by Richard Mead
There was also some reluctance in the Army to let its best men transfer to an unproven organization, although the strong support of a number of senior officers, notably Brooke and his successor in late 1941 as C-in-C Home Forces, Bernard Paget, would over time prove invaluable in overcoming opposition from that quarter.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the CLE began its work under the overall command of Group Captain L.G. Harvey. The army side was headed by Major John Rock and the RAF by Wing Commander Sir Nigel Norman, whilst the Parachute Training School (PTS) came under two commanders before the appointment in July 1941 of Squadron Leader Maurice Newnham, who would be associated with it for the rest of the war. No. 2 Commando was renamed 11 Special Service Battalion and was organized into a headquarters, a parachute wing and a glider wing. In February 1941 the first ever British parachute operation took place, when a party of seven officers and thirty-one other ranks parachuted into Italy and mounted an attack on the Tragino Aqueduct, with the objective of disrupting water supplies to Taranto, Brindisi and Bari. The operation was successful, but the whole party with one exception was captured and the impact was negligible. Nonetheless, some useful lessons were learnt about the mounting of such operations.
Urged on by an impatient Prime Minister, the War Office and the Air Ministry began work in early 1941 on a joint paper on the development of the airborne forces. Little progress had been made by the time Churchill visited the CLE on 26 April and he came away profoundly depressed. Yet more pressure was applied and at the end of May the joint paper was submitted which, among other things, proposed the formation of two parachute brigades and two airlanding brigades, one of each in the UK and the Middle East respectively. This led to the formation in September of 1 Parachute Brigade under Brigadier Richard Gale, comprising 11 Special Air Service Battalion, now renamed 1st Parachute Battalion and under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Eric Down, and the newly raised 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions under Lieutenant Colonels Edward Flavell and Gerald Lathbury. In the following month 31 Independent Brigade Group was converted into 1 Airlanding Brigade Group, with the command given to Brigadier George ‘Hoppy’ Hopkinson. In the meantime a small number of glider pilots were trained on civilian gliders until the arrival of the Hotspurs, whilst the first prototype of a larger troop-carrying glider, the Horsa, was flown on 12 September 1941.
This was the situation in the autumn of 1941, when the War Office decided that a separate headquarters was necessary to coordinate the expanded airborne forces. Brooke, as C-in-C Home Forces, carried considerable weight in proposing that the new commander should carry not only administrative but operational responsibility and, indeed, that the new organization should be constituted from the outset as a divisional headquarters. Thus, when Boy arrived at GHQ Home Forces in Storey’s Gate on 3 November 1941, it was as Commander Para-Troops and Airborne Division1. He had been asked whom he wanted as his GSO1 and chose Walch, who reported for duty on the same day. On the following day they were joined by Nigel Norman from the CLE as Air Adviser and the other members of the staff arrived over the ensuing weeks.
Some of the staff were handpicked by Boy. There were two Grenadiers, Lieutenant Colonel John Goschen, the AA&QMG, and Major Richard des Voeux, the GSO2 (Operations), both of whom had served under Boy in the 2nd Battalion. Major Dick Shorrock, the DADOS, had been on the staff of 128 Brigade and Captain Brian Urquhart, the GSO3 (Intelligence), had been recommended to Boy whilst serving in 43 Division. The remaining staff officers were Colonel Austin Eagger, the ADMS, Lieutenant Colonels Geoffrey Loring, the ADOS, and Mark Henniker, the CRE, Majors John Cowan, the DAQMG, W. T. Williams, the DAAG, and ‘Pigmy’ Smallman-Tew, the SO Royal Signals. Together with Staff Sergeants Watson and Dexter, the Chief Clerk and his assistant, they comprised the ‘Dungeon Party’, so called because they were located in a basement in the depths of Storey’s Gate.
Almost all these men were to remain associated with the airborne forces in some capacity for the next three years of Boy’s career, indeed Walch, Cowan, Eagger, Loring, Shorrock and Urquhart moved with Boy to successive HQs and ultimately to I Airborne Corps, achieving promotion as they went. Boy always rewarded loyalty when it was given to him. On the one hand this was a great attribute and produced a tightly knit team, each of whom understood what the others were doing. On the other, an infusion of new blood from time to time might have instilled new ideas in the execution of staff duties, whilst the lack of experience on active operations of most of his staff was to prove a considerable handicap in the autumn of 1944.
Perhaps because he was not from the Army and thus the difference in seniority was less important, the man closest to Boy was Nigel Norman, a deep friendship developing between the two men. The others either knew Boy well already or quickly came under his spell. In Brian Urquhart’s words, ‘Once you got used to Browning’s mannered arrogance – wearing his cap at meals in the mess2 and always slightly aloof and challenging – you found a delightful and imaginative man and a loyal friend.’3
Boy did not come to his new role entirely cold. He had for some time been seriously interested in the possibilities of airborne warfare and, whilst commanding 128 Brigade, he and members of his staff would retire to his room after dinner in the mess to work out the men, weapons and equipment which would be needed for an airborne army. He had conveyed his views on a number of occasions to the War Office and to Brooke, whom he admired enormously, and it was said that he even copied his letters to his former comrade from the trenches, now the Prime Minister.
He also had some modest theoretical experience. Shortly after assuming command of 24 Guards Brigade Group, he had been asked to take part in a tri-service exercise without troops in South-West Area (Devon and Cornwall) as the commander of an ‘invasion force’ which would land at Start Bay and attempt to take Plymouth. His allotted force was one infantry division, one parachute regiment and twelve dive bombers. He asked Basil Liddell-Hart to help him with a plan, one part of which involved an airborne landing between Plymouth and Tavistock. The reviewing panel concluded that he would have succeeded in taking the former, although there was some criticism of the dispersed nature of the parachute landings and their distance from the seaborne invasion force. This problem would be played out on a much larger scale later in the war, but Boy was clearly already thinking about the issues.
From Brooke’s perspective Boy was the ideal candidate. He was known to be determined and energetic but also personally ambitious, which meant he could be counted on to throw himself into the role and make a success of it. He was a natural leader, who would inspire those under his command. He was a good organizer, who would overcome any obstacles put in his way. Whilst no intellectual, he was entirely open to new ideas, unlike many of his contemporaries. Finally, he was very well connected, not only to Brooke himself, who was about to become the professional head of the British Army as CIGS, but to other senior officers and politicians, even to Churchill himself. He had even been known for many years to the Royal Family: there is no suggestion that this played a role in either his appointment or his later achievements, but the visible interest of the King and Queen in the airborne forces was helpful in building morale and establishing a reputation among the wider public.
The task before Boy was nothing less than monumental. There were no good recent precedents for raising an entirely new type of fighting organization. The nearest equivalent was the formation of the Tank Corps in the Great War, so Boy arranged a lunch with Major General J. F. C. Fuller, one of the first armoured warfare pioneers, to draw on his experience. Boy knew that, although a great deal of work had been done over the previous eighteen months, much more needed to be resolved, starting with the composition of the division. It had been accepted that there would be a parachute brigade and an airlanding brigade, but there was no guidance as to what would constitute the divisional troops. Henniker, as Boy’s Chief Engineer, recalled that his first problem was to work out exactly what airborne engineers would do. This in turn depended
on the role of the division itself. Would it land in small parties behind enemy lines, in which case the engineers’ role would combine sabotage and demolition, or would it operate as a whole, when the role would be more conventional and include building bridges, preparing landing grounds, laying and lifting mines and organizing water supplies? If the latter, how would they get the equipment into action, given that they would have no heavy ground transport? Problems like these were multiplied across the various arms and services.
One thing was clear. The HQ would have to move out of London, preferably to an area where the main formations could be based and train. 1 Parachute Brigade was located at Hardwick Camp, near Chesterfield, which was relatively convenient for parachute training at Ringway, but otherwise remote. 1 Airlanding Brigade Group had recently moved to the Newbury-Basingstoke area. Boy thought that the best place to concentrate would be around the British Army’s traditional training area on Salisbury Plain and Walch was despatched to find a suitable location. As it happened, it was a part of the world the GSO1 knew well as his parents-in-law lived in Brigmerston House, near Netheravon. He quickly identified Syrencote House, half a mile away, as ideal for the divisional HQ. Previously the residence of the Commandant of the School of Artillery at Larkhill, it was occupied by a number of girls from the ATS, who were summarily ejected. The HQ moved there on 22 December 1941, with Boy, Walch and Norman billeted at Brigmerston House, Walch’s in-laws having moved to another house owned by them locally.
With good grass airfields nearby at Upavon and Netheravon and plenty of space to train on Salisbury Plain, this was an excellent location and Boy brought 1 Parachute Brigade south in April 1942. There had been some movement on the RAF side as well. Two exercise squadrons, 296 for glider training and 297 for parachute training, were formed in January 1942 and consolidated that month into 38 Wing, commanded by Nigel Norman, who was now promoted to group captain. He located his HQ initially alongside the Airborne Division at Syrencote House, before moving to Netheravon airfield. Norman was given the responsibility for all air training, but the number of aircraft received was far below the planned establishment and progress was agonizingly slow, causing great frustration to both him and Boy.
Boy’s first priority was to mould his new command into the shape he wanted, much as he had done for every other sub-unit, unit or formation he had ever led. He was not entirely pleased with what he found. The original paratroops had been formed from an army commando and, whilst excellent fighting men, had adopted a somewhat relaxed attitude to discipline. The two newer parachute battalions were manned by volunteers from every regiment in the Army and, once again, they had stepped forward in order to see some excitement, not to drill or polish brass. The four airlanding battalions, although regular in origin, had been diluted by conscripts and officers with emergency commissions.
To Boy, discipline had always been the cornerstone of military success and he therefore took steps to improve every aspect of it, primarily by importing a number of NCOs from the Brigade of Guards, but also by ensuring that his subordinates understood the standards to which they should aspire. A second key plank of his philosophy was esprit de corps, driven by his experience in the Grenadiers, who epitomized this. He wanted everyone in the airborne forces, from generals to drivers, to identify with the whole organization, not just their own part of it, to wear the same uniform and badges and to take pride in themselves and in the achievements of all the others. Realizing this objective, he reasoned, would be assisted immeasurably by distinction of dress, the way by which parts of the British Army have traditionally differentiated themselves.
For entirely practical reasons, variations in dress were already being introduced by the time he arrived. It had been learnt very early on that the Mark I helmet, worn since the Great War and still in use for the bulk of the army, was entirely inappropriate, indeed positively dangerous for parachuting, and that a design would be necessary which did not jut out so far from the head. A new pattern was produced and adopted which was both practical and quite distinctive from the Mark I. A helmet was also designed for glider pilots to use whilst flying – on the ground they used the same type as other airborne troops – and another, known as the ‘rubber bungee’ was used for parachute training. Similarly, a number of different smocks or jump jackets were introduced, the prime purpose of which was to prevent items on the outside of the wearers battledress getting entangled in the parachute harness.
Whilst he approved of all of these, Boy wanted something which would single out a man as a member of the Airborne Forces when he was not in battle and the obvious item was the headgear. The Royal Tank Regiment had adopted the black beret in 1924 and its use had also been sanctioned for the newly raised Guards Armoured Division. The beret was an eminently sensible piece of clothing, easy to put on, take off and stow away when necessary, and potentially a great deal smarter than the ubiquitous field service cap. It was also easy to produce in different colours and Boy realized that this would make it the most recognizable part of the uniform. Ironically, he himself was mildly colour blind, but he put together a committee to produce some alternatives, which were paraded by Guards NCOs at Wellington Barracks before a representative audience. The choice of colour was whittled down to two, maroon and light blue, and the former was chosen as the latter was too close to that of the newly formed RAF Regiment.4 The light blue was not forgotten, however. Boy also insisted on the same identifying badge being worn on the battledress of every single man in the Airborne Forces, regardless of his unit or formation. The theme was to be Bellerophon mounted on his winged horse, Pegasus, in light blue on a square maroon background,5 the final design being created by the artist Edward Seago. Beneath the badge, in identical colours, was the word AIRBORNE.
None of this took place as quickly as Boy would have liked, as the dead hand of bureaucracy lay heavily upon such decisions. At the monthly meeting of all his commanders on 9 February 1942, attended by representatives from the War Office, the changes were reported to be in the hands of the Directorate of Staff Duties. Boy made it clear, referring to a meeting with the C-in-C Home Forces and the CIGS a month earlier, that the two most senior officers in the Army ‘had already agreed that the new uniform was a necessity for the Airborne Division, and had ordered that it should be provided. He requested that GHQ Home Forces and the War Office should push the provision of this uniform with the greatest vigour’. Sensing delay, he arranged a meeting with the VCIGS, Archie Nye, to lobby for more vigorous action to be taken, but it was not until May that the beret and Pegasus badge were finally approved by the War Office.
Problems with suitable equipment also multiplied. Personal weapons needed no adaptation, but heavier guns were an issue when it came to loading them onto gliders. The axle of the 6-pounder anti-tank gun had to be narrowed to fit it into a Horsa, whilst the American 75mm pack howitzer proved to be more suitable than its British 3.7 inch counterpart. It was another piece of American equipment, however, which was to make the greatest impact on the airborne forces.
A problem which had been identified early on was the mobility of the division once it had landed. Heavy vehicles would not fit in the Horsas and there would be limited availability of a larger type of glider, the Hamilcar. Light cars were not powerful enough to pull trailers or artillery over rough ground and Universal Carriers, though used in small numbers in the airlanding brigade, lacked speed and agility. The solution emerged whilst HQ was still based in the Dungeon. A call came in to Walch from the US Military Attaché, Colonel Wells, asking if he and Boy would be interested in seeing a new type of vehicle, the Jeep, the first two prototypes of which had just arrived in the UK. Boy accepted enthusiastically and the two of them had a trial drive down Piccadilly at some speed. They agreed that it would be just what was required, only provided that it fitted in the Horsa. One of the vehicles was driven at once up to Ringway, where the first few Horsas were by then located, and it was discovered to be about half-an-inch too wide. Wells sent an immediate signal
back to the USA and the design was altered just in time to go into production. The jeeps still required further modification when they arrived, with the help of a mock-up Horsa fuselage, as did the glider itself: the tail could be removed in later production models of the Horsa I, whilst the Horsa II also had a hinged nose.
Boy’s style of leadership required him never to ask his men to do something he had not done himself. Like every man in the parachute brigades and many in the supporting services, this meant that he had to learn how to parachute. He was neither a good nor a keen jumper and, in a much later conversation with Roy Urquhart, revealed that he had done two jumps and hurt himself both times.6
Qualifying as a glider pilot was quite another matter. The Glider Pilot Regiment was formed with a single battalion on the last day of 1941 under the command of John Rock. Boy’s relationship with Rock was never close, but it was much better with George Chatterton, initially Rock’s second-in-command and then the CO of the 2nd Battalion when it was formed in August 1942. Chatterton’s philosophy of warfare was close to Boy’s and he both introduced a strong ethos of discipline in the regiment, assisted by two company sergeant majors from the Brigade of Guards, and developed the concept of the ‘Total Soldier’, whereby his men would be not just pilots, but also fully trained infantrymen. He also taught Boy to fly.7 As he later wrote: ‘teaching a General of over forty-six8 to fly was no easy matter, particularly this one, for he was a very determined person, and highly inflammable! Nevertheless, he was amazingly good, and quickly learnt the technique of flying an aeroplane. He went solo in eight and a half hours, which is the average for a young man of twenty-one, and very creditable to General Browning.’9 After qualifying, Boy always wore the Army Air Corps wings, designed by himself and still in use to this day.