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?