Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks and the salt cellar
In early 1944 Horrocks was desperate to put a staff together for XXX Corps in time for the invasion. All his friends were already spoken for and he was reduced to those officers who had been left, for good or bad reasons, behind. One of these was a Commandant of a POW camp in Cheshire. He made it known that he would like to join Horrocks and Horrocks agreed to visit.
On the appointed day, the Camp Commandant and all his staff paraded at the front gate and waited. And waited. And a sergeant came and told the Commandant that er, General Horrocks had been and gone.
"Gone?"
"Yes, sir, came in through the back gate, went straight to the prisoners' mess, sir. Then he left."
Horrocks had opened a salt cellar and found no salt.
Horrocks prized attention to detail highly. He needed staff who could get this done. He got a plan of the camp, noted the position of the canteen, came, checked and left. This shows a great level of organisation, research and planning, and tells me more about him than the Wiki article.
My Dad was a deputy Camp Commandant from a nearby camp. He and his brother Hugh (who just happened to be Camp Commandant) had been invited down to "make up the numbers."
