The Chief Steps Down

THE SERVICES

Canada's first soldier stepped down last week. Lieut. General Andrew George Latta McNaughton, commander in chief of the Canadians overseas, resigned.

The reason 56-year-old Soldier-Scientist McNaughton gave was his own ill health. There was no doubt that tousle-haired General McNaughton was ailing and needed a rest. But in Ottawa McNaughton's resignation had been an off-again, on-again rumor for months, and for reasons that had nothing to do with health.

The Idea of Unity. One was that McNaughton, who had built up the first army structurally entitled to the name in Canadian history, had lost his fight to let Canadians go into battle as a full and separate army. Defense Minister J. L. Ralston, just back from overseas, announced last week that Canadians would fight on two fronts--in Italy, where they were reinforced to the strength of a corps, and in the invasion of Western Europe, where they will be something less than a full, tactical, all-Canadian Army.

Life with Monty. Another reason that might have prompted McNaughton's retirement was that he did not get on well with General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, who had just been named to command the British forces in the invasion of Western Europe. Back in 1941, when the Canadians first came under Monty's command in England, they called him: "God Almonty." In FORTUNE'S January issue Editor Charles J. V. Murphy tells this little-known story: "McNaughton and Montgomery worked well as generals but . . . sparks flew whenever their flinty wills clashed. The scientific man from Saskatchewan drew back from Montgomery's well-known arrogance, his maddening habit of lecturing other generals as if they were backward children.

"One of Montgomery's crotchets was to make his staff officers, even sedentary file keepers, take a five-mile run every Wednesday afternoon. Just to show their independence, the Canadians stayed at their desks." When McNaughton met Montgomery in Sicily last fall relations were not improved, but Andy got a little of his own back. He found his colleague occupying a large villa overlooking the Messina Strait, could not resist the rib, "Not going soft, Monty?"

The Easy Soldier. McNaughton's going was a blow to his men. He was enormously popular with the hell-for-leather Canadian rank & file. His rumpled grey hair, habitual stoop and tobacco-stained fingers made him conspicuously lacking in one virtue that drillmasters extol. But his men admired him for something more than a guardsman's back. When Andy McNaughton broke open a Sten gun, he was examining something he understood. No commanding general in any army knows as much as he does about weapons. No permanent successor to McNaughton had been named this week. Ruddy Engineer Lieut. General Kenneth Stuart, formerly chief of staff in Canada, took over temporarily. But he was assigned a new permanent post in Britain: chief of the Canadian staff overseas. At the same time headquarters announced what Canadians had long suspected: that McNaughton's principal collaborator, Lieut. General Henry Duncan Graham Crerar, 55, is now in command of the Canadian Corps in Italy. War Correspondent Ross Munro (Canadian Press) hinted he would not stay there, might soon be recalled to Britain to fill McNaughton's shoes.

Like McNaughton, a World War I gunner, strictly professional General Crerar is unlike his former chief in most other ways. He is neat, McNaughton is rumpled. He has the line soldier's devotion to drills, ceremonials and discipline; McNaughton thinks them a necessary evil. McNaughton generates ideas, Crerar has carried them out.

Unlike McNaughton, Crerar has got along well with the redoubtable Monty, with whom he has formed a fast friendship. With Monty already appointed to the command of Empire troops in the invasion, teamwork might be the most important thing of all.

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