After seven days in the MCC chair, Colville reported that Churchill had been ‘talking a lot and getting nothing done’.54, 55 Churchill was one of few in Cabinet who had fought in a war; he was accustomed to people deferring to his experiences in Cuba, the Sudan, India, South Africa and France. His high-handed behaviour suggested to Ralph Edwards that he was still on his charger at Omdurman, riding roughshod over the opinions of his military and political advisers. ‘Everyone is very indignant about the conduct of affairs and Winston appears to be the chief target.56 He will try and be a naval strategist if not an actual tactician.’ Geoffrey Shakespeare had observed during the Altmark incident how it was not enough for Churchill to conceive and direct operations himself: he had to be there in the thick of it. When Churchill niggled about the disposition of the Expeditionary Force to Norway, he behaved to General Ironside as though he was ‘a company commander running a small operation to cross a bridge’.57 His interest glided quickest to where the prospect of action seemed most imminent. Pownall felt that ‘great as are his uses, he is also a real danger, always tempted by the objective, never counting his resources to see if the objective is attainable’.58 Churchill’s colleagues in the War Cabinet were especially critical. The Chancellor John Simon believed that ‘his judgement is at its worst when things go badly’.59 ‘A farce’ was how Kingsley Wood described to John Reith the MCC meeting on 14 April, as a result of the ‘dreadful state Churchill had gotten himself and everyone else into.60 Admiralty in a state of jitters from top to bottom.’
Rarely would things go so badly for Churchill than in Norway. Samuel Hoare was reduced to a state of hair-tugging despair by Churchill’s ‘meddling’ and ‘complete wobbles’ over tactics and strategy.61 In one estimate described as ‘conservative’, Churchill changed his mind about the military objectives fourteen times in three weeks.62 These tensions bubbled away as the date approached for Operation ‘Hammer’, and on Tuesday 16 April they erupted.
Early that morning Churchill summoned an astounded General Ismay to tell him that he ‘disagreed entirely’ with the Chiefs of Staff’s plan for the attack on Trondheim.63 Ismay feared that ‘a first-class row’ might develop into ‘a first-class political crisis’ if Churchill then went ahead and chaired the MCC meeting to discuss ‘Hammer’. Ismay tackled the Chiefs of Staff directly, imploring them not to lose their tempers. Churchill seems to have recognised the mutinous atmosphere. He requested that Chamberlain take the meeting at noon and get him ‘out of a hole’.
Chamberlain chaired all MCC meetings from that day forth. ‘The result was magical.64 We were always unanimous,’ he wrote in relief to his sister. ‘Oh dear!’ Ida wrote back.65 ‘What a state of affairs when the P.M. cannot depend on those who ought to be his chief support and continually has to take over the most important jobs himself. You do indeed have to pay for your Winston.’ His other sister Hilda was equally sympathetic. ‘You do manage Winston wonderfully & he is clever enough to know when he must give way gracefully, although doubtless his brilliant ideas are stored somewhere to be brought out in book form later to show how much better he could have done than you.’66 She was spot on. Here is Churchill, the self-proclaimed skilled strategist and bold dynamic leader, reflecting eight years later on the disasters in Norway: ‘Had I been allowed to act with freedom and design when I first demanded permission, a far more agreeable conclusion might have been reached in this key theatre, with favourable consequences in every direction.’67
Chamberlain had spent his twenties in the Caribbean, where his native workmen had a saying: ‘You can’t buy meat without getting some bone.’68 He confided to his sisters that Churchill’s presence in the Cabinet was ‘just the price we have to pay for the asset we have in his personality and popularity’.69 Still, the cost continued to escalate. Under Churchill’s chairmanship, the MCC had been ‘getting into a sad mess, quarrelling and sulking, with everyone feeling irritable and strained and with a general conviction that Winston had smashed the machine we had so carefully built up … He does enjoy planning a campaign or an operation himself so much and he believes so earnestly in all his own ideas (for the moment) that he puts intenser pressure on his staff than he realises.70 The result is apt to be that they are bullied into a sulky silence – a most dangerous position in war.’
With Chamberlain once again in charge of the machine, it was decided on 16 April to go directly for Trondheim ‘with the least possible delay’.71 The War Cabinet was united. Churchill appeared delighted. Chamberlain wrote that the First Lord was ‘in the best of humour & tells his friends that he and the P.M. are working admirably together’.72
But three days later Churchill claimed to have faced ‘a vehement and decisive change in the opinion of the Chiefs of Staff and of the Admiralty’.73
A critical draft memorandum by the Joint Planning Staff had already been circulated on 15 April. Then at the morning MCC meeting on 19 April, the Chiefs of Staff presented a new paper strongly opposing ‘Hammer’. A naval bombardment of Trondheim was too risky. The Germans had had ample time to fortify the entrance to the harbour. If the British lost a cruiser in a German air attack, as suddenly seemed likely, then Italy might declare war. The paper recommended a ‘complete alteration of emphasis’, placing the entire onus on the pincer movements.74
In a striking departure that was based on what Peter Fleming called ‘a blithe disregard for the realities of the situation’, Churchill’s senior military advisers suggested that ‘Maurice Force’ and ‘Sickle Force’ ought no longer to be diversionary operations – given the ‘considerable advance’ made by Carton de Wiart and the ‘unexpected success’ in landing Paget’s forces at Åndalsnes without a casualty.75, 76, 77 Although separated from each other by 200 miles of snow-covered mountains, birch forests and wide expanses of frozen water, the two forces should form the main attack on Trondheim, which it was still thought essential to seize for a base.
At a loss to know what to commend, Chamberlain, now back in the MCC chair, looked for answer to the First Sea Lord, having, in General Alan Brooke’s account, a deep respect for Admiral Pound and his judgement. At the other end of the table, Pound responded with one of his enigmatic silences until it was realised that he had begun to doze, as he often did in these long MCC meetings.fn1 78 ‘But at the mention of the Fleet,’ Brooke wrote, ‘the old man, to whom the security, traditions and transmitted wisdom of his Service were life itself, awoke to full activity and shook his head vigorously.’79
Churchill was said to have lost his temper when Pound assured him that ‘there was no need to risk ships’, and that the military were confident of the success of their pincer attacks.80 ‘You admirals all the same … agree on plans … when it comes to fighting you’re yellow.’ This was the story put around by Brendan Bracken to defend his master from rumours that Churchill had developed cold feet. In the Bracken–Churchill version, Churchill only with immense reluctance agreed finally that evening to Pound’s proposals.
Churchill’s other colleagues in the War Cabinet, however, felt that the First Lord was not quite so reluctant or angry about his advisers’ volte-face as later he maintained, and that Churchill had been all in favour of cancelling ‘Hammer’. The Chancellor, John Simon, was emphatic about this in his diary. ‘Churchill never for one moment urged a different course.’81 Simon’s understanding was shared by Halifax. ‘Great efforts are being made to represent the Norwegian business as the result of timid colleagues restraining the bold, courageous and dashing Winston.82 As a matter of fact the exact opposite would be at least as near the truth, and on Winston certainly rests the main responsibility for the abandonment of the naval attack on Trondheim.’
Simon and Halifax are supported in their accounts by Chamberlain, who described to his sisters how, with no advance notice, Churchill had called the Chiefs of Staff to the Admiralty ‘which he had then no authority to do’ and bullied them into agreeing ‘with a course which they disapproved’.83 Churchill had next telephoned Chamberlain and asked
for the Prime Minister’s authority to drop the direct blow on Trondheim, saying that the Admiralty advised it and all the Chiefs of Staff concurred. Chamberlain wrote: ‘I said that if that were so, I would be guided by their opinion and the necessary orders were taken at once.’
Chamberlain was merely doing what Churchill had asked, even if Churchill tilted it somewhat differently in The Gathering Storm, saying that he had no option but to agree to a paper that represented the collective view of the military chiefs. Yet as General Percy Groves had observed six years earlier: ‘There are few paradoxes more striking than that to be found between Mr Churchill’s deeds as a Minister and his words as an historian.’84
On 20 April, Churchill signalled Forbes to cancel ‘Hammer’. Cadogan was disgusted. ‘All Trondheim plans upset.85 “Frontal attack” given up, and we can’t expect anything for a month! This was recommendation of Cs of Staff, approved by P.M. and Winston. But it seems to me awful!’
To compound the awfulness, the War Office had yet to inform the British or Norwegian commanders on the ground that the seaborne assault on Trondheim had been aborted, in Pownall’s words, as ‘a dud plan’.86
In the burning ruins of Namsos, Carton de Wiart fretted for ‘Hammer’ to begin, unaware that his Territorials and not the navy now constituted the main attack force on Trondheim. At 11.35 p.m. on 21 April, he sent another signal marked Urgent. ‘Enemy aircraft again very active and dominating situation … Fear our position becomes untenable … Only three small store houses standing … All civilians left Namsos.87 No cars left.’
Back in the Admiralty Map Room, Churchill’s mercurial focus had swivelled northwards – much to the dismay of Ironside. ‘He is so like a child in many ways.88 He tires of a thing and then he wants to hear no more of it. He was mad to divert the brigade from Narvik to Namsos and would hear of no reason. Now he is bored with the Namsos operation and is all for Narvik again.’
8
WORST OF ALL EXPERIENCES
‘Ah, it is all very difficult, we are used to travelling on camels across the desert and here you give us boats, and we have to go across water.’1
FRENCH FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE, Narvik, April 1940
‘Chamberlain was destroyed not in the West End but in the fjords of Norway.’2
SIMON BALL, The Guardsmen
While Carton de Wiart waited in vain for the Royal Navy to hammer Trondheim, 300 miles north a separate naval offensive was about to get under way.
Vice Admiral Whitworth had sent another excited signal to the Admiralty after sinking the remaining eight German destroyers on 13 April. ‘I am convinced that Narvik can be taken by direct assault without fear of meeting serious opposition on landing.3 I consider that the main landing force need only be small.’ Churchill’s deduction that Narvik was there for the taking prepared the ground for the fiasco which followed.
Flushed with the news of Whitworth’s easy victory, Churchill continued to be magnetised by the iron-ore town. Whatever his public commitment to seizing Trondheim, behind the scenes Narvik was his false north; a place that interfered with his ability to orient his attention properly elsewhere. He never ceased to regard its capture as the ‘primary strategic objective’, and he telegraphed the naval commander, Admiral Cork: ‘Once this is achieved we have the trophy at which all Europe is looking.4, 5 We must get into Narvik or its ruins as soon as possible.’
Yet the same combination of heavy snow, lack of men, equipment and air cover which had proved lethal to Operations ‘Sickle’ and ‘Maurice’ now bogged down Operation ‘Rupert’ in ways that rivalled the routs at Namsos and Åndalsnes. When General Auchinleck arrived in Narvik on 12 May, he had one word for the farcical situation that he found there: ‘Gilbertian’.6 Even the town’s German commander was at a loss to understand why Churchill had not seized Narvik in April. General Dietl said that it remained ‘a mystery which only the British leaders could explain’.7
On 15 April, the day after Peter Fleming landed in Namsos, the cruiser HMS Southampton steamed into Vägsfjord off Harstad, a small town on an island forty miles north of Narvik. On board and recovering from seasickness was the military commander of Operation ‘Rupert’, Major General Pierse Mackesy, the original land-force commander of ‘Avonmouth’ and ‘R.4’. Mackesy had asked to rendezvous with Admiral Cork, on board the cruiser HMS Aurora. Their brittle meeting was to shape the battle for Narvik.
Mackesy had changed operations as many times as ships in the previous week, having to transfer with his staff from the Aurora to the liner Batory, and then on 11 April to the Southampton, after receiving fresh Cabinet orders. The revised convoy was to be known as ‘NP1’. Long before he reached Narvik, Mackesy felt that he had stepped up onto a stage of ‘plans by impulsiveness and out of ignorance’ in which – and of this he had not an ounce of doubt – the First Lord was a leading player.8 ‘Mr Winston Churchill had almost supreme personal responsibility for the direction of the Imperial war effort.’ The questionable strategic value of Mackesy’s latest destination did nothing to deepen his confidence. ‘Narvik was really a name on the map, the place itself of little use to anyone.’9
Sailing ahead, the Southampton had arrived at Harstad the day before, on 14 April. Finding no German forces on the island, Mackesy disembarked his troops – two companies of Scots Guards and a detachment of Royal Engineers: twenty-two officers and three hundred and thirty-five men, who would establish headquarters in cooperation with the Norwegians. Mackesy described his men as ‘a typical advance party, chiefly administrative personnel loaded for a peaceful and orderly landing at an organised friendly port’.10 The remainder of his force, four more battalions from ‘R.4’, were scheduled to arrive the following day; and a demi-brigade of Chasseurs Alpins five days after that.
His men were already ashore when at around 3 p.m. Mackesy received a radio message from Admiral Cork. Because of the mountains, the signal was garbled, but its gist was clear. The navy commander had read Whitworth’s first signal about the ‘thoroughly frightened’ enemy in Narvik, and he suggested to Mackesy that ‘we take every advantage of this before enemy has recovered’ – by landing Mackesy’s troops in Narvik at daybreak the following morning.11 Faced with the prospect of one more hasty re-embarkation, Mackesy ‘disliked the suggestion enormously’.12 He wired back that it would be better to wait for the rest of 24th Guards Brigade, expected shortly on ‘NP1’, and meanwhile reconnoitre the area, which according to an old pilot on the lighthouse at Tranøy, was ‘very strongly held’: he had advised the British not to attack until they had twice as many ships.13
Mackesy proposed that he and Cork get together the following day, 15 April, to discuss the next step.
Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of Cork and Orrery greeted Mackesy on the Aurora that afternoon by chucking up his monocle and catching it in his eye. He was someone the army commander had not met before, a short, impetuous Irish peer, known as ‘Ginger’ for his red hair and ‘Cork-n-horrible’ for his temper, and another First World War veteran hauled out of retirement in order to command the naval forces that would assist in the amphibious capture of Narvik. Cork was Mackesy’s senior in age and rank, even though Mackesy remained the operation’s overall commander. The ‘ridiculous appointment of Cork’, as the anonymous senior officer wrote to Godfrey, coming on top of ‘the side-tracking of the C-in-C Home Fleet’, was the next most serious criticism of Churchill’s conduct of the Norway Campaign.14 It was felt that the First Lord had injected unnecessary confusion into the chain of command.
A veteran of the Murmansk Campaign, Mackesy, according to his son Piers, was not a conciliatory man, ‘and he did not gladly accommodate himself to those in high places with whom he disagreed.15 He had sailed for Narvik already convinced that the plan was inept and the expedition badly mounted. And at Harstad he was confronted by a total stranger sent by the statesman whom he knew to be chiefly responsible for the Scandinavian adventure and its disastrous organisation. Many witnesses of that first encounter in the A
urora were to recall the intense antagonism of the two commanders.’
Aside from not getting on, each commander carried contradictory orders. Cork’s instructions from Churchill had been delivered orally on 10 April, and not shared with the War Office or with Mackesy, at a late-night meeting of Churchill’s Military Coordination Committee, during which it was made clear to Cork that the government desired ‘to turn the enemy out of Narvik at the earliest possible moment’.16 Churchill reiterated his impatience for bold and prompt action the following afternoon, 11 April, during a brief car trip from the Admiralty to the House of Commons, where Churchill was to deliver his first statement on Norway. ‘The crowd lining the streets gave him a great ovation,’ Cork recalled, ‘and attending to this and the fact of other people being in the car precluded any serious attention to the matter in which I was interested.’17
Mackesy, meanwhile, had arrived in the theatre of operations ‘with diametrically opposite views’ from those of the navy commander.18 According to the official account in the London Gazette, ‘not only was his force embarked as for a peaceful landing … and unready for immediate operations but … the orders he had received … ruled out any idea of attempting an opposed landing’. Mackesy’s written instructions from General Ironside were specific and cautious, issued in a totally different situation, and intended to avoid fighting with Norwegian troops if the Allies were to land in Narvik prior to a German response to ‘Wilfred’. Orders issued earlier on 5 April had been even less combative, recommending that ‘fire in retaliation is only to be opened as a last resort’.19
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