Oliver Leese

The Second World War began for Leese still in India as the Chief Instructor at the Staff College, Quetta. The course there, usually lasting two years during peacetime, had been reduced to a single year but plans were made for it to be reduced to five months in order to enable more staff officers to be produced in the rapidly expanding British and Indian armies. Despite this, and the fact that Leese was selected as a possible Commandant of the college, he was anxious to return to Europe where the fighting was sure to be.[26] His wish was granted in March 1940 and he returned to England at the end of that month.[26]

Shortly after his arrival, he assumed command of the hastily-raised 20th Independent Infantry Brigade (Guards), which was to participate in the ultimately doomed Norwegian campaign but this did not happen. Instead, with the German Army's invasion of Western Europe which began on 10 May, Leese received a signal ordering him to report to General Lord Gort, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), then serving in France, where he was to be Lieutenant-General Henry Pownall's Deputy Chief of Staff. Leese arrived at the BEF's General Headquarters (GHQ), then at Arras, on the evening of the German assault.[26] On 11 May he was promoted to the acting rank of major-general, after having been promoted to the acting rank of brigadier just nine days earlier.[27] Four days after his arrival, he set up an Advanced Headquarters at Renaix in order to be closer to the BEF, now stationed on the Dyle Line, but in the following days and the BEF began retreating to a series of river lines, Gort's GHQ was moved to Wahagnies.[26]

By 18 May, with the situation becoming worse by the day, Leese prepared an emergency plan for the BEF to retreat to Dunkirk, although it was politically impossible to go through with the plan at that time. Two days later, on 20 May, the BEF's headquarters (HQ) staff had by now been split in two to manage the battles which were now unfolding.[26] Robert Bridgeman commanded one half of the staff, while Philip Gregson-Ellis commanded the other half. Both men were well known to Leese, having been at school, and then later at the Staff College, Camberley, with him. Events moved rapidly and GHQ relocated several times, eventually arriving at Last Panne, Belgium, within the Dunkirk perimeter, on 26 May. Over the next few days, the staff worked frantically to oversee the withdrawal and evacuation of the BEF back to the United Kingdom, following mostly the same plan which Leese himself drawn up only a few days beforehand. He himself was evacuated from Dunkirk on 31 May.[26] Throughout the campaign, Leese was "a model of cool, unruffled fortitude during the retreat to Dunkirk" and who, possibly, "more than anyone, imposed some order on the BEF's withdrawal and evacuation", he was also "a tall, commanding figure" who "usually boomed with confidence."[28]

A few weeks after his return to the United Kingdom, and after relinquishing his acting rank of major-general,[27] Leese was ordered to form and train a large brigade group, the 29th Infantry Brigade, composed of four, instead of the usual three, battalions of the Regular Army just back from India, along with various supporting units such as artillery and engineers, all of which needed a considerable amount of training in methods of modern warfare, which occurred over the next few months.[26] On 30 December 1940 he was again promoted to the acting rank of major-general[29][27] and given command of the West Sussex County Division, which included his recently departed 29th Brigade, now commanded by Brigadier John Grover.[26] A month later he was moved to become General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division, then stationed in East Anglia.[26] He retained command of the division, a Territorial Army (TA) formation created only in late 1939, until mid-June when his good friend and fellow Staff College student, Philip Christison, arrived to assume command in Leese's place.

At that same time, he was selected to become GOC of the newly created Guards Armoured Division during its formation and training. "A forceful personality, Leese proved extremely energetic in getting what he wanted from the War Office and then drove his men hard to create a thoroughly well organised division within a relatively short time".[30] His rank was upgraded to temporary major-general in November[31] and was made substantive in December.[32]

Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery pictured in North Africa sometime in late 1942 with his three corps commanders, from left to right: Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, GOC XXX Corps, Lieutenant-General Herbert Lumsden, GOC X Corps, Lieutenant-General Montgomery, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, GOC XIII Corps

In September 1942 Leese received new and unexpected orders and was sent to Egypt at the request of Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, the newly appointed commander of the British Eighth Army in the Western Desert. Leese left the United Kingdom on 12 September and arrived in the Egyptian capital of Cairo two days later, and he assumed command, as an acting lieutenant general,[33] of the Eighth Army's XXX Corps in place of William Ramsden.[30] Montgomery had formed a high opinion of Leese when he had been one of his instructors at the Staff College in the late 1920s. This opinion had been strengthened by Leese's work at the BEF GHQ in France over two years before.[30] By the time Leese had arrived, the Battle of Alam el Halfa had already been fought and Montgomery was already planning on an offensive to knock the Axis forces out of North Africa. In this battle, the new commander of XXX Corps was to play a major role.[30]

The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, with military leaders during his visit to Tripoli, February 1943. The group includes: Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, General Sir Harold Alexander, General Sir Alan Brooke and General Sir Bernard Montgomery.

Leese commanded XXX Corps for the rest of the campaign which ended with the final Axis surrender of well over 200,000 prisoners being taken in May 1943 in Tunisia. He was mentioned in despatches for his services in North Africa.[34] XXX Corps then took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July−August 1943 before, after almost a year of non-stop campaigning, returning to the United Kingdom after the Sicily campaign to prepare for the planned Allied invasion of Northwest Europe, scheduled for the spring of 1944.[35] A year after being promoted to the acting rank of lieutenant-general, his rank was made temporary lieutenant-general in September.[36][37]

Leese receiving his knighthood in the field from King George VI on 26 July 1944.

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 United Kingdom in January 1944 to prepare for the Allied invasion of Normandy.[35] By the time of Leese's arrival, he discovered that the Eighth Army had reached its first enforced halt since El Alamein the previous year and was, together with the U.S. Fifth Army (both of which together formed the 15th Army Group, later renamed the Allied Armies in Italy), bogged down in front of the Winter Line (also known as the Gustav Line). The 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division attempted to take the Italian village of Arielli soon after Leese's arrival, in mid-January 1944, but this was a failure and only resulted in casualties which could ill be afforded. Leese's new command was to remain static until May but it also gave him the opportunity to get to know the men and units under his control.[35]

General Sir Harold Alexander (right), with Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese and Lieutenant-General Sir John Harding, inspect one of the German Panther tank turrets which formed part of the Gothic Line defences, September 1944.

Leese commanded the Eighth Army at the fourth and final battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944 (when the bulk of the Eighth Army was switched in secret from the Adriatic coast to Cassino to strike a joint blow with the Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, who Leese disliked working alongside) and for Operation Olive on the Gothic Line later in 1944.[38] His rank of lieutenant-general was made permanent in July 1944.[39]

In September 1944 he was appointed to succeed George Giffard as the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of Eleventh Army Group and assumed command in November, by which time the Army Group had been renamed Allied Land Forces, South-East Asia (ALFSEA).[38] Leese was replaced as commander of the British Eighth Army by Lieutenant-General Sir Richard McCreery. Leese viewed the existing command structure in South-East Asia 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."[40] Leese commanded three groups: the Northern Combat Area Command under his American subordinate, Lieutenant General Dan Sultan, the Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant-General Sir William Slim in central Burma and further south in the Arakan, Indian XV Corps under Lieutenant-General Philip Christison, his Staff College classmate. Until the end of the year, he fought a successful campaign which led to the capture of Rangoon by an amphibious landing (Operation Dracula) in early May 1945.[41]

Major-General Thomas Rees, GOC 19th Indian Infantry Division, talking with Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese in Mandalay, 19 March 1945

Slim had turned the Fourteenth Army into an effective military force and had commanded a highly successful campaign from the relief of Imphal to the recapture of Rangoon and the destruction of the Japanese forces in Burma. 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 Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, that he should be replaced by Philip Christison, who had experience in amphibious warfare 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.[42] 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.[43] In fact, Slim reacted by telling his staff he had been sacked and wrote to Leese and General Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief India, to say he would refuse the new post and resign from the army in protest.[43] Once the news circulated within the Fourteenth Army, mutinies and mass resignations of officers were threatened. Leese was obliged to reinstate Slim when Mountbatten refused to support him, even though he had authorised the original proposals. 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.[43]