Foreword

THIS BOOK does not owe its inception to any personal inclination to authorship, or to any wish to achieve further publicity. I write it because of many suggestions that such a book of memoirs is needed. I aim to give to future generations the impressions I have gained in a life that has been full of interest, and to define the principles under which I have considered it my duty to think and act.

Every word of the book was written in the first instance in pencil in my own handwriting. That being done, and the chapters typed in turn, they were read by three trusted friends whose opinions I value. The chapters were re-drafted by me in the light of their comments and suggestions. Finally, the complete book was read through by the same three, for balance and accuracy.

Chief among the three was Brigadier E. T. Williams, Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford---frequently referred to in the book as Bill Williams. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for the time he gave to reading and comment.

Next was Sir James Grigg, also referred to in the book. His comments and suggestions were invaluable. And last was Sir Arthur Bryant; this great historian gave much of his time to reading the chapters.

To these three I extend my grateful thanks.

I am grateful to those who typed the chapters and helped in organising the maps and photographs. Again, I extend my gratitude for permission to publish extracts from letters and books, and I apologise in any case where such permission has been overlooked.

I recognise---by the quotation which is at the beginning of this book---that I have often been a controversial figure. But my thoughts, actions, mistakes have been but human. Throughout my life and conduct my criterion has been not the approval of others nor of the world; it has been my inward convictions, my duty and my conscience. I have never been afraid to say what I believed to be right and to stand firm in that belief. This has often got me into trouble. I have not attempted to answer my critics but rather to tell the story of my long and enjoyable military life as I see it, and as simply as possible. Some of my comrades-in-arms of the Second World War have told their story about those days; this is mine.

I have tried to explain what seems to me important and to confine the story to matters about which my knowledge is first-hand. Whatever the book may lack in literary style, it will therefore have, it is my hope, the merit of truth.

F.M.

Isington Mill,
Alton, Hampshire
September 1958

Since the first publication of this book, the author, in a broadcast in the B.B.C. Home Service on Thursday, 20th November 1958, stated that he was grateful to General (now Field-Marshal) Sir Claude Auchinleck and the Eighth Army under his command for stabilising the British front on the Alamein position, thereby enabling the author to conduct his successful offensive, known to the world as the Battle of Alamein, in October 1942.

The publishers think that readers of this book, who neither heard the broadcast nor read the accounts of it in the press, might reasonably assume that, immediately before the author assumed command of the Eighth Army, General Auchinleck was preparing to withdraw into the Nile Delta, or even beyond, in the event of a determined attack by the enemy. They wish it to be known that a number of other writers, and notably General Alexander (now Field-Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis) in a Despatch published as a Supplement to the London Gazette of 3rd February 1948, make it clear that after General Auchinleck, commanding the Eighth Army, had successfully halted the enemy's attack in July 1942, it was his intention to launch an offensive from the Alamein position when his army was rested and had been regrouped.

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