The Auk on Two Fronts
Auchinleck. By John Connell. (Cassell, 35s.) Tobruk. By Anthony Heckstall-Smith, D.S.C. (Blond, 21s.) MR. JOHN CONNELL'S extremely interesting though unsatisfying biography traces the life of Field- Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck from his birth in 1884 to his departure from India in 1947. Mr. Heckstall-Smith's study of events in Tobruk gives us a close-up of one of the most dramatic episodes in Auchinleck's storm-tossed career as the Middle East Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Heckstall-Smith does not make Mr. Connell's pretensions to be a historian, but in fact he has done exemplary research on the general subject of which Tobruk is a detail. His book is far more than a former correspondent's 'blood and guts' tale of the West- ern Desert. The two accounts of Tobruk do not contradict each other.
There is only space to look at the two highlights of Mr. Connell's record : Auchinleck's Com- manderships-in-Chief in the Middle East, from 1941 to 1942, and in India, from 1943 to 1947. Of the two accounts the second is the better, though it shares faults with the first. Everyone who served under 'the Auk,' even in the humblest role, must rejoice that Mr. Connell has established beyond argument that in the Middle East Auchinleck proved himself one of the great British Army Commanders of all time. The merits of this part of the book, notably in the tense battle narratives, are very considerable, and the sketches of the principals surrounding Auchinleck—Arthur Smith, Ritchie, Gott and Corbett—are drawn with admirable skill, as is the interplay of personality and circumstance. As a piece of research and cor- relation the book takes a high place. But these salient literary virtues cannot wholly redeem faults which come from a persistent want of literary tact. The style does not suit the subject. The disparity comes out most plainly when Mr. Connell traces the conflict between Sir Winston Churchill and his Middle East Commander-in-Chief. There can presumably be no doubt now that the Prime Minister interfered to excess, and sometimes un- fortunately, in military operations, and no general suffered more from this high-level nannying than Auchinleck. Now it would be one thing, and a very interesting thing, if Auchinleck (untrue to his stoical habit) had thrown off his restraint, and had expressed himself on the matter in strong and even coarse language, but it is quite another thing when Mr. Connell does this on his own, going to all extremes of sententiousness, with equal vehemence on great and small occasions.
This party-politician conduct of the book de- feats much of the purpose of its Middle East sec- tion: it obscures the facts that Mr. Connell has brought to light by his full reference to original papers. Here was a superb Army Commander who, for reasons hard to define, proved an unsuccessful Commander-in-Chief outside India. When all looked hopeless he snatched a decisive victory out of disaster, a victory to be forgotten in the hurry of subsequent events, and later misrepresented by interested people as part of the disaster. There can be no doubt at all after this book that Auchinleck turned the tide against Rommel (and that does not mean Montgomery was nobody). There can equally be no doubt that the disaster from which Auchinleck snatched the victory was his responsi- bility as chief; that this affected his authority, and that his removal from the Middle East command had become a necessity. He as good as said so himself. But when, at a crucial point in the book, Mr. Connell deals with Auchinleck's supersession in the Middle East he completely loses his head, and protests not only too much but more than one might believe possible. He puts forward every conceivable explanation, except the obvious true one. He even has a bash at the Establishment game and suggests that if 'the Auk' had been more of a fashionable cocktail-party man he would have been better supported by the decadent sybarites of Cairo GHQ! The book here descends to a nadir of silliness which would amuse the reader more if the joke was not at Auchinleck's expense. A tragic sequence of events has been turned into a ridiculous hard-luck story.
But though further blue-eyed-hero-versus. scowling-monster absurdities are still to appear, the book picks up again after the Middle East chapters. Mr. Connell is more at home with India and, with fewer lapses and many memorable strokes, as in his examination of the Japanese- sponsored 'Indian National Army,' he tells the noblest part of Auchinleck's story. In the Middle East Auchinleck had several times proved himself a sagacious political adviser; in India he showed himself a great statesman. It fell to this devoted officer of the Army of India to dissolve that army's Anglo-Indian association. It is likely that his orders were extremely uncongenial to him, but all that can be certainly known is that he threw himself into the task without reservation and with abundant effect. Auchinleck is an august excep- tion to the rule that soldiers make bad politicians. He understood nationalism and its claims, and even when the meanest chicanery of national leaders was directed against himself, he could understand without bitterness that this was in- evitable. Professional Indian politicians seem to have feared that by becoming a popular hero in India he might queer the national pitch, and they took appropriate action. Auchinleck's last deed in India was to prevent the outbreak of hostilities between its two newly constituted States. In a war- like situation the initiative of this honoured mili- tary man was irresistible. True to form, other people took the credit for the maintenance of peace, and true to form Auchinleck remained a complete stranger to all temptations to sourness;
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