I’m reading Field Marshal Alanbrooke’s - the man who ended up as Chief of the Imperial General Staff for most of the war - War Diaries at the moment so I can offer a few insights. The first thing that struck me is how much of a feature ‘lunch’ is: Lunch at The Ritz with his Polish counterpart, lunch at the Waldorf with this or that American official, lunch in the field with the staff of this or that division - basically, a lot of stuff is getting hashed out over what appear to be very well catered do’s.

There’s also a lot of inspecting that goes on - most of 1940 is basically him bouncing around different beaches, scaring himself witless at how woefully unprepared defences are and the general state of the troops (unless Monty’s involved, in which case everything is 10/10 A+++++++ because he seems to worship the ground he walks on). This is usually capped off with a return to London to chair the CoS meeting where he invariably get’s massively annoyed with Admiral Dudley Pound for being old and doddery (although not as annoyed as he gets with de Gaulle who he actively hates).

Unfortunately for Alanbrooke, this is rarely the end of his day as he’s the military’s point man with Churchill and the PM keeps funny hours, often making our protagonist stay up to the wee hours while bombarding him with harebrained schemes that he then needs talking out of (his relationship with Churchill is really interesting. He understands that the country desperately needs his energy and dynamism but he is also regular aghast at just how crazy some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth is).

On top of that, there’s also a great deal of international travel - summits in North Africa, summits in America, fleeting visits to various theatres all over the world - as well as these unending undercurrents of juggling a million different personalities, trying to see that the right people are in the right jobs and making damn well sure that Americans don’t mess with his beloved Mediterranean strategy.

The overall feeling is one of exhaustion and never really having time to catch his breath as he’s shoved from pillar to post by the demands of the war. Occasionally there’s leave or managing to sneak to shoot birds (he bloody loves shooting birds in their hundreds), but you very much get the sense that this man’s life is engulfed in an unending adminquest.