FH115 Final.qxd - Winston Churchill

Freeman, continued
ertheless, this is a well-researched biography
and a crackling good read.
Like the prime minister he ably
served, Pound was American on his
mother’s side. Elizabeth Pickman
Rogers came, appropriately, from an
old Massachusetts seafaring family, but
seems to have been a much more impossible
woman than Jennie Jerome.
Ultimately, she proved too much for
her husband, Alfred Pound, who preferred
the quiet life of a country solicitor.
Mrs. Pound’s kleptomania and excessive
borrowing destroyed her marriage
and poisoned her own image in
the memory of her son. Her profligacy
also meant that Dudley would
throughout his life be wholly dependent
on his navy pay for an income
which itself was subject to the vicissitudes
of the tight budgets of the interwar
years. After his retirement Admiral
of the Fleet Pound declined Churchill’s
offer of a peerage in the belief that his
family could not support such a position
financially.
While he may not have recalled
his mother with fondness, Dudley
Pound inherited from her the same
strong-willed determination that
Churchill, Harold Macmillan and the
now late Lord Hailsham all recognized
and remarked upon in their own
American mothers. Like those statesmen,
Pound enjoyed something of a
mercurial life.
Born on 29 August 1877, Dudley
Pound began his naval career at age
thirteen and followed the conventional
path of the pre-1914 Royal Navy. He
excelled on exams, usually coming first
and marking himself out as a young officer
of promise by the time he received
his commission. During the late Victorian
and Edwardian periods, he proceeded
rapidly up the ranks.
In the first month of the Great
War, Pound demonstrated his farsightedness
by stressing the need for aircraft
to work with the navy in anti-submarine
warfare. Soon afterwards, he made
Captain and was appointed naval assistant
to the First Sea Lord, the inimitable
Jacky Fisher. Thus Pound became
an eye-witness to the ultimately
combustible chemistry between Fisher
and the First Lord, Churchill. From
that experience, the future First Sea
Lord took away what proved in time to
be valuable lessons, both on the proper
relationship between the professional
and political heads of the navy, and on
how to handle Churchill.
By 1916 Pound had taken up his
first command, the battleship HMS
Colossus. Attached to the Grand Fleet,
Colossus led the 5th Division at Jutland,
where she engaged in two sharp
encounters: the sinking of the German
cruiser Wiesbaden and the destroyer
V48; and a severe shelling which took
the arm of the range taker who was
standing next to Pound on the bridge.
Nevertheless, Pound brought Colossus
safely home to Scapa Flow, having distinguished
himself in the one great surface
naval battle of the war.
Between the wars Pound served as
chief of staff in the Mediterranean to
the flamboyant Admiral Sir Roger
Keyes, learning lessons in how not to
behave in high command. After a stint
as Second Sea Lord, Pound was given
command of the Mediterranean Fleet,
then the Royal Navy’s premier at-sea
command. From this posting he hoped
directly to retire, but a rash of serious
illnesses among Britain’s top admirals
of the day left little option but for him
to become First Sea Lord on the eve of
war in July 1939—the best possible
man still available.
Brodhurst believes that it must
have been Pound who ordered the famous
signal to the fleet “Winston is
Back!” but interestingly notes that the
message was intended to be a warning
as much as a report. Still, Pound had
long ago learned just how to handle his
new political superior. “Never say a direct
‘No’ to Churchill at a meeting,”
the First Sea Lord would advise his
deputy in 1941. “You can argue against
it, and as long as you don’t exaggerate
your case the PM will always let you
have your say.”
Like his chief-of-staff colleague
Sir Alan Brooke, Pound understood
the best way to dissuade Churchill was
to present a thoroughly researched,
well-reasoned explanation of the disadvantages
inherent to an ill-conceived
plan. Exasperating as such exercises
may have been for the military commanders,
they testified to a leader with
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creativity, always willing to investigate
every conceivable plan of attack. Pound
appreciated this quality in a man and
regarded inaction as the greatest failing
that his naval commanders could exhibit.
More than one captain got
sacked by Pound for excess caution.
Brodhurst faults Pound for tolerating
more interference in operational
matters from Churchill than should
have been allowed. But the author also
admits that Pound recognized the importance
of civilian authority taking
precedence over that of the professional
military in any democracy. Thus, the
First Sea Lord went along with the dispatch
of the ill-fated Force Z to the Far
East in December 1941 which resulted
in the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse
as well as Pound’s very dear friend
Admiral Tom Phillips.
For the same reason—the politics
of the war dictated it—Pound bowed
to the need to send the equally ill-fated
convoy PQ 17 around the Scandinavian
peninsula to Archangel in the
summer of 1942, taking personal responsibility
for the decision to order
the convoy’s dispersal when he could
not rule out the possibility that Tirpitz
might have been in the vicinity.
The First Sea Lord did not believe
such a difficult decision should be
shouldered by anyone of lesser rank.
While he may be criticized for being
too conservative on that occasion,
Pound could not realistically risk any
of his ships at a time when the war had
reduced the Royal Navy to such an
alarming level that even Churchill
showed signs of acute anxiety, as the
Prime Minister admitted in his memoirs.
PQ 17 lost twenty-three ships to
German attack, but the all-important
naval escorts escaped unscathed. The
irony was that Pound had opposed