General (later Field Marshall) Sir Claude Auchinleck (see the link for a comprehensive career outline) is one of the most interesting generals of the Second World War. Many of his devotees would claim he is one of the most under-rated. But he is an excellent example of why it is difficult to assume that just because a general is good at one level, he can also be good at another. In fact he is the classic example of a general who excelled at two widely separate levels of command, while failing miserably at the intermediate levels.
Auchinleck followed the classic route to high command of British generals. Military family; graduated into Indian Army just before the Great War; fought through the war in difficult and challenging roles; came out highly respected, held staff appointments and studied and later taught at Staff Colleges; received his first important independent command in the late thirties, etc. The main difference being that his Great War experience was in the wildly fluctuating campaigns in modern Iraq, with their vastly different highs and lows to anything experienced in trench warfare. He started and finished the war involved in mobile warfare, even if he fought trench campaigns in the middle.
In World War Two he had the unique distinction of being the only Indian Army officer called to England to command an entirely British corps. He led it in the brief campaign in Norway without having a chance to demonstrate much that was either good or bad in the way of his own abilities. He then commanded a corps, and later an entire ‘Command’ in Southern England during the Nazi invasion scare, before returning to India to become CIC.
