Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell

"Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm…. The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battle-field. We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the Infantry."

"The beginnings of any war by the British ('still as Saxon slow at starting, still as weirdly wont to win' [The Old Way - Adm Ronald Hopwood]) are always marked by improvidence, improvisations, and too often, alas, by impossibilities being asked of the troops."

"I can only say that I have always believed in doing everything possible in war to mystify and mislead one’s opponent…."

"No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one."

"A bold general may be lucky, but no general can be lucky unless he is bold. The general who allows himself to be bound and hampered by regulations is unlikely to win a battle."

"It is in peace that regulations and routine become important and that the qualities of boldness and originality are cramped."

"Yet the British soldier himself is one of the world’s greatest humorists. That unhumorous race, the Germans, held an investigation after the late War into the causes of moral, and attributed much of the British soldier’s staying power to his sense of humour. They therefore decided to instil this sense into their own soldiers, and included in their manuals an order to cultivate it. They gave as an illustration in the manual one of Bairnsfather’s pictures of “Old Bill” sitting in a building with an enormous shell-hole in the wall. A new chum asks: “What made that hole?” “Mice,” replies “Old Bill.” In the German manual a solemn footnote of explanation is added: “It was not mice, it was a shell.”"

"A general may succeed for some time in persuading his superiors that he is a good commander: he will never persuade his army that he is a good commander unless he has the real qualities of one."

"The higher commander who goes to Field Service Regulations for tactical guidance inspires about as much confidence as the doctor who turns to a medical dictionary for his diagnosis."

"The British have been a free people and are still a comparatively free people; and though we are not, thank Heaven, a military nation, this tradition of freedom gives to our junior leaders in war a priceless gift of initiative. So long as this initiative is not cramped by too many regulations, by too much formalism, we shall, I trust, continue to win our battles – sometimes in spite of our higher commanders."

"All his life Wavell had been not only a student of the art of modern war, but a student of the art of war throughout the ages. He had used various ruses both on the strategic and tactical planes to deceive the Italians in the Abyssinian War, and he was convinced that the study and application of this art were essential elements in the duties of a commander’s planning staff. But he went further, he knew and foresaw, that the Second World War would be a world war in all its implications, controlled centrally by the two great antagonists, the Axis and the Allies. Every operation in every part of the world, however distant, and however disparate the conditions, would have its effect on every other operation. Therefore he argued that if it were possible to deceive the enemy in one theatre, that deception, especially on the strategic plane, could not be effective and might even be dangerous if its effects on operations in other theatres were not controlled."

"Behind an inarticulate and ruggedly orthodox exterior Wavell concealed one of the most fertile minds ever possessed by a British senior officer."