I was privileged to deliver this year’s Wellington Lecture at the University of Southampton, and here’s the text of the lecture:<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n Some time in the summer of 1945 Captain Alf Smith, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, staff officer 21st<\/sup> Army Group, Brussels HQ, spent a day south of the city sightseeing.\u00a0 He toured the battlefield at Waterloo, but it was some time after the 130th<\/sup> anniversary commemoration on 18 June 1945.\u00a0 I know my dad was there because he had his batman\/driver take a photograph of him standing with a big grin on his face in front of the Lion Mound.\u00a0 My father left school at 14, his prowess at cricket helping considerably to secure his commission.\u00a0 The chances are that he knew very little about the Duke of Wellington other than that he gave Napoleon a bloody nose.\u00a0 What he did know was that from the winter of 1944 the killing fields of Waterloo \u2013 and my dad knew all about killing fields \u2013 was, in today\u2019s parlance, the go-to experience for any British soldier with a keen sense of history.<\/p>\n For many officers, especially regulars, Waterloo was a place of pilgrimage.\u00a0 For veterans of the Great War, visiting the battlefield had been impossible until late 1918.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because in August 1914 the Germans had so rapidly secured control of the Belgian capital and its hinterland.\u00a0 In the winter and spring of 1939-40 a visit was out of the question: members of the BEF \u2013 the British Expeditionary Force \u2013 were strictly forbidden to cross the border into Belgium, a then neutral country.\u00a0 The speed of the German offensive in May 1940 ruled out any British excursion to Waterloo until liberation over four years later.<\/p>\n How ironic that, while the British were denied access to the Waterloo battlefield throughout the First World War and most of the Second World War, the Germans for much of this time enjoyed easy access.<\/p>\n In German history the Battle of Waterloo is known as La Belle Alliance, named after the inn where the victors \u2013 Wellington and Blucher \u2013 met on the evening of 18 June.\u00a0 The name is bitter-sweet given the pivot in British foreign policy on the cusp of the last century which led in due course to the 1904 signing of the entente cordiale<\/em>.\u00a0 For the next ten years Berlin endeavoured to disrupt the entente<\/em>, using a mix of threats and promises to try and resurrect a belle alliance<\/em> with London, the Wilhelmstrasse still seeing the British as Germany\u2019s most natural ally.<\/p>\n Waterloo was a site which many if not all nineteenth-century Germans had treated with a reverence not dissimilar to that of their one-time ally and future implacable foe.\u00a0 Many but not all Germans: for Hannover and Brunswick, with their close English connections, Waterloo was the<\/em> great battle of the Napoleonic wars; whereas for other member states in the German Confederation and later the German Empire, the Battle of Leipzig, fought in 1813, was deemed the key moment in nation-building.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, career officers in Berlin recognised the significance of Waterloo as a coda to the succession of land battles which the Prussian general staff had been obsessed with since Clausewitz wrote On War<\/em>.\u00a0 On 18 June 1815 troops such as the Hanoverian Brigade and the King\u2019s German Legion had performed heroically in resisting successive French assaults \u2013 incredibly, some 155,000 of the 209,000 Allied troops were German-speaking.<\/p>\n Had Blucher arrived earlier in the day then the Prussian and later the German Army would have hailed Waterloo as one of its greatest triumphs.<\/p>\n Kaiser Wilhelm II did precisely that in 1903 when praising Hanoverian soldiers for in his rewrite of history saving their British comrades from annihilation.\u00a0 In 1915 Hannover was unique in marking the battle\u2019s centenary.\u00a0 A museum exhibition and a well-attended ceremony at the city\u2019s Waterloo Column together confirmed the Kaiser\u2019s version of events \u2013 without the brave Germans, Napoleon had the measure of Wellington.\u00a0 The rest of the wartime Reich ignored the anniversary, reinforcing Leipzig\u2019s precedence over Waterloo in the nation\u2019s shared memory.\u00a0 Hannover\u2019s next collective engagement with the battle came half a century later.\u00a0 In June 1965 citizens with long memories and an unease over offending their French allies inside the EEC and NATO watched uncomfortably as British troops marched through the city in a commemorative parade.<\/p>\n \u2018Wellington and two world wars \u2013 the German perspective\u2019 is clearly a fascinating topic, but one I must leave for experts in the field like Brendan Simms and Jasper Heinzen.\u00a0 Instead, I\u2019ll focus on the British military, while noting the muted civilian commemoration of the 100th<\/sup> and 130th<\/sup> anniversaries of Waterloo in 1915 and 1945.<\/p>\n The centennial came at a grim moment in the early years of the Great War, with casualties mounting on the Gallipoli beachheads, and in Belgium where the original BEF had with great loss of life seen off a renewed German attack on Ypres.\u00a0 The 130th<\/sup> anniversary occurred at the start of the 1945 general election campaign, and with the initial euphoria of VE Day muted by the expectation that British forces, boosted by reinforcements from Europe, would be fighting the Japanese for months into years.<\/p>\n It’s easy to dismiss Wellington\u2019s legacy when considering how Britain in the 20th<\/sup> century twice adapted to the multi-faceted demands of what many label \u2018total war\u2019, but which \u2013 like Hew Strachan and others \u2013 I prefer to call \u2018industrial war\u2019: what relevance can a general from Napoleonic times, however great, have to the First and Second World War \u2013 very different conflicts fought on a vastly different scale and in very different circumstance and conditions?\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to over-state my case, but I would simply say, \u2018More than you might think.\u2019\u00a0 To substantiate that claim I want to consider three over-lapping areas:<\/p>\n Firstly, and most straightforwardly, the visible legacy: Wellington and Waterloo in the landscape of war, whether on the Home Front or within the armed forces.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secondly, I want to consider the legacy of Wellington with reference to military doctrine, and continuing areas of debate re morale and combat effectiveness in the British Army by the summer of 1944.\u00a0 Time prevents me from going into great detail, but I can signal the continued saliency of these issues.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thirdly, and most obviously, which generals in both world wars can be compared with the Duke \u2013 in what ways, and why.<\/p>\n Having addressed these three areas then I hope you will agree with me that examining multiple connections between the first Duke of Wellington and Britain\u2019s involvement in the two seismic conflicts of the 20th<\/sup> century is no idle exercise \u2013 so let\u2019s begin.<\/p>\n The visibility of Wellington and Waterloo within a wartime environment<\/strong><\/p>\n Reminders of the Duke of Wellington and his best-known battle were ever present in 1914-18 and again in 1939-45, not least in the capital.\u00a0 Thousands of military and non-military personnel passed through Waterloo Station, the<\/em> key transit point in both world wars.\u00a0 For those not from the south of England this was often a novel experience, a crowded and unfamiliar concourse only adding to the mixture of apprehension and anticipation felt by all.\u00a0 Perhaps they drank a last, pre-embarkation pint at the Wellington Hotel, across the road from the station.\u00a0 Just across the river in Westminster stood Wellington Barracks, but even in wartime this was largely the preserve of regular Guardsmen \u2013 the impressive building\u2019s significance once the Blitz began lay in the fact that Buckingham Palace still required guarding, the Royal Family having chosen to remain in London.<\/p>\n The Army\u2019s most lasting link to the Duke of Wellington was the regiment named in his memory.\u00a0 Formed in 1853 from a veteran unit of the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington\u2019s Regiment spawned multiple battalions in both world wars.\u00a0 They fought with distinction in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Far East; the 2nd<\/sup> Battalion even fighting behind enemy lines in Burma as part of Orde Wingate\u2019s Chindits.\u00a0 The 6th<\/sup> Duke of Wellington \u2013 killed at Salerno in September 1943 \u2013 had held a commission in his namesake regiment prior to joining the Commandos.<\/p>\n However, as we\u2019ll see, the 6th<\/sup> Battalion\u2019s resilience under fire triggered a wider debate re the combat effectiveness of British troops endeavouring to break out of the Normandy beachhead.<\/p>\n The RAF boasted not one but two bombers named after the Duke.\u00a0 Less well known was the Vickers Wellesley, a single-engine monoplane which saw action against the Italians in East Africa in 1940-41, during which time its vulnerability became obvious to all who flew it \u2013 never was an aircraft less appropriately named.\u00a0 The Wellesley boasted a geodetic airframe, devised by designer Barnes Wallis from his work on the R100 airship.<\/p>\n The same principle of construction was employed on the Vickers Wellington, the twin-engine bomber which was the mainstay of Bomber Command until 1942.\u00a0 In production from 1936 to 1945, more Wellingtons were built than any other bomber.\u00a0 It\u2019s Wellingtons that are seen being constructed in Humphrey Jennings\u2019 1941 documentary Heart of Britain<\/em>, and it\u2019s a Wellington that is shot down over Holland in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger\u2019s 1942 feature film One of Our Aircraft Is Missing<\/em>.\u00a0 RAF propaganda freely associated the Wellington with the Iron Duke, ignoring the inconvenient fact that \u2013 like the Stirling, Lancaster, Halifax, etc \u2013 prewar Bomber Command named its aircraft after towns and cities.<\/p>\n The Royal Navy boasted an HMS Wellington<\/em> and an HMS Duke of Wellington<\/em> during the Second World War, but these were largely names of convenience, for an escort sloop and a converted landing craft.\u00a0 HMS Waterloo<\/em> would have been a large, state-of-the-art destroyer, but the order was cancelled in 1945.<\/p>\n The Senior Service\u2019s most famous salute to the hero of Waterloo were the four Iron Duke-class Dreadnoughts laid down before the First World War.\u00a0 The actual HMS Iron Duke<\/em> was the flagship of the Grand Fleet.<\/p>\n In May 1916 Southampton\u2019s own Admiral Sir John Jellicoe commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland from the bridge of the Iron Duke<\/em>.\u00a0 The battleship saw almost continuous action for eight years from 1914 to 1922, but unhappily spent most of the Second World War as a beached gun platform in Scapa Flow.\u00a0 By comparison, HMS Nelson<\/em> \u2013 a smaller battleship launched in 1925 \u2013 saw near continuous action.<\/p>\n For the Royal Navy Horatio Nelson was of course a regular point of reference in both world wars.\u00a0 Sir John Jellicoe\u2019s caution at Jutland as losses mounted earned begrudging approval postwar, but in 1916 his critics were insistent that Nelson would have kept fighting.\u00a0 That criticism was given tacit approval by David Beatty, who as commander of the Grand Fleet\u2019s Battlecruiser Squadron cultivated an image designed to draw parallels with Nelson, and whose remarkable capacity for self-promotion culminated in his appointment as First Sea Lord.<\/p>\n If the Royal Navy was sensitive over its surface fleet\u2019s record in the First World War the same could not be said of the Second where admirers hailed Andrew Cunningham as Britain\u2019s greatest fighting admiral since Nelson.\u00a0 Cunningham\u2019s morale-boosting victories in the Mediterranean ensured his appointment as First Sea Lord in late 1943: every year the Royal Navy commemorates the victory at Trafalgar, but in addition the Fleet Air Arm celebrates the devastating attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940.<\/p>\n The power of the Nelson myth with the Royal Navy prompts comparisons re Wellington and the British Army.\u00a0 One obvious question is: does Waterloo have the same centrality within the service psyche as Trafalgar, not least in wartime?<\/p>\n The simple answer is clearly yes, but not as in the Navy a service-wide commemoration year on year: recognition of the great day rests with those regiments whose battle honours include \u2018Waterloo\u2019.\u00a0 Cavalry regiments enthusiastically celebrate 18 June, not least because their histories highlight the clearest lines of continuity.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s hard to imagine during the Second World War say the 1st<\/sup> and 2nd<\/sup> Household Cavalry Regiments finding time to toast their illustrious antecedents in the saddle \u2013 except possibly in 1943 between the end of the North African campaign and the invasion of Sicily.\u00a0 If so, the future 8th<\/sup> Duke of Wellington may well have orchestrated the Royal Horse Guards\u2019 anniversary celebration.<\/p>\n For regular cavalry regiments in 21st<\/sup> Army Group the end of the war in Europe meant that they could mark the 130th<\/sup> anniversary of Waterloo in style \u2013 the same being true for the Guards and the Rifle Brigade.\u00a0 One wonders how intense these celebrations were outside the mess, and beyond a now shrunken cadre of regulars?<\/p>\n Wellington and military doctrine<\/strong><\/p>\n In August 1914 the Peninsular War was the last campaign the British Army could consider a clear victory.\u00a0 The same could not be said for the Crimean War, where Wellington cast a long shadow, or for the Boer War.\u00a0 Yet cavalry tactics honed during the Napoleonic wars, and severely tested in Crimea and South Africa, proved remarkably resilient; not least because it was largely cavalrymen who in the Edwardian era moulded military doctrine and training methods.\u00a0 By October 1914 all these ideas were obsolete, albeit resurrected to a degree between the wars.\u00a0 Trench warfare meant few if any British generals found themselves asking \u2018What would Wellington do?\u2019.\u00a0 The same was even more the case in 1939-45.<\/p>\n Occasionally a military historian has asked \u2018What would Wellington have done?\u2019 \u2013 John Keegan, for example.\u00a0 Not that Wellington\u2019s legacy is always viewed in a positive light.\u00a0 Brian Bond and David French both attributed an absence of initiative and quick thinking on the battlefield to an inflexible, top-down system of command and control that was traceable straight back to the Duke.\u00a0 For the BEF one hundred years on from Waterloo, fighting on the Western Front consolidated an unquestioning adherence by subordinate commanders to the prevailing \u2018master plan\u2019.<\/p>\n David French paralleled the evolution of British military doctrine with nineteenth-century industrialisation, arguing that by 1915 Douglas Haig and his fellow generals sought to impose regularity and order on a chaotic battlefield, through strict adherence to certain overriding principles and practices of war, in the same way as industrialists ran their factories.<\/p>\n Today, former generals like Rupert Smith and Richard Dannatt argue that the reversals of 1940-42 confirmed the resilience of an ethos that penalised rapid response to changing circumstances.<\/p>\n Ironically, much of the historiographical debate over the morale and combat performance of British infantry in Normandy \u2013 where attrition rates significantly exceeded those of the Western Front \u2013 focus upon the Duke of Wellington\u2019s Regiment, and specifically the 6th<\/sup> Battalion.\u00a0 The Regiment\u2019s other battalions all fought with distinction throughout the Second World War.\u00a0 However, in July 1944 Montgomery disbanded the 6th<\/sup> following a damning report on why command and cohesion of the battalion had completely collapsed.\u00a0 In his 1984 bestseller Overlord<\/em> Max Hastings focused on the 6th<\/sup> Battalion fleeing the front line.\u00a0 He saw this as confirmation of the German generals\u2019 claim that raw British troops and exhausted veterans of the Eighth Army were demonstrably inferior to their adversaries \u2013 in other words, that victory for 21st<\/sup> Army Group came solely through superior firepower and air supremacy.<\/p>\n A more nuanced view, by historians like David French and John Buckley, questioned Max Hastings\u2019 readiness to generalise about the calibre of British infantry on the strength of one painful incident.\u00a0 They pointed to:<\/p>\n For these reasons the Duke of Wellington\u2019s Regiment is no longer synonymous with a damning revisionist view of how well British infantry battalions fought in NW Europe in 1944-45.<\/p>\n Meanwhile modern bestsellers like James Holland\u2019s Brothers In Arms<\/em> have maintained the reputation of British armour.\u00a0 A Yeomanry regiment of cavalry like Nottinghamshire\u2019s Sherwood Rangers would have been instantly recognisable to the Duke in 1939. Yet within two years they had become a frontline force in the Desert War \u2013 and then reinvented themselves to fight in very different conditions from Normandy to the Baltic.<\/p>\n It was the Sherwood Rangers who were fighting alongside the 6th<\/sup> Battalion of the Duke of Wellington\u2019s Regiment in Le Parc de Boislonde on 17-18 June 1944 when the DWR suffered its catastrophic baptism of fire \u2013 note the date.\u00a0 Stanley Christopherson, the Sherwood Rangers\u2019 commanding officer, wrote in his diary:<\/p>\n \u2018The Duke of Wellingtons, with whom we were holding this high ground, took a bad hammering and retreated without orders, leaving its anti-tank guns and equipment, some of which were captured in a counterattack.\u2019<\/p>\n That counterattack involved the 7th<\/sup> Battalion, which maintained the honour of the Regiment on the 129th<\/sup> anniversary of Waterloo.\u00a0 Stanley Christopherson had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the Sherwood Rangers on the eve of the battle, as everyone senior to him was either dead or wounded.<\/p>\n In North Africa, but even more so in NW Europe, tank regiments experienced a turnover of officers, NCOs and Troopers which even Wellington post-Waterloo would have found staggering.<\/p>\n Which British generals from the two world wars can be spoken of in the same breath as the Iron Duke<\/strong>?<\/p>\n As to generals mentioned in the same breath as the Iron Duke the easiest answer is to say none. Posing the question appears to presume a pyramid of British martial achievement which sees Wellington and Marlborough contesting the apex, with other victorious commanders \u2013 from Cromwell to Edward III, Wolfe to Haig \u2013 some distance below.\u00a0 Crudely ranking military leaders across a millennium in this way is clearly absurd.<\/p>\n A more nuanced approach, limited to the two world wars, is to look for parallels between Wellington and those commanders in the field who displayed similar leadership qualities of:<\/p>\n personality, empathy, motivation, organisation, imagination, innovation, risk management, endurance, strategic vision, tactical nous and flair for alliance diplomacy.<\/p>\n Such a unique and comprehensive set of skills signals a very short list of candidates, with none of them matching the Duke\u2019s claim to them all.<\/p>\n Wellington and Alanbrooke<\/strong><\/p>\n Note my qualification of commanders in the field.\u00a0 Unfairly, this discounts Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1941-46, a truly outstanding chief of staff who, to appease the Americans, was forced to forego appointment as Supreme Commander for \u2018Overlord\u2019 in favour of Eisenhower.\u00a0 Like Wellington \u2013 and a number of generals in both world wars, including Montgomery \u2013 Alan Brooke was born into the Anglo-Irish \u2018Ascendancy\u2019.\u00a0 His masterly control of II [Second] Corps\u2019 retreat to Dunkirk in May-June 1940 has echoes of Wellington\u2019s retreat from Burgos to Cuidad Rodrigo in the autumn of 1812.<\/p>\n The Duke would have thoroughly approved, in contrast to an earlier II Corps\u2019 far more costly retreat from Mons to the Marne in August-September 1914 \u2013 Wellington would have condemned the losses sustained at Le Cateau while recognising and applauding the BEF riflemen\u2019s sharp-shooting skills.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure experts on Waterloo would want me at this point to note the presence of an even earlier Second Corps, commanded by Lord Hill, on 18 June 1815.<\/p>\n Incidentally, staff officers of the BEF did find time on 25 October 1915 to commemorate with their French counterparts the five hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt.\u00a0 I\u2019m grateful to my colleague Anne Curry for pointing this out.\u00a0 The village of Azincourt was roughly halfway between the Channel and Loos, where the failure of the recent offensive necessitated a symbolic reaffirmation of the entente cordiale<\/em>.\u00a0 The Allies\u2019 absence from the plains of Waterloo had of course prevented a similar centennial ceremony of reconciliation the previous June.<\/p>\n Alan Brooke was a \u2018Gunner\u2019 and in the Great War too busy planning creeping barrages to take part in affirmations of la grande alliance<\/em>, but as a bilingual product of the French education system he was uniquely qualified to celebrate the metamorphosis of historic adversaries into resolute allies.<\/p>\n Wellington and Montgomery<\/strong><\/p>\n However outstanding Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke undoubtedly was, our exercise demands we look to frontline generals.\u00a0 Bernard Montgomery, a brilliant self-publicist, clearly established himself in the popular consciousness as Britain\u2019s most successful general in the Second World War.\u00a0 From El Alamein in the autumn of 1942 through to his death in 1976 he enjoyed a unique level of popular recognition, and doubtless there are many who would maintain his claim to be the nation\u2019s greatest general since Wellington \u2013 he certainly thought so!<\/p>\n Yet even prior to his death Montgomery\u2019s decision-making in NW Europe, from \u2018Operation Goodwood\u2019 to \u2018Operation Market Garden\u2019, was subject to rigorous reappraisal, with often highly critical conclusions.\u00a0 Has Wellington\u2019s Peninsular campaign been subject to the same level of critique?\u00a0 I suspect not.\u00a0 Wellington wasn\u2019t short of self-confidence, but he couldn\u2019t boast an ego as big as Montgomery\u2019s (or indeed Mountbatten\u2019s), and crucially he displayed an aptitude for alliance diplomacy which the commander of 21st<\/sup> Army Group demonstrably lacked.\u00a0 In this respect the Duke\u2019s political skills draw comparison with Alanbrooke\u2019s \u2013 however contemptuous of your allies you take a deep breath and smile (and that night vent your feelings on paper).<\/p>\n In Brussels, Montgomery\u2019s Intelligence Chief used the example of Wellington to warn his boss off pontificating on the postwar world at a time when the war was far from won:<\/p>\n \u2018\u2026the fact that the Duke of Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo, just down the road, didn\u2019t stop his windows being stoned when he turned politician.\u2019<\/p>\n Monty took on board Brigadier Williams\u2019 timely words. [H, 122-3] He also went off to tour the battlefield, drawing on the experience in December 1944: during the Ardennes counter-offensive he sent a delusional Brian Horrocks home on leave when the commander of XXX Corps wanted the Germans to advance as far west as Waterloo so that this time around they would find themselves on the losing side. [H, 232]<\/p>\n In Montgomery\u2019s A History of Warfare<\/em>, published in 1968, he attributed success in Spain largely to the endurance and fortitude of the ordinary British soldier, and victory at Waterloo to the negligence of an ailing Bonaparte ie not primarily to the quality of command.\u00a0 Montgomery labelled Wellington \u2018the best soldier Britain has produced for many a long day,\u2019 but only a sentence later unequivocally nominated Nelson as the architect of Napoleon\u2019s ultimate demise.<\/p>\n Of far greater interest to Montgomery was the Duke of Marlborough, his status as a military \u2018genius\u2019 not unconnected to the fact that the Field Marshal found parallels between his own experience on the battlefield and that of Churchill\u2019s illustrious ancestor.<\/p>\n Wellington and Slim<\/strong><\/p>\n To his credit, in A History of Warfare <\/em>Montgomery was generous in his praise of Field Marshal Lord Slim, highlighting more than once \u2018Bill\u2019 Slim\u2019s tactical brilliance in recovering Burma from the Japanese.<\/p>\n If any general of the Second World War can lay claim to Wellington\u2019s mantle is it \u2018Uncle Bill\u2019, who from 1943 forged the 14th<\/sup> Army \u2013 the \u2018Forgotten Army\u2019 \u2013 into a formidable fighting force?<\/p>\n Of the 13 divisions that comprised the 14th<\/sup> Army, 8 were Indian, 2 were British, and 3 African (with a similar ratio for autonomous British and Indian brigades).<\/p>\n Consider Wellington\u2019s composite army at the Battle of Assaye, which the Duke more than once spoke of as his greatest victory \u2013 on 23 September 1803 he commanded just three British regiments.\u00a0 However, the complementary forces of the East India Company were overwhelmingly indigenous.<\/p>\n The then Major-General Wellesley: –<\/p>\n trusted and respected his Indian troops;<\/p>\n made shrewd appointments of commanders in the field;<\/p>\n laid out clear objectives to both officers and men;<\/p>\n focused on the well-being of his forces on and off the battlefield;<\/p>\n valued high quality intelligence;<\/p>\n and made himself visible on the frontline.<\/p>\n Here were the foundational principles on which he fought the Peninsular War, and<\/em> on which Slim led his men \u2013 and women \u2013 from Bengal to Rangoon.\u00a0 A further parallel is both generals\u2019 reliance on irregular forces, whether Spanish guerillas or Chindits and Burmese nationalists.\u00a0 Also, like Wellington and unlike Montgomery, Slim could serve as a team player if necessary \u2013 as in his partnership with Mountbatten, C-in-C South-East Asia Command.<\/p>\n Wellington and Allenby<\/strong><\/p>\n In the First World War \u2013 unlike the Crimea or even the Boer War \u2013 Wellington was rarely seen as a guide for generals on the Western Front; if he could serve as a role model then it was in logistical operations and the maintenance of morale behind the lines.<\/p>\n How the Duke would have raged at the appalling consequences of poor leadership on the Dardanelles, albeit exempting colonial commanders like Birdwood and Monash; and yet how he would have loved to command the Allied offensive of 1917-18 designed to destroy Turkish power in the Levant and the Arabian peninsula.<\/p>\n Here again was a multi-national force, with extended lines of communication and supply stretching from the Suez Canal to the Beqaa Valley, and<\/em> a commitment to reconciling speed and mobility with the deployment of maximum force.\u00a0 Palestine was the last great cavalry campaign, but for gunners and infantry a further manifestation of \u2018industrial war\u2019 utilising all necessary components to secure absolute victory.<\/p>\n Overseeing this grand assault on Ottoman hegemony was the future Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, a cavalryman whose prewar CV Wellington would have found not that dissimilar to his own.\u00a0 Like the Duke in the Peninsula, and Bill Slim in Burma, Edmund Allenby placed a premium on maintaining the morale and physical well-being of troops a long way from home and fighting in a hostile and alien environment.\u00a0 Allenby was notoriously short-tempered, but the political acuity he demonstrated in Palestine, let alone his obvious capacity for supreme command, would surely have earned him Wellington\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n By now it\u2019s clear that, even if Wellington lacked the same mythical status across the Army that Nelson enjoyed within the Royal Navy, he nevertheless was an ever-present within service life \u2013 not least for regular officers and other ranks keenly aware of regimental history and tradition.\u00a0 His name, like that of the battle for which he is best known, was a recognised part of wartime Britain; even if for much of the time civilians scarcely registered the Duke\u2019s long shadow.\u00a0 His name and image also of course had an imperial presence, which Miles Taylor explored in an earlier Wellington Lecture.\u00a0 No previous general, including Cromwell and Marlborough, had experienced the same intensity of memorialisation as Wellington, and the only postwar equivalent is Mountbatten \u2013 like Nelson a sailor.<\/p>\n While generals like Bill Slim or Edmund Allenby would only look to Wellington as a point of historical reference, it\u2019s hard to believe Montgomery did not on occasion look for comparisons with the Duke \u2013 even if, as already noted, after the war it was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough whose campaigns he saw parallels with.<\/p>\n Unlike the First, the Second World War lends itself to imagining a modern Arthur Wellesley forging his reputation as a great commander:<\/p>\n earning his spurs in France, with plaudits for getting his division to Dunkirk intact;<\/p>\n proving a worthy foe for Rommel in North Africa;<\/p>\n and partnering the Americans in the great invasion of continental Europe and the long road to the Luneburg Heath.<\/p>\n No wonder Monty drew parallels, even if he and Wellington bore the burden of command very differently \u2013 as already suggested, the Duke\u2019s dealings with the Americans and the other Allied commanders would have displayed a good deal more patience and political nous.\u00a0 Wellington\u2019s relations with Alanbrooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff might have been more testy, as the CIGS would not have been as protective as he was towards Monty.<\/p>\n In Downing Street from July 1945 it\u2019s hard to imagine veteran company commander Major Attlee having much time for the hauteur of Sir Arthur (\u2018Dukedom?\u00a0 Out of the question!\u2019), but what about before July 1945?<\/p>\n Imagine the late night brandy-fuelled conversations of the Prime Minister and General Wellesley: the martial feats of Churchill\u2019s illustrious ancestor; the attractions of mutual female acquaintances; the hottest curry house in Calcutta; the finer points of polo; the soothing qualities of a good cigar; the hidden depths of the British working man and woman; the iniquities of socialism; the respective merits of Goya and Velasquez \u2013 the list would go on, and on.<\/p>\n We can only speculate on a fantasy marriage made in heaven.\u00a0 One thing we can be fairly sure of: at Churchill\u2019s darkest moments during the war, whether the surrender of France, the surrender of Tobruk or the surrender of Singapore, he surely drank deep the whisky and soda, inhaled hard on the Havana, and cried out, \u2018Where is my Wellington?\u2019.<\/p>\n There was no second Wellington, but in both the Second and the First World Wars the Duke\u2019s finest qualities could be found in a myriad of different combinations in a variety of service men and women, from the most elevated general to the humblest private.<\/p>\n Similarly, in both world wars there were British and colonial forces who Wellington would have taken pride in commanding, from the BEF in 1918 to the Eighth Army in 1943, from the ANZACs at Suvla Bay to 6th<\/sup> Airborne at the Pegasus Bridge.<\/p>\n Waterloo may have entered the national psyche, remembered if at all just once a year, but the leadership, courage and sacrifice displayed on 18 June 1815 was no less in evidence a century or more later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was privileged to deliver this year’s Wellington Lecture at the University of Southampton, and here’s the text of the lecture: Introduction Some time in the summer of 1945 Captain Alf Smith, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, staff officer 21st Army Group, Brussels HQ, spent a day south of the city sightseeing.\u00a0 He toured the battlefield at … <\/p>\n\n