There was no doubt that Dwin admired much about Montgomery. The field marshal presented a young Lieutenant Bramall with the ribbon for a Military Cross awarded for his leadership in October 1944, when he cleared a German post with grenades and his Sten gun. Before Bramall met the great man at the presentation, one of Montgomery’s aides had given him some advice: ‘The Field Marshal will ask you whether you and he have ever met before. He will not mind if you say “Yes” or “No”, but he will mind if you say you can’t remember.’ Dwin chuckled at the memory, shaking his head.
As our discussion progressed, Dwin became keen to discuss what he termed ‘the privilege of responsibility’. Whether leading a small team in combat to seize tactically important ground, or clashing with Whitehall mandarins over the implications of budget cuts, ‘the personal sense of responsibility,’ Dwin expounded, ‘does not feel different and nor does the sense that one is extremely fortunate to be faced with such challenges and looked to by others for a way forward.’
Taking a pause to gather his thoughts but looking me straight in the eye, he continued: ‘It does not matter what one’s appointment is or the tests that one faces, leadership is essential. Leadership underpins everything the Army does and involves everybody. Success is always founded on good leadership while with failure the opposite is very often true. It is vital, absolutely vital, to find a way to inspire men to do the mundane as well as the extraordinary. Yes, inspire is the correct word – inspire and motivate.’ The field marshal then explained how he, and those who inspired him, encouraged men to follow. He emphasized his belief that the methods and style adopted by an individual leader have to take account of many variables if they are to be successful.
Academics David Day and John Antonakis concur, having written that leadership is shaped by ‘the leader’s dispositional characteristics and behaviours, follower perceptions and attributions of the leader, and the context in which the influencing process occurs’. Yet while obvious attributes such as moral courage, decisiveness and calmness under pressure are essential for leader effectiveness, it is leadership skills – such as the ability to communicate, empathize and create an esprit de corps – which will make a leader potent. Successful military leaders therefore need to possess both intra and inter personal skills if their leadership is to work, and this requires constant attention to the art of leading and constant attention to how they might improve their abilities. As Harry S. Laver and Jeffrey J. Matthews note in The Art of Command, a study of nine commanders from George Washington to Colin Powell: ‘Their careers demonstrate that the quality of one’s leadership ability develops over years, even decades. None of them began their careers in the military as exceptional leaders. They did, however, have the good fortune to serve under effective mentors, and, more significantly, each had the good sense to learn from the examples set by these role models.’
With each new role, every advance in rank and each new context, it is particularly important that officers and soldiers think again about their leadership and what is demanded of them. While an army will do what it can to prepare individuals for the next stage in their career (for traditionally armies grow their own leaders), self-development remains indispensable because there is always a need to translate organizational training and education into something that reflects the leader as an individual. Even if enlisted soldiers make up by far the greater proportion of an army, finding time to improve one’s leadership is particularly important to officers because they dominate command appointments in which they have legal responsibility for the ‘direction, coordination and control of military forces’. Leadership is an indispensable constituent of command – which makes its own heavy demands on an individual’s professional and personal competencies – but no matter what role or context an officer happens to be working in, proficient leadership drives military effectiveness, for as the ancient Greek writer Herodotus wrote nearly two and a half thousand years ago, ‘Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.’ In being recognized as the personification of an army’s values, standards and leadership philosophy, a leader not only creates a positive local climate but helps to reinforce the healthy organizational culture upon which the army’s fighting power depends. It is a poorly advised army, therefore, that does not take heed of Jörg Muth’s assertion in his book Command Culture that ‘troops fight the way they are led’ and, ultimately, fighting is what an army exists to do.
During our discussion about military culture, Dwin Bramall began to speak with great knowledge about the impact of three particular leaders: George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Born between 1885 and 1891, they came into the world at the height of an industrial revolution which powered the Age of Empire in Europe and the Gilded Age in the United States, and fuelled the First World War. All three officers participated in the 1914–18 cataclysm, and like millions of others, the field marshal emphasized, were so affected by their wartime experiences that it became a fundamental influence on their lives. Yet neither Patton, Montgomery nor Rommel were dissuaded by the carnage from seeking military careers when the guns finally fell silent, and in time the army became their great passion. Each became wholly dedicated to the profession of arms and, being exceptional officers and leaders, they prospered. Yet despite the broad similarities between the three men, there were marked differences in their approaches to leadership due to the individuality bestowed on them by their genes, upbringing, life experience and relationships. Together, these stimuli created three unique personalities – which, in turn, determined each man’s leadership style.
During our discussion about the complex and nuanced web of what makes one man willingly follow another, the field marshal suggested that I use the lives of Patton, Montgomery and Rommel to reveal ‘the short steps on the long journey of leadership’. The result is this book, which seeks, through the eyes of a military historian, to explore the many and various influences that shaped Patton, Montgomery and Rommel as men, as soldiers and, principally, as leaders. It will chart their leadership development through war and peace and through good times and bad. It is a military biography of three officers, viewed through the prism of leadership as they became among the most prominent officers in their armies and, eventually, in early 1943, all fought in Tunisia. North Africa, however, did not mark the end of the leadership odyssey for Patton, Montgomery or Rommel; it instead acted as a waypoint on the route to a final confrontation in northern Europe, at the end of which, two of these remarkable men would be dead.
Grove Press
Atlantic Monthly Press
