Who Dares Wins

On February 17th, 1937, Major-General A.P. – later Field-Marshal Earl – Wavell came down to his old school to talk. He was the best educated, though not the luckiest, commander on either side in the mid-twentieth-century world war that was already then hull up on the horizon, for he had been a scholar at Winchester. I was among those who heard his lecture, simply entitled ‘The Russian Army’.

His acquaintance with it went back to 1911; he had spent about eighteen months of his life on Russian soil, and among his many gifts was fluent Russian, then an unusual accomplishment for any Englishman. He had moreover been at the recent Red Army manoeuvres, and had watched there the impact of a small, well led body of parachutists on the command system of the opposite side. He had doubts about its tactical efficacy, but foresaw that more might be done with the method.