This is not the first joint biography of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel, arguably the three outstanding battlefield commanders of World War II. Terry Brighton led the way in 2009 with his acclaimed study Masters of Battle: Montgomery, Patton, and Rommel at war, and three years later came Peter Caddick-Adams’ only slightly less ambitious Monty and Rommel: parallel lives. In Lloyd Clark, the trio have found an able new chronicler.
As the author of several outstanding campaign studies, including Blitzkrieg, Anzio, and Arnhem, Clark is well-qualified for the task. The Commanders draws on an impressive range of archival and secondary sources, supplemented by unpublished papers and interviews. The narrative zips along, giving enough of the wider context to make his subjects’ careers intelligible. Clark has a gift for memorable phrases. Confronting the ‘Bonus Army’ protestors in Depression-era Washington DC, for example, Major Patton’s force had ‘taken up its position without fanfare like a cartridge slipped effortlessly into a shotgun chamber’.
Small details are used economically to elucidate character. In the invasion of France in 1940, we see the inexhaustible Rommel hurrying everywhere to issue orders, or up to his waist in water helping his engineers with a river crossing, but also finding time to ask his wife to collect news cuttings about his exploits.
