GREAT SOLDIERS LEADERS IN ITALY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 55, 2 September 1944, Page 9

GREAT SOLDIERS LEADERS IN ITALY

ALEXANDER AND LEESE

(By James Lansdale Hodson.)

LONDON, August 22. There was an occasion some years before the last war when two men, r-ien unknown to the public, were travelling by ship to India. One was a Civil Servant going out to deal'with India's finances, the other an Army Colonel. Both shrewd, able men, they studied one another and took a liking to each other. The Civil Servant said to himself, "Here is the future Com-mander-in-Chief." That Civil Servant was the man who is now Sir James Grigg,. Britain's Minister before the war, and the Army officer was General H. R. L. Alexander, Commander-in-Chief, Italy. , Alexander is not, in a sense, easy to write about. He isn't an intellectual or a writer like Wavell, nor has he that touch of colour drama—one might even say of theatricality—-that Montgomery possesses. Montgomery, ruthless, tireless, living like Cromwell and with Cromwellian religion in him, wrote, the Eighth Army's name firmly, into history. Yet it is certain that Alexander, who was behind him at El Alamein, deserves equal credit. THE^^^W^ PONY. Alamein—when Rommel's army was broken and victory in the desert was clinched—was Alexander's third tough assignment in this war. First came Dunkirk. It was to Alexander, the Divisional General, that Lord Gort, Commarider-in-Chief, handed over when Gort himself, the moment having come when only one division remained on French soil, was commanded to return to England. I remember a Colonel of the Irish Fusiliers telling me how- he saw Alexander, who, somehow or other, had got hold of a wh/te pony, riding that white pony along the beach at Dunkirk (and it wasn't a healthy place) and calling out. "How are you chaps?" .Alexander wasn t the last to leave Dunkirk, but very nearly the last. He was fortyseveh years old then, a man who at twenty-six had been LieutenantColonel in his Irish Guards, with whom he had been twice wounded in World War 1. One may pause for a moment to reflect that generals have to be lucky men. Montgomery was gravely wo«nded in World War 1 and lay out m No Man's Land with, a body over him for some hours. General Oliver Leese, who took over the Eighth Army from Montgomery, was so seriously wounded twice in the last war that he was out of' that war by 1915 Again, generals must look after themselves. None of those three'men smokes. -Montgomery doesn't drink either. All three go to bed in good time when they can. Montgomery once said to me, dryly, "The night' is made for sleeping." All three have a passion ; for physical fitness, realising Jh^ 1 Ys. oldiers are useless without it "Fighting fit.and fit to fight" is Alexander's motto. He could run a mile with the best. Even when a general some years back, late at an appointment to deliver a lecture at Aldershot he was observed steadily doubling— that's running—along the road to avoid keeping his audience waiting. Members of his staff were running behind him, slowly being outdistanced. WHEN ENGLAND EXPECTED INVASION. Alexander captures a good deal of serenity. When commanding an area including Salisbury Cathedral in the period when England was expecting invasion, he was sometimes sitting in the cathedral close, sketching or painting. The second of his three tough assignments was Burma. I happened to be there when he arrived. Prior to his coming, the then Commander-in-Chief, General Hutton, and the Governor, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, had reached the conclusion that southern Burma must be evacuated and Rangoon harbour destroyed. We had less than two attenuated divisions plus one hundred Stewart tanks. When Alexander took over we were in sorry condition, outnumbered five to one, possibly more. Enemy tanks had been reported on roads , nearing the main road to Rangodn. One rumour among many was that those enemy tanks were no more than elephants with trunks stuck out. I recall Alexander's dry smile '• when I asked him about this. "I think they are tanks all right," he remarked quietly. He said little, for there was little to be said. He proceeded to act. He blew, demolitions, withdrew his army, and fought his way by Japanese road-blocks and ambuscades to Prome and thence to North Burma and the borders of India. Next came El Alamein. He used the simile for breaching Rommel's line of inaking a hole in a wall with a crowbar and then levering the crowbar this way and that till the hole was big enough for armour to crash through. This was done—with this proviso Rommel" was led to believe that the hole would be attempted at one place, but, in fact; it was made at another. HOW YON ARNEtt WAS TRICKED. That is significant of his mind and methods. He has directness but also he has some subtlety. These qualities were again shown in Tunisia. Orice more he arrived at the critical" moment.1 He took over command :of the ground forces when. the. Battietbf the Kassenne Pass, wherein Americans were "severely blooded," was in the balance. Alexander stayed off disaster. Later, when the campaign was nearing an end, Alexander, aware of yon Arnim's fear of the Eighth Army, strengthened that fear by. feint attacks, meanwhile transferring two divisions from the Eighth Army to.the First Army. .The First Army delivered blows which routed the Germans, for the blow yon Arnim expected in his midriff struck him instead in the throat. . ; ■-:::/,. This then is the man commanding the^armies in Italy. A" Northern Ireland man, and the son of an Earl he V-a^ 1^? usually regarded as English. That is, he is quiet, brave, and has talents not easily suspected He knows several languages and is reported to have been lately brushing up his German His courage needs no stressing. I doubt if anyone recalls seeing him wear a steel helmet. In all my contacts with various sorts of men from pnvates^to generals and Ministers of State, I have never heard anyone say a wrong word "of.him. A friend of his told me that, when a young man, he and his comrade going out to dine fnd dance suddenly discovered that they had only one pair of dancing shoes between them. At first nonplussed, Alexander said after a moment, "You go, then take off your shoes and send them back to me." Thus they got through the evening swopping shoes from one to the other. GENERAL OLIVER LEESE. When Montgomery took over the Eighth Army at El Alamein, he sent for General Oliver Leese to command his 30th Corps. Leese fought with that Corps through North Africa and Sicily and when Montgomery was called to England seven months ago to command the second front invasion force Leese took charge of the Eighth Army! He still has it—this Army which is in some measure British Commonwealth in being, for it has United Kingdom troops as its core, also divisions from India, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. That is how Leese likes to look on it—Commonwealth in being I saw Leese the other night. He is a bull of a man, about 6ft 4in high He was dressed for dinner but he wore no beribboned jacket—just a khaki shirt. He doesn't always wear even his badges of rank. A student of war ' can note with amusement that the generals coming from Brigade Guards (Leese started in Coldstreams) and sticklers for meticulous dress, can be the most casual themselves. There was an occasion not long ago when £ v + r *m§ a / al n shower °n the Italian battlefront, Leese put up a woman's umbrella—an action as sensible as it was unconventional. .When the rain stopped he used the umbrella as a pointer. . Leesq has a complex character. He , nas almost a boyish zest for a -life of adventure and is inclined always to take the lighter view of affairs Yet his capacity for work is extreme. Between . wars he served in Africa and India and travelled both countries extensively, studying the terwn,- J 1? T3^^^ Conimander-m-Chief to Lord Gort in France and