Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [141]
This seems to identify a fundamental Allied difficulty. Eighth Army’s defeats in North Africa in 1941–42, almost invariably by German troops inferior in numbers and armoured strength, certainly reflected inadequate generalship. But they were also the consequence of deeper shortcomings of method and determination. The British public was increasingly conscious of these. Glasgow secretary Pam Ashford wrote on June 24, 1942: “There is a general feeling that there is something wrong514 with our Forces … Mrs. Muir thought it was our generals who were not equal to the German generals, they get out-manoeuvred every time.” Young laboratory technician and former soldier Edward Stebbing wrote, “The feeling is growing that we are having515 our present reverses in Libya and the Far East not merely because of inferiority in numbers and equipment, but also because the enemy are really too clever for us, or rather that we are too stupid for the enemy.”
Ivan Maisky, the Russian ambassador in London516, once observed to Hugh Dalton that he found British soldiers unfailingly stiff and formal, unlike their counterparts in the other services. The army, he suggested, lacked the Royal Navy’s and RAF’s collective self-confidence. This was so. General Pownall wrote after the Far East disasters:
Our [career officers] regard [war]517 as an upsetting, rather exhausting and distinctly dangerous interlude in the happier, more comfortable and more desirable days of peace-soldiering … We need … a tougher Army, based on a tougher nation, an Army which is regarded by the people as an honourable profession to which only the best can gain admittance; one which is prepared and proud to live hard, not soft, in peace. One whose traditions are not based on purely regimental history but on the history of the whole British Army; where the competition is in efficiency, not in games or pipe-blowing and band concerts … Training must be harder, exercises must not be timed to suit meal-times. Infantry shouldn’t be allowed to say that they are tired … We must cultivate mobility of mind as well as of body, i.e., imagination; and cut out the great hampering “tail” which holds back rather than aids the “teeth.”
The regimental system was sometimes an inspirational force, but often also, as was implied by Pownall’s remarks, a source of parochialism and an impediment to the cohesion of larger formations. German, American and Russian professional soldiers thought in divisions; the British always of the regiment, the cherished “military family.” Until the end of the war, the dead hand of centralised, top-down command methods, together with lack of a fighting doctrine common to the entire army, hampered operations in the field. Techniques for the recovery of disabled vehicles from the battlefield—a vital skill in maximising combat power—lagged badly behind those of the Afrika Korps. British armoured units, imbued with a cavalry ethos, remained childishly wedded to independent action. In the desert as in the Crimea a century earlier, British cavalry charged—and were destroyed. This, when since 1940 the Germans had almost daily demonstrated the importance of coordinating tanks, antitank guns and infantry in close mutual support.
British unit as well as army leadership left much to be desired. On the battlefield, local elements seldom displayed initiative, especially if outflanked. Troops engaged in heavy fighting sometimes displayed resolution, but sometimes also collapsed, withdrew or surrendered more readily than their commanders