"Alanbrooke," wrote General MacArthur, "is undoubtedly the greatest
soldier that England has produced since Wellington." He fought with the
artillery in the First World War, had a brilliant career as a peacetime
soldier, and conducted his Corps with exemplary calm and courage in the
retreat to Dunkirk. In November 1941 Churchill selected him as Chief of
the Imperial General Staff, and from that moment he became indispensable
in Whitehall, the one man who could never be spared for the more
spectacular feats of war on the battlefield which he longed to
undertake.
Alanbrooke was the master strategist of the British military effort. His
partnership with Churchill--the statesman's imagination and inspired
energy perfectly complementing the soldier's clarity of mind and
unflinching realism--was often turbulent, yet endlessly fruitful. Under
his chairmanship the Chiefs of Staff became the most efficient machine
for the conduct of war which Britain, perhaps the world, had ever seen.
His influence in the shaping of global strategy was immeasurable.
Born the son of Brigadier The Honourable William Fraser (1890-1964) DSO
MC, who had been the military attache in Paris when the Second World War
begun, David Fraser was educated at Eton College and Christ Church
College, Oxford. He left school to enlist at earliest opportunity after
the Second World War begun, and joined his father's regiment, the
Grenadier Guards in 1940, serving for much of the War with the Guards
Armoured Division, later in North West Europe, ending the war in the
rank of Major. He was appointed General Officer Commanding 4th Division
in 1969, Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Policy) in 1971 and Vice
Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1973. He went on to be British
Military Representative to NATO in 1975, and Commandant of the Royal
College of Defence Studies in 1977 before retiring in 1980.
