Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  The result was that Mackesy, the intellectually intolerant engineer, and Cork, the monocled fiery Irish peer, were pitched into an instant stand-off, reflected by the fact that Mackesy established his HQ ashore while Cork remained on board his flagship. There was little prospect of laughing it off to reach a rapprochement – a pilot who had dealings with Cork observed: ‘If there was one thing the Admiral detested it was the humouring approach.’20 To illustrate the bristling tension between them, Cork flew from the Southampton to Aurora in an old Walrus which was attacked by his own side’s Bren gun, fired by Lance Corporal Ludlow, who was reprimanded for ‘missing a low-flying admiral’.21

  Reduced to a convoy of fourteen ships after the sudden detachment of the rear half, ‘NP1’ arrived off Harstad on 15 April. The troops disembarked in fishing boats onto a slippery pier, slowly edging closer to Narvik while Force HQ made up their minds. The Norwegian Chief of Staff, Major Lindback Larsen, seeing men with bare knees puffing on bagpipes, reported gloomily back to his commander, Major General Carl Fleischer, that nothing could be expected of them. In contrast to the young German mountain troops who had been gathered on the afterdecks of their destroyers and shown maps and been told where they were heading and why, none of the British officers had a clear idea of the mission, and hardly any of the soldiers spoke Norwegian – there were fewer than two interpreters to every thousand men. Instead of going into action, 1st Irish Guards hunkered down in cramped accommodation in freezing temperatures, in a landscape foreign to anything they had known. The men’s despondency was registered by their Quartermaster who opened the Daily Mirror and read the headline ‘Narvik in Allied Hands’.22 ‘What the – hell do they think we are?’ In his official history of the regiment, Major Desmond Fitzgerald wrote that ‘all the battles in Africa, Italy, France, Holland and Germany, longer and bloodier though they were, could not efface the memory of the Norwegian campaign as the worst of all experiences’.23

  Cork was said to have boasted that in the first twenty-four hours he could have seized Narvik with his bare hands. Against his impatience to take immediate advantage of Whitworth’s attack, Mackesy counselled caution. Mackesy’s strength had been halved the night before by the sudden diversion of 146th Infantry Brigade to Namsos. In his soldier’s view, it was the height of folly to attempt any landing at Narvik until he had received his promised reinforcements of men and equipment, plus intelligence concerning the enemy’s strength. Each hour brought fresh rumours which made an accurate assessment impossible. A Norwegian coastguard telephoned that five enemy submarines were moving at full speed towards Narvik. A flurry of flashes passed between the Battalion HQ and the Aurora, followed by more signal activity. ‘For submarines, please read whales.’24 In fact, there were five U-boats in the vicinity.

  A warning of the risk to Mackesy’s troops even from limited shore defences was the example of Germany’s newest heavy cruiser Blücher, sunk in Oslo on 9 April with the assistance of two nineteenth-century shore guns. Narvik’s beaches were believed to be mined and covered by machine guns that had already wounded eleven British servicemen. The harbour was clogged with wrecks and still-burning debris. Because of the botched unloading at Rosyth, Mackesy had no landing craft or maps, other than poor reproductions of a 1906 Norwegian survey; and his anti-aircraft defences were ‘quite inadequate’ to cope with the 140 raids which took place on Harstad during the eight weeks of operations.25 Mackesy cabled the War Office: ‘I must point out that I have not even one field gun and I have not even one anti-aircraft gun.26 I have practically no Mortar ammunition. My force is probably inferior to the enemy … Offensive operation without artillery must be ruled out.’

  On top of everything, the weather was atrocious. The War Office had assured Mackesy that there would be no snow in Narvik after mid-April. Yet the snow lay five feet thick to the waterline, and continuous blizzards rendered visibility ‘seldom greater than two cables’.27 As at Namsos, the occupying force lacked skis, sledges, snowshoes. On 16 April, Mackesy agreed with a reluctant Cork to send a joint communiqué to the War Office. ‘Until snow melts about end of April, operations on any scale across country cannot take place.’28

  This was not what Churchill wished to hear. He sent back a ‘most urgent’ message addressed to both commanders, asking them to give their full consideration for ‘an assault on Narvik’, and emphasising that the capture of the port ‘would be an important success’.29, 30 In a separate message to Admiral Forbes, Churchill placed scornful blame on Mackesy for wanting ‘to sit down in front of Narvik and convert the operation into a kind of siege’.31

  Churchill expressed his unshakeable belief that ‘failure to take Narvik will be a major disaster’, and a long delay ‘disastrous both for military and psychological reasons’.32 Yet the psychological reasons were mostly Churchill’s. General Mackesy was far from being the only authority to question Narvik’s strategic worth. At home, Leo Amery wanted to know ‘why we are wasting men on Narvik where the Germans have been isolated and helpless from the moment their ships were sunk instead of concentrating every possible man on the immediate capture of Trondheim’.33 In Amery’s decided opinion, ‘Here Winston was all wrong.’ This was the opinion, too, of more or less every military adviser aside from Cork, and also of the press. The Spectator’s correspondent wrote: ‘There was no apparent reason why British warships should have devoted their attention to Narvik alone.’34

  But Narvik had taken on extra resonance with the capture of Churchill’s twenty-three-year-old nephew. Quite apart from having to deal with the anxiety of Romilly’s parents, there was the First Lord’s own position. He had been the chief advocate of the minelaying operation, not least in a bid to wipe clean the Gallipoli slate. After the German invasion, the taking of the ore-town was supposed to be his masterstroke, up there with one of Marlborough’s conquests. Maisky wrote of Churchill’s ambitions: ‘He always imagined himself in the role of a great military leader who flung armies from one end of Europe to another, conquered kingdoms and won brilliant victories …’ Now Narvik risked turning into an Arctic Dardanelles.35

  The two campaigns bore similarities in their conception – the wish to break a stalemate by deploying British sea power – but also in their bungled planning and execution: the sending in of the navy before troops were ready, the diversion to another port, the failure of ships to suppress land targets, even down to the wild confusion over transporting equipment – horses in one ship, harnesses in another … The baffling command structure was a further unwelcome echo: Admiral Godfrey had landed on Y beach at Gallipoli on 24 April 1915. ‘The question of who was in local command was not clear, even to some of the senior officers on the spot.’36

  Tormented by the parallels, Churchill claimed to have ‘pondered a good deal upon the lessons of the Dardanelles’.37 He flinched at whispers that the ‘iron of the Dardanelles had entered into my soul’; that it was the iron ore of Narvik now affecting his judgement and quite possibly his nerve.38

  Typical was the reaction of General Pownall when informed of the scheme for Norway. ‘Of all the harebrained projects I have heard this is the most foolish – its inception smacks all too alarmingly of Gallipoli.’39 The dread words ‘harebrained’ and ‘Gallipoli’ bobbed up again and again. In March, Lord Gort, head of the British Expeditionary Force in France, expressed his fear that the Scandinavian expedition ‘might … prove a Gallipoli’.40 On 17 April, Colville was taken aside by Lord Hankey who hinted that he was ‘a little worried by Winston’s determination to direct the war: he remembers, he says, the operations at the Dardanelles all too clearly.41 He is going to warn the P.M.’

  Obvious to Lloyd George was that Churchill had been ‘bruised’ by the Dardanelles, and had ‘some sort of inferiority complex when it comes to offensive operations’.42 ‘Bruised’ was an understatement. When describing the events of 1915, Clementine said: ‘I thought he would die of grief.’43

  Churchill admitted in his memoirs that there was no compelling strategic
reason to desire quick success at Narvik, but Piers Mackesy argued in his father’s defence that ‘there were political ones; and Churchill himself had a personal reason to desire one’.44 By late April, A. J. Sylvester was hearing from various sources ‘that Winston is worried for purely political reasons – he has got a “Dardanelles complex”’.45 To Admiral Godfrey, nothing could be plainer. Churchill had anticipated redeeming himself in Norway, and he was ‘determined that he would not leave the Admiralty a second time under a cloud of failure’.46

  Twenty-five years earlier, Churchill had found a scapegoat in General Stopford. He now piled on General Mackesy the failure to exploit Whitworth’s golden opportunity. Impatient to resolve ‘the damaging deadlock and the neutralisation of one of our best brigades’, and ignoring Ironside’s efforts to get him to understand that it was fatal ‘to start monkeying about from here with the General on the spot’, Churchill cast the army commander as the villain and the reason for a situation ‘at once unexpected and disagreeable’.47, 48, 49

  Chamberlain had noted how Churchill intimidated his staff so that they were afraid to speak out, dismissing those who disagreed with him. Churchill’s unflattering portrait of Mackesy in The Gathering Storm was a further example. Its vindictiveness mystified Mackesy’s son Piers. ‘How can one explain the bitterness with which Churchill pursued the little Narvik operation in later years?’ Piers Mackesy objected that Churchill’s contentious narrative was cast in a framework of ‘factual inaccuracy, of careful innuendo and of inconsistencies which can only be explained by the author’s profound emotional involvement in the operation’.50

  Mackesy, the general on the spot, did not consider Churchill’s plan worth the ‘sheer bloody murder’ which it would entail.51 He asked Cork to pass on the following message: ‘So far as I am concerned, I will not have the snows of Narvik substituted for the mud of Passchendaele in public opinion.’52 After making a reconnaissance on 20 April, Mackesy – now ‘in a thoroughly disgruntled state’, according to Ironside – reported that the chances of a successful landing from destroyers were ‘non-existent’, and from open boats would involve ‘NOT the neutralisation but the destruction of 24th Guards Brigade’.53, 54

  As at Gallipoli, Churchill professed not to care too much about casualties, believing that his orders ‘so evidently contemplated heavy losses, that they should have been obeyed’.55 He had been ‘taken aback’ by Mackesy’s unwillingness to engage with the enemy, and now tried to sideline him.56 Days earlier, he had bypassed Admiral Forbes and Vice Admiral Whitworth. In the same spirit, and behind everyone’s backs, he signalled the navy commander directly.

  Geoffrey Shakespeare was at the Admiralty at 3 a.m. one night when Churchill asked his yawning secretary, ‘Where is the oil?’

  ‘What oil, sir?’57

  ‘Wake up,’ said Churchill, ‘I want the oil [Earl of Cork and Orrery].’

  On 18 April, Churchill telegraphed Cork. ‘Should you consider the situation is being mishandled it is your duty to report either to me personally or to Admiralty upon it.’58 In a startling instruction, Churchill gave Cork the authority to detain Mackesy. ‘If this Officer appears to be spreading a bad spirit through the higher ranks of the land force, do not hesitate to relieve him or place him under arrest.’59 Then on 21 April, Churchill used ‘the apparent lack of harmony’ between the two commanders as the excuse to put Cork in supreme charge of ‘this crucial operation’.60

  With his own man now in position, the seizure of Narvik appeared closer than it had ever been. But Churchill’s eager hopes were dashed almost immediately. On going ashore personally to ‘test the snow’ with a party of Royal Marines, the diminutive Cork sank in up to his waist and had to be pulled out after losing his monocle.61 ‘To make any progress was exhausting,’ he reported to the Admiralty that night. And he had a request. ‘What is really our one pressing need is fighters, we are so over matched in the air.’62

  Whether by design or not, Cork set the operation for 24 April – an indelible date in the Churchill calendar. Preceded by a heavy naval bombardment, the battalion was to land on Narvik’s north side at the subsidiary harbour of Vasvik. ‘It is a curious fact,’ Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner told his company commanders on 22 April, ‘that the 24th is the anniversary of Gallipoli.63 On that date, the day after tomorrow, the Battalion is going to make an assault landing and capture Narvik. There is only one assault landing craft available.’

  When Mackesy heard of Cork’s plan to pummel the town and its civilian population into surrender, he cabled a formal protest to the War Office, saying that the shelling was likely to achieve nothing militarily, but stood gravely to impair good relations with Norway, and he demanded that his views be represented to the government. ‘There is not one officer or man under my command who will not feel shame for himself and his country if the thousands of Norwegian men, women and children in Narvik are subjected to the bombardment proposed.’64

  One of those standing in the direct line of Cork’s contemplated attrition was Churchill’s nephew. When the Germans picked up a radio warning from Tromsø, General Dietl decided to evacuate the town. Shortly after 3 a.m. on 23 April, Giles Romilly was woken in the Café Iris and driven to Beisfjord where a seaplane was moored. This is the last entry in a log kept by the mate of the steamer Blythmoor: ‘3.30 Romilly taken away.65 Guards say he is to be flown to Germany. Poor beggar.’

  The naval bombardment of Narvik began in a heavy snowfall at 7.05 next morning, twenty-five years to the day of the Gallipoli landings. It was a bitingly cold dawn. A howling gale flung snow into the faces of 1st Battalion Irish Guards, muffled up to the eyes and waiting to land from the repair ship Vindictive. At 8.30 a.m., the last guardsman had been heaved up the rope ladder from a fishing boat used to transfer the troops, when the Aurora flashed the message ‘Negative embarkation’.66 The bombardment had not been satisfactory. But the main reason, wrote Major Desmond Fitzgerald, who passed the details on to Evelyn Waugh, was that the naval staff ‘could not guarantee that the landing craft would ever reach the shore’.

  ‘We want a bit of luck,’ General Ironside had written when the Norway Campaign was at the planning stage.67 General Pownall ascribed the muddles in Narvik and Namsos to Churchill’s bad luck – ‘he is unlucky, he was throughout the last war; and that is a real thing and a bad and dangerous failing’.68 Lord Gort was another who reckoned that Churchill had ‘an unlucky star’ and that the Scandinavian expedition was ‘a mistake’ from the beginning.69

  Yet Churchill’s outrageous good fortune must not be overlooked either.

  Churchill’s kismet seems to have smiled on him when he waved on Vice Admiral Whitworth to engage with the German fleet on 13 April, as he had urged Captain Warburton-Lee three days earlier. (‘Attack at dawn, all good luck.’70) A further fluke was the success of Churchill’s convoy in avoiding the multitude of torpedoes aimed at it from German submarines.

  Churchill had greatly underestimated the risk to his navy from above water. But he ignored as well the dangers from below the sea. Trond Kristiansen is a Narvik publisher specialising in the Norway Campaign. He says: ‘It was suicidal and insanely dangerous to bring the navy into Vestfjorden, because five U-boats were waiting for them.’71

  U47 was commanded by Günther Prien who six months earlier had sunk HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow with the loss of 833 men. On the evening of 15 April, Prien came upon the Narvik convoy ‘NP1’ at anchorage fifteen miles east of Harstad, waiting to disembark. Prien was amazed to see through his periscope ‘a wall of ships’, including ‘three large transports, three small and two cruisers’ – the destruction of which, believes Geirr Haarr, could have influenced the entire Allied campaign in Norway.72 The weather was good, the target impossible to miss. At 10.42 p.m., Prien fired four torpedoes at two cruisers and two large transports. The distance: 700 yards. He waited for the certain explosion – but nothing. He reloaded, navigated closer, and three hours later fired another four torpedoes. Again, nothing happened,
except that U47 became grounded on an uncharted reef, and Prien had to send his crew out on deck to run up and down in order to rock the submarine free.

  In what became part of the ongoing Torpedo Crisis or Versager (failure), Prien fired a total of ten torpedoes at sitting ducks like HMS Warspite and HMS Hotspur – all of which malfunctioned, either exploding prematurely or failing to detonate. The same failures were reported by the captains of U48, U46, U38, U49 and U65. The reasons were never explained satisfactorily. The high iron-ore content in the soil may have affected the magnetically activated pistols, and caused the gyro-magnets to make the torpedoes run deeper. Nicholas Rodger, one of Britain’s foremost naval historians, points out that before the war the German navy had practised firing torpedoes in a freshwater lake in Schleswig, and he conjectures that Prien’s torpedo officers might have neglected to make adjustments for the heavier salt water. At any rate, a disgusted Prien complained to Admiral Karl Dönitz that he had been sent to war with the equivalent of ‘wooden rifles’. In a few hours at Gallipoli, three of the largest vessels in the British fleet had gone to the bottom. Operation ‘Rupert’ might have been over and done with in a day at Harstad if Prien’s torpedoes had detonated on 15 April. Kristiansen says: ‘If the German torpedoes had functioned, Gallipoli would have looked like a children’s birthday party.’ For Churchill, it would have been a career-stopper.

  War is supremely the domain of accident, and great flukes often decide great events. Although some scepticism is in order when introducing any speculation, Gunnar Hojem, head of Namsos’s History Society, predicts an outcome even more dramatic had Churchill’s army and navy commanders in Norway carried out his orders. ‘If Churchill had done what he meant to do, it would have been a catastrophe. Maybe we’d all be wearing brown shirts still today.’