Page 6, 18th September 1987

18th September 1987

Page 6

Page 6, 18th September 1987 — Charming recollection of the Catholic soldier and knight
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Locations: Johannesburg, Berlin, Oxford

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Charming recollection of the Catholic soldier and knight

Send For Freddie: the story of Montgomery's Chief of Staff by General Sir Charles Richardson (William Kimber £12.25)
THE affectionate name "Freddie" covers Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand, KBE, CB, DSO, descended from a French count and therefore Catholic by birth. Schooled at Ampleforth (1915-19), he was the Second World War's most distinguished Catholic soldier. After the Great War he was commissioned into the West Yorkshire Regiment just ahead of my father, and one handed on the Adjutancy of the Battalion to the other.
But rightly General Richardson is brief about Freddie's life up to 1939. Soldiers' lives are inclined to be intensified into very few years of significant toil. Freddie had two such intensities the first was during 1941-45, from the Desert to Berlin as a senior staff officer.
Monty wrote to another of his inner circle (the author being one of them), to "Bill" Williams, now Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford and Editor of the DNB: "As a staff officer Freddie was superb: as a Chief of Staff he had no equal . . . Freddie was, in fact, the first proper Chief of Staff in the British Army — and right well did he carry it through." The title of the book comes from Monty's cry often heard at his GHQ or out on a limb.
So close was the bond between these two battle-winning soldiers that Freddie's amazingly persistent bouts of (psychosomatic?) illness, often traceable to nervous exhaustion, did not result in his being suspended. He was too good at his job, which included his pastoral skills of reassuring Monty and diplomatic skills of calming down others — not least American generals (Ike included). There most of the time, he was better than another there all of the time.
At the end of the War he was burned out, and Monty wasn't becoming CIGS or top soldier at the War Office. Monty made Freddie promises for his future, then back-tracked for reasons of tact. Freddie went into depressed resentment, resigning his soldiering to find a life in Africa. His difficult marriage, which ended in divorce, was a part of the problem, an Australian wife unwilling to live in England (though she later became mistress of Knole — as I know, having visited).
He went to live in Johannesburg, beginning the second part of his life. He was then only 45 and a knight. He took up directorships in industrial companies, becoming a rich man. He threw himself into studying South Africa's racial problem, founding and leading his South Africa foundation and raising money and interest particularly in the USA for its mission. He was able to draw on the then president, Eisenhower, for support in his policies.
As president of his Foundation, Freddie called for a review of discriminatory legislation, job reservation and influx control, demanding free social contact between races. For his work he was awarded "The Great Star of the Order of Good Hope".
But his earlier soldierly life continued to impinge. By degrees the memoirs were published, and each caused its storm among protagonists and historians alike. De Guingand was first away, with Operation Victory (1947). Monty had counselled the unvarnished facts, with the debate aired peaceably later when Europe had settled and the players retired. But neither Freddie nor Eisenhower in his Crusade in Europe (1948) heeded that. Monty's Normandy to the Battle (1947) drafted for him by General "David" Belcham, was indeed unvarnished: Monty waited till he had retired in 1958 before publishing his highly controversial Memoirs.
So a strange triangular lovehate relationship grew up, with Freddie in the middle hearing both sides. It revolved around the 1944 strategic choice — the narrow northern drive versus the broad front. For American political reasons, Ike had selected the latter. For professional reasons, Monty had overargued the former.
Both in 1944 and in the postwar years, Freddie's diplomacy saved a total break-up between Ike and Monty — but only just. All three talked at length (even when Ike as President should have had better things to do) with and against each other. It was all rather ignoble.
General Richardson's is not a learned book, but a personal book and a charmingly easy read. It illuminates two central aspects: the Chief of Staff's perennial sicknesses, and "the battle of memoirs".
'Mork Stacpoole OSB




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