‘Mismanaged Alamein'

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31320, 16 March 1967, Page 17

‘Mismanaged Alamein'

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, March 15. The Battle of Alamein In October, 1942, was stage • managed by a megalomaniac Winston Churchill and mismanaged by the British commander, Montgomery, a British military historian claims In a book published this week. The latest attempt to debunk the myths that have group up around Montgomery is made by Reginald W. Thompson, who was a war correspondent with Montgomery’s troops in northwest Europe. Thompson has written several military studies, including a book on the 1942 Dieppe raid. In “The Montgomery Legend” he says the decisive desert war had already been won by Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the British Middle East commander, in a battle at Alamein three months earlier. He concedes that Montgomery, a “military messiah” had mastered his profession and excelled at defensive warfare.

But he condemns him for over-caution, inflexibility in planning, intolerance of criticism, and over-reliance on the textbook and training.

He did not rise above competence, Thompson says, in spite of his supreme self-con-fidence, his flair for personal publicity, and his “invincible bloody-mindedness.”