Winston Churchill's War Leadership - Martin Gilbert [28]
Jefferis was to work for the rest of the war as head of a special defence establishment, directly under the Minister of Defence. This establishment was the scene of extensive rocket research throughout the war. From time to time Jefferis took his rockets and bombs to Chequers to demonstrate them to the Prime Minister. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to major-general and knighted.
Churchill’s ability to find, encourage and sustain individuals who he knew would make a significant contribution to the war effort was an important feature of his war leadership. One of the most remarkable of these characters, for whom Churchill had to fight tenaciously, was a retired major-general, Percy Hobart, who before the war had been one of the main figures in the development of tank warfare. In 1936 Hobart had gone to see Churchill—then in the political wilderness—in search of a more vigorous tank policy. Hobart, who was unpopular among the officials in the War Office, had been retired in March 1940 and refused reinstatement. In October 1940 he was serving as a private in the Home Guard. Churchill was surprised that Hobart’s talents were not being used and pressed for his re-employment. That was not an easy task, particularly when the Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, informed Churchill that Hobart had on various occasions during his military career been “impatient, quick tempered, hot headed, intolerant and inclined to see things as he wished them to be instead of as they were.”
Churchill was not deterred, writing to Dill about Hobart in a Minute that resonates with the flavour of Churchill’s mind and perceptions:
I am not at all impressed by the prejudices against him in certain quarters. Such prejudices attach frequently to persons of strong personality and original view. In this case General Hobart’s original views have been only too tragically borne out. The neglect by the General Staff even to devise proper patterns of tanks before the war has robbed us of all the fruits of this invention. These fruits have been reaped by the enemy, with terrible consequences. We should therefore remember that this was an officer who had the root of the matter in him, and also vision . . .
We are now at war, fighting for our lives, and we cannot afford to confine Army appointments to persons who have excited no hostile comment in their career. The catalogue of General Hobart’s qualities and defects might almost exactly have been attributed to most of the great commanders of British history. Marlborough was very much not the conventional soldier, carrying with him the goodwill of the Service. Cromwell, Wolfe, Clive, Gordon, and in a different sphere Lawrence, all had very close resemblance to the characteristics set down as defects. They had other qualities as well, and so I am led to believe has General Hobart.
This was a time, Churchill added, “to try men of force and vision and not to be exclusively confined to those who are judged thoroughly safe by conventional standards.” As Churchill wished, Hobart was re-employed. Just as Jefferis made a substantial contribution to the weaponry of war, so Hobart designed an array of armoured vehicles (known as “Hobart’s funnies”) that made a major contribution to the Normandy landings.
There were others in Churchill’s confidence whose judgment he trusted and whose presence he welcomed during times of crisis, men who were to be