A Gallant General's Summing-Up
MARSHALL, S. L. A.
WRITERS and WRITING A Gallant General's Summing-Up The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay. Viking. 488 pp. $6.75. Reviewed by S. L. A. Marshall Author, "Bastogne," "Blitzkrieg," "Pork Chop...
...He got what he calls a "smattering of tactics, history and engineering...
...I realized only too clearly that my new work bore no resemblance to anything that I had ever done before," Ismay says...
...Beyond doubt, the writing reflects Ismay accurately, a man at peace with himself, in love with his wife, favored by fortune and ever ready to give any human being as much credit as is given self...
...it is not accurate, reportorial writing, and therefore adds little to common understanding of how great men shaped great events in our time...
...If he is a master of the nuances in that gray area of free government wherein political authority must come to the meeting of minds with those who exercise autocratic military power, no part of this wisdom is forthcoming...
...Instead, in the 1930s, things happened which enable him to write truthfully: "My lucky star was still in the ascendant...
...Too soon, this saccharine treatment becomes cloying, or—at the very least—unconvincing...
...Adulation and admiration are without reservation...
...The grade A-1 American high commanders I have known would feel only contempt for a staff officer with that obsequious way...
...Hardly, because Ismay tries to think in the kindliest way of everyone on his own stage—a personal virtue which in a summing-up may prove a vice...
...About that we need not wonder...
...Reviewed by S. L. A. Marshall Author, "Bastogne," "Blitzkrieg," "Pork Chop Hill" "PUG" ISMAY BELONGS to that company of men who contend strongly, disagree fairly, agree warmly and deal with any citizen as if he were a blood brother...
...He was brought next to "the seats of the mighty" when an appointment opened as Assistant Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defense...
...But the quality of great personal charm aside, there seems to be little other reason for the brilliant success of this life story...
...Henty could never have used it...
...Robert Lincoln O'Brien once said of the late Cal Coolidge that there is no explaining his career except that it happened...
...There are occasional asides about Winny's human foibles, such as his puckishness and his love of the lofty phrase and dramatic riposte, but none of these ever comes through as personal faults or impulsive demarches which had to be opposed, tempered and controlled by the harassed Imperial General Staff or other high-placed subordinates...
...Approximately nowhere, except that in this book we meet a decent, congenial and almost naive staff officer, who has been repeatedly honored by high position and has discharged his responsibilities creditably and won such honors as the Garter, while apparently cultivating in himself hardly more military knowledge than the fine art of how to get along with people...
...There is the difference that Ismay, from subaltern days, was ever the lovable guy, personally modest, the son of a renowned father, the epitome of noblesse oblige...
...It was his great fortune to be the military right hand of Winston Churchill during the World War II years, as Chief of Staff of the Minister of Defense...
...Provided one is interested in the makeup of the human and professional qualities of the product which the British system evaluates as a superior staff officer, no more enchanting case study has come our way...
...And why isn't "yes man" the word for it...
...Horatio Alger and G.A...
...Clearly, he rates Churchill not only as a peerless political leader in the hour when the free world knew Armageddon but as the most brilliant military brain of the ages...
...He becomes a barnacle on the seat of any headquarters...
...There were a few nasty brushes with his fanatic following, but this is actually all that Ismay had of hard field soldiering during a lifetime...
...But even the three small monkeys of Nikko, had they collaborated in writing their life story, could not have been more circumspect...
...Ismay has plenty of self-effacement, and he has strained so hard to keep generosity uppermost in what he writes that in the end he is unfair mainly to Ismay...
...For example, when Ismay salutes and flatteringly appraises Generals Eisenhower, Marshall, Montgomery, Auchinleck and others who have been socked under the belt by certain critics, are the estimates significant...
...Even so, the secretariat opened for him as if it had long awaited the coming, and he was not to leave it until after he had spent World War II at the side of Winston Churchill, his idol...
...So where does that get us...
...In result, though the story of the early years flows smoothly, and is sprinkled with tidbits of interesting information, there is a blandness to it which might have become the preface to quiet retirement in a rocking chair...
...At one point, he dilates on how the military staff stands in relation to the commander: "Without being in any way 'yes men,' their sense of discipline does not permit them to oppose his wishes too forcibly, or to state their own case too baldly...
...Then during the four years of World War I when friends whom he deemed more fortunate were either getting killed or setting the foundation for future high command responsibility by derring-do along the Western Front, he became stuck in British Somaliland (of all places) where another Mahdi was twisting the lion's tail and proclaiming holy war...
...The reaction was always as if he took no account of the power factors...
...So saying still affords some room for adding that the memoir has noteworthy shortcomings, that 15 years later Lord Ismay has been inexcusably careless about his collateral research, that if he had more to say there would be more reason to listen, and that he must still be hailed as a gallant gentleman who has an almost philanthropic approach to the art of winning people, nonetheless...
...Instead, we get only an exercise in recall over a prolonged period by a noble spirit who looks back in thankfulness, admiration and awe, remembering only the best side of his distinguished contemporaries...
...As a person, he is salt of the earth, and as an official, he has been the right bower of the shakers thereof...
...It's an attitude perfectly designed to make the staff game all pudding and pork pie...
...War's main happenings—the swift over-running of Poland, the strike at Norway, the speed of the German advance to the channel, the Dunkirk "miracle," the quick collapse of the French Army—surprised Ismay...
...Maybe the formula was all Ismay needed to get where he did...
...worse yet, he can't be sent back to troops because he lacks the manly force which ranks respect...
...So being, it is subject to the same criticism, when considered as a footnote to history rather than as the personal confessions of a noble spirit...
...Serving in India, he participated in a few trifling affrays along the northern frontier...
...If he knows what command requires, there is no inkling...
...But there is an extra proportion to Ismay's worship...
...Otherwise nothing can be said for it...
...Ismay began schooling for military service in 1904 because "in those days commerce was not considered suitable employment for a gentleman...
...If he has prescience, he does not show it...
...Thus the commander becomes more and more accustomed to having his own way...
...This comment on the tone must suggest that the Ismay memoir is as extreme in one direction as is the Lord Alanbrooke memoir in the other...
...This book is his summing-up of a life experience and what it reveals of the individual idiosyncrasies and actions of the greater VIPs has somehow less relevance and entertainment value than what it says of "Pug" Ismay's reaction to them...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 50
