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

by Richard Mead

  As a man who had inherited all the energy and enthusiasm of his uncle, the Duke was not content with the role of figurehead in any organization to which he lent his support, but although his commitment to each of them was undoubted, he had limited hours available in the day and thus many of the more mundane matters landed on Boy’s desk. In addition Boy found himself more significantly involved in several of these organizations, sometimes in his own right, examples being the NPFA and the Central Council of Physical Recreation, and in a few cases in order to provide a stimulus on behalf of the royal patron. There were two significant examples of the latter, the first being the Cutty Sark Preservation Society.3

  The last of the tea clippers, the Cutty Sark had been privately owned until 1938, when it was presented to the Thames Nautical Training College for use as a training ship. Surplus to requirements after the War, its future was in doubt until the Duke and Frank Carr, the Director of the National Maritime Museum, formed the Society in 1951 to secure its preservation. Boy became a founding member of the Steering Committee which was formed that year, going on to join the Board of Governors and become Chairman of the Appeals and Publicity Committee, in which capacity he used his considerable contacts to help raise the necessary finance for the project. As a knowledgeable sailor himself, he was also involved with some of the technical aspects of the restoration, including the rigging. The campaign was highly successful and the ship was moved to its permanent berth at Greenwich in 1954 and opened by the Queen on 25 June 1957.

  The second example of a deeper involvement by Boy concerned an initiative even closer to the Duke’s heart and one which continues to bear his title. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme has been an enormously successful undertaking, dedicated to the personal development of young people from all backgrounds, who undertake varied and challenging programmes on their way to the achievement of Awards. It was conceived by the Duke himself in 1954, inspired by the vision and philosophy of Kurt Hahn. An Originating Committee was set up in November of that year, composed of representatives from a number of other organizations including the Amateur Athletics Association, the Central Council of Physical Recreation, the Royal Geographical Society and the Arts Council. Boy joined the committee, becoming the main link between the Duke and its members, and also sought on behalf of the Duke some reactions from industry and the regions, which were broadly favourable.

  Boy was simultaneously a member of the Council of the Outward Bound Trust, and in this capacity he became directly involved with setting up the Pilot Scheme for the Award in September 1955, pending the formation of the latter’s own administration. One of the other members of the Pilot Scheme’s Working Party was Brigadier Sir John Hunt, the former leader of the successful Everest Expedition and now Assistant Commandant at the Staff College, who had been approached by Hahn himself to see if he would be interested in becoming involved. Boy sounded out a number of other parties and was able to advise the Duke that Hunt would be prepared to leave the Army and devote his life to the Scheme as its first Director. Boy stepped back once the Scheme had been firmly established, but his contribution to its formation had been considerable.

  There were a number of existing commitments to be satisfied by the Duke during 1952, one of which was his attendance at the Olympic Games in Helsinki that summer. The Duke had become the President of the British Amateur Athletics Board, his first action being to write a letter to each of the athletes, inviting them to represent their country. He travelled to Helsinki for the opening ceremony on 19 July and Boy flew there with the sixteen-year-old Duke of Kent to join the royal party six days later. They stayed to watch the Games, which produced an even more disappointing result for the British team than 1948, with a single gold medal in show-jumping out of a total of 8 medals, putting the country in 18th place. The Duke, Boy and Parker returned via Oslo,4 where they attended the 80th birthday celebrations of King Haakon V, before travelling directly to Cowes for two days of the regatta.

  Following the poor showing at Helsinki, an Appeal Committee was set up by the British Olympic Association, with the Duke of Beaufort as President and Lord Burghley and Boy as Joint Chairmen, its objective being to raise £75,000 to send the strongest team possible to the next Games in Melbourne in 1956. In the words of the BOA: ‘It is essential that a team worthy of Great Britain should be there and that our competitors of many sports who are already in training should not be deprived of Olympic competition – the highest honour in sport – through apathy or lack of funds.’ The much improved results were a fitting reward for a successful campaign by the committee, with 6 gold medals out of a total haul of 24, lifting the country into 8th place. The Games were opened by the Duke in November 1956, but Boy was once again holding the fort at home.

  Back in 1952 the Duke’s most immediate priority was his Chairmanship of the Coronation Commission. The event itself, on 2 June 1953, was a triumph of organization and as a national celebration was boosted by the news of the conquest of Everest, received that morning. Boy wore the full dress uniform of a general officer and, for the first time, the insignia of a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honour in the direct gift of the Queen to which he had been admitted on the previous day. He walked up the aisle of Westminster Abbey immediately behind the Duke and his page and between Horsley and Parker5 and rode in the procession in the group following the State Coach. Daphne and Eileen Parker had seats above the peeresses in the gallery of the abbey.

  Later that year Daphne found herself unable to refuse yet again an invitation to spend a week at Balmoral. She was dreading it long before she went, but found the experience better than the anticipation. She had met the Duke on several occasions and thought him good company and she felt very comfortable with the Queen Mother. Nevertheless, she found the relative formality of the house party intimidating and she was unable to participate in the field sports which formed an essential part of the programme, although she loved being out on the hills. By the time she left she was exhausted by the amount of nervous energy she had expended on doing the right thing all the time. On the other hand, when the Duke came to stay at Menabilly again at the end of a visit to the West Country, she was much more relaxed than Boy, who once more worked himself into a state about the arrangements and the condition of the house.

  On the face of it, the relationship between Boy and Daphne went through a quiet stage in the early to mid-1950s. For her part, she had got over the loss of Gertrude Lawrence, whilst her friendship with Ellen Doubleday remained just that and there were no similar emotional distractions. For his, the weekend routine was well established, although he continued to be depressed at the thought of returning to London. At least whilst he was in Cornwall he had some new boats to enjoy. One of these was a replacement for ‘Yggy’ which, although not abandoned completely was now honourably retired, having been hauled ashore and positioned on the lawn at Menabilly some way from the house, for grandchildren to enjoy. Ygdrasil II was also a motor boat, but significantly larger and faster than its predecessor. Even more exciting was the culmination of a project which had occupied much of his spare time over recent years, just as Fanny Rosa had once done, the design and build of a new sailing yacht.

  Jeanne d’Arc was a descendant in design terms of La Mouette, the alternative to Fanny Rosa which Boy had worked on during the War, but which had been shelved when the MFV became a realistic proposition. For the new project Boy enlisted the help of Maurice Griffiths, the longstanding editor of Yachting Monthly and designer of the Eventide and Waterwitch yacht classes, and the result was a beautiful wishbone ketch, much more elegant than anything previously owned by Boy and Daphne and capable of being raced with some success. Construction took place at their own yard and the boat was named by Mrs Hunkin. Inevitably the cost of the new boats fell on Daphne, who was as ever generous in this respect, although still with some mild resentment that Boy was digging into her capital.

  In the meantime the three children were moving on. Kits followed his father to Et
on in the autumn of 1953. On his last day at West Downs, Boy had taken him to meet his new housemaster and he continued to be interested in his son’s progress through the school, among other things sharing with him a mutual detestation of Geometry. He would usually come down for the Fourth of June celebrations but Daphne always managed to develop a virus of some sort shortly beforehand to provide her with an excuse not to attend. It was the sort of social occasion she loathed, but at which Boy, who knew many of the parents, excelled. Kits remembered him being particularly charming to the ladies. Father and son became closer through their common interest in sport – via his connections with the Football Association, whose Secretary Sir Stanley Rous was a great friend, Boy arranged for Kits to train with Tottenham Hotspur in the late 1950s and on one occasion to meet the great Stanley Matthews – but Kits always felt that Boy was more like a grandfather than a father and regretted that he never came to know him better.

  Tessa had been living in London for some time and had seen more of her father than the others. He greatly enjoyed taking her to the ballet and going on afterwards to dine at the Savoy and dance to the music of Carroll Gibbons. By this time she had already had one serious boyfriend in the person of Ken Spence, the son of a Grenadier and one of Boy’s godsons. The relationship developed and met with the approval of both Boy and Daphne, especially the latter, but in spite of Spence being keen to marry Tessa broke it off. Instead she began to see more of another suitor, Peter de Zulueta, an officer in the Welsh Guards. Because of their fondness for Spence this was an unpopular move with the family at first, but both Daphne and Boy grew to like de Zulueta, who bent over backwards to help around the house and make himself otherwise agreeable. Tessa married him in 1954 and Boy’s and Daphne’s first grandchild, Marie-Thérèse, was born in the following year, followed by Paul in 1956.

  Flavia left school in 1954 and went to Paris to learn French, staying with Daphne’s friend, the young writer Oriel Malet. Her original intention on her return was to follow her grandfather Gerald into the theatre, but although she enrolled at RADA her interest later waned. In 1956 she married Alistair Tower, yet another Guards officer, this time in the Coldstream.

  Daphne was still writing, but the first serious work after My Cousin Rachel was not one of her best. Mary Anne is the story of her great, great grandmother Mary Anne Clarke, the mistress of the Duke of York,6 and it hints at some of the unhappiness in Daphne’s own life, the loss of Gertrude Lawrence and the concerns she was now beginning to develop about Boy. While visitors to Menabilly would see a charming couple, calling each other ‘Duck’ and laughing together, under the surface there was some tension. Daphne was becoming exasperated by Boy’s moods and depressions, sometimes manifested by criticisms about the state of Menabilly. The moods were exacerbated by drink. He would arrive back cheerful after a day’s sailing, but would progress from being pleasantly chatty after the first gin to increasingly argumentative as the evening wore on and the alcohol took effect.

  His physical health was even more worrying. He had frequent periods off sick from his duties at Buckingham Palace and in 1954 he was unable to accompany the Duke to the Empire Games in Vancouver because he was in hospital with amoebic dysentery, possibly a legacy of his service in the Far East. There were also bouts of ‘me tum’, alleviated to some extent by copious doses of Eno’s Fruit Salts, and of lumbago, for which his remedy was to take to bed with bread and milk. He also became increasingly prone to bronchitis, which he had endured as a child and which was probably caused or exacerbated by his heavy smoking. In 1955 he went into a nursing home for a check-up, but the enforced rest had no permanent effect on his ailments and the tiredness of which he complained to the family.

  Once again his public and private faces were quite different. To those with whom he worked, there were no signs of fatigue at all. Apart from his occasional absences through sickness, he remained the decisive and commanding figure which the Duke’s Household had come to expect and he continued to carry out all his duties, including the numerous occasions on which he was required to be in attendance on his royal master, with no diminution of energy. He was highly regarded by those with whom he worked. Anne Griffiths, then one of the secretaries in the Household,7 recalled that he had the perfect manners of an English gentleman and was regarded with great respect and much affection, but that he still retained a touch of vanity, telling her once that his Sam Browne belt was the same one he had first had at the age of eighteen. Mike Parker’s daughter Julie, one of his numerous godchildren, remembered that he was always welcoming when she visited the Palace, invariably with a big twinkle in his eye.

  Boy accompanied the Duke on several short visits abroad and, in April and May 1954, he escorted Prince Charles and Princess Anne on the maiden voyage of the Royal Yacht Britannia to Tobruk to meet their parents, who were on the last leg of the five-and-a-half-month Royal Tour to the West Indies, the Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon and Uganda. Boy stayed briefly in Libya, accompanying the Queen and the Duke to the British War Cemetery outside Tobruk before flying home.

  His weekday social life in London also continued unabated, as did his interest in the ballet. One memorable occasion was a dinner hosted by the Prime Minister and Mrs Churchill at 10 Downing Street in October 1953, at which the other guests were the Duke, Montgomery, the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and General Al Gruenther, the NATO C-in-C, the last two with their respective wives. Boy also found time to take on further outside appointments, including membership of the Executive Committee of the Gordon Boys School and the chairmanship of the United Appeal for the Blind which, with other very similar charities, was consolidated into the Greater London Fund for the Blind in 1956, with Boy becoming Joint Chairman.

  Boy’s humour was probably not improved by the spectre of ‘Market Garden’ arising once again. In the years immediately after the War a number of personal accounts had been published, including those of Brereton and Gavin, the former in his diaries, the latter in a book devoted to the history and future of airborne warfare. Boy himself had been extensively interviewed by those preparing the British Official History and had given a lot of his time to Terence Otway, who was writing a detailed and largely factual account of the British and Commonwealth airborne forces for the War Office.

  By the early 1950s few objective historians had yet considered the battle in any detail, but an early and distinguished entrant to the field in 1952 was Chester Wilmot, who wrote at some length about the operation in his book on the wider North-West Europe campaign, The Struggle for Europe. Wilmot had been a war correspondent, in which capacity he had landed in Normandy by glider with 6 Airborne Division, so he understood something of airborne warfare. Moreover, he had interviewed many of the key participants of ‘Market Garden’, including Dempsey, Gavin, Horrocks, O’Connor, Thomas, Lathbury and Hackett.8 The result was an outstanding account of the operation and an incisive analysis of its failure, which still stands favourable comparison with anything produced subsequently. In Wilmot’s account there is no explicit or implied criticism of Boy himself, indeed he endorses Boy’s decision to order Gavin to give priority to the Groesbeek Heights and excuses his rebuff of the offer of a brigade from 52 Division.

  Boy, nevertheless, took exception to the relevant chapters, as he made clear in a letter of March 1952 to Horrocks, who was serving as Black Rod at the Houses of Parliament:

  He [Wilmot] appears to have got his thoughts considerably muddled, such as:

  1. His criticisms of the landing area at Arnhem. As you know, it is only by dint of considerable argument that we even persuaded the Air Force to fly over that part of Europe in daylight, and their flack [sic] maps showed the Arnhem Bridge area being an extremely dangerous centre.

  2. He entirely overlooks the fact the Bridges which Monty ordered to be captured were in fact captured.

  3. He fails to see that the Operation up to and including Nijmegen, even if Arnhem could not be held, pushed the Second Army through about 40 miles of unpleasant co
untry and produced a firm base on the higher ground in Holland for Monty to turn east through the Reichswald if he required.

  4. His failure to appreciate that as an Airborne Operation the Airborne Corps was successful in carrying out what it was told to do.9

  Boy’s criticism was unfounded. In his book, Wilmot refers explicitly to the advice on flak at the Arnhem road bridge, although he makes no reference to any debate over the daylight drop. He concedes that the salient created was ‘of immense tactical value for the purpose of driving the Germans from the area south of the Maas’, but goes on to say, correctly, that it was a strategic blind alley. 10 He also admits that in terms of the number of bridges captured, the operation was the success that Montgomery claimed, but points out that the failure to secure the last bridge meant the frustration of his real objective. His analysis is difficult to argue with.

  Boy asked Horrocks ‘to write something straightening out people’s ideas’, but the reply was not the one he wanted. ‘I am sorry that you have found Chester Wilmott’s [sic] description of operation Market Garden inaccurate. I must re-read this part of the book, which I must say I found on the whole extremely accurate.’11 Boy, it seems in retrospect, continued to hold the opinions he had developed in the immediate aftermath of the operation, emphasizing tactical success, but reluctant to concede strategic failure.

  When his actions attracted criticism, which at this time was more implied than explicit, he reacted sharply. Nearly three years after Wilmot’s book had been published, he received a letter from Major General Erroll Prior-Palmer, at the time the Head of Army Staff at the British Joint Services Mission in Washington. Prior-Palmer had commanded 8 Armoured Brigade12 during ‘Market Garden’, and so was entirely familiar with the battle. He had been approached by Jim Gavin, now Chief of Military Operations at the Pentagon, for some support on the decision to give priority to the Groesbeek Heights in preference to the Nijmegen bridges, in the light of some adverse views which were beginning to emerge from those writing the US Official History. As a man with further military ambitions, Gavin was keen to dispel any criticism and possibly to deflect some of the blame.