In his new book, In the Heat of Battle, British historian, Donough O’Brien, profiles 75 well-known and not-so-well-known leaders from history and categorizes them into one of ten categories: those who seized the moment, those who bucked the odds, those who had the courage of their convictions, those who showed a constant thread of valor, and those who rose to the occasion without fanfare; those who were too confident by half, those who were destroyed by fatal inattention, those with incurable obsessions, the traitors, and those who showed a streak of cruelty. In the following essay, he explores the notion of loyalty, rivalry, and betrayal on the battlefield.
As I was ending my military service, the Commanding Officer of the Irish Guards advised me to visit London to see a senior executive “who only recruited officers, preferably from the Brigade of Guards.” Later my new civilian boss explained his apparently maverick and elitist attitude, “Providing they are sufficiently intelligent, they have been trained not to lie, seek advantage, blame others – they co-operate.” Would it were always so!
Researching and writing my book, I was struck by two areas of competence during WWII where Britain and America were able to overcome any rivalry and collaborate in a constructive manner. Their code-breaking collaboration is well known, with American officers at Bletchley Park and British officers in Washington sharing “Ultra” and “Magic.” A revelation for me, however, was their teamwork in photo-reconnaissance interpretation. Britains led the world in this technique; they trained the Americans, and the two countries formed a seamless and successful collaboration (employing, incidentally, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son and Winston Churchill’s daughter).
Throughout history great commanders have inspired co-operation in huge armies of different nations: Britain’s Sir Harold Alexander during World War II in the desert and Italy; Norman Schwarzkopf, leading the multinational coalition in the First Gulf War; Napoleon; and Dwight Eisenhower, who famously said to his staff, regarding relations with their British counterparts during World War II, “I don’t mind if you call him a SOB, but if you call him a British SOB, I’ll fire you!”
However, the horrifying evidence is that in warfare there can be an extraordinary lack of cooperation. Snobbish arrogance is one reason. Before their Revolution, the French were adept at this, losing three battles – Crècy, Poitiers and Agincourt – by quarrelling amongst themselves about rank and then despising their nemesis, the lower-class English archer. But the British could be equally bad, with cavalry looking down on infantry, let alone gunners or engineers. And let’s not forget those “dashing” American cavalrymen like William Fetterman, disregarding his infantry commander’s orders not to go beyond a certain ridge, or George Custer turning down the Gatling guns just before the Little Big Horn. Both were destroyed by a not very snobbish Crazy Horse.
Inter-service rivalry is nothing new: It proved fatal to the Japanese navy and army during World War II. In the US and Britain the “senior services” turned on their upstart air forces – and therefore, upon air power itself between the World Wars – ignoring Billy Mitchell’s warnings. Not for nothing were the horrors of 9/11 called “a second Pearl Harbor.” Navy and army lack of collaboration in 1941 was to be mirrored by FBI/CIA intransigence sixty years later.
It is strange, but true, that well-earned combat experience can be seen as a negative. The Duke of Wellington was sneeringly called “the Sepoy General” because of his fighting in India. American Air Force chiefs in 1942 ignored the British warnings that unescorted bombers in daylight would suffer horribly, leading to disasters like the Schweinfurt raid.
Unbelievably, one can even find a bias against brains. The Duke of Cambridge, who ran the British Army for several disastrous decades in the 19th century, once sought comforting reassurance that a colleague was as stupid as he was, asking, “You’re not clever, General, are you?
Sometimes fear and jealousy play a part. Joseph Stalin destroyed his own officer corps, shooting no less than 37,000 of them, because of his paranoid fear of being overthrown. The German Wehrmacht was jealous of the Waffen SS. Benedict Arnold became so jealous of his colleagues that he tried to betray his country.
Then you find contempt for governments “that don’t understand,” leading to disobedience and disasters like Lord Chelmsford’s defeat by the Zulus or Douglas MacArthur’s eventual dismissal by President Harry Truman. Disobedience can also be based on “I know better than my bosses,” which is why the Canadians hated Lord Mountbatten for their slaughter at the Dieppe Raid. Worst of all perhaps is the case of Mark Clark, which I cover in my book. His selfish and vainglorious decision to liberate Rome instead of trapping the Germans as ordered in 1944 condemned the Allies and Italians to an extra year of brutal fighting in Italy.
Failing to control “prima donnas,” means they may eventually destroy themselves. The poisonous, childish rivalry between two otherwise great men, George Patton and Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, did not help the Allied cause. Britain’s Lord Sackville at Minden in 1759 during the Seven Years War refused four orders to charge because he did not want his deputy to get the credit for victory. Court-martialed and disgraced for a while, he later became Britain’s First Lord of Trade and Secretary of State for America and managed to lose the American colonies!
However, there are signs that things are getting better. Today, American cadets are graduating from Sandhurst, creating valuable new comradeship.
And my own nephew, an SAS major, has done four tours with US Special Forces in the Middle East and cannot praise his American comrades enough.
Donough O’Brien is author of In the Heat of Battle: A History of Those Who Rose to the Occasion—And Those Who Didn’t (Osprey Publishing, October 2009).
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