Mystery Of Alteration In Dispatch Solved

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29956, 18 October 1962, Page 23

Mystery Of Alteration In Dispatch Solved

i (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyrtyht)

LONDON, October 18. The mystery person who changed FieldMarshal Alexander’s original dispatch on the plans for the El Alamein battle in the Egyptian Deeert during World War H was identified by the War Office today as Lord Alexander himself. The controversy arose after Lord Alexander, to his war memoirs published last week, said a sentence had been added to his dispatch when it was published five years later, in 1948. “This particular sentence does not appear in the original typescript of the dispatch. which I hold, and how it got there is, at this time of day, a matter for unprofitable surmise,” Lord Alexander wrote. After the chief defence spokesman of the Labour Party, Mr Gordon Walker, announced that he would raise the matter when Parliament reassembled, the War Office today declared that it had examined the documents dealing with the desert campaign and had found that Lord Alexander amended the dispatch himself after discussions with the War Office.

According to the War Office statement, the original dispatch had said that FieldMarshal Alexander, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces in the Middle East, adopted a plan of battle in principle.

This was altered to read that General Montgomery accepted the plan to principle and that Lord Alexander agreed. At : the time of the El Alamein battle, General Montgomery had taken over the command of the Eighth Army from General Claude Auchinleck after the advance of the German Afrika Corps across the Egyptian border. Some time ago a biography of Auchinleck, written by his friend, Mr John Connell, suggested that “Auk” had already prepared plans for meeting any new German offensive when he was replaced by “Monty” as Eighth Army Commander.

Lord Montgomery, who was Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the time the dispatch went to the War Office, today told reporters that when he arrived in the desert to 1943 to take over the command of the Eighth Army nobody had suggested any plans to him. “I accepted nothing. I made a reconnaissance when I arrived. Nobody suggested to me what I should do with the Eighth Army. “It would have been quite improper for anybody to have done so.”

English Association. Officers elected at the annual meeting of the English Association were: chairman. Professor J. C. Garrett; secretary, Dr. A. H. Harte; committee, the Rev. J. Hogan, Mr E. M. Mrs H. Hogan, and Dr. R. A. Copland.