The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (94 page)

We were all in full agreement on the unpleasantness of our plight and the little we could do at the moment to better it. The Supreme War Council agreed that the immediate military objectives should be:

(
a
) The capture of Trondheim, and

(
b
) the capture of Narvik, and the concentration of an adequate Allied force on the Swedish frontier.

The next day we talked about the dangers to the Dutch and Belgians and their refusal to take any common measures with us. We were very conscious that Italy might declare war upon us at any time, and various naval measures were to be concerted in the Mediterranean between Admiral Pound and Admiral Darlan. To this meeting General Sikorski also was invited. He declared his ability to constitute a force of a hundred thousand men within a few months. Active steps were also being taken to recruit a Polish division in the United States.

At this meeting it was agreed also that if Germany invaded Holland the Allied armies should at once advance into Belgium without further approaches to the Belgian Government; and that the R.A.F. could bomb the German marshalling-yards and the oil refineries in the Ruhr.

* * * * *

When we got back from the Conference, I was so much concerned at the complete failure, not only of our efforts against the enemy, but of our method of conducting the war, that I wrote as follows to the Prime Minister:

Being anxious to sustain you to the best of my ability, I must warn you that you are approaching a head-on smash in Norway.

I am very grateful to you for having at my request taken over the day-to-day management of the Military Co-ordination [Committee], etc. I think I ought, however, to let you know that I shall not be willing to receive that task back from you without the necessary powers. At present no one has the power. There are six Chiefs [and Deputy Chiefs] of the Staff, three Ministers, and General Ismay, who all have a voice in Norwegian operations (apart from Narvik). But no one is responsible for the creation and direction of military policy except yourself. If you feel able to bear this burden, you may count upon my unswerving loyalty as First Lord of the Admiralty. If you do not feel you can bear it, with all your other duties, you will have to delegate your powers to a deputy who can concert and direct the general movement of our war action, and who will enjoy your support and that of the War Cabinet unless very good reason is shown to the contrary.

Before I could send it off, I received a message from the Prime Minister saying that he had been considering the position of Scandinavia and felt it to be unsatisfactory. He asked me to call on him that evening at Downing Street after dinner to discuss the whole situation in private.

I have no record of what passed at our conversation, which was of a most friendly character. I am sure I put the points in my unsent letter, and that the Prime Minister agreed with their force and justice. He had every wish to give me the powers of direction for which I asked, and there was no kind of personal difficulty between us. He had, however, to consult and persuade a number of important personages, and it was not till May 1 that he was able to issue the following note to the Cabinet and those concerned.

May
1
,
1940.

I have been examining, in consultation with the Ministers in charge of the service departments, the existing arrangements for the consideration and decision of defence questions, and I circulate for the information of my colleagues a memorandum describing certain modifications which it has been decided to make in these arrangements forthwith. The modifications have been agreed to by the three Service Ministers. With the approval of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Major-General H. L. Ismay, C.B., D.S.O., has been appointed to the post of Senior Staff Officer in charge of the Central Staff which, as indicated in the memorandum, is to be placed at the disposal of the First Lord. Major-General Ismay has been nominated, while serving in this capacity, an additional member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. N. C.

Defence Organisation

In order to obtain a greater concentration of the direction of the war, the following modifications of present arrangements will take effect.

The First Lord of the Admiralty will continue to take the chair at all meetings of the Military Co-ordination Committee at which the Prime Minister does not preside himself, and in the absence of the Prime Minister will act as his deputy at such meetings on all matters delegated to the Committee by the War Cabinet.

He will be responsible on behalf of the Committee for giving guidance and directions to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and for this purpose it will be open to him to summon that Committee for personal consultation at any time when he considers it necessary.

The Chiefs of Staff will retain their responsibility for giving their collective views to the Government and, with their respective staffs, will prepare plans to achieve any objectives indicated to them by the First Lord on behalf of the Military Co-ordination Committee, and will accompany their plans by such comments as they consider appropriate.

The Chiefs of Staff, who will in their individual capacity remain responsible to their respective Ministers, will at all times keep their Ministers informed of their conclusions.

Where time permits, the plans of the Chiefs of Staff, with their comments and any comments by the First Lord, will be circulated for approval to the Military Co-ordination Committee, and unless the Military Co-ordination Committee is authorised by the War Cabinet to take final decision, or in the case of disagreement on the Military Co-ordination Committee, circulated to the War Cabinet.

In urgent cases it may be necessary to omit the submission of plans to a formal meeting of the Committee, but in such cases the First Lord will no doubt find means of consulting the Service Ministers informally, and in the case of dissent, the decision will be referred to the Prime Minister.

In order to facilitate the general plan outlined above and to afford a convenient means of maintaining a close liaison between the First Lord and the Chiefs of Staff, the First Lord will be assisted by a suitable central staff (distinct from the Admiralty Staff) under a senior staff officer who will be an additional member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

I accepted this arrangement, which seemed a marked improvement. I could now convene and preside over the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, without whom nothing could be done, and I was made responsible formally “for giving guidance and direction” to them. General Ismay, the senior staff officer in charge of the Central Staff, was placed at my disposal
as my staff officer and representative,
and in this capacity was made a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. I had known Ismay for many years, but now for the first time we became hand-and-glove, and much more. Thus the Chiefs of Staff were to a large extent made responsible to me in their collective capacity, and as a deputy of the Prime Minister I could nominally influence with authority their decisions and policies. On the other hand, it was only natural that their primary loyalties should be to their own Service Ministers, who would have been less than human if they had not felt some resentment at the delegation of a part of their authority to one of their colleagues. Moreover, it was expressly laid down in the memorandum that my responsibilities were to be discharged
on behalf of
the Military Co-ordination Committee. I was thus to have immense responsibilities, without effective power in my own hands to discharge them. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that I might be able to make the new organisation work. It was destined to last only a week. But my personal and official connection with General Ismay and his relation to the Chiefs of Staff Committee was preserved unbroken and unweakened from May 1, 1940, to July 27, 1945, when I laid down my charge.

* * * * *

It is now necessary to recount the actual course of the fighting for Trondheim. Our northern force from Namsos was eighty miles from the town; and our southern force from Andalsnes was one hundred and fifty miles away. The central attack through the fiord (“Hammer”) had been abandoned, partly through fear of its cost and partly through hopes of the flanking movements. Both these movements now failed utterly. The Namsos force, commanded by Carton de Wiart, hastened forward in accordance with his instructions against the Norwegian snow and the German air. A brigade reached Verdal, fifty miles from Trondheim, at the head of the fiord, on the nineteenth. It was evident to me, and I warned the staffs, that the Germans could send in a single night a stronger force by water from Trondheim to chop them. This occurred two days later. Our troops were forced to withdraw some miles to where they could hold the enemy. The intolerable snow conditions, now sometimes in thaw, and the fact that the Germans who had come across the inner fiord were like us destitute of wheeled transport, prevented any serious fighting on the ground; and the small number of scattered troops plodding along the road offered little target to the unresisted air power. Had Carton de Wiart known how limited were the forces he would have, or that the central attack on Trondheim had been abandoned – a vital point of which our staff machinery did not inform him – he would no doubt have made a more methodical advance. He acted in relation to the main objective as it had been imparted to him.

In the end, nearly everybody got back exhausted, chilled, and resentful to Namsos, where the French Chasseur Brigade had remained; and Carton de Wiart, whose opinion on such issues commanded respect, declared that there was nothing for it but evacuation. Preparations for this were at once made by the Admiralty. On April 28, the evacuation of Namsos was ordered. The French contingent would re-embark before the British, leaving some of their ski troops to work with our rear guard. The probable dates for leaving were the nights of the first and second of May. Eventually the withdrawal was achieved in a single night. All the troops were re-embarked on the night of the third, and were well out to sea when they were sighted by the German air reconnaissance at dawn. From eight o’clock in the morning to three in the afternoon, wave after wave of enemy bombers attacked the warships and the transports. We were lucky that no transport was hit, as no British air forces were available to protect the convoy. The French destroyer
Bison,
and H.M.S.
Afridi,
which carried our rear guard, were “sunk fighting to the end.”

* * * * *

A different series of misfortunes befell the troops landed at Andalsnes; but here at least we took our toll of the enemy. In response to urgent appeals from General Ruge, the Norwegian Commander-in-Chief, Brigadier Morgan’s 148th Infantry Brigade had hastened forward as far as Lillehammer. Here it joined the tired-out battered Norwegian forces whom the Germans, in the overwhelming strength of three fully equipped divisions, were driving before them along the road and railway from Oslo towards Dombas and Trondheim. Severe fighting began. The ship carrying Brigadier Morgan’s vehicles, including all artillery and mortars, had been sunk, but his young Territorials fought well with their rifles and machine-guns against the German vanguards, who were armed not only with 5.9 howitzers, but many heavy mortars and some tanks. On April 24, the leading battalion of the 15th Brigade arriving from France reached the crumbling front. General Paget, who commanded these regular troops, learned from General Ruge that the Norwegian forces were exhausted and could fight no more until they had been thoroughly rested and re-equipped. He, therefore, assumed control, brought the rest of this brigade into action as fast as they arrived, and faced the Germans with determination in a series of spirited engagements. By the adroit use of the railway, which fortunately remained unbroken, Paget extricated his own troops, Morgan’s Brigade, which had lost seven hundred men, and some Norwegian units. For one whole day the bulk of the British force hid in a long railway tunnel fed by their precious supply train, and were thus completely lost to the enemy and his all-seeing air. After fighting five rear-guard actions, in several of which the Germans were heavily mauled, and having covered over a hundred miles, he reached the sea again at Andalsnes. This small place, like Namsos, had been flattened out by bombing; but by the night of May 1, the 15th Brigade, with what remained of Morgan’s 148th Brigade, had been taken on board British cruisers and destroyers and reached home without further trouble. General Paget’s skill and resolution during these days opened his path to high command as the war developed.

A forlorn, gallant effort to give support from the air should be recorded. The only landing-“ground” was the frozen lake of Lesjeskogen, forty miles from Andalsnes. There a squadron of Gladiators, flown from the
Glorious,
arrived on April 24. They were at once heavily attacked. The Fleet air arm did their best to help them; but the task of fighting for existence, of covering the operations of two expeditions two hundred miles apart, and of protecting their bases, was too much for a single squadron. By April 26, it could fly no more. Long-range efforts by British bombers, working from England, were also unavailing.

* * * * *

Our withdrawal enforced by local events had conformed to the decision already taken by the War Cabinet on the advice of the Military Co-ordination Committee with the Prime Minister presiding. We had all come to the conclusion that it was beyond our power to seize and hold Trondheim. Both claws of the feeble pincers were broken. Mr. Chamberlain announced to the Cabinet that plans must be made for evacuating our forces both from Namsos and Andalsnes, though we should in the meanwhile continue to resist the German advance. The Cabinet was distressed at these proposals, which were, however, inevitable.