Commando General

by Richard B Mead

  On the face of it, Bob’s directive changed little between 1943 and 1946, but the underlying situation was very different. The most dramatic development affected the Commandos. In May 1945 Wildman-Lushington returned from the Far East to relieve Sturges at the Commando Group, but in practice he had come to preside over its demise.

  Nearly a year earlier, a new committee had been set up under Norman Bottomley, once again seen as a neutral figure, to consider where the future responsibility for amphibious warfare should lie. The Admiralty and the Royal Marines held a strong hand, not least because the opposition of the War Office to their assuming the dominant role had diminished substantially. At an earlier meeting in March 1944, chaired by the Second Sea Lord, Vice Admiral Sir Algernon Willis, and attended by the Commandant General RM, Sir Thomas Hunton, it had been agreed that, as the amphibious functions of combined operations were essentially naval, the Royal Marines should in due course assume the role proposed by the Madden Committee in 1924. The Bottomley Committee, on which Bob himself sat, arrived at the same conclusion, but the demands of the last year of the War meant that no changes could be made at that time. In September 1945, however, its findings were re-submitted to the Chiefs of Staff, who decided that the Commando Group should be wound up, that the Army Commandos should be disbanded and that only one Commando brigade should be retained, composed of three RM Commandos.

  In the knowledge that the War Office had only been prevented from doing away with the Army Commandos in 1940 by Churchill himself and had subsequently regarded them with disfavour, Bob had reluctantly accepted that the only way to retain both a Combined Operations organization and a Commando force after the War was to give full responsibility for the latter to the Royal Marines. He had therefore tabled a paper for the COS meeting supporting the recommendations. Brooke was not present at the meeting, but was represented by the VCIGS, Lieutenant General Nye. After Cunningham and Portal had confirmed their agreement to the proposals, the former, who was in the chair, invited Nye to say a few words. Bob later wrote:

  To everybody’s amazement but my own General Nye casually remarked that he had nothing to add except that the War Office had never wanted the Commandos and were delighted to see the last of them. Cunningham and Ismay looked pensive and Portal disgusted. The latter asked if I had any further comment to make. I replied that all I could say was that, had the decision been left not to the War Office but to the distinguished Generals who had commanded in the campaigns in France, Germany, Italy and South East Asia, a very different view might have been forthcoming.4

  This was confirmed at a conference at Camberley in August 1946, over which Montgomery was presiding for the first time as CIGS. In a session on Combined Operations there was a debate on the requirement for Commandos in the future. Monty asked Major General Wimberley, the Director of Infantry, to speak for the War Office, and he produced an indictment of the Commandos on the grounds that they denuded the infantry of their best men. Bob, invited by Monty to make a reply, suggested that one would come better from a former senior field commander with experience of Commandos in battle. Monty picked Dempsey:

  There was dead silence as Sir Miles Dempsey rose to reply but I was not apprehensive as to his verdict. Very quickly he gave it as his opinion that if ever he found himself in command in another war he would never be quite happy unless he knew that there were some green berets in the vicinity.5

  In late 1945 the changes began to take place. Bob broke the news on 25 October in a talk to 3 and 6 Commandos, which had recently returned from Germany. This was followed immediately by an order of the day and an address which was circulated to every man in the Army Commandos. Two weeks later the process of disbandment began, with the officers and men of Nos. 2, 3, 6 and 9 Commandos being either discharged or returned to their units. No. 4 Commando was subsequently disbanded in Germany and the troops of No. 10 (IA) Commando were returned to their parent countries. Nos. 1 and 5 Commandos escaped the fate of the others for a time, as they formed part of the garrison of Hong Kong. They were in due course merged into 1/5 Commando and then disbanded in February 1947.

  The decision to retain a single brigade of only three Commandos meant that the Royal Marines did not escape unscathed. The only formation still operational by early 1946 was 3 Commando Brigade in Hong Kong, which thus became the sole survivor, to this day, of the four brigades in the Commando Group. All the RM Commandos were disbanded except No. 42, which represented those which had served in the Far East in the old 3 Commando Brigade, No. 45, which did the same for 1 and 4 Commando Brigades in north-west Europe and No. 44, which stood for the units of 2 Commando Brigade in Italy and the Adriatic, albeit that it was subsequently renumbered as No. 40.

  The other units of the Commando Group were also disbanded,6 although the Commando Basic Training Centre in due course re-emerged as the Commando Training Centre RM. A new School of Combined Operations, incorporating the Combined Operations Signals School, was opened in early 1946 close to COXE, with Wildman-Lushington as its first Commandant. It was to accept as students officers from all the services. The CTCs, however, were all closed down, and Bob’s proposal to open new Combined Training Establishments in Germany, the Middle East and East Africa were rejected on financial grounds.

  When Bob announced the disbandment of the Army Commandos, he expected the green beret to disappear with them. However, the propaganda value attached to this symbol was just too great, and a decision was made shortly afterwards to retain it for the RM Commandos.

  During 1946 a great deal of Bob’s energy was devoted to consideration of the future of Combined Operations. On the positive side Clement Attlee, the new Prime Minister, and the CIGS and CAS had all expressed their support for the continuation of COHQ. Bob, however, was being seriously hampered by a lack of guidance from the Chiefs of Staff on the composition and balance of the three services, the equipment available to them and the nature of the enemy and the ground over which any future war was likely to be fought. He was also dismayed by the scrapping, on the grounds of cost or obsolescence, of a great deal of the specialized equipment used during the War, especially landing craft, as well as the return of all Lend Lease craft and equipment to the Americans and the handing back to their owners of those merchant ships which had been specially fitted out for amphibious operations.

  In May 1946 he prepared a draft paper for the Chiefs of Staff requesting more information on the plans and intentions of the service ministries, which would allow him to make a well-considered appreciation. This he submitted for comments to ‘Pug’ Ismay, who was heading a committee on the reform of the Ministry of Defence. The reply came not from Ismay, but from Major General Sir Leslie Hollis, the Chief Staff Officer to the Minister of Defence, saying that Bob was asking the impossible and that the paper should be recast more precisely to explain his difficulties, ask for guidance on specific issues and include some tentative suggestions as to what policies or actions he might adopt.

  The paper was duly redrafted around two broad questions, the first being on what scale and at what stage of a war was a combined operation likely to be required, the second on what enemy was likely to be encountered and in what geographical area. It failed to generate any serious response, which was deeply frustrating; indeed, the attitude of the Chiefs of Staff was encapsulated by Bob in a note which he wrote in preparation for a talk at the Staff College:

  No money, manpower, somehow keep torch CO alight lean years so that rebuild amphibious power times better – meantime do not bother us.7

  The apparent lack of interest may have been exacerbated by wholesale changes on the COS Committee. Portal had in late 1945 been succeeded by Lord Tedder, Cunningham was off in early June 1946, to be replaced by his namesake, John Cunningham, and Brooke was shortly to hand over to Montgomery. Not only did this create a temporary hiatus, but the new Chiefs were to lack the unity of their predecessors, to the extent that Monty would even refuse to attend meetings at which Tedder was present.8 In the event, no guidance of rea
l value was received thereafter by Bob.

  There was, however, another possible route to enlightenment. Bob had a representative at the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington, through whom he maintained contact with the Americans. He now engineered an invitation to visit the USA during November and December 1946 to find out how they were approaching the issue of combined operations in the post-war environment.

  After a briefing at the JSM, Bob met Eisenhower, now the Chief of the Army Staff in Washington DC, who was welcoming and encouraging, and General Alexander Vandegrift, Commandant of the US Marine Corps. They and others made it clear that they thought war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, that they continued to take combined operations very seriously and that therefore, and in sharp contrast to the British attitude, money was no object. Bob then visited a number of training establishments on the eastern side of the country before flying to San Diego, where the Pacific Fleet Amphibious Force was based. The Force Commander was Rear Admiral Arthur Struble, whom Bob had known very well as Admiral Kirk’s Chief of Staff for OVERLORD. Since then Struble had gained considerable further experience in command of a Seventh Fleet Amphibious Group during the landings in the Philippines in late 1944 and early 1945.

  In addition to visiting a number of other training establishments, including the Air Support School, the Gunnery Support School, the Communications School and the Troop Training Units, the last being the equivalents of the British CTCs, Bob was invited to attend Exercise DUCK as an observer. The exercise was in some respects elementary, as the participants were largely new to amphibious operations, but it demonstrated very clearly that the flame of combined operations was burning much more brightly in the USA than it was in Great Britain. Bob joined Struble aboard USS Eldorado, which had been the command ship for the landings at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and was impressed by his decision to go ahead with landing a complete division in heavy surf, made possible by new, high-powered landing craft which were able to avoid breaching to.

  Although the Eldorado was similar to British HQ ships, Bob was further impressed by a recent decision by the US Navy to convert a heavy cruiser into a command ship, stripped of its main guns but faster and more heavily armoured than its predecessors. He was also highly envious of the developments in landing craft design, which went far beyond what had been available during the War.

  There was time on the trip for play as well as work. Bob drove down to Tijuana to see a bullfight, but it was cancelled so he went to the races instead, and he stayed for two days with David Niven,9 who hosted ‘a stupendous party for him which went on a very long time and ended in extreme drunkenness’!10 Amongst the guests were Rex Harrison and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. Bob then travelled to Canada. He had intended to visit Angie’s father, but William Dudley Ward died soon after he left the UK. He thus went directly to Kingston, Ontario to deliver a talk at the Canadian Staff College, before travelling on to New York, where he was joined by Angie.

  Following his return Bob wrote a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff, setting out the alternatives as he now saw them, recommending that they should take note of the requirements to lift a single brigade group, the maximum he believed to be possible in the current circumstances, and asking them to decide what course they should adopt if the Admiralty was unable to meet these requirements. The reaction was muted. Bob was, in any event, running out of time to see through any substantive changes, as it had been decided six months earlier that he would hand over to Wildman-Lushington at the end of June 1947, after which the position of CCO or its equivalent was always to be held by a Royal Marine officer.

  When the time came, Bob was still only forty and the chances of him obtaining another major general’s appointment within the next few years were slim. He had been a substantive colonel since 25 May 1946, with seniority backdated to 22 October 1944, so there was a strong possibility that he would go back no further than brigadier, although it was likely that he would find himself in another office job and almost certainly one less interesting, albeit perhaps less challenging, than CCO. Even a field appointment in 1947 would not have offered the excitement of the Special Service Brigade. He therefore decided to resign his commission and retire into private life.

  Bob never disclosed his full reasons for going but, as well as his almost certain demotion, it is quite likely that the exasperation of the last two years had taken its toll and he was simply disinclined to remain in the Army in such circumstances. Moreover, he had a young family, of whom he had seen very little during the War and which had recently grown with the birth of Benjamin Richard Laycock on 4 June.

  Bob was, at least, accorded the honorary rank of major general. He had been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the New Year’s Honours of 1945 and had subsequently been made a Commander of the Legion of Merit by the Americans, specifically for his contribution to raising, organizing and training the Rangers, a Commander of the Légion d’honneur by the French, a Commander, with Star, of the Order of St Olav by the Norwegians and a Grand Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau, with Swords, by the Dutch.

  There was, however, no knighthood, which was perhaps understandable for one so junior, but might nevertheless have been expected for the position Bob had held as CCO. Mountbatten had written a year earlier:

  I want to take this chance of telling you that your C.B. is, in the opinion of everyone with whom I have discussed it, an entirely inadequate reward for your outstanding war service.

  I am quite sure that if you had not been a ‘youngster’, you would have unquestionably have had at least a K.C.B; and if you had been a real Old Blimp I am sure it would have been the G.C.B or a baronetcy.11

  This reflected the opinion of Sturges, who had written to thank Bob for recommending him for his own KBE in 1945:

  Hells Bells, you got Cdos going, and were my boss so if there was a ‘K’ about in Combined ops it should have been yours.12

  For the time being, however, there were no further honours.

  After the War ended, Bob and Angie initially kept on their London flat, but also lived in two cottages at Hawthorn Hill, one for them and their cook and the other for the children and their nanny. Young Joe and Tilly went to a small school nearby. In the spring of 1947, however, probably in the knowledge that the family was about to expand, they bought The Old Vicarage at Winkfield, near Windsor, although for some time they retained the farm at Hawthorn Hill. The Old Vicarage was a much larger house with a substantial garden and three fields. It was run by a butler, Simpson, who was eventually fired for drinking too many bottles of Bob’s whisky. In addition, there was a gardener, an odd-job man, who lived with his wife in a caravan in one of the fields and played the trombone, and two daily women.

  Bob did not take on a full time job. He was asked to stand for Parliament again, both for Bassetlaw in any forthcoming General Election and for North Croydon in a by-election in 1947, but declined. However, he accepted some non-executive appointments, one as a director of Lloyds Bank, another as chairman of the Windsor Hospital Management Committee. His father was now in his eighties and, although still active – he had been County Commandant of the Nottinghamshire Home Guard during the War – was less able to look after the estate than he had been. The Seghill Colliery was nationalized on 1 January 1947, but there were substantial agricultural holdings in the north-east, which Bob inspected from time to time, and at Wiseton, where he and the family were frequent visitors, staying for a longer period each summer.

  Bob and Angie had a very large number of friends, some of long standing such as the Heads and the Cotterells, others made during the War, including Evelyn Waugh and Bill Stirling, and there were numerous occasions when they had guests to stay or were entertained themselves. The large house parties which had been regular events in the ’20s and ’30s were, however, markedly rarer. For a man whose boyhood, adolescence and early career had been devoted to hunting, polo and steeplechasing, it might seem surprising that Bob never again rode for recreation. He had always attr
ibuted his success in avoiding capture in the Jebel Akhdar after the Rommel Raid to his knowledge of the habits of foxes and had vowed to give up hunting as a result. However, there was another reason for not riding, which was that he began to experience pain in one of his legs, which was to endure for the rest of his life.

  Both Bob and Angie went up to London at least weekly, Bob to attend board and other meetings and to see his friends, sometimes staying overnight at White’s. Angie was still very active on behalf of the Commando Benevolent Fund, which continued to hold fund raising events, including a ball at Claridges at which Princess Elizabeth was present, and a concert at the Albert Hall attended by the King and both Princesses. Bob was also on the Committee, which included over the years many of the leading Commando veterans, including Tom Churchill, Charles Newman and Charles Vaughan. He continued to retain close links with his wartime comrades, attending reunion dinners not only of the newly formed Commando Association, but also of the individual Commandos. He was in Westminster Abbey when Winston Churchill unveiled the Commando Memorial there in May 194813 and at Spean Bridge, near Achnacarry, when Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother performed the same function in respect of the spectacular Memorial there just over four years later.

  Bob developed a number of interests for which he had had no time hitherto, some of which were unusual for such a masculine person, including needlepoint tapestry. The journalist and author Godfrey Winn, who interviewed Angie and her sister Pempie for a regular feature in Woman’s Illustrated, commented on a beautiful hand-painted table, on which hundreds of blobs of red, green and blue paint had been interlaced into a complicated pattern, and was astonished to learn that it was Bob’s work. Bob also inherited his father’s lathe, on which he turned some very attractive artefacts.