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Montgomery’s men broke through. Ultra revealed to the British that Rommel considered himself beaten, and was in full retreat. Churchill rejoiced. At a Downing Street lunch he gleefully told guests, including MP Harold Nicolson: “There is more jam to come669. Much more jam. And in places where you least expect it.” After this coy hint at Torch, across the same lunch table he told Brendan Bracken to order the nation’s church bells rung. When the proposal met doubts, he agreed to delay until November 15, to ensure that no accident befell Allied arms. Thereafter, he was determined that the British people should recognise just cause for celebration.

Brooke wrote in his diary: “If Torch succeeds we are beginning to stop losing this war.”670 Early on Sunday, November 8, Allied forces landed in North Africa. Eisenhower’s command was initially small, half the size of Montgomery’s—107,000 men, 35,000 of them British. But the symbolic significance of this first commitment of American ground troops on a non-Pacific battlefield was immense. Though the invaders encountered some fierce resistance from Vichy forces, all the beachheads were swiftly secured. Churchill cabled congratulations to Marshall, adding wryly: “We shall find the problems of success not less puzzling though more agreeable than those we have hitherto surmounted together.” The Times wrote of the prime minister’s performance at the annual Mansion House dinner on November 10: “A sense of exaltation pervaded Mr. Churchill’s speech671. It was the speaker’s due. In the toil and sweat and tears to which he summoned his country he has borne a leader’s share.” Dalton wrote on November 12: “The self-respect of the British Army672 is on the way to being re-established. Last week … a British general was seen to rush in front of a waiting queue at a bus stop and to leap upon the moving vehicle. One onlooker said he would not have dared to do this a week before.”

Alexander and Montgomery became Britain’s military heroes of the hour, and indeed of the rest of the war. The former was especially fortunate to find laurels conferred upon him, for his talents were limited. Hereafter, Alexander basked in Churchill’s favour. He conformed to the prime minister’s beau ideal of the gentleman warrior. While forces under his command would endure many setbacks, they never suffered absolute defeat. Montgomery was a much more impressive personality, a superb manager and trainer of troops, the first important British commander to display the steel necessary to fight the Germans with success. Montgomery’s conceit was notorious. In one of his proclamations in the wake of a victory, he asserted that it had been achieved “with the help of God.” In the United Services Club, an officer observed sardonically that “it was nice Monty had at last mentioned673 the Almighty in dispatches.” Yet Churchill and Brooke knew that diffidence and modesty are seldom found in successful commanders. Montgomery had few, if any, of the attributes of a gentleman. This was all to the good, even if it rendered him less socially congenial to the prime minister than Alexander. Gentlemen had presided over too many British disasters.

“Monty’s” professionalism was allied to a shrewd understanding of what could, and could not, be demanded of a British citizen army in whose ranks there were many men willing to do their duty, but few who sought to become heroes. He does not deserve to rank among history’s great captains, but he was a notable improvement upon the generals who had led Britain’s forces in the first half of the Second World War. A carapace of vanity armoured him against prime ministerial harrowing of the kind that so wounded Wavell and Auchinleck. In the autumn and winter of 1942, it was the newcomers’ good fortune to display adequacy at a time when the British achieved a formidable superiority of men, tanks and aircraft.

“We are winning victories!”674 exulted London charity worker Vere Hodgson on November 29. “It is difficult to get used to this