Eric Dorman-Smith - World War II

World War II

In October 1940, Wavell asked him to look into the feasibility of taking the offensive against the Italian forces who had invaded Egypt from Libya. On delivery of his report, he was sent as an adviser to Major-General Richard O'Connor and the Western Desert Force. Dorman-Smith is credited by Correlli Barnett with planning Operation Compass and with the discovery of a gap in the Italian lines south of Sidi Barrani. He was then sent back to Haifa while the Western Desert Force carried out his daring plan with great success.

In January 1941, Wavell again asked him to report to O'Connor and assess the progress of the campaign in order to distill what could be learned from its success. He stayed with the army until, in early February, the Italian Tenth Army surrendered near Benghazi. O'Connor sent him back to Cairo to ask Wavell's permission to advance on Tripoli but, in the meantime, Churchill had instructed Wavell to send troops to the aid of Greece, thus effectively ending Operation Compass. "Chink" returned to Haifa on 13 February.

In April 1941, he was temporarily appointed Brigadier General Staff and watched from a distance while Rommel won back all the territory that O'Connor had gained and the Allied forces were pushed out of the Balkans and Greece. He personally conveyed several messages to General Freyberg who was preparing the defence of Crete. His temporary appointment ended at the end of May and he again returned to the Staff College in Haifa. When the news arrived that Wavell was going to be replaced by Auchinleck in July, Dorman-Smith probably thought that he stood a chance of getting a permanent role closer to the action but no job offer was made. By December, he had made up his mind to retire from the army. He had a meeting with Auchinleck and was appointed Liaison Officer for Persia and Iraq. Although he realised that was a meaningless sinecure, he stayed on. In February 1942, Auchinleck sent him to assess the condition of the Eighth Army under Ritchie. His conclusion, which was shared by everyone he consulted, was that Ritchie should be replaced but Auchinleck took no action. After a few more unproductive months in which he again offered his resignation - which Auchinleck tore up - and he worked on a proposal for a Higher Command School with Smuts, he was offered, on 8 May, a choice of major-general positions: an unspecified role under Wavell in India or Deputy Chief of the General Staff in Cairo. "Chink" accepted the latter.

Until 6 August 1942, when he was sacked, Dorman-Smith, a full colonel but holding the acting rank of major-general, served as chief of staff to Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief Middle East and later Field-Marshal. Auchinleck took over personal command of the Eighth Army on 24 June after the failure of Neil Ritchie to provide effective resistance to Rommel's forces and took Dorman-Smith along to act as his staff officer. Dorman-Smith's innovative use of intelligence derived from Ultra decrypts led them to formulate tactics based on systematic attacks on the weakpoints of the German forces, notably the Italian formations, which proved very successful in slowing down and finally disrupting the German advance. However, the stream of bad news from this war zone in the weeks prior to Auchinleck's assumption of personal command had led to a crisis of confidence in Whitehall. Churchill and Alan Brooke visited Cairo in August 1942 to take stock of the situation for themselves. They were not impressed by Auchinleck's poor grasp of public relations work and decided that a change of command was required. In addition, Brooke had spoken to his former protégé Ritchie and various other senior officers whom he knew personally from his days with the horse artillery and had come to the conclusion that Dorman-Smith was a poor advisor to Auchinleck: "I was beginning to be suspicious that "Chink Dorman-Smith, one of his staff officers, was beginning to exercise far too much influence on him (Auchinleck). Dorman-Smith had a most fertile brain, continually producing new ideas, some of which (not many) were good and the rest useless". This diary entry was written in January 1942, however, at a time when Dorman-Smith had little access to Auchinleck and had spent more time in Haifa than in Cairo. Clearly, he had upset a number of people with access to Brooke's ear. Brooke himself was not amongst his admirers and there seems to have been a build-up of antipathy until he was finally dismissed.

Dorman-Smith never held any important military positions after this date. He reverted to the rank of brigadier on 11 September 1942 and shortly after was appointed to command the Welsh 160th Brigade in Kent, preparing for the invasion of France. Another unfortunate meeting took place on 20 November, when Churchill paid a visit to the Division and invited "Chink" to the official lunch party. Dorman-Smith got into an argument with Churchill and gave him a patronising lecture on military tactics. In May 1943, a try-out for the invasion of France, Exercise Spartan, took place and although his brigade performed well, there was no official recognition. To compound his misfortune, on 11 November 1943, he learned that his new corps commander was going to be Neil Ritchie. He wrote to his divisional commander requesting that he be moved to a new post and on 21 November he was ordered to vacate his command and stay on leave of absence until further notice, although his divisional commander made it clear that this was in no way a reflection on his efficiency. On 30 March 1944, he learned that he was to be given a brigade to command in Italy. He was sacked again after it was alleged that his battalion commanders complained about his leadership. His divisional superior declared him "unfit for brigade command".

The circumstances behind his demotion are controversial. He was in command of three battalions. James Hackett wrote in 1984 that he was summoned by the divisional commander to give his opinion of his superior officer, a procedure that annoyed and offended him. He, therefore is unlikely to have complained about Dorman-Smith. Neither of the other two officers left accounts of the episode. The only evidence rests on the report of the divisional commander which is tainted by inaccuracies in that at least one of the three officers did not lay a complaint. The truth is that the divisional commander Penney seems to have borne a grudge against Dorman-Smith that might have dated from their time together at the Staff College in 1928. Greacen's biography includes a summary of the differences between the three accounts of this episode made by Penney on various occasions.