Only in one direction did there seem any prospect of action in the near future. It lay in the person of a broad-shouldered, uncouth, almost simian officer who used to drift gloomily into the office for two or three days at a time, audibly dream dreams, and drift out again…In our frenzy of planning, we used to look on this visitor as one of those to be bowed out, as soon as it was possible to put a term to his ramblings; but as we became aware that he took no notice of us anyway, but that without our patronage he had the ear of the highest, we paid more attention to his schemes. Soon we had fallen under the spell of his almost hypnotic talk …

Wavell used Wingate…as in irritant to stir up his junior generals. He did this by extolling his original ideas on war and battle in a self confident and masterly manner. [When Wingate first met Slim] Slim pointed out that he had just taken over, he was not impressed by the units under his command who had not been taught how to fight orthodox warfare let alone guerrilla warfare and that he had no troops at all to spare for what he considered useless and unnecessary diversions.