In the immediate aftermath of the surrender, little seemed to change at Tac. A grand celebration dinner was held in B Mess, which Monty attended, even sipping an unaccustomed glass of champagne, and a rest camp was established by a lake near Lübeck, but the pressure of work remained considerable. The American LOs left very quickly, but the British remained, carrying out their duties as before with daily visits to field formations.
The major problem was not so much the disarming of the Germans, who were highly disciplined and gave little trouble, but the arrangements for some two and a half million displaced persons who were now roaming the country. These were both German civilians who had fled in front of the Russians, and former prisoners of war and forced labourers from previously occupied countries. Those heading for France, Belgium and the Netherlands were passed through as quickly as possible, but the citizens of countries to the east were much more difficult to handle, notably those who had fought for the Germans; these were understandably highly reluctant to be handed over to the Soviet Union. It had been agreed at the Yalta Conference, however, that full repatriation would be carried out, and the Russians made it clear that Allied POWs in their own zone would be not be released until they saw this happening.
There was also an urgent requirement to deal with the survivors of the concentration and labour camps, four of which – Belsen, Fallingbostel, Neuengamme and Sandbostel – were liberated by 21st Army Group. By VE Day there were 9,000 hospital cases, putting serious additional strain on medical facilities. Special general hospitals were set up and field hygiene units and a mobile bacteriology laboratory were deployed.
The LOs, accustomed in the past to focusing on military operations, were now Monty’s eyes and ears on what was happening to resolve these problems in each of the corps districts. Carol Mather, who returned to duty in July, was responsible for liaison with VIII Corps and got into serious trouble with Barker for his criticism of the conditions in a camp holding SS POWs at Neuengamme. Monty ordered the camp to be shut down immediately and Barker was furious, banning Mather from his district. Wake reported an issue common to all the districts, which was that many officers and men were now being posted to the Far East, others were already being demobilized, formations and units were being disbanded and it was not known from one day to the next who would be available to carry out the work.
The job did have its compensations, however. A number of LOs were sent off on missions outside the British Zone. Mather and Wake travelled to Copenhagen and Prague together and were warmly welcomed in both places, whilst Mather also enjoyed three trips to Switzerland, where for the first time he was able to enjoy the comforts of a country which had not been exposed to war. One of his missions was to retrieve Monty’s skiing boots from a hotel in Lenk, where they were prominently displayed in a glass case in the hotel in which they had been left before the war.
Some LOs also occasionally accompanied Monty on his visits, as Howarth did when Monty received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour from de Gaulle in Paris. As Henderson was away, John Sharp was detailed to act alongside Chavasse as a temporary ADC to Monty on a visit to Marshal Rokossovsky. The Russians were highly hospitable, and either Sharp took advantage of this to compensate for ‘Master’s’ abstinence or, as he maintained afterwards, his drink was spiked. In any event, he had to be bundled on to the plane by Chavasse and locked in the lavatory in time for Monty’s return to Tac. As the plane taxied down the runway, the Russians fired a 21-gun salute, which was matched shot for shot by Sharp, who loosed off his revolver in a feu de joie through the window of the lavatory until he ran out of bullets, whereupon he had to resort to clicks. Monty inevitably demanded to know what was going on and, once Sharp had sobered up two days later, summoned him for an interview. He told the young officer that he could not afford to have someone on his staff who behaved in such a way and that he was demoting him to captain and returning him immediately to his regiment. He went on to say, however, that no official report would be made and that he would tell Sharp’s commanding officer that he was to be given command of a battery as soon as possible, thus restoring him to the rank of major.
On 3 June Tac closed down on Lüneburg Heath and moved to Schloss Ostenwalde, the attractive site which Monty had decided should be his personal HQ during his brief sojourn there in April. Wake was despatched to Berlin to collect six mallard ducks from the zoo to swim on the pond. The establishment was significantly reduced, to the extent that it could be substantially accommodated in the castle and adjoining buildings. There was no further need for the engineers or Phantom, and the defence troops and signals element were cut back. The Counter Intelligence Detachment was also thinned out, but the need for security remained and Kirby was to stay on in charge until early 1946. The Operations and Intelligence staff were largely redeployed, but not before there was yet another tragedy among the latter a month after the move, when the brilliant Joe Ewart was killed in a car crash. Aged only 28, he had been a major contributor to the victory through his handling of ULTRA and was at Monty’s side on a number of key occasions, notably at the final surrender.
Main HQ moved at the same time as Tac, the first echelon two days earlier and the second a day later, so that there should be no disruption. Its destination was Bad Oeynhausen, a rather unexciting town south-west of Minden, which on 25 August was to become the HQ of 21st Army Group’s successor, the British Army of the Rhine.1 It was not the original choice, which was Bückeburg, some 17 miles away, together with the nearby spa town of Bad Eilsen, where the hotels and recreational facilities were good. They proved to be too small, so were allocated to the RAF, which also used the large airfield nearby. Even Bad Oeynhausen was only big enough for Main itself, so Rear HQ and the HQ troops were located in Herford, Bielefeld and as far afield as Detmold.
Partly as a result of running down the numbers commensurate with its changing status and partly because of posting and demobilization, there were a number of departures from Main HQ. One of the first to go was Freddie himself, a few days before the move. He badly needed a complete rest and, in line with what had previously been agreed, was sent home to recuperate. This was in spite of a proposal by none other than Churchill that he should be appointed Deputy Military Governor, which was vetoed by the War Office. Harry Llewellyn, who was about to be demobilized, wrote afterwards:
I went home on the aeroplane that followed Freddie; but not before he had called in a small group of about a dozen officers who had been in his team in the desert and north-west Europe, to say goodbye – and, at the end, a barely audible ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ Such was our respect, admiration and affection for our boss that not one of us could say a word as we left.2
Monty put his own thoughts in writing on 31 May:
My dear Freddie
I feel I would like to send you a short note of personal thanks for all you have done for me during the time we served together. No commander can ever have had, or will have, a better Chief of Staff than you were; you never spared yourself, in fact you wore yourself out completely for the good of the show.
Together we achieved much; and together we saw the thing through to the end. You must now have a good rest, and then later on, together we will conquer fresh fields.
Thank you very much.
Yrs ever
B.L.Montgomery3
Freddie replied on 2 June, writing among other things:
It is no good my trying to say all I feel, or to thank you adequately for all you have done for me. Being Chief of Staff to you was not difficult for two main reasons. First, you gave us such clear direction and secondly you showed me your confidence by letting me get on with the Business without petty interference. For these two Blessings I thank you most deeply.4
Freddie was relieved by Sandy Galloway. Others stayed on for weeks or months, but by the end of the year both the complexion and the duties of HQ BAOR had significantly changed. Tac HQ was no longer styled as such, but was still Monty’s personal domain. In line with the practice he had adopted during the war, he was an infrequent visitor to Bad Oeynhausen. His personal staff changed, with Dawnay and Warren leaving to be replaced by Coverdale as Military Assistant and O’Brien as Personal Assistant. BonDurant went back to the USA, but Henderson and Chavasse both remained until after Monty left Germany. The requirement for LOs also diminished. Howarth moved on briefly to the Control Commission for Germany before leaving the Army, and Earle, recovered from his wounds, Harden, Mather and Wake had all either returned to their regiments or been posted elsewhere by early in 1946. One new arrival at Ostenwalde was Belchem, who was summoned by Monty to draft the history of his campaigns in both Eighth Army and 21st Army Group. El Alamein to the Sangro and Normandy to the Baltic were published in 1946, both under Monty’s name. Neither acknowledged Belchem’s contribution! They were, however, uncontroversial, containing in particular no reference to the disagreements with Eisenhower in the last year of the war.
On 3 September the Military Government branch of BAOR ceased to exist, its staff transferred to the British element of the Control Commission for Germany. BAOR itself continued to be responsible for all military matters. Templer became Deputy Chief of Staff (Execution) at the CCG, but his job remained the same and it was largely due to him that the German people in the British sector managed to survive the forthcoming winter without starvation or extreme fuel shortages. He was responsible to Monty’s Deputy, initially Lieutenant General Sir Ronald Weeks, who had been DCIGS for the last three years of the war, and then, following Weeks’s illness, to Brian Robertson, who had served as Alexander’s CAO ever since Monty had engineered that appointment. A number of other senior officers went to the CCG, including Richardson, who became Weeks’s Military Assistant before becoming Chief of the British Military Division of the Control Commission in Berlin.
As early as July 1945 it was known that Monty was likely to become the next CIGS in succession to Brooke. Brooke himself preferred Alexander, but Alex was persuaded by Churchill to become the Governor-General of Canada, and as the other pre-eminent British soldier, Monty was the only serious alternative. However, Churchill’s own successor, Clement Attlee, persuaded Brooke to stay on until the end of June 1946.
It was apparent from Monty’s letter to Freddie of 31 May 1945 that he was expecting his former Chief of Staff to serve under him again. In the autumn of 1945 both clearly construed this as Freddie becoming VCIGS in succession to Archie Nye. In order that he should obtain experience of the War Office, of which he had none other than as Military Assistant to Hore-Belisha in 1939/40, Monty persuaded Brooke to appoint Freddie as DMI as soon as he completed his sick leave. The appointment did not suit him. Although Freddie had been DMI at Middle East Command for a relatively brief period in 1942, the new job was completely different, strategic rather than tactical in nature, and he struggled with it. Moreover, he had still not completely recovered his health. The upshot was that, when Nye was selected in early January 1946 to become Governor of Madras, Brooke, who was to remain in office for another six months, refused to accept Freddie for the job. His preference was Dick McCreery, at the time the British C-in-C and High Commissioner in Austria. Monty vetoed McCreery, with whom he had had a difficult relationship in the latter’s capacity as Alexander’s Chief of Staff. The compromise was ‘Simbo’ Simpson, who was wholly acceptable to both as he had performed very capably as, successively, DDMO, DMO and ACIGS at the War Office, whilst simultaneously acting, next only to Brooke, as Monty’s main contact in Whitehall.
Freddie, who was informed in person of this turn of events by Monty himself, was devastated. He already had some cause for complaint about his treatment in the recent past. He had been increasingly marginalized on the important operational decisions during the latter stages of the campaign in North-West Europe, whilst at the same time exhausting himself in his efforts to keep the peace between Monty and Eisenhower. He had not been promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, which was appropriate to his role and had been held by his predecessor at 21st Army Group, William Morgan. When, in September 1945, he was compelled for lack of a suitable appointment at that time to revert to his substantive rank of colonel, his appeals to Monty to have the decision reversed fell on deaf ears, and it was only after representations by Eisenhower that his acting rank as major general was restored. He now wrote a letter to Monty expressing his disappointment, only to receive a brusque reply telling him not to bellyache. Four months later, after another period of sick leave, he resigned his commission.
On a colonel’s pension5 and with no other means, Freddie knew that he would have to find a job. His inclination, for health and other reasons, was to look outside the United Kingdom and he eventually decided on Southern Rhodesia. He had fallen in love with Africa during his secondment to the King’s African Rifles from 1926 to 1931 and he was encouraged in his decision by Bob Long, who had served in Eighth Army Main HQ, where he had particular responsibility for reconnoitring new sites following the Mainwaring debacle. David Stirling, who in his capacity as the commander of the SAS had been a frequent visitor to Freddie in North Africa, asked Freddie to chair a local company and, although this was not a success, it led him on to a number of other boards in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, in both of which countries he had a number of wartime friends. Before very long he became a prominent member of the business community and financially secure.
Monty duly became CIGS on 26 June 1946. He was not a success. He had never served at the War Office and had little idea of what the role entailed. He was inclined to treat it as being Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, a position which had been abolished in 1904. One of his great strengths, the ability to simplify, would not always work with the complex issues with which he was now faced. He disliked dealing with politicians and civil servants, something from which Alexander and Brooke had always sheltered him. Most damagingly of all, he failed to establish good relations with his colleagues on the Chief of Staffs’ Committee.
From the appointment of Brooke as CIGS in December 1941, the Chiefs of Staff had been a happy and united group. They did disagree on a number of issues, but Brooke, Dudley Pound, succeeded as First Sea Lord following his death in October 1943 by Andrew Cunningham, and Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, always took a united line when it really mattered and they became good friends. Cunningham’s successor was John Cunningham, for whom Monty conceived a dislike which became mutual. Portal was followed by Tedder and he and Monty loathed one other. Tedder had been jealous of Monty ever since they had served together in North Africa. For his part Monty ascribed to Tedder much of the difficulty he had experienced with SHAEF in the last year of the war. If he knew Tedder was to attend a COS meeting, Monty would send Simpson in his place, and later Templer, Simpson’s successor as VCIGS. The relationship was not helped by the publication in 1946 of the diaries of Commander Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s Naval Aide,6 which revealed Tedder’s role in the plot to remove Monty. The result was that little useful could be achieved.
It was therefore a relief to all parties when, two years later, Monty was offered and accepted the position of Chairman of the Western Union Commanders-in-Chief Committee. Before leaving he attempted to have John Crocker appointed as his successor. Clement Attlee, who as Prime Minister had the job in his gift, felt that Crocker carried insufficient weight and brought back Bill Slim from retirement, the first and only Indian Army appointee to the position of CIGS.
The Western Union, which was formed in early 1948, was a military alliance between Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Monty’s term was dominated by his long-running feud with General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, who had commanded the First French Army in the last year of the war and who was now the C-in-C Land Forces of the Western Union. Both claimed supremacy. Monty believed that, in the event of hostilities with the Soviet Union, which seemed more likely with the beginning of the Berlin blockade, he would be become Supreme Commander of the Western European forces. De Lattre considered that Monty, as the mere chairman of a committee, had no powers over planning, or for that matter very much else. Neither would give in, and the relationship became poisonous.
David Belchem, a French speaker, was appointed as Monty’s Chief of Staff, with promotion to major general. He set up the HQ in the chateau at Fontainebleau, where he established a multinational staff. In spite of the antagonism between the two main players, the staff members of the various countries were on friendly terms and their work enabled some good progress to be made on bringing together the disparate armed forces of the member states. Nevertheless, and even though Monty and de Lattre became reconciled late in the day, the folding of the Western Union into NATO in 1951 was widely welcomed.
Monty spent the next seven years as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, initially under Eisenhower, and then under Generals Ridgway, Gruenther and Norstad. He retired from active service on 18 September 1958 after a career of 50 years to the day, a record which is unlikely ever to be surpassed.
Other than the two volumes on his campaigns ghosted by Belchem, Monty had refrained from publishing anything until his Memoirs came out shortly after his retirement. It was clear from the quote from the Book of Job on the very first page after the title – ‘Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards’7 – that he expected to book to be controversial, and this was indeed the case. The last paragraph of the Foreword read:
I have tried to explain what seems to me important and to confine the story to matters about which my knowledge is first-hand. Whatever the book may lack in literary style, it will therefore have, it is my hope, the merit of truth.8
Truth is a tricky concept and in this case it was seen entirely through one man’s prism. It was not always recognized as such by others; indeed, the book created something of a furore. This was largely because of Monty’s adverse comments about Auchinleck and particularly the latter’s apparent readiness, in Monty’s opinion at least, to retreat from the El Alamein line. Auchinleck threatened legal action. Freddie, an admirer of Auchinleck, offered to mediate, but was warned off by Monty. In the end it was Bill Williams who brokered a compromise, drafting a note to be inserted by the publishers in the front of future copies of the book, in which Monty grudgingly acknowledged his gratitude to Auchinleck for stabilizing the British front and noted the latter’s intention to launch a new offensive when Eighth Army had rested and regrouped.
Freddie’s attempted intervention was not his first foray into what might be called ‘The War of the Memoirs’, which went back over a decade. In fact his own memoirs, Operation Victory, had been published in 1948. The book was controversial only in one respect, that it introduced for the first time the information that Freddie had disagreed with Monty on the Northern Thrust. Monty wrote to Freddie, congratulating him on a ‘first-class’ work, but saying that he could not remember either the disagreement itself or that the issue had ever been argued. This was later confirmed by Johnny Henderson, who wrote: ‘There were often discussions at dinner when we were alone with Monty and Freddie about the need for the Northern Thrust and I never heard Freddie say anything other than supporting Monty on the issue.’9 The conclusion must be that Freddie, in spite of his misgivings, loyally supported Monty’s views to Eisenhower.
Eisenhower himself went into print with Crusade in Europe in the same year. This brought to public notice for the first time the disagreement between himself and Monty over the unified ground forces command from 1 September 1944 onwards. Eisenhower presented a picture of the difficulty of dealing with Monty:
He consistently refused to deal with a staff officer from any headquarters other than his own, and, in argument, was persistent up to the point of decision.10
He contrasted this with Freddie:
[He] lived the code of the Allies and his capacity, ability, and energy were devoted to the coordination of plan and detail that was absolutely essential to victory.11
Eisenhower’s book received a great deal of adverse publicity in the British press, seen as it was, quite accurately, as the American version of the war in contrast to the British. Freddie wrote a review in the Sunday Graphic, which was favourable in general, but which drew attention to the author’s deprecation of Monty’s eccentricities and the difficulty of dealing with him and which claimed that the solution to the command issues would have been the appointment of an overall land force commander. Eisenhower replied, defending his portrait of Monty on the grounds that concealing it would have raised charges of bias from many quarters, and setting out the arguments against a single ground commander.
Eisenhower’s views were supported by Bradley’s publication of his own wartime memoirs, A Soldier’s Story, in 1951, which revealed for the first time the deep hurt inflicted on the author by Monty during the Battle of the Bulge and particularly in the subsequent press conference. Although his assessment of the Normandy campaign, in which Bradley had been one of the few senior Americans who appreciated what Monty was out to achieve, was entirely fair, the book elicited two sharp letters from Monty expressing his great disappointment. It did not help that Bradley was, at the time, Chairman of the NATO Military Defence Committee and thus technically Monty’s boss.
Freddie, barred by Monty from dealing with the Auchinleck problem, weighed in privately with Eisenhower regarding the Memoirs, in which Monty applauded the former Supreme Commander’s character as an Allied leader, but disparaged his military skills. His mediation failed when Eisenhower drew a line under the affair, preferring to keep silent in public. In private he was furious and it marked the end of his friendship with Monty.
In 1964 Freddie returned to the fray with his last book, Generals at War, whose title had an obvious double meaning. His depictions of Wavell, Auchinleck, Eisenhower and Monty were all sympathetic, but if he had expected to heal any breaches, he was unsuccessful. On the other hand, his relationship with Monty himself had recovered markedly after the disappointment of being passed over as VCIGS. The two men met quite frequently, both in the UK and Southern Africa, and it was clear that Monty still valued his Chief of Staff’s opinion. However, there was another disappointment yet to come. In 1967, Monty visited Egypt to see the battlefield of El Alamein on the 25th anniversary of his victory. Freddie expected to be included, but was told that the party was to be a ‘closed shop’, the only former member of his staff to be included being Hugh Mainwaring. His letter expressing his distress at this decision led to another sanction, exclusion from Monty’s eightieth birthday party later that year. Both Dempsey and Leese threatened to boycott the event if he was not included, and Monty relented. Afterwards it was Brian Robertson who told both men to stop behaving like children.
When Monty died in 1976, the pallbearers at his funeral in Windsor12 consisted of five field marshals, an admiral of the fleet, a marshal of the RAF and Freddie. This was at the specific request of David Montgomery; indeed, it had been the plan for many years. He wrote later to Charles Richardson:
One of the reasons why I was so keen to have Freddie in this role was because of the alleged rift between them. I felt that, if Freddie was there, this would demonstrate the extraordinary closeness of their relationship at various times over the years.13
Freddie was once again in very poor health at the funeral and had to be pumped up with drugs, with a guardsman walking close by in case he should need support. He himself died in Cannes only three years later.
It was, perhaps, unsurprising that many of the staff officers at Monty’s HQs went on to have highly successful careers, both in the Army and outside it. Two followed Monty to the very top of their profession, Gerald Templer as CIGS in 1955 and George Baker as the re-styled CGS in 1968. Templer had particularly distinguished himself as High Commissioner in Malaya, where he oversaw the defeat of the Communist insurgency. As CIGS he succeeded John Harding, never a member of Monty’s staff but certainly one of his long time protégés, who had beaten Brian Robertson to the job in 1952. Robertson, who was well qualified for the role, had been High Commissioner in Germany and C-in-C Middle East. On being asked by Churchill, once again Prime Minister, which of the two he recommended, Monty plumped for Harding on the grounds that a CIGS needed to have won a battle, and Robertson, albeit an extraordinarily gifted administrator, had not done so. Robertson subsequently went on to become the Chairman of the British Transport Commission and was created a life peer.
Also to serve on the Army Council were Sidney Kirkman as Adjutant General, becoming British Special Representative in Germany after his retirement in 1950 and then Director-General of Civil Defence, a vital job at the height of the Cold War, and Charles Richardson as both Quartermaster General and Master General of the Ordnance, at the end of a career which lasted until 1971. Many others reached general officer rank, including Gerry Duke as Engineer-in-Chief at the War Office, Gerry Feilden as Vice QMG, Bert Herbert, John McNeill and John Oswald, as well as David Belchem, who resigned his commission in 1953 and went on to have a successful career in industry and commerce. One of the most distinguished was John Sharp, who recovered quickly from his dismissal by Monty following the incident on the aircraft and rose to become Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Northern Europe. Had it not been for his untimely death in harness in 1977, he, too, might have reached the top of the Army. One of Monty’s outstanding qualities was his ability to judge character and his decision in this case was thoroughly vindicated.
Many of the senior advisers who had already reached general officer rank well before the end of the war retired within the next few years. They included Meade Dennis, Drummond Inglis, Ricky Richards and ‘Slap’ White, the last of whom had, apart from a brief gap, served as Monty’s Chief Signals Officer from El Alamein onwards. The Army was rapidly reducing in size, notwithstanding its commitments in Germany and Commonwealth countries, where independence was in a number of cases preceded by unrest. Whilst there were many exceptions, of whom Monty himself was the most prominent, it was time to bring in the next generation, whose members had been promoted much more rapidly than they might ever have hoped for and whose experience the Army wished to retain for the future.
By the end of the war the large majority of those serving in Main, Rear and Tac HQ’s, and particularly the latter, were Territorial, Reserve or emergency-commissioned officers and, whilst some elected to stay on, most were only too keen to return to civilian occupations. Among those who left early from Main was Miles Graham, knighted for his services as Monty’s MGA, who resumed his business career, becoming a director of Times Newspapers and a number of other companies and chairing the Greyhound Racing Association. Harry Llewellyn returned to his family’s colliery business in South Wales, but his main loves were horse racing and show jumping. With his outstanding jumper, Foxhunter, he was in the team which won the bronze medal at the 1948 London Olympic Games and followed this with Great Britain’s only gold medal in Helsinki four years later. He was knighted in 1977 and also succeeded to the family baronetcy.
Bill Williams went first to work for the UN Security Council Secretariat in New York, before becoming so exasperated that he returned to his true métier as a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. In 1952 he became Warden of Rhodes House, having first visited all the countries from which Rhodes Scholars were selected. Later combining the role with that of Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, he eventually retired in 1980. He was knighted in 1973. He always kept in close touch with Monty and was consulted by him on a number of occasions.
Oliver Poole stood for Parliament and was elected Conservative MP for Oswestry. He resigned his seat in 1950 to pursue business interests, but combined this with acting as Head of the Conservative Political Centre and subsequently treasurer of the party. In 1955 he became the party chairman and was created a peer in 1958. Another Eighth Army and 21st Army Group stalwart to become a political party chairman and life peer was Frank Byers, who had worked in Staff Duties alongside Herbert and Baker; in his case he had been Liberal MP for North Dorset. The ranks of the former members of Monty’s staff in the House of Lords were also swelled by two medical men, Arthur Porritt, who became Governor-General of New Zealand, and Bob Hunter, the former Tac MO, who became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham.
Two of Monty’s LOs also became MPs: Carol Mather, later knighted for his services, as Conservative Member for Esher, and Dick Harden as United Unionist Member for Armagh. Bill Mather, also knighted, returned from the war to run the family company and become a prominent businessman in North-West England. Of Monty’s other LOs, Dick O’Brien was knighted as Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, whilst Tom Howarth, rated the most intelligent of the LOs by Toby Wake,14 returned to his previous occupation as a schoolmaster and became successively Second Master of Winchester, Headmaster of King’s School, Birmingham and High Master of St Paul’s. Monty kept in particularly close contact with him and his son Alan,15 who was one of two researchers who made a huge contribution to Monty’s last book, A History of Warfare. Bigland was initially posted to the CCG; on leaving the army he became a stockbroker and then director of a number of wine and spirit companies. Wake returned to his family estate in Northamptonshire and followed numerous members of his family as High Sheriff and Vice Lieutenant of the county, in due course inheriting a baronetcy created in 1621. Paul Odgers returned to the Civil Service, in which he had a successful career, culminating as Deputy Secretary of the Department for Education and Science.
One of the more unlikely career moves was that taken by David Strangeways. He stayed in the Army until 1957, initially acting as a political adviser in both Germany and Greece and latterly commanding an infantry battalion in Malaya during the Emergency. When he left he entered a theological college as preparation to taking holy orders. After serving in several English parishes and as chaplain to the British Embassy in Stockholm, he became Chancellor and Senior Canon of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral in Malta. Llewellyn Hughes, Monty’s favourite cleric during the war itself, was appointed Chaplain General to the Forces at the end of 1944 and went on to become Dean of Ripon. He remained a close friend and confidant of Monty.
Only Ray BonDurant of Monty’s personal staff remained a soldier, in his case retiring as a colonel in the US Army in 1968. Trumbull Warren rejoined his law practice in Canada, where he was delighted to provide accommodation for Monty on his visits to that country, whilst both Dawnay and Henderson had highly successful careers in the City of London. Henderson was also High Sheriff and then Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire and performed a great service to British racing by setting up Racecourse Holding Trust, which saved Aintree, Cheltenham and a number of other racecourses which might otherwise have been taken over by property developers.
Henderson was another who remained in frequent contact with Monty, seeing him for the last time only two weeks before his death. He was the organizer of the Tac Reunion Dinners, which Monty used to attend even after he had given up dining out elsewhere. Later, Henderson was the instigator of the campaign to have a statue of Monty erected in a prominent position in Whitehall, where it stands alongside those of two other great soldiers of the war, Alan Brooke and Bill Slim. It was unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1980.