The World at War (22 page)

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WRIGHT

I remember one time Dowding was going through a built-up area that had been very badly blitzed and houses and flats hanging out in all directions and things flung around, it was then that he expressed a feeling that might sound a little stilted – he said he was appalled at what he considered was a dreadful intrusion into the privacy of the lives of these people.

COLONEL GALLAND

Hitler decided to attack Russia, but nevertheless he continued with this attacks against London and Great Britain with reduced strength. In April 1941 Hitler assembled all the commanders in France and he told my friend and myself that it was done in order to camouflage the offensive against Russia; so the last raids can only be considered as a cover for the beginning of the Russian campaign.

GWEN BUNT

Plymouth housewife, night of 22–23 April 1941

The children, Raymond and Sheila, were both asleep. I usually put them into bed about seven. When the sirens went I called my mother, she came down the stairs and said, 'I'll take Raymond up.' 'All right,' I said, 'I'll take Sheila.' And we called Mrs Todd, that was the lady upstairs, and she came down with her three children and we went to our respective cupboards. I sat on a little tiny chair, put Raymond at my side and I held Sheila in my arms. They were still asleep; they never woke up. When the bombs fell I'm sure I heard the one that hit us – I could hear the screeching of it as it fell and then I knew no more. I must have rallied round because I heard my father say, 'Oh, I think your mother's had it.' I didn't answer him, I said, 'Oh, Sheila's all right, she's in my arms.' I went to put my hand out to see if Raymond was all right but I couldn't feel him, my arm was high up like and of course we was buried, and I said, 'Oh, I can't move.' Anyway, someone took Sheila from me – I could feel that – and then I felt whoever it was carrying me put me over his shoulder and I seemed to rally round again and I could feel myself being carried out into the air and the next time I knew I was in hospital when I came to. Later I learned that my mother was dead, and the two children were, and Mrs Todd was killed – she was expecting a baby any hour – and two of her children. One of her children must have run out but I never heard of him from that day to this.

EMILY THOMAS

Plymouth housewife, night of 22–23 April

The children had been with us and then, like children do, they wanted to run around, and they ran to another part of the shelter – you know, the shelter runs into different compartments. They hadn't been gone not five minutes before that shelter had a direct hit where the children were. That's one of the awfullest things I remember and of course we were stunned, we were shocked, and there were several men there, my son-in-law was there with my husband, and of course all the men dived to try to get the children but they couldn't because there was too much masonry. My husband went back to our place and got some crowbars that were lying in the garden and they tried to lift this heavy masonry but they couldn't. By the time they got through to them, well, by the time they got through to the children, they had died.

ARTHUR BOTTOMLEY

Trade-union leader and Walthamstow borough councillor

There was a Captain Blaney who was a
bomb-disposal man and one night when I was the Civil Defence Controller he came to me and he said there was a parachute mine that had come down. Well, the instruction given us was that we shouldn't touch them, it was a matter for the Navy. And Blaney said, 'Look, I'm going to tackle it,' and I said, 'It's not your duty, you must leave it alone.' He called me a white-livered cur and this rather challenged me and very foolishly the Chief Inspector of Police, Captain Blaney and myself went to this power mine and he defused it. Everybody else who's approached one was blown up, so we were jolly lucky. But he was reprimanded – he was reduced to the rank of lieutenant and he became very troubled and upset about it, as you can imagine. Not long afterwards he borrowed my car and I saw his sergeant and said, 'Is my car back?' and he said, 'I'm sorry to say Captain Blaney is not coming back.' 'What happened?' He said he was defusing a bomb and he failed to notice two others there and it exploded – up he went.

ANTHONY EDEN

Foreign Secretary from December 1940

President Roosevelt sent his Republican opponent
Wendell Wilkie over to this country in 1941 at the time when there had been a good deal of Blitz activity. And I remember he came to see me at the Foreign Office and he asked me what advice I could give him as to how to find out what people in this country really thought about the war. 'Well,' I said, 'ask them.' And it so happened that we were coming out of the Foreign Office there was a man working away at windows which had been broken in the night, on top of a ladder, and Wilkie went up to him and said, 'How do you feel about the war?' The man looked slightly astonished and said, 'What do you mean?' Wilkie said, 'Well, do you want to go through with it,' and the man said, 'Hitler ain't dead yet, is he?' If I'd have laid it on it couldn't have been a better answer. And that, Wilkie told me long after, was a view found throughout the country and therefore if Britain did hold on and did work her way through, immense credit of course to Winston and his leadership. But immense credit is also due to the British people, because it was their victory.

CHAPTER 8
NORTH AFRICA AND THE BALKANS

In 1940–41 events in the Balkans and North Africa were intimately linked. After the Fall of France the Italians concentrated their troops in Libya on the Egyptian border, and invaded British-held Egypt in September 1940, Beset by the logistical problems that were to prove a feature of desert war they advanced only as far as Sidi Barrani, where they dug in. In November the Greeks defeated an Italian invasion and drove it back deep into Albania. On 7 December 1940, under the overall command of C-in-C Middle East, General Sir Archibald Wavell, the Commander of Commonwealth Forces in Egypt, Lieutenant General Henry Maitland Wilson, launched Operation Compass. Major General Richard O'Connor's attack destroyed the advanced elements of the Italian Army at Sidi Barrani, and Wavell then withdrew the 4th Indian Division for service against the Italians in Ethiopia. The offensive continued: after capturing Tobruk on 22 January, O'Connor sent the 7th Armoured Division on an uncharted route across the bulge of Cyrenaica and on 7 February 1941 cut off the entire Italian force at Beda Fomm, compelling it to surrender. Shortly afterwards he was ordered to halt at El Agheila and Wilson was appointed to lead a Commonwealth Expeditionary Force, its troops taken from O'Connor, to reinforce the Greeks in anticipation of a German reaction to the defeat of their Italian ally. The pro-Axis government in neighbouring Yugoslavia was overthrown in late March, but in April the Germans raced through Yugoslavia. By the end of the month they had driven Wilson's force out of Greece to Crete, and they took Crete itself by airborne assault in May. Meanwhile Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel, who had made his
reputation commanding a panzer division in France in 1940, had arrived in Tripoli with a small armoured force soon called the Afrika Korps. He defeated the British at El Agheila on 24 March; on 7 April he captured O'Connor and Wilson's replacement in Egypt, Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame, and by 15 April had recovered all of Cyrenaica except Tobruk, which was besieged until 27 November 1941. The see-saw of war in North Africa had begun.

ANTHONY EDEN

British Secretary of State for War

Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir John Dill and I had a meeting, I think it was early July, and we decided the only place we could fight the enemy was the North African desert; there was nothing else. We couldn't hope to make a landing in France in any foreseeable future, therefore couldn't injure the Germans that way. The two alternatives were bombing and fighting in the Middle East. As to aircraft you realise the difficulties – because the Germans and the Italians had the inner lines, they could shift their aircraft with the greatest of ease through the north of France down to Greece or anywhere. We, on the other hand, had to go all the way round the Cape with almost everything, with all the delay that entailed.

BRIGADIER JOHN HARDING

Chief of Staff to General O'Connor, Commander Western Desert Force

There had been no light at the end of the tunnel at all since the withdrawal from Dunkirk. I think for political and above all morale reasons – the morale of the people of this country and the standing of our positions round the world – it was terribly important from this point of view and indeed from everybody's point of view to show that we could hold the Germans.

PRIVATE BOB MASH

Engineer, Nile Army

We actually made
dummy tanks, dummy guns, and from the air when reconnaissance planes came across it just looked as though we had a really good, strong army. I've known the time when we've blown up rubber tanks, put them in position, taken them down in the evening, taken them three or four miles further away, blown them up again and lay them there, and from the air it looked as though we had plenty of tanks. Just the same as on the Canal Zone anti-aircraft guns, every other anti-aircraft gun was a wooden one.

ANTHONY EDEN

What we needed for the battle to have any chance, according to Maitland Wilson, who was going to be in charge of the battle, was what were called 'I-' tanks in those days, infantry tanks, heavy, rather slow-moving animals, which would act as fortresses to move forward and to reduce Sidi Barrani. And
Wavell, quite rightly, was tremendously security-conscious, a lot of gossip always in a place like Cairo, and he didn't want anybody to know anything. So I wasn't allowed to telegraph Winston, give any hint of what might happen until I got home. But at the same time Wavell did want these I-tanks and so I had to send a telegram, very masked and complicated, saying to Winston please don't ask questions and please don't argue or anything but please send us some I-tanks. Which I must say, grandly, he did at once. Because we didn't have too many of these things and they were very important. But apart from that, the battle was fought on Wavell's resources and brilliantly fought, there's no question of that.

LAWRENCE DURRELL

Press officer, Cairo

Wavell had an extraordinary weakness for poets and poetry and was in fact at that moment doing an anthology and a treatise on generalship, which is one of the more amusing and one of the most sensitive books I think ever written by a general. He was a frequent visitor to the Anglo-Egyptian Union. A side of him was withdrawn, not exactly morose but he had a wall eye, and wall-eyed people give a feeling of dryness and moroseness. A bit gentle, nice, we liked him very much. He was a great addition to the circle and he used to come down very modestly, and at the time he was, I suppose, deep in plans to mop up the Italians. It never showed and he always had an anthology of verse under his arm.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL RONALD BELCHEM

7th Armoured Division

General Wavell will go down in history as one of our most competent generals of the Second World War. Indeed it's known that Rommel told his son that General Wavell was a military genius. General Wavell, remember, was Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, stretching from the Persian Gulf right across to Malta. And for this enormous responsibility the resources at his disposal were meagre indeed, not only on the ground but also in the air. Probably only the Navy was able to afford the scale of effort that the situation demanded. But working on interior lines General Wavell, who was a great strategist, managed with these meagre resources to liberate Ethiopia, to defeat the Italian forces there and in Somaliland.

ANTHONY EDEN

Churchill was delighted when success came along. It was a very trying time until it did because I could show him on the map what we hoped to do, but Wavell quite rightly never would be too optimistic in what he said. He'd always play it down to get more help for this or that, which was rather trying if you were at the London end hoping great things, wanting great victories for other purposes apart from the actual battle. But of course Churchill was delighted when the results came in and they were wonderful. If any of my listeners have military ambitions, I would strongly advise them to avoid holding a high military command in the first two years in the British Army. Better wait until the stuff begins to come along, which I am afraid in the last two experiences was after the third year or later.

MAJOR GENERAL RICHARD O'CONNOR

Commander Western Desert Force

We started out to do a five-day raid. My resources were only two divisions, the 4th Indian and the 7th Armoured divisions, whose morale was extremely high and they were very well trained. The enemy, on the other hand, had a vast numerical superiority, something in the nature of eight to one, but their morale was low and they had no interest or enthusiasm for the war at all. We therefore felt that we had to do something to knock him off balance and prevent him using that vast superiority against our small numbers. In this we were helped because his method of defence was this: he had a series of these fortified perimeter camps and we decided that we would attack one and one only. As they were so far apart we felt sure they would be unable to support each other and we would be able to deal with this one by itself. Therefore, in order to get a better result, we decided that by night we would move our main forces round between two of these camps until we came right to the rear and then to attack from the rear, which would be the last place he would expect to be attacked, and then the surprise would be complete.

BRIGADIER HARDING

General O'Connor's instructions were to inflict such heavy losses on the Italians to destroy their potential for the invasion of the Delta, and his tactics were to get in behind the camps in which the Italian forces had entrenched themselves and to take full advantage of their fortress-minded deployment and to knock off the camps one by one, at the same time inflicting very heavy losses on them. Eventually this opened the way to an advance which again he exploited to the full. He was a commander who was always looking for an opportunity for bigger and better things and he certainly saw this, appreciated it immediately and took advantage of it.