Oliver Leese - World War II

World War II

Leese returned to the UK from India in March 1940. It had been planned for him to command a brigade in Norway but with the German invasion of Western Europe in May, he was sent to join Lord Gort's headquarters as Deputy Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary Force. He evacuated from Dunkirk with Gort on 31 May

On his return to the UK Leese was ordered to form and train a large brigade group, 29th Infantry Brigade. In December 1940 he was appointed acting major-general and given command of the West Sussex County Division which included 29th Brigade. A month later he was moved to command of the 15th (Scottish) Division. His rank was upgraded to temporary major-general in November and was made substantive in December. In June 1941 he was given command of the Guards Armoured Division during its formation and training.

In September 1942 he was sent at the request of Eighth Army commander Bernard Montgomery to North Africa to assume command, as an acting lieutenant-general, of the Eighth Army's XXX Corps. Montgomery had formed a good opinion of Leese when he had instructed him at Staff College in 1927 and 1928 and had also been impressed by his work at GHQ in France.

Leese commanded the Corps for the rest of the campaign which ended with the Axis surrender in May 1943 in Tunisia. He was mentioned in despatches for his services in North Africa.

The Corps then took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 before returning to the UK after the Sicily campaign, which ended in August, to prepare for the planned invasion of Northwest Europe. Leese was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general in September.

On 24 December 1943, however, Leese received a telegram ordering him to Italy to succeed Montgomery as Eighth Army commander as Montgomery was to return to the UK in January 1944 to prepare for the Allied invasion of Normandy. Leese commanded the Eighth Army at the fourth and final Battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944 (when the bulk of the army was switched in secret from the Adriatic coast to Cassino to strike a joint blow with the United States Fifth Army) and for Operation Olive on the Gothic Line later in 1944. His rank of lieutenant-general was made permanent in July 1944.

In September 1944 he was appointed to succeed George Giffard as the Commander-in-Chief of Eleventh Army Group and assumed command in November, by which time the Army Group had been renamed Allied Land Forces, South-East Asia. He viewed the existing command structure as inefficient and proceeded to appoint former members of his Eighth Army staff. The methods of the two staffs differed and the newcomers were resented. As Slim expressed it in his memoirs, "His staff, which he brought with him... had a good deal of desert sand in its shoes, and was rather inclined to thrust Eighth Army down our throats."

Leese's command covered three separate groups: the Northern Combat Area Command under US Lieutenant General Dan Sultan, Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant-General William ("Bill") Slim in central Burma and finally, further south in the Arakan, Indian XV Corps under Lieutenant-General Philip Christison. Through the year-end he fought a successful campaign which led to the capture of Rangoon by an amphibious landing (Operation Dracula) in early May 1945.

Slim had turned Fourteenth Army into an effective military force and had commanded a highly successful campaign from the relief of Imphal to the recapture of Rangoon including the destruction of the Japanese forces in Burma. However, Leese believed that Slim was very tired (he had asked for leave once Rangoon had been taken) and proposed to the Supreme Commander South East Asia, Louis Mountbatten and the CIGS, Alan Brooke, that he should be replaced by Philip Christison (who had amphibious experience and so would be well suited to leading the army in the planned seaborne landings in Malaya), leaving Slim to take over the new Twelfth Army with the less demanding task of mopping up in Burma. Leese misread the reactions of Brooke and Mountbatten and having then met Slim to discuss the proposals came away believing Slim had agreed to them. In fact, Slim reacted by telling his staff he had been sacked and wrote to Leese and Claude Auchinleck, the C-in-C India, to say he would refuse the new post and resign from the army in protest. Once the news circulated within the Fourteenth Army, mutinies and mass resignations of officers were threatened.

Leese was obliged to reinstate Slim when the Supreme Commander South East Asia Louis Mountbatten, although he had authorised the original proposals, now refused to support him. Mountbatten subsequently approached Alan Brooke (who had always doubted Leese's suitability for the role) and they agreed that Leese should be removed. He was succeeded by Slim.

Leese had achieved success with the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy, so he did not lack ability. Where he was deficient, in his post in South-East Asia, was in his knowledge of the intricacies of the local command environment and its personalities and in his ability to mould the existing staff into a different style of leadership and administration whilst reconciling antagonistic staffs into a unified organisation.