Rostron Peter. The Military Life and Times of General Sir Miles Dempsey: Monty's Army Commander

Pen and Sword, 2010. — 224 p.When I was first asked to write about Miles Dempsey I knew very little of him. I had studied the Normandy Campaign at Staff College, and walked the course for the D-Day landings and Operation GOODWOOD. I had heard his name and had a hazy idea of his position in the hierarchy. In that respect, I suspect I shared my ignorance with the great majority of the British public. As I came to know him better, two things became apparent to me – the first, that little had ever been written either by or about him. This was largely due to his reticence, and to old-fashioned notions of loyalty and a dislike of self-aggrandisement. Second, I came to perceive that, in addition to these admirable traits, he possessed in abundance all the military virtues – leadership based on self-confidence, a shrewd tactical brain, calmness in a crisis, total disregard for danger, and a ‘big’ personality, able to make quick decisions and stick to them. I also realized that he had played an enormously important role in the great events that shaped the world in which we now live. That he had not received his fair share of plaudits was as much due to the desire on the part of others to seek glory as to his own reticence. No biography had ever been written, largely because of the lack of source material on which to base one. He ordered the majority of his papers to be burned, and produced nothing for the public domain. But, despite this dearth of material, what I did see induced in me huge respect, not least because of the calibre of those who passed favourable judgement on him. These ranged from major figures such as Montgomery, Mountbatten, Leese, Horrocks and de Guingand to Selwyn Lloyd, a wartime soldier who went on to great things in politics, and had no axe to grind on the military front.