The Making Of The British Army (89 page)

¹⁸⁶
‘Ultra’ was the generic term for intelligence gained by intercept of German strategic communications (encoded by the ‘Enigma’ machines) and decrypted at the code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park.

¹⁸⁷
The most formidable German gun of the war, the ‘88’ started life as an anti-aircraft gun; and indeed some Luftwaffe anti-aircraft units were redirected to tank-killing at various times. The 88 would also be mounted later on the Tiger tank and the Panther tank destroyer.

¹⁸⁸
David Fraser,
And We Shall Shock Them: The British Army in the Second World War.

¹⁸⁹
The ‘El’ is sometimes dropped: the name derives from the ridge between the railway and the sea, Tel el Alamein – the hill of twin cairns.

¹⁹⁰
Some 25-pounders were later mounted on the Grant-Sherman chassis as self-propelled artillery – known as the ‘Sexton’ – which considerably speeded up the response to calls for fire.

¹⁹¹
Chartres, ‘7th Field Squadron in World War II’,
Royal Engineers Journal
, 1981.

¹⁹²
He would be similarly caught out on D-Day.

¹⁹³
Napier,
History of the Peninsular War
(published in six volumes between 1828 and 1840).

¹⁹⁴
‘Overlord’ referred to the allied invasion of north-west Europe. The assault phase was known as ‘Neptune’ – the landing on the beaches, and the supporting operations required to establish a beachhead in France. ‘Neptune’ began on D-Day (6 June 1944) and ended on 30 June 1944. ‘Overlord’ began on D-Day, and continued until allied forces crossed the River Seine on 19 August 1944. The ‘battle of Normandy’ is the name given to the fighting between D-Day and the end of August.

¹⁹⁵
‘Army group’was a new concept for the British (one of sorts had been formed very briefly for operations in Tunisia in February 1943): a response to the requirement to have an intermediate headquarters below that of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to direct and coordinate the various self-contained armies, not least in logistic and air support. Operations in 1940 had shown the need, as well as recognition of the sheer scale of the enterprise in north-west Europe. The Germans had army groups from the early days of the war; the Russians too, though they called theirs ‘fronts’.

¹⁹⁶
For more on Hobart, see ‘Notes and Further Reading’.

¹⁹⁷
Patrick Hennessey,
Young Man in a Tank
(self-published, 1988). Corporal Pat Hennessey was subsequently commissioned into the RAF and rose to the rank of group captain before retiring in 1984.

¹⁹⁸
On D-Day, the allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. For details, see ‘Notes and Further Reading’.

¹⁹⁹
Later than he might have done, for the build-up of US troops had placed them in the majority. It made sense, however, to wait until the battle for Normandy was won.

²⁰⁰
Boulogne and Calais were not taken until 22 and 30 September respectively, and Dunkirk did not surrender until the end of the war. The US army transport battalions were also supplying 21st Army Group, and supply routes were an allied concern: roads were designated one-way to and from the front line, and the whole operation was known by the Americans as the ‘Red Ball Express’. Even by September only a very limited amount of supplies could be moved by rail, such was the effectiveness of the preliminary allied bombing campaign, and air transport could move only a small proportion of daily requirements.

²⁰¹
In fact Montgomery had first lobbied Eisenhower for a concentrated drive on Berlin, so convinced was he that German fighting power was broken. ‘Ike’ ruled this out at once: there was simply not the means of maintaining such a thrust, even with Antwerp open. The thrust would in any case be vulnerable to counter-attack along its entire length, and he was correct in estimating German fighting capacity to be greater than Montgomery supposed, as the Ardennes offensive in December proved.

²⁰²
Browning was married to the writer Daphne du Maurier. Their daughter, Tessa, married Montgomery’s only son in 1967.

²⁰³
One of the Airborne Corps’ intelligence officers had his suspicions, but he was ignored in the general desire to get the operation mounted.

²⁰⁴
The previous commander of 1st Airborne had been killed in Italy, and Urquhart took command in January 1944, aged 43. He was new to airborne forces. Indeed, until the year before he had been commanding an infantry battalion, but he was fresh from the fight in Italy where he had won a DSO. He had an uphill struggle gaining the confidence of the division, not least of his brigadiers, one of whom, Gerald Lathbury, had been told unofficially that he was to command the division. Urquhart had been commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry, and a fellow subaltern had been the future Hollywood star David Niven. In Niven’s outrageous autobiography
The Moon’s a Balloon
, he describes Urquhart as ‘a serious soldier of great charm and warmth’. Urquhart’s daughter is married to former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell.

²⁰⁵
Fr Egan was awarded the MC, and Tatham-Warter the DSO.

²⁰⁶
The reference is to Lord Moran’s
The Anatomy of Courage
(1945), quoted by Hew Pike in
From the Front Line.
Although Arnhem is primarily a Parachute Regiment battle honour, it is shared by several infantry regiments which served in the (glider-borne) Airlanding Brigade, as well as by the supporting arms. But the army as a whole has been conscious of the example, and the raised height of the bar.

²⁰⁷
The Royal Tank Corps, as the RTR was known until 1939, had comprised eight battalions. After 1939 its constituent units were styled consecutively 1st Royal Tank Regiment (1RTR), 2RTR etc.

²⁰⁸
Other elements of cavalry were re-roled as gunners and even signals, but there were none with horses still, for the horse had finally disappeared from the army’s regular order of battle (though there were mules and the odd horse in 14th Army in the Far East).

²⁰⁹
An opinion stated baldly by General Sir David Fraser in his assessment of Market Garden
(And We Shall Shock Them).
The armoured cars of the Household Cavalry had actually got up to the Rhine, by-passing resistance, but it made no difference to the follow-up. In fairness, however, none of the divisional commanders was RAC.

²¹⁰
Roberts retired not long after the end of the war, but Carver became a chief of the defence staff, and field marshal.

²¹¹
Crocker had commanded 6th Armoured Division after the fall of France, and then a corps, but did not fight in the desert – his active service in North Africa being later in Tunisia, where he was wounded. Montgomery rated him highly, and he commanded the predominantly infantry 1st Corps in Normandy. Though futile, it is nevertheless interesting to speculate what might have been had Crocker commanded the armour under Auchinleck in the desert – or even, for that matter, under Montgomery at Alamein.

²¹²
One of the best accounts of Chindit operations, with their sense of fighting the Japanese beyond the front line, is
Beyond the Chindwin
(1945) by one of the Chindit commanders, Brigadier Bernard Fergusson (the River Chindwin was in effect the front line in north-west Burma).

²¹³
Hobart’s ‘funnies’ were the shining example, and they continued to serve until the day of the German capitulation. Perhaps the most succinct judgement is war correspondent John North’s in his
North-West Europe 1944–5
(1953): ‘The war as fought by Britain’s 79th Armoured Division when supporting an infantry assault was the ultimate in mechanized fire power, and the conception and its execution had been British throughout.’

²¹⁴
Unprecedented, that is, excepting the Military Training Act of April 1939, which was passed in the expectation of war.

²¹⁵
The allies had been urging Russia to declare war on Japan since the Tehran conference in 1943, and earlier, but Stalin had bided his time until the Soviets could enter the war against Japan with minimal loss. It was not until after the US dropped the first atomic bomb (6 August 1945) that Stalin revoked the Soviet – Japanese non-aggression pact and invaded Manchuria and North Korea. President Truman, in some alarm, proposed a joint occupation of Korea by the two powers. The Soviets occupied the territory north of the 38th parallel, quitting in 1948 after installing a Communist regime.

²¹⁶
Described in ch. 11.

²¹⁷
From
Eye-Witness History
edited by Jon E. Lewis (1998), and in conversation with author, 2005.

²¹⁸
From
The Edge of the Sword
, Farrar-Hockley’s account of the battle and his subsequent experience as a PoW (including his several escape attempts).

²¹⁹
His son would win the MC commanding a company of 2 Para at Goose Green.

²²⁰
Including the legendary Padre Sam Davies (at whose theological college the author once studied), who had stayed behind with the wounded, and who was to be particularly savagely treated in captivity. His utterly un-self-serving account of that time,
In Spite of Dungeons
(1954), powerfully illustrates the role of the regimental chaplain.

²²¹
And the legend of Imjin lives on. When the headquarters of the (NATO) Rapid Reaction Corps moves from Germany to the UK in 2010, its new home, formerly RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire, will be renamed ‘Imjin Lines’.

²²²
Perhaps the best known of the British officers who remained in Malaya after the fall of Singapore was Spencer Chapman, who wrote a classic account of the guerrilla war, and thereby of jungle tactics,
The Jungle is Neutral
(1949).

²²³
The best known of the local trackers, who saw service as a formed unit, were the Ibans brought from North Borneo.

²²⁴
The Briggs Plan, and Templer’s application of it (hand in glove with his permanent secretary, Sir Robert Thompson) was studied by the US army in Iraq under General David Petraeus. There is, indeed, further irony in this: Briggs was, until the age of 20, an American citizen, and Thompson, after leaving Malaya, was a special adviser to President Kennedy in the Vietnam War. The US ‘strategic hamlets’ plan for Vietnam had some similarities with the British Malaya experience, and Briggs was confident that the counter-insurgency strategy would work. However, in its execution US forces diverged from the principles, and the rest is history.

²²⁵
There are so many explanations of the term ‘Mau Mau’ that it is pointless listing them, especially since the rebels themselves – largely of the Kikuyu clan – called themselves by several names but not this.

²²⁶
Ever undaunted, his final command, as a four-star general, would be of NATO troops in the Arctic (‘a good horse runs on any going’).

²²⁷
The CGS at the time of the Falklands, Field Marshal Lord (’Dwin) Bramall, commanded a battalion of the Green Jackets in Borneo.

²²⁸
Another of the 2nd’s officers was the future CGS and field marshal Sir John Chapple.

²²⁹
See ch. 32 and epilogue.

²³⁰
Following President Nasser’s nationalization of the British- and French-owned Suez Canal in 1956, an Anglo-French force seized the canal zone in an airborne and maritime operation in which the last British operational parachute drop took place. US pressure compelled a humiliating withdrawal soon after.

²³¹
Macmillan served with the Grenadiers in the First World War and was wounded three times. At the Somme he had quietly lain in a trench with a bullet in his pelvis, waiting to be evacuated, reading Aeschylus in the original Greek.

²³²
There were never enough serviceable aircraft, they did not have the range to reach the Indian Ocean without refuelling on the ground, and the airspace through which they flew belonged to other people.