September 1940 - on the brink

Blazing docks behind Tower Bridge

Aerodromes and cities. The Germans have hammered the airfields of the south-east, they have targeted oil supplies at Thameshaven creating fires that could be seen from London. They have smashed London itself, night after night. On the 10th a bomb even hit Buckingham Palace. I've sat listening to nothing but radio reports, wondering the same as everyone throughout the country - how much more can London take? The damage is incomprehensible. When you drop a 1000lb bomb on houses, how many does it destroy? How far out does the blast smash windows? We have all become weary experts on demolition, and surely no one is fooled by the carefully picked interviews and the staged photographs? The world is burning.

Blitz Newsreel

Day after day aircraft fight. It's little more than a strange swirl of numbers. This many bombers flew over, this many were shot down, we lost so many fighters... always we lose less than they do. But is it true? Even it if is, how many aircraft do they have, compared to us? Can we even afford to lose one for five of theirs? No matter how many we seem to shoot down, the swarms keep coming. 

On the 11th, the Prime Minister gave a speech stating the unspoken obvious - the week or weeks ahead are critical, perhaps the most critical we have ever faced. The invasion must come soon before the weather turns, but the bombing carries on. The Germans have no intention of stopping. For all Churchill's bluster about the armada, the Spanish didn't have long-range aircraft dropping explosives. They have overturned Europe in months, re-written history, redefined any notion we may have had just a year ago of what is possible. It seems fatuous to belive the channel will stop them, and even the papers are reporting the gathering of invasion barges on the coast of the continent that Hitler has conquered.  

Churchill's speech on the 11th September

Battling fires in London

Raid and counter raid. The RAF bombed Berlin and Amsterdam - trumpeted as major successes. Even so, on the 15th hundreds of German bombers attacked London yet again, and again our news was of more victories in numbers. Almost 200 or so enemy planes claimed 'downed' for 'just' 30 of ours. All so strange and fluid, not like trenches in the last war, miles advanced or retreated, this unit decimated, that escaping lightly. Just planes, numbers, bombs, and all the time the feeling that, as bomb follows bomb, there is only so much we can take. 

I'm not fitted for this. Perhaps it was my time in Greece in 1914-18, perhaps it's just the feeling that all we can do is sit and wait, but my nerves are in tatters, so much so I find it hard to recognise when there may be a turning point. The 15th may have been one such moment. Following a massive raid we claim to have scattered, the RAF bombed the German invasion barges. The raids carry on, but by night. A lull for the winter, and so we live to struggle on.

Italians advance into Egypt

A lull in bombing, but not in the war. Ships are being lost almost daily, and on the 9th of September, the Italians invaded Egypt. It seems a distant sideshow, but of course, it isn't. It's our link to the Empire, to the oil we need to keep fighting, to rubber for tyres, to men. By the 13th the Italians had taken Fort Capuzzo on the Egyptian/Lybian border and had started to push into Egypt itself. By the 16th they had taken Sidi Barrani, almost 60 miles from where they had crossed. Aircraft from HMS Illustrious bombed Benghazi, but with the Italians advancing across the desert aiming of Alexandria, and the skies all across Kent ablaze with dogfights, the BBC bulletin felt like the announcement of armageddon. Like the Gerams's though, switching to lighter raids, the Italians were content to sit at Barrani, almost as if prolonging our agony. To underline our powerlessness, the 'free French' under a General called De Gaul landed in French West Africa at Dakar, hoping to raise the French colonies. The Colonies sided firmly with their German masters and the free French were pulled out in disgrace. French 'Vichy' aircraft bombed Gibraltar. 

King's speech to the people - 23rd September 1940

In the Far East, the Japanse invaded French Indochina. A real sideshow as everything so close to home teeters on the brink, but it simply served to yell 'there is no hope, no help coming from anywhere'. Many I have talked to still pray for a miracle, for the Americans to appear and save us. The King spoke in this vein, and there is evidence that sentiment in the US is with us. 52% of Americans would help us if they could, but there is now 'America First' - an organisation in the US dedicated to keeping America out of the war, and to abandoning us. Even if they agreed to help us, with U boats in the Altlantic sinking ships at will, German bombers in our skies by night, and the Italians ready to cut us off from the Empire, what real help could they give?

  

Fight for the Skies - the Battle of Britain. July and August 1940.

And so it begins, what feels like the beginning of the end. It is the 7th of September, and I am sitting, listening to the radio, looking out at dusk overtaking my garden, but the news coming through the speaker in the clipped tones on the BBC, overlaid with static, is all of disaster and defeat. 

The fall of France was a stunning blow, but just the start. Within days shipping the channel was being attacked from the air, The Channel no longer safe, and as for Elizabeth against the Spanish, our last defence. In early July news bulletin after news bulletin talked of raids on Dover, Southampton, Maidstone. Holiday destinations, pleasant days out in the Austin in the seemingly ancient days before the war. These places are the front line now, bombed from their air, bristling with guns, awaiting what can only be delayed - the certainty of invasion. All I could think then and all I can think now is: how can it have come to this? That we must contemplate battling for the streets of Bournemouth? Brighton and Hove? Littleport and Shoreham?

On the 9th of July, the Germans bombed Norwich for the first time. On the 30th of July, Surrey street was smashed. I headed planes overhead that night, and distant flashes reflected off clouds in the sky. More bombing? Anti-aircraft guns? How have we all, in so short a space of time, begun to talk about, and think in terms of, such things?

Rationing, messages against hoarding, 'Keep Calm and Carry On', but the news doesn't stop. How much are we being told, when what we know is awful enough? Fighter bases across the South East are ablaze, pummeled by the Luftwaffe day after day. How many fighters have we lost on the ground, before they are ever airborne? The Germans called the start of this Adlertag... 13th of August, Eagle Day. These are the unbeaten, victorious Germans that felled France in weeks.

19th of August and the news was worse than ever. Huge RAF losses on the ground, my sleep full of burning wrecks. Towns and cities across the South, East and Midlands hit. I need sedatives to sleep, and my days are dominated by nerves. I've never been the best like that, not since Thesselonkia, not since 1916, but it isn't a funk. I overheard some say it is time to 'give it up', make peace like the French did, see what we can save, and I almost yelled. We have no choice but to hang on, and it is better to go down fighting, make an end that may be remembered if that is all that is left to us. 

My reading material hasn't helped. What kind of fool with weak nerves reads H.G.Wells 'The War of the Worlds' and Homers 'The Illiad'. I cannot decide if we are the Trojans, crushed by the Greeks, backed by capricious Gods, fighting our last amongst our burning homes, or if, The Empire humbled, we are ants beneath the Martian's feet, the heat ray slicing to and froe, dealing merciless death from above. Oh God, oh to be deprived of an imagination... to be the butcher in Hingham, with his 'bit of a bust-up down south yesterday."

Churchill made a speech in Parliament on the 20th. 'Never in the field of human conflict'. But he was so wrong about France, and I could barely listen to him with the country on the brink of oblivion. It was naive bluster, nothing more.  

Audio: Never in the Field of Human Conflict

I have all the food I can, hidden around the house. I have children, a wife... I have an old service revolver from my Thessaloniki days. My daughter asked if it were for the Germans, and of course, I said yes, but this War is all but lost, and what do we, what does my family, do? Do we stay put as German gliders land on the beach at Holkham, and armoured columns advance from a London decked in Swastikas? 

We might run, like the French, clogging the roads across the Fens, trying to get North, but for what? To be machine-gunned from the air outside Spalding? To have made it to Birmingham or Leeds as the Nazis arrive? To end in an internment camp, or flee again to starve on the fells of the Yorkshire Dales?

The tension is unendurable, the doubt, the fear, the anger, the helplessness, and above all the waiting. The greatest skill of all, and I don't have it... half the time I feel on the edge of nervous exhaustion, and tonic wine and sedatives my only refuge.

The 24th August saw a huge raid on London, and then news, the feeling of a fightback, a raid by the RAF on Berlin. I felt euphoric at the news, not all is lost, we can take the fight to them! But hope seems like a childish illusion, a temporary reprieve for the Trojans. A moment of misplaced optimism from Well's narrator at Stains and Chertsey when the artillery brings down a Martian fighting machine before the guns were swept out of existence by the heat ray. The day after our token Berlin raid, fighter after fighter was shot down over southern England or destroyed on the ground. More RAF aircraft were destroyed on that day than on any day so far.

I walked alone for hours at the weekend, my wife, understanding as she always does, kicking me out of the house with a sandwich and a thermos of tea. I sat looking up at the sky, hearing aircraft in the distance, I don't know who's, and I don't know where they were going. Germans on an errand of destruction? Ours in the hopeless task of defence? I looked up, and I had a terrible, terrible thought. I have my gun, and I have enough bullets for us all. Two daughters, my wife, and I. When I thought that I screamed at the top of my voice, and then I cried like a child.

So I sit here, in Norfolk, listening to the radio, to news of still greater fire and destruction - a mass raid, bigger by far than any previous, not aimed at airfields, or aircraft, but at London. A people, at factories, at the beating heart of the Empire. Night is now complete, quiet, calm. Cool but not cold, a gentle breeze, a perfect late summer evening. Except for the fact that, in all likelihood, these are the last days of the Great Britain that I know.

 

Agony upon Agony - June/early July 1940

News in the first half of June rolled on, all bad. Norway finally fully evacuated, the surrender of the Government and the flight of the King to London, the Germans pushing deeper into France, crossing the Aisne. There was another evacuation, this time from Le Havre, but the German general, Rommel, was there a day after and ending the resistance of the 51st Highland Divisions and part of the French Army.

Italians bomb Malta

On the 10th had come the news that Italy had declared war on us and on France, and I was split, whether it felts like the final blow for us, or comic grandstanding. The day after we bombed an Italian airfield in North Africa, a place called El Adem. Out came the Atlas again, but it was only me looking. As my wife said, she had lost the appetite for following more defeats on maps. Later that day, with the dominions declaring war on Italy, Italy bombed Malta.

News Reel: Italian Declaration of War

After The Fall

On the 14th, the German's took Paris. There was no fighting, the city had been declared open and Germans just marched in. It had been inevitable, but still, the shock was enormous. The day after, the fortress of Verdun surrendered. For those of us that served in the last war, no matter where we served, the desperate fight in '14 to halt the advance on Paris and the long fight for Verdun, were semi-mythical symbols, pivotal moments. All of that was swept aside, all that we fought for reduced to meanless nothing. On the 17th, Petain, now Premier, told the French that the fighting needed to stop, with a French general, De Gaul, broadcasting on the BBC exalting his people not to lose hope. All the while more people were being evacuated from Cherbourg, ships fleeing the wreckage wherever they could. In radio bulletin, after bulletin, we listened to the disintegration of a nation. Finally, on the 22nd, an armistice between France and Germany was signed, but the humiliations continued - German forces continuing to advance until they reached the Spanish border on the 27th, having seized the whole Atlantic coast.

News Reel: German Troops in Paris

News Reel: French Surrender

Mers-el-Kebir

On the 3rd of July, reported as a signal to the world that we will fight on, British aircraft attacked the French North African port of Mers-el-Kebir, bombing French naval vessels to stop them falling into German hands. The French 'government', now operating out of the small town of Vichy broke off diplomatic relations with Britain and bombed Gibraltar in revenge. I see the logic, but cannot but help feel that we piled on the pain for our lost allies. We killed over a 1000 of their sailors that day.

On the 18th of June, Churchill had given speech - We will never surrender! This rings hollow to me now, though, having believed the speech he gave just weeks before. That first speech was given at the very time that he must have known that French armies were disintegrating, and he asserted strongly, confidently, convincingly, that the bulk of the French army had yet to be committed to battle. I have to concede that my neighbour, who wrote the French off even before Dunkirk, seems to have understood events better than me, but will be fare any better?

News Reel: Churchill's speech - we shall never surrender

Occupation of The Channel Islands

Occupation of The Channel Islands

One final sad postscript. My wife and I honeymooned in Jersey, back when days were brighter. We stayed in a B&B in St Helier, with a view of the harbour and Fort Elizabeth. A picture of Castle Gory hangs on our landing. The Germans occupied the Channel Islands on the 30th of June, without a shot being fired.

It must surely be our turn next, and the first pictures from Jersey, German staged shots, I don't doubt, kept me awake the evening I first saw them. Staged or not, there seems little but naive hope between us and a similar fate.

How long before I see German troops in Norwich? Or Hingham, even? Perhaps just weeks.

Fall of France and evacuation from the wreckage. May-early June 1940

Defence of the Port of Dunkirk

News was limited over the weekend of the 26th May. People in the village discussed the situation in France briefly, but there was no one with a taste for discussion at the White Hart. In fact, I heard one man tell another to 'put a sock in it'. People know there is no real news, and are tired of the speculation, I think. What's worse, what talk there is is mostly rumour based on fifth column' stories. German agents parachuted into the country to cause trouble mostly discussed as nuns. Ludicrous, but it did force me to consider an actual possible invasion for the first time.

The surrender of the Belgium King on the 28th caused considerable alarm, the local newspaper publishing a demand for a full review of 'home defence' in order to reassure the public. But there was equal space dedicated to the fate of the B.E.F. Thay were 'trapped' according to one headline, completely cut off from the main body of France, along with thousands of French troops, and all their heavy equipment. They were falling back on what ports we still controlled. Some believed that they could be lifted off by sea. Others thought that they may take a go at breaking out south, trying to smash through German lines and reconnect with the French south of the German thrust. Either way, the B.E.F. and other allied troops were at huge risk, and with them the bulk of our trained fighting strength.

Evacuation by sea

So, a naval withdraw began from the port town of Dunkirk. The army held a perimeter, trying to keep the Germans away from the beaches. The navy was getting some thousands off a day, the RAF battling back the Luftwaffe, The Daily Mirror's headline (31sy May) ran: Navy fights for B.E.F. - thousands home! But there were hundreds of thousands, and all the time, scanning newspapers, listening to the radio, we were wondering how long it would take for the Germans to advance.

The call for pleasure craft when it came, seemed ludicrous, but incredibly they answered the call, and were even useful, ferrying troops out to the larger warships, even more crucial after the flagship of the operation, HMW Keith, was sunk. By the 4th, it was all but over, morale high, but those from the B.E.F. that were now home scathing about the failure of the RAF to protect the beaches.

Ships close in at the beaches

Many are forgetting that the war was still being fought in France. Paris was bombed on the 3rd of June, 150,000 British troops left behind to be captured, the French still fighting but being pushed back. I was in a coffee shop in Norwich when three B.E.F. walked in. They were cheered, stood their coup of tea for free as if the war in France was done.

News Reel: Evacuation of the BEF

People got a bit less comfortable when they started on at the RAF. The radio had been full of stories of the aircraft fighting to keep the Germans back, but the men I talked to were quite clear - they camped on the beach for days. 'If the RAF boys were there, you'd have hardly noticed, but when the Germans were overhead, you bloody knew about it.

Home, but to what?

I asked if they had seen anything of the Belgian Army, think of my wife's uncle, and he shrugged, "Plucky bunch, give 'em that. There were a few that got out, not sure how many though."

But it wasn't the kind of talk people wanted. Our escape from France is an excuse to obscure disaster across Scandinavia, the low countries, and in France itself, the whole west lost in just a few short weeks. It is rumoured too that Italy is about to join the war. Churchill, however, did not sugar we pill. We stand, and we stand alone.

Radio Broadcast - Churchill. We shall never surrender.

The Fall of the Low Countries.

On the 10th of May, after the Norway failure, Chamberlain resigned. Clearly, discussion has been intense behind the scenes and Winston Churchill was rapidly installed. Some had thought Halifax - seen as a peacemaker - would have ended the war. Churchill was a signal to the nation, and the world, that this is just the start. That same day, we invaded Iceland, a peaceful occupation to prevent the Germans from taking it and interfering with our supply lines.

Through the days of the Norway debate, it was clear that tension was rising on the German frontier with France and the Low Countries. The Royal Family of Luxembourg evacuated to France and Belgium put her forces on alert, even as the fighting was still continuing around Narvik in Norway. Every radio broadcast I listened to, every newspaper I grabbed, I was trying to scrabble together more detail. My wife asked me again and again if I thought that her parents in Belgium would be alright. I feel ashamed to admit it now but I was excited, thrilled at the fact that a war that had been without real incident for us until the debacle in Norway, seemed finally to be moving into it's 'main act'. The British army had had time to prepare, the French army was huge and had the prepared defences of the Maginot Line.

The Maginot Line

On the very day that Churchill became Prime Minister, 10th May, the Germans struck, and were seemingly everywhere. At dawn, they rolled into France, Belgium and the Netherlands, attacking in Zeeland and around Rotterdam, Fort Eben Emael in Belgium, The Hague and Maastrict. Luxembourg had fallen by the end of the day.

There were confused reports throughout the 11th, if they were to be believed, the Germans were winning everywhere and advancing at speed. Myself and the girls plotted everything we heard on maps I had ordered through the post during the quite of January and February. Only the Dutch seemed to offer any good news, beating back the Germans around The Hague. The German army was tearing through the 'neutrals' who's neutrality had not done them any good when their turn had come. Then, on the 12th, the Germans attacked at Sedan in France, clearly trying to gain a crossing of the Meuse.

By the 13th the Dutch were folding, their queen evacuating to London, scuttling their Navy on the 14th. They surrendered at a quarter past ten in the morning on the 15th. Through that day we heard that Rotterdam had been heavily bombed, and that Sedan had fallen.

The next few days were a blur of place names on maps, a strange mix of dread and excitement. We had no world from my wife's family, expected none. She had a relative in the Belgian army and I could only wonder at what he was going through. Her home, near Ypres, was close to the French border, but the speed of the German advance seemed to make that almost irrelevant. Brussels fell on the 17th, and Antwerp the day after. It was obvious that the Germans were swinging towards the coast.

I had a huge row with a neighbour who said it looked like it was all finished, and the French would be next. Churchill had broadcast, saying that the French army had not yet really been engaged. My neighbour had fought, like me, in the last war. I had been in Greece, mostly, fighting the Austrians, my Neighbour had been on the Somme. When I repeated what Churchill had said he laughed and said the French were useless bastards, and I'd see if he wasn't right - after all, he'd served next to them.

Broadcast: Churchill's first speech as Prime Minister.

French tank surrenders to the Germans

There was more confusion over the next few days - were we retreating to the coast or not?  We were attacking at Arras, but then we pulled back. By the 22nd the Germans were around Calais and Bologne, cutting off our army in Belgium and Northern France. All the while, fighting in Belgium continued, Ghent and Tournai falling on the 24th. Incredibly, almost forgotten, there were troops still fighting on in Norway.

Bologne went on the 25th, the B.E.F. now pinned in and around Dunkirk - we had been there once, on one of our trips to see my wife's family, and to visit the War Graves. It was a strange evening, and I think my wife had realised for the first time that what was happening was a true disaster, and admitted she had stopped listening to the radio news some days before. We dragged out some of the postcards I had collected, villages, cemeteries, one, Lijssenthoek, where her father had planted the trees.  She cried, and I put the postcards away.

News Reel: Troops and refugees in Louvain, Belgium, 1940

Newspaper Map, 20th May 1940

On the 28th King Leopold of Belgium announced his country's unconditional surrender. On the 29th of May Ostend, Lille, and most painfully of all Ypres, were all taken by the Germans. We had to explain to the girls that we had no idea what had happened to their grandparents, or their aunts and uncles. It was another day of tears, made worse by being surrounded by people for whom the war still felt distant, almost impersonal.

With my wife's home and quite possibly her family, now under German control, it feels very close to us indeed.

   

The Collapse of Scandinavia - April 1940

So the quietness ended. After so long waiting, wondering, us and the Germans tilting at each other across the channel, the world exploded and the war is on our door step. In the early hours of the 9th of April the Germans gave the Dutch and Norwegians an ultimatum - accept German 'protection' or be invaded. The Dutch - what choice did they have? - surrendered to save lives, and their country was in German hands within six hours.

Disaster in Norway

The Norwegians, perhaps with the example of the Finns fresh in their minds, decided to fight on. All through that first day there was broken news of Allied and German landings, German ships and allied ships lost, one a German heavy cruiser, taken out by Norwegian shore guns.

News Reel: Invasion of Scandinavia

10th and 11th April bought more of the same. Telegraphic bulletins, the German cruiser Konigsberg knocked out by British dive bombers, two British submarines sunk by the Germans, King Haakon in hiding in the mountains. The Danish territory of Iceland declared independence, and the Danish Faroe islands were occupied by us.

On April 19th after landings, bombardments, skirmishes, our troops and German troops engaged for the first time in the war at Verdal. By the 22nd our troops were retreating back to Trondheim and then Namsos By the 26th our position in Norway was clearly disastrous, the Luftwaffe striking at will, with total command of their air. By the 29th our troops were being evacuated and it was clear that Norway is being taken by the Germans with ease.

By the 3rd May our evacuation was complete, and all that remained was to hear the broken snatches of a nation in it's final agonies of defeat, men fighting on with no hope of victory or help. We mounted a botched attempt to recapture Narvik, and the fall of Andalsnes, Trondheim, the Hegra Fortress were each a little triumph of pointless resistance and a crushing of that spirit place by place, mile by mile.

The Norway Debate

Then there was Westminster - another world. The 'Norway Debate' rumbled on, the MP Leo Amery reported as saying to the PM 'You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!'

The Prime Minister survived a vote of no confidence but so narrowly that by the evening of the 10th of May he had resigned.

One of my daughters asked if the Germans could come here. They were looking at a map, crossing off the countries that the Germans have conquered and looking at how much of our coast now faces German held territory. I said no - and confidently. We are a different nation, the sea is wide, the Navy is strong. When they had gone to bed my wife looked at me and told me I was lying. Of course I am lying, to the girls, to my wife, to myself. The Germans have stormed Poland and Scandinavia, sunk more of our ships than I care to think, and our Generals are an embarrassment. Belgium and France are waiting for the war to turn to them, and my wife's family live in Ypres - her Father works on the War Graves. What else is there to do but lie? 

Looking to Spring - 1940

February and March were almost as quite as January - unless you we Finnish. The Soviets finally breached the Mannerheim Line during the Battle of Summa and then attacked the city of Viipuri. By the 10th of March Viipuri was lost, and by the 12th the Finns had conceded 16,000 square miles in exchange of peace. Britain and France would have intervened, but were blocked by Norway and Sweden from doing so.

The Royal Navy intercepted a German ship, the Altmark in Norwegian waters, releasing hundreds of British prisoners - the Norwegians protested, as they are Neutral, and the Germans described the action as piracy. The navy also stopped an Italian convoy laden with coal bought from Germany.

The odd U boat sunk, a liner sent to the bottom of the English Channel. They mounted an air-raid on our Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow, we raided their seaplane bases at Sylt and Hornum.The first German aircraft of the war was shot down over Whitby - a Heinkel-111. This was particularly bitter - we travel to Whitby every year for a family holiday, and have done since the girls were small. Perhaps the first real impact on us as a family was the realisation that a holiday booked with the land lady when we left last year is just not on under the current circumstances.

Whitby holiday snap - just last year, but it seems a world away.

Just posturing, until Churchill's speech on Neutral States. He said that they could not be blamed, but by balking at war and by bowing the German demands for material, they would extend the war and that it not in the interests of Britain or the 'common good' for their strength to be added to that of the enemy. I met a friend of mine for lunch in Norwich, a man I used to work with, and we talked about almost nothing but that speech. It can mean almost nothing but that we are prepared to act against neutral countries.

As we left, I saw the woman who ran the tea shop staring at us, and looking meaningfully at a poster she had just pinned to the wall. 'Careless talk costs lives' it said. As we walked away, I was in two minds. Did she have a point, or was she just an interfering busy body enjoying a moment of supposed moral superiority? Probably the later, but I couldn't shake myself of the uneasy feeling that she might have been right. Strange how these situations bring out other the best and worst in people, and how hard it can be to tell them apart.

Then, on the 4th of April, came a fantastic speech by the Prime Minister that lifted my spirits. Hitler has 'missed the bus'. We brought enough time to catch up in terms of war material and the Empire is mobilising fast. But given Churchill's speech, this can only mean the the behind the scenes the neutrals are not so neutral and that Europe will stand together. Feels like spring, and I've promised the family that we'll make Whitby next year.

Coverage of the speech.

Newspaper reaction to 'Hitler has missed the bus'.