jolly good show, but we’re short of N.C.O.S. If any of you know anything about drill, hand in your names for stripes. We’ll parade in Hyde Park at 9 a.m. tomorrow.”

  His last words were greeted with a groan. “All right, then,” he added, “let’s say 9.30. Try not to be late, you chaps.”

  I glanced from this amiable officer to my unsoldierly-looking comrades-in-arms and thought perhaps the Army was not going to be so bad after all. Things seemed to have changed a bit since the Boer War. I think they changed still more between the two world wars.

  The scene next morning in Hyde Park was unbelievable. Some of the men wore top-hats, morning coats and khaki trousers with puttees; others old Army tunics which apparently dated from the Boer War, with striped City trousers. Self-appointed N.C.O.s ran about trying to put us into some sort of order.

  A ribald crowd gathered round us and began to cat-call and cheer our maiden efforts and even to shout fanciful words of command which added to the confusion. One lively-looking old man who may have fought in the Zulu War when younger kept shouting, “On the right of you—Savages! On the left of you—Savages!” in ironic comment of the way we were facing in different directions.

  “Lumme,” exclaimed another man, “they won’t ’ave no need to fight. When they seen this lot the Jerries’ll die of larfin’.”

  Another spectator, a little man with a scrubby moustache, amused himself by shouting “Encore!” every time we tied ourselves in a knot. He did this once too often, for a big, solemn-looking recruit broke ranks, walked up to him and knocked him down. Some of the crowd took exception to this and set upon the recruit, whereupon several more of us broke ranks and went to his rescue.

  A constable who was watching the proceedings thought that matters had gone far enough and blew his whistle. More policemen came running up and our critic was arrested. “Encore!” we all yelled as he was taken away.

  At this time the German propaganda machine was in full blast trying to prove that the military power of Great Britain was insignificant and contemptible. Yet these recruits who so perfectly fitted the nickname of ‘Fred Kamo’s Army’ were later to form part of Kitchener’s famous First Army, the finest volunteer force ever raised. Hitler made the same mistake with his sneers about British decadence. His famous jibe about ‘military idiots’ was by this time beginning to recoil on his head after Monty’s victories in the Western Desert.

  The next few days I tailed Monty, except when I was forbidden to, watching his every movement and trying to catch his fleeting expressions; and I began to realize that he had himself under control in a way that I have never seen paralleled.

  The whole nation was on tenterhooks about the coming invasion which might easily become a blood-bath, and even a shattering defeat. And one of the exceptions to this general nervousness was the man who had most cause to worry, the man who was in charge of it. From what I saw of him I would compare him to a ship with a deep keel which prevented it from being carried away by cross-currents.

  “It is absolutely vital,” he wrote later, “that a C.-in-C. should keep himself from becoming immersed in details. He must spend a great deal of time in quiet thought and reflection. He will refuse to sit up late at night conducting the affairs of his Army; he will be well advised to withdraw to his tent or caravan after dinner at night.”

  He had already withdrawn to his private room in the train on the evening when I set out for my promised interview. As I made my way there I wished that I had some of his iron self-control and detachment. Far from being detached, I was as nervous as if I had been granted a Royal Audience at Buckingham Palace. As I knocked on his door I imagined myself standing tongue-tied while the steel-blue eyes were fixed on me waiting for me to speak.

  A quiet voice said, “Come in.” I opened the door. The General was sitting at his desk writing his daily diary, which he never failed to do. He stood up with a smile.

  As we stood facing each other it was rather like looking at myself in a mirror. The likeness struck me as uncanny, and I realized how relieved MI 5 must have been when they found me and how horrified they were when I had wanted to back out of it. On the stage it is something if you can resemble a man after using every artifice of make-up, but in this case there was no need for false eyebrows, padded cheeks, or anything of that kind. I was extraordinarily like the General, and as I afterwards discovered, the two of us were remarkably alike when we were boys.

  I don’t know if similar thoughts were passing through his own mind, but at once he made me feel perfectly at ease, just as he had done when he first began talking to the men of the Eighth Army on his arrival in the Western Desert.

  When I told him that I had been born in Perth, Australia, the ice was well and truly broken, for his father had been Bishop of Tasmania and the family had lived in Hobart. He talked about his father—how he had travelled round his huge diocese on foot or by boat, sometimes going off for weeks at a time into the bush. I thought this curiously like Monty’s own behaviour in the field, with his revolutionary idea that a Commander-in-Chief should be well up in front making personal contact with his men.

  As he talked he stood up again so that I had a close view of him from every angle. I was also trying to record in my mind the rather high-pitched, incisive tone of his voice and the way he chose his words. He never used high-flown phrases; some people have even described his speech as dry and arid.

  He questioned me about my service in the First World War and about what I had done in civilian life. To my surprise I found that like Colonel Lester he knew quite a lot about the Stage, and he was very much amused when I told him that years before I had worked one-night stands all through Scotland.

  Suddenly I realized that it was time for me to go. The time had passed like lightning.

  Monty said: “You have a great responsibility, you know. Do you feel confident?”

  While I was hesitating he added quickly: “I’m sure everything will be all right. Don’t worry about it.” And in that moment not only did my qualms vanish but I saw how Monty had only to tell an army that it could do the impossible and it just went and did it.

  We shook hands and I went out.

  Walking back to my hotel I thought of that slight figure sitting in his bare, unfurnished room completely alone with his burdens and I wondered how I should feel if I were in his shoes.

  It was common knowledge that he was no yes-man and that he’d had a considerable say in the invasion plans. Also that in initiating new methods of strategy he had trodden on the corns of the orthodox and had stirred up feelings of h
ostility by his ruthless opposition to inefficiency. His enemies could do nothing against him while the invasion was pending, but at the first sign of failure on his part they were waiting to set on him like wolves. It was a terrible responsibility for a man to shoulder, but hadn’t he shouldered an even bigger one when he had been flown out to the Western Desert to take over an army standing on its last legs before a victorious Rommel?

  Since the end of the war I have heard more unjust and irresponsible criticism of Montgomery than I have heard of any other man. Soldiers have called him a ‘killer’ because, they said, he left them too long in the line. Have they forgotten that half-way through the Battle of El Alamein he withdrew his armour for a 36-hour rest to the dismay of his superiors? Do they know what we in the first war had to go through when we fought to the point of complete exhaustion and still were not relieved?

  Often I have heard him described as a showman, a conceited mob orator of a General who was for ever courting popularity among his men. All I can say is that if he was a showman he used his showmanship to brilliant effect and got extremely worthwhile results.

  One of his post-war dictums was that the prime duty of a Commander-in-Chief in the field was to create an ‘atmosphere’, a kind of aura of courage and confidence in which his Staff and his subordinate commanders with their troops could live, work and fight.

  This is what he set out to do the moment he first landed in Africa. The troops mistrusted Brass-hats; they had been let down once too often. And so he stuck a black beret on his head and talked to the Pit and Gallery in a way that no General in the field had ever talked before.

  “Every single soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is fighting fits into the larger picture,” he wrote. “The troops must be brought to a state of wild enthusiasm.”

  Before the very gates of Cairo he issued an order that there was to be no more retreating, and then going among his soldiers he convinced them that they were going to stand fast against Rommel’s expected attack and a little later hit them for six. He even explained his plans to the Other Ranks. And they believed this strange little General whom nobody had heard of and who popped up in the desert from nowhere.

  People said he was conceited and overbearing. This was not at all the impression which I got in my contacts with him. The hall-mark of conceit is a divorce from reality, a flight into a world of fantasy where a man sees things as they are not. But Monty was a thorough-going realist. In warfare he saw things as they really were, and before they happened he accurately predicted their course. Since he often knew better than most other people and was almost invariably proved right, they were slow to forgive him.

  He had such a grasp of a military situation that it must have been galling for him when his superiors insisted on taking what in his view was the wrong course. No wonder that at times he seemed a little overbearing. Those who are dubious about something find it easy to be swayed this way and that, but a man who sees clearly what should be done must have a terrible feeling of exasperation when he cannot get others to agree with him. In all my dealings with him he always struck me as never in the least doubt about what he wanted to do, how it was to be done, and the complete rightness of his own point of view.

  Chapter X

  THE STRANGEST REHEARSAL ON RECORD

  Returning from this memorable interview I went into the bar of the hotel to see if I could find Jack, but he was not there. As I was having a drink an old man with a gnarled, unshaven free and bloodshot eyes tugged at my sleeve and motioned me aside. I was expecting him to try cadging a drink from me but instead of this he assumed a dark air of secrecy.

  “Excuse me,” he began, “but are you concairned wi’ the General?”

  “Why do you ask?” I replied guardedly.

  He became even more mysterious. “It’s none o’ my business, likely, but there’s queer things going on in yon woods. Ye see, I go oot o’ nichts—”

  “Poaching?”

  “I’m no sayin’ it’s that, mon, but this is no poachin’ matter. Ye see, I went oot the nicht”—he put his lips down to my ear—“and yon woods is full o’ Gairmans! It’s the General they’re after, I’m thenken.”

  It was so fantastic that I couldn’t help laughing, and at this moment Jack came into the bar.

  “What’s the joke?” he asked.

  “No joke at all. This Security man here, thinly disguised as a Scottish laird, reports that the woods are full of Germans.”

  Jack uttered an expressive monosyllable.

  “They’ve come here to kidnap the General.”

  Jack looked at the poacher, who solemnly nodded confirmation of my statement.

  “And do you know who’s going to save him?” I asked.

  “Young Topping of the Naval Division, I suppose,” said Jack and ordered a double Scotch.

  “No, lieutenant Jack Hervey, Popular Jack, with his little bow and arrow.”

  We soon forgot the incident, but next morning a middle-aged farmer buttonholed Jack outside the hotel and told him that he and others of the local inhabitants were rather worried about something. The woods beyond the railway were full of soldiers who seemed to be talking German.

  Jack began to suspect that his leg was being pulled. “Who started this yarn?” he asked. “No enemy troops could land here without being seen.”

  But the farmer refused to be put off. Hie repeated that that woods were full of Germans who appeared to be tough paratroopers, and he thought that General Montgomery was in grave danger.

  Jack told me all this later in the day, and absurd as the news seemed to be, neither of us could forget it. We kept returning to it and at last almost convinced ourselves that it was just possible that some parachute troops had been, dropped by night in this lonely part of Scotland and were lying in wait to make a sortie and assassinate Monty. I pointed out that it was Jack’s duty to deal with this desperate move on the enemy’s part, and I drew a glowing picture of his last stand on a mountain of enemy dead, waving a Union Jack and brandishing a sword.

  Jack retaliated by offering to reconnoitre and insisting that I go with him. As I couldn’t see how to get out of it we set off together in the dark that night. Except for the hooting of an owl, all was quiet. We reached the edge of the woods and stood still straining our ears.

  Presently to my horror we heard the unmistakable sound of gruff voices and faint lights showed through the trees.

  “Wait here,” said Jack, and disappeared into the gloom.

  Five minutes later he was back again. “Paratroops,” he said shortly. “I was never nearer death in my life.”

  “Good God!”

  “Polish,” he added. “A sentry covered me with his rifle and my past life came up again. I don’t know a word of Polish, or why he didn’t pull the trigger.”

  When we got back to the hotel we found our friend the poacher waiting for us in the bar. We explained to him that the paratroops were not Germans but Poles.

  He shook his head. “Nae, nae, they’ll be Hitler’s men,” he said decisively. “They wouldna let me tak a rabbit.”

  When my stay in Scotland had come to an end and I told Colonel Lester about this he hardly listened. He was much, more interested to hear whether anyone had had any doubts about my being a bona-fide I.C. Sergeant. In fact, on reporting to him at the War Office he put me through quite a gruelling cross-examination.

  After I had answered his questions he again said, “The General is very pleased with the way you have done your job so far.”

  How on earth did he know? I wondered. I would have taken my oath that he hadn’t been on the phone to Monty. Security reasons alone made it very unlikely. Had he been in Dalwhinnie under my very nose disguised as a Scots ghillie?

  He went on to warn me for the fiftieth time against opening my mouth too wide. I admit that I was beginning to get rather tired of these never-ending cautions and I even thought that MI 5 were unnecessarily fussy. But after the war was over I heard a story
which made me think again. The truth is that even the most reticent people are occasionally subject to indiscreet moods.

  Some time after D-Day it was discovered that there had been a grave leakage of information about our secret plans, and an officer of MI 5 was sent to France to find out how the leak had occurred. He spent days cautiously questioning scores of people, hoping for a chance word which might put him on the track of the culprit, but he drew a complete blank. He was about to return to England and report his failure when a casual word or two from a Staff Officer sent him to one of the Top Brass in the R.A.F. who blandly admitted to being the guilty party!

  Where I was concerned, MI 5 forgot nothing, and looking back on it now, I am convinced that they never did an unnecessary thing or spoke one word too many. Although I was told that I should have to fly, I had no idea where I should fly to.

  As far as anyone knew, Monty had never been air-sick in his life. Very well, I must be given some air training. One morning the Colonel asked me to go to the Devonshire Club, St. James’s Street, where I met a young, good-looking Wing Commander of the Canadian Air Force. In Kensington we picked up an R.A.F. officer who was a friend of the Wing Commander and drove to Nortbolt aerodrome.

  It was a lovely day, and not knowing what was in store for me I enjoyed the run down. But on arrival there the Wing Commander said casually, “I’ve had orders to take you up to see if you’re OK for flying,” and both of them disappeared into the control building.

  In this modern age of air travel it may seem absurd that I was petrified by this news, but the fact was I had never flown before and heights always made me feel ill.

  Presently they came out of the building and I followed them across the aerodrome. We came to a huge plane with seats for about thirty passengers. Oh good, I thought, this isn’t so bad. I can at least hide in the back and they won’t notice when I’m being ill. But they walked past it.