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Ian McGill's avatar

Excellent article Rob - so informative and yet so easy to read. Thanks!

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Dr Robert Lyman MBE's avatar

Thanks Ian!

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Nick Champion's avatar

Thank you Robert! Entertaining, illuminating and fascinating. Needs reading again I feel and I need to buy 'Generals' now - then read in conjunction with Al Murray's new book on leadership perhaps. I love the lessons you lay out for those that want them and I intend to circulate this to many within my organisation to inspire innovative and novel thinking linked back to the key tenets laid out here. What strikes me mostly is the balance between luck, innate and instinctive ability and being in the right place at the right time for the right job - oh and of course, the 'say do gap' like Stilwell! I personally warm to O'Connor and his stellar advance in the desert to capture so many Italians and nearly push them out - and then his unfortunate capture after Rommel's arrival - but then after escaping to go on to lead a Corps in Normandy and Market Garden.

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Dr Robert Lyman MBE's avatar

Thanks Nick. I agree with you about Dickie O'Conner. Yes, fascinating that Stilwell could write so eloquently about generalship and then fail to live up to his own standard.

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Nick Champion's avatar

I think that potentially Stilwell knew the theory but was not self-aware at all - driven by emotion, ego and status, plus being out in a position where he had to deal with people he despised innately. Never a good mix. MacArthur worse though in my view. Complete narcissist willing to walk up the piles of bodies of his own troops to gain status - well, re-gain status.

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Dr Robert Lyman MBE's avatar

I agree with David Rooney's argument that Stilwell saw his job to be the defence of US national interest. He did this spectacularly, but at the expense of wider Allied interests, for which he was poorly equipped.

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Nick Champion's avatar

Very interesting, thanks - and at the same time, ensure that the British couldn't reinstate a Colonial power again post-war? Same thing I suppose.

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Dr Robert Lyman MBE's avatar

Stilwell wasn't worried about this: he was more concerned about how China used the Lend Lease largesse the US provided, and how Chiang Kai-shek sublimated himself to American imperatives, rather than the other way round.

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Bob Cook's avatar

A great read indeed. I read 'somewhere' that soldiers of every nation like to see dead generals in war and don't really care whose side they were on.

Were the British the only ones to give their generals titles like 'Uncle' Bill Slim, 'Uncle' Frank Messervy, 'Daddy' Warren for example

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Dr Robert Lyman MBE's avatar

Thanks Bob: I’ve seen lots of other armies where soldiers give their generals nicknames, many of them ones that the generals in question aren’t happy with, like the over-large Major General ‘mud-guts’ Wootten of the 9th Division AIF.

Indeed, there’s a whole list of nicknames here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_figures_by_nickname

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