General Montgomery╒s new appointment is regarded by his soldiers here as an earnest that the new campaign will not be long delayed, that it will be the most important in the war, and that it will be consistently successful. It is regarded too by every man in the Eighth Army you speak to as a loss personal to himself.
Italy╒s Eighth Army is only to a very limited extent the Eighth Army of the Desert ╤ its 78th Division, and its Canadians, for instance, joined it only with the opening of the Sicilian campaign ╤ but every man in it has surrendered to Montgomery╒s quality of personal leadership and his infinite faith in his wisdom and generalship.
To realise that it is only necessary to drive along a road here behind the Army Commander╒s car and to see the cheeky, matey way that lorry-borne soldiers being driven the other way wave their hands to him and shout ╥Good owd Monty╙ or ╥Good luck, Monty.╙
It is not the way, perhaps, of other armies and other generals. Montgomery╒s obvious encouragement of the soldiers╒ friendliness and his obvious delight in its more informal manifestations, grates on the nerves of some, but it works ╤ and so does what seems to be Montgomery╒s main principle of generalship, which, contrary to the ideas of some observers, is extreme caution.
Every soldier in his army knows that he will not go into battle until a way has been made for him by air bombing and by artillery concentrations and until every possible supply has been brought to where it will be needed. Was it Wellington who once said that the secret of his success was ╥having an eye, an eye, ma╒am to the baggage train╙? If so ╤ one has no books here ╤ it is one lesson that Montgomery has learned from a general from whom in personal respects he is curiously dissimilar.
Montgomery will take over the British forces for the next invasion not only with a tradition of consistent success ╤ his name alone must be worth many men, ╤ but with a conception of his interdependency of ground and air forces that has been put into effect nowhere yet but in his campaigns. The Desert Air Forces and the Eighth Army are part of each other. With Britain as our air base for the next campaign, better equipped than any base we have had here, this welding of air and land power may yield astonishing results.
