Wavell of Cyrenaica
By PETER FLEMING N N immense, patient strength—perhaps that is the quality in Lord Wavell which seems, now that he is dead, the most important part of his character. With it went gentleness, and wisdom, and a remarkable humility. His one eye looked quizzically rather than sardonically upon the world, and he retained a certain innocence of spirit, the uprightness—almost- of a small boy who does not yet know that there are alternatives to uprightness. He was shy and reserved, and his reserve was a handicap in public life. He was, for instance, seldom understood and almost always undervalued by Americans, who found it incom- prehensible that so legendary a figure should be so little concerned to underwrite the legend with some sort of panache; and he could not command that extra impulse of affability or effusiveness which is so useful a lubricant when dealing with Orientals.
Behind his taciturn manner, and the drawl which often held an unnecessary note of diffidence, and that speculative but too easily disinterested eye, there was a vivid apprehension of beauty, a boyish sense of humour and a quiet capacity for enjoying life. Perhaps the nearest approach to self-revelation which he allowed himself was the marginal comments in his anthology, Other Men's Flowers; and the man who emerges from these brief but charm- ing asides is very different from the monolithic figure which he was sometimes apt to cut in public. Feeling as well as style came out in some of his orders of the day, and the latent warmth of his personality expressed itself in innumerable unobtrusive acts of kindness. He had, moreover, a sort of sunniness—again some- how recalling, to me at any rate, a little boy—which would break out in off moments. As we all trotted back to breakfast from a long scrambling gallop over the unlovely plains round Delhi, a sound not readily distinguishable from a giggle would emanate from the august figure on the big bay. " Did I ever tell you," he would begin, " about the Russian admiral ? " and as he told us the anecdote (which was invariably very funny and revealed him as something of a connoisseur of the ridiculous in human nature), the mask which could look so grim would become full of glee, and one suddenly saw in the bay's rider a sort of eternal youthfulness. He was a very lovable character.
That lift of the heart which his destruction of the Italian armies in the desert gave to the whole Empire is not easy to recapture now ; and events soon proved that the battles which he won were not decisive. But that first campaign had about it a style and a mastery which will, I imagine, ensure it an honourable and perhaps a unique place in the annals of modern warfare. It combined the well-timed grace of a drive through the covers with the impu- dence of a practical joke. It took skill and dash to win it ; but —even more—it took immense courage to fight it at all. For when it was launched we did not know as much about the weak-
ness of the huge Italian forces as we soon found out ; and Wavell's other commitments in Africa might well have deterred a less tough, aggressive and unimaginative commander from an enterprise of such hazard. Not many men in the war conceived and prepared a project for inflicting major damage on the enemy before it had occurred to Mr. Churchill ; but the first desert campaign was strategically entirely Wavell's idea.
After that the odds lengthened steadily against him, and his pluck and resource and cunning never again enabled him to con- vert a predicament into an opportunity. I once asked him, towards the end of the war, if he believed that the diversion of German forces to deal with our intervention in Greece had imposed on Hitler's first headlong drive into Russia the small margin of delay which in the event meant that winter caught the Germans just outside Moscow and enabled the Russians to halt their advance. It was a perfectly arguable theory and has since, I believe, been confirmed from German sources ; and it was a theory which, since it showed in so favourable a light the long-term results of a quixotic but disastrous adventure, might have been expected to commend itself to the man who had been responsible for the military, though not the political, side of the affair. Wavell's reply was characteristic: " I've often wondered about that," he said. "I imagine Greece did upset the Gerinan programme to a certain extent ; these diversions always do. But I don't see how anyone can tell at this stage how much effect it really had. We shall know one day, I expect." He was extraordinarily fair-minded. I doubt if anyone ever knew him to claim even indirectly any credit for himself, except in some trivial context and by way of a joke.
In the British Army the men who hold high command at the outbreak of war, as Wavell did, are seldom responsible for innovations which contribute materially to the final victory. Wavell's shrewd and questing mind evolved one idea which, personified first by a single staff officer of his own choosing, was gradually built up into an off-shoot of the General Staff which, though it always remained numerically small, made in the end a vital and wholly disproportionate contribution to the defeat of Germany. Though the idea behind it is as old as warfare itself, the aims and methods of this curious sideshow are not yet in the " it can now be revealed " category ; and it can only be said that Wavell's imagination forged a weapon for which the British showed a perhaps rather unexpected aptitude, and which is unlikely to be left in the armoury when they go to war again.
At cricket the batsman who goes in first faces fresh bowlers and a new ball ; but the bat and the pads with which he is equipped are not inferior to those with which his successors confront the terrors he has diminished. This is one of the fairly numerous respects is which war differs from cricket ; and everybody knows that, first against the Italians, then against the Germans, and finally against the Japanese, Wavell bore the initial brunt with resources which were derisory compared with those deployed later in the long innings. What few, perhaps, realise is the enormously greater personal strain imposed on a theatre-commander in his day-to-day life if the theatre is ill-found. The machinery of high command is almost as indispensable to the commander as his box of tricks is to the conjurer ; but unlike the box of tricks it is not something he can carry about with him. He needs an efficient secretarial staff, a long-distance telephone equipped with
a " scrambler," established channels for liaison with his allies, an air-conditioned office if he is in the tropics, a private 'aeroplane wherever he may be, and-many other things. These are his tools, these enable him to function and prevent the heavy strain upon him from being increased by petty delays and frustrations.
Both in the Middle and the Far East Wavell started without them. One day in 1942 I found myself in a Blenheim bomber, with no guns and no wireless, manned by an Australian crew in their first operational flight, flying over Central Burma ; the only other non-Japanese aircraft in Burma at that time was a Moth, based on Lashio and used for diopping mail to Army Head- quarters at Nagungo. With me in the tail of the Blenheim—a rather gnomelike figure wrapped against the cold in an old blanket —was General Alexander ; and somewhere forward, sitting I think
on the co-pilot's knee, was Wavell. It occurred to me, at the time (though perhaps to neither of my distinguished fellow-passengers) that the unruffled exercise of supreme command under these con- ditions required a certain resilience of spirit.
But of course that was what they both had—Wavell less obviously but not less certainly than Alex. It was that quality, allied to a sort of simple faith and a sense of duty which was so innate that it could not be said to ride him, which sustained Wavell in the moments of defeat and the periods of frustration. When he accepted the Viceroyalty I believe it was the wrench, the almost physical wrench, of leaving the Service to which he had given his life that prompted the only reservation in his mind. He had been overseas for four years already, under continuous strain ; and I doubt if he had taken a week's leave in the time. The task in India was not really in his line, and he knew it would be a thankless one ; but his great, patient strength was needed and fie gave it ungrudgingly.
I doubt if history will much alter the current impression that as a Viceroy he was less than great ; and history, thanks to his reticence, is unlikely to record in full the shabby circumstances of his recall. But history will not overlook his claims as a soldier, and in the memories of his countrymen the impression of his selfless and resourceful integrity will shine for ever alongside the bright battle honours that he won for us in a dark hour ; while to those who knew him he will always be most dear.
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