Patience v. panache

The square jaw and steely gaze are deceptive. In reality, next to a prima donna on the slide, no one is more vain and temperamental than a general on the climb. So much at least is clear from Peter Caddick-Adams’s intriguing study of generals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Each was assiduous in the celebrity skills of image-making and audience massage, and none more adept at stabbing rivals in the ribs and ascribing good luck to talent. Yet for all the froth, both succeeded in a trade whose yardstick of success, crushing an opponent to death or submission, cannot be faked.

In popular terms, it is the great confrontation in the North African desert that most obviously links Rommel and Monty, but Caddick-Adams teases out other similarities to justify examining the two lives in tandem. Psychologically both needed to over-achieve; Rommel to compensate for his height of five feet six inches and his unsoldierly Swabian background in a world of Prussian-dominated militarism, and Montgomery for a loveless upbringing and chronic penury among well-heeled fellow-officers. And obviously, they were both products of what might be called the Long War from 1914 to 1945, being blooded in the meatgrinding warfare on the Western Front, testing fresh ideas about training and combat during the peace, and displaying their full military genius in the desert and Normandy campaigns.

The differences are more revealing, however. As a battle-commander, Rommel was matchless in flair, flexibility and aggression. All three qualities were demonstrated in 1917 when, while still a lieutenant, he broke through the Italian frontline in the Austrian alps and in a daring operation that involved the ascent and descent of four mountains up to 4,500 feet high, he captured 81 guns and 9,000 men with a force of less than a tenth of that number.