Page 82 - They Also Served

with Ritchie as commander of the Eight Army, Auchinleck took command himself. Brooke, the chief of the general staff, summed up the new commander well: ‘He could have been one of the finest commanders but lacked the ability to select the men to serve him’.
Initially, ‘The Auk’ succeeded in stopping the German advance at the First Battle of El Alamein, but with his personally selected chief of operations, Eric Dorman-Smith, managing to alienate the commanders of the various formations, these successes were short-lived. Furthermore, he was victim to what we now call ‘the long-handled screwdriver’, with Churchill constantly interfering from London. Matters came to a head in August 1942 when Churchill and Brooke flew to Cairo and sacked The Auk and Dorman-Smith. When Montgomery arrived to take over, he couldn’t resist a jibe at The Auk’s expense. Auchinleck is said to have immediately reminded Monty of his trouble as a cadet at Sandhurst with ‘at least I passed out higher than you, old boy’.
Returning to India, Auchinleck was unemployed for a year before becoming commander-in-chief of the Indian Army. Here, he quickly grasped the need to keep the 14th Army supplied to defeat the Japanese in Burma and, therefore, safeguard India. Field Marshal Slim later wrote: ‘It was a good day for us when he took command of India. The final victory owed much to his unselfish support and never-failing understanding’. Remaining in command of the Indian Army after the war, he was promoted to field marshal on 1st June 1946. Although he was against the partition of India, he did much to ensure that it was achieved, remaining there until he finally retired in November 1947. Much has been written about Auchinleck’s private life, especially after his wife left him for his friend, a senior RAF officer. However, like many of his generation, he was discrete and avoided scandal. Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck eventually retired to Marrakesh, where he died in 1981.
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