General ‘Boy': The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning

by Richard Mead

  For the first time since 1914, the war on the Western Front became one of forward movement as each of the Allied attacks pushed back the exhausted and demoralized Germans. On the Fourth Army front the Hindenburg Line was penetrated almost immediately and Rawlinson’s divisions drove east towards the Belgian border. Boy would never forget the exhilaration of these weeks, as the enemy was repeatedly placed on the back foot due to the aggressive tactics of the Allies, and it would strongly influence his thinking and that of many other senior British officers in the late summer of 1944, at which time the Germans were again apparently on the run. By early November, with its army in a state of near mutiny, Germany sued for peace, by which time Boy had been released back to his regiment.

  On 4 November Boy reported not to the 2nd Battalion, but to the 1st as Adjutant. The Commanding Officer was Lieutenant Colonel the Hon. W. R. Bailey,8 whom Boy knew well. Bill Bailey had had a remarkable record of service in the 2nd Battalion, of which he was Adjutant when Boy first joined in October 1915 and second-in-command to Rasch when he returned from sick leave nearly a year later, one of the three officers who had survived the Somme intact. Bailey had only taken command of the 1st Battalion a month previously, after Lord Gort had been seriously wounded during the initial attack on the Hindenburg Line, 9 although he had stood in for Gort on a temporary basis during the summer and had been slightly wounded himself during one of the advances in August. It is quite possible that he had asked for Boy, as he characterized him in a subsequent report as ‘a born leader’. The war by this time was in its last days, but the 1st Battalion was in action with the Guards Division right up to 7 November, the rapid advance culminating in the capture of Maubeuge, a fortress town and railway junction south of Mons.

  Chapter 5

  Peace (1918–1924)

  Exactly a week after the Armistice, the four Grenadier battalions left Maubeuge on foot for Cologne, where the Guards Division was temporarily to join the occupation forces. The 1st Battalion took a route past Charleroi and Namur and through the Ardennes, being received for the most part with great enthusiasm by the Belgians. Once into Germany the soldiers were surprised at the lack of hostility shown by the local population. On 20 December, after a month on the road, they arrived in Cologne, where they were actually welcomed as protectors against the anarchy which was springing up in the defeated country. In January a party from each battalion was sent to bring the colours out and in late February orders were at last received to return to England.

  On 9 March Boy left France, arriving back in plenty of time to participate in the great parade of the Guards Division and the Household Cavalry from Buckingham Palace to the City of London. The procession was led by the Earl of Cavan, the division’s first commander, with the Prince of Wales, also a serving Grenadier during the Great War, riding alongside him, closely followed by Major General Feilding, who had led the division since before the battle of the Somme, and his staff. Most of those who had commanded Guards brigades were present as were many former commanding officers, each one riding at the head of the battalion he had once commanded, next to the incumbent, whilst demobilized soldiers followed their battalions in plain clothes.

  Boy had had a ‘good’ war. He had come out physically unscathed, a remarkable achievement for one who had spent nearly two and a half years as a junior infantry officer on the Western Front. In addition to his DSO, he had a French Croix de Guerre to his name and had been mentioned in despatches. Because of the close contacts established between the officers of the Guards Division, he was widely known in all the regiments of the Brigade of Guards, although his acquaintances in the wider Army were more limited. He was still only twenty-two and now had to decide, like most of the other officers, whether or not he wanted to stay on. As he held a regular commission, to do so would not have been difficult, but the attractions of peacetime soldiering had to be weighed up against the alternatives.

  Boy’s father had also had a good war. Following the death of Lord Roberts in 1914, Freddie had left Twiss & Brownings in the hands of its managers and volunteered his services to the Government. In February 1915 he was made Comptroller of the Trade Clearing House, moving on to be head of the War Trade Intelligence Department. At the beginning of 1916 he was invited by Captain Mansfield Cumming RN to join the Secret Service Bureau, also called the Secret Intelligence Service. Cumming had joined this organization in 1909 as head of its foreign section and between then and 1914 had created a substantial network of agents, all of them being directed against Germany. From his habit of initialling all his letters ‘C’ in green ink, he became known by this initial, which was subsequently used for all his successors in the SIS, or MI6, as it became more popularly known.

  With a temporary commission as a lieutenant colonel, Freddie was just the man Cumming needed to provide the right connections and the two of them got on very well together. He became, in effect, Cumming’s ‘fixer’, the man who would find a way to achieve a goal by routes apparently unavailable to the other members of the organization and the one who could introduce ‘C’ and the other key intelligence officers to all the people who mattered. In addition he assumed responsibility for economic intelligence, leaving the political and military sides to others better qualified.

  At the end of the war Freddie stood down from his job at the Secret Service Bureau and reverted to civilian life, taking with him the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel and a CBE.1 Now approaching fifty and having been for some time the senior partner of Twiss & Brownings, he suggested to Boy that he might like to join the firm, as by this time no other member of the family was actively involved. Not for the last time, Boy thought seriously about it, but the decision was easy to make. He believed that the Army, and particularly the Grenadiers, would provide a much more satisfying life than the wine trade. It was a considerable disadvantage that he had no independent means, unlike most of his fellow officers, and money concerns would be a continuing theme of his life, but at least Freddie was a wealthy man and Boy might look for an inheritance in due course. In the meantime he would have to live on his army pay.

  In any event, although no less sociable than Freddie, and in due course no less well connected, his character was more suited to the Army than to business. He knew from his experience of the last three years that he possessed the power of command. He responded instinctively to the discipline and high personal standards demanded by the Army, which he sought at every opportunity to convey to others, and he enjoyed the comradeship which was inherent at all levels in a good regiment. There was little that the wine trade could deliver to him other than a comfortable life, which was certainly not at the top of his list of priorities.

  He was also well regarded by a number of more senior officers who would have a great impact on the Grenadier Guards over the next twenty years and, in some cases, prove to be influential beyond the regiment. As Adjutant of the 1st Battalion, he had retained the rank of acting captain on his return to England and he was recommended for promotion to the substantive rank in the summer of 1920 by the Commanding Officer, Claude Hamilton, a recommendation strongly endorsed by George Jeffreys, who was now the Major General Commanding London District.

  Peacetime soldiering was very different from Boy’s previous experience. The mass demobilization which took place in the two years after the War meant that the battalions, now reduced again to three, were substantially manned by recent recruits, both subalterns and other ranks, although the senior NCOs had all seen active service. The objective was to get each battalion back to the pre-war level of efficiency, which had been very high, and in this Boy excelled. He began to develop a name with his superiors as a smart and energetic officer who could be counted on to instil the highest standards in those under his command, and with his subordinates as a strict disciplinarian with an occasionally explosive temper, albeit one which was never long-lasting.

  The life of the average Guards officer was by no means demanding. As the ‘war to end all wars’ was now over, the Government a
ccorded very little priority to the armed services, implementing the ‘Ten Year Rule’ – a doctrine which made the presumption that there would be no major war for ten years and which in 1928 was permanently extended on a rolling basis. The Army was, if anything, a Cinderella organization compared to the Royal Navy, good for imperial policing, but otherwise not worth devoting resources to. As far as the Guards were concerned, the public and ceremonial duties reverted to pre-war practice. There was a strong focus, as before, on drill, whilst warlike exercises received less prominence. Much of the training could be safely left to the excellent cadre of warrant officers and NCOs. For the commissioned officers there was plenty of time for both leave and other activities, largely sporting in nature.

  The one officer in each battalion who had to work hard was the Adjutant, and for this he received more pay, which would have been an additional attraction to Boy at the time. As the right-hand man of the Commanding Officer, he had to run the organization and administration of the battalion other than its logistical requirements, which were handled by the Quartermaster. He was in particular concerned with discipline, both in general and as it related to individuals. As such, he was by some way the busiest officer in the battalion, with consequently less time for the other activities.

  Boy’s appointment allowed him to become close to Hamilton’s successor as Commanding Officer, who was the man who shared his nickname, ‘Boy’ Sergison-Brooke. The latter, like many other officers, had taken a reduction in rank from brigadier general and reverted to battalion command. Sergison-Brooke’s opinion of Boy was entirely favourable. In his Annual Confidential Report for 1921, he wrote: ‘I have never seen a more promising young officer in the Regiment, and cannot speak highly enough of him.’ This was echoed by Jeffreys at Horse Guards: ‘I regard him as the best Adjutant in the Brigade of Guards.’ In June 1921, for the first time since 1914, the King’s Birthday Parade was held on Horse Guards Parade in full dress uniform.2 The 1st Battalion of the Grenadiers formed one of the Guards and Sergison-Brooke commanded the parade as Field Officer in Brigade Waiting, selecting Boy to ride beside him as one of the two officers on his staff.

  In November 1921 Boy was appointed the Grenadiers’ Resident Captain at the Guards Depot at Caterham, where he had been posted briefly in 1916 whilst unfit for active service. The Depot was where the recruits of all five regiments of Foot Guards were sent for their primary training. It was housed in rather grim barracks, but had the advantage of extensive grounds. At the time there were fifteen officers on the establishment – the CO, Adjutant and Quartermaster plus three each from the Grenadiers and the Coldstream and two each from the Scots, Irish and Welsh. Most of these commuted daily from London, but Boy lived there alongside his equivalents in the other regiments.

  For Boy this was a good posting for two reasons. The more important one was that this was where the process began of turning young and untrained civilians into guardsmen, instilling into them the qualities of discipline, obedience and smartness to which Boy himself now subscribed so wholeheartedly and differentiating them from not only the man in the street, but also their comrades in the wider army. This was the first and best opportunity to create out of unpromising raw material what the Guards believed would be the finest soldiers in the world, and the standard set by the officers and NCOs of the Depot would be those to which the new recruits would aspire.

  It was here over the next two years that Boy honed the reputation, among the other ranks in particular, which would follow him through his regimental career, as an officer who would only accept the highest standards and who would lead by example. He was intolerant of slackness in any respect, but particularly in dress, where he expected all to be as immaculate in their turnout as he was. However, he was no petty tyrant. He took great care to understand the men under his command and to inspire rather than browbeat. It is doubtful that he was as popular as other officers who permitted more latitude, but he was admired and even copied.

  Drill remained of the utmost importance, not only because this was what guardsmen were supposed to excel at on ceremonial occasions, but also because it was the foundation of obedience to orders. Boy developed a great respect for the drill sergeants of his regiment, whom he regarded as the finest exponents of military discipline. He would use them in the future, even outside the regiment, on occasions when he considered that standards were below the level he demanded. In addition to drill, the recruits were introduced to marksmanship, with instruction being given on the miniature range. Perhaps the most important lesson, however, was on the history and traditions of the regiment, with pride in its achievements being a major ingredient of the glue that bound together a disparate band of individuals into a single unified body.

  Boy was particularly concerned with developing the physical fitness of the recruits. Most of them came from the working classes and, in the aftermath of war, were often badly nourished and unused to any sort of regular exercise. This is where Boy excelled, as sport was rapidly becoming the next most important thing in his life after the regiment and the ease with which he could pursue his interest was the second reason why the posting to the Depot, free from the greater demands made on a battalion adjutant and away from the fleshpots of London, was so attractive to him.

  In some of his sporting activities Boy followed the conventional preferences of the army officer. He was handy with a shotgun and more than capable as a horseman, although it would be not until some time later that he would ride competitively. He took up three sports, however, which were more unusual for the average army officer. One was archery, which he enjoyed for the rest of his life, but which offered little opportunity for representative honours. In the other two, athletics and bobsleigh, he went on to compete at the highest level.

  His focus in athletics was on hurdling, the event which he had taken up with modest success at Eton, although he competed on occasion in both high and long jump. In the United Kingdom there were three standard distances, 120 yards over hurdles of 3’ 6” (106.7cm) and 220 yards over hurdles of 2’ 6” (76.2cm), known respectively as the high and low hurdles, plus a longer race over 440 yards: Boy would participate in all of these. He was later to write of hurdling: ‘It is, in my opinion, the most fascinating of athletic events both to watch and to take part in. In no other event can so much be attained with a minimum of natural ability. All the best times have been made by a few men who have demonstrated the value of intensive application of hurdling science.’3 Whether or not he had natural ability, he must have been built to what he saw as the physical specifications. ‘The best type of hurdler’ he wrote ‘is found in the tall, loose-jointed individual without too much muscular development, but with a certain amount of natural sprinting ability.’4

  Against those with whom he was in closest contact, his comrades in the Army, he was soon to show his skill and in July 1921, whilst still Adjutant at the 1st Battalion and before he had started serious training, he came in a close second in the high hurdles at the Guards athletics meeting. There was a grass track at the Depot which he could use at will and that year he also joined the South London Harriers, one of the best athletic clubs in London. He was proposed by Major William ‘Babe’ Alexander,5 an officer in the Irish Guards, and by E. J. Holt, the honorary secretary of the club, who was not only a good athlete himself, but who went on to become a leading sports administrator.6 The club maintained a coach at both Crystal Palace, relatively convenient for Caterham, and at Stamford Bridge, and there would have been opportunities to train with good club athletes.

  By the summer of 1923, he was the winner of both high and low hurdles at the Guards Brigade sports, and the high and long jump as well, and later that summer was in the winning Army team in the 200-yard hurdle relay at the Inter-Services Championship.7 Rather more significantly, he came fourth in the high hurdles in the English AAA Championships in June of that year and, although he failed to qualify for the final of the same event at the British Championships, he came third in the 440 yards hurdles. This b
rought him to the notice of the wider athletics community and in May 1924 he was selected provisionally to represent Great Britain in both the 100m and 400m hurdles at the Olympic Games to be held that year in Paris.

  This was the ‘Chariots of Fire’ games in which Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell were to achieve sporting immortality. Although Boy failed to make the cut when the final team was chosen, possibly because he was not fully fit after a serious bobsleigh accident earlier in the year, he would still become a friend of Abrahams and other leading athletes of the day. It was his misfortune to be competing against some other very fine runners in his event, notably Fred Gaby, who was at the peak of his powers in 1924, followed by the much younger David Cecil, Lord Burghley, who achieved selection in 1924 but had to wait until the Amsterdam Games in 1928 to win a gold medal for Great Britain.8

  Boy’s most successful year came in 1925, when he ran third behind Gaby and Burghley in the Kinnaird Trophy low hurdles race that June and second behind Gaby in the English AAA Championships early the following month. Subsequent reports that he won the AAA Championships three years in succession are well wide of the mark, but he did, as claimed, represent England internationally. Other than at the Olympic Games, there were relatively few opportunities for international competition, but Boy was selected for the match against Ireland and Scotland in Dublin on 10 July, coming fourth in the final behind Gaby, an Irishman and a Scotsman.