CHAPTER NINE
Cutting the Gordian Knot
It was 12.30 on 20 January 1943, and the younger children in Sandhurst Road School in Catford, south-east London, were sitting down for lunch. Their older schoolmates were getting ready for a trip to the theatre to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A seven-year-old in the playground looked up after hearing what sounded like the roar of an RAF bomber and waved. Seconds later, the plane’s pilot, Hauptman Heinz Schumann, cut her down with a round of machine-gun fire. Then, turning his Focke-Wulf FW 190A-4 and diving again, he released a single 1,100 pound bomb into the school building. The air raid warning had sounded far too late for the children and their teachers to take cover. In a serious failure by London’s air defences, no barrage balloons had gone up.
Molly Linn, who had just turned twelve, looked out of the window moments before Schumann unloaded his deadly cargo. ‘The pilot was wearing a leather helmet and goggles, but it didn’t occur to me that he was German,’ she recalled more than six decades later, the memory of the day’s horrors still fresh.121 ‘His mouth was drawn back and for a few seconds I thought he was grinning. Then I realised he was snarling, and I saw him reach forward and do something with the controls. He was probably releasing the bomb at that very second.’
The carnage was appalling: thirty-two children and six staff were killed; sixty were hurt, many buried for hours under the rubble. ‘It was a terrible sight,’ one man who had been cycling nearby and rushed to the scene told The Times.122 ‘We started dragging the debris aside and pulling the kiddies out, handing them out on boards through the window. Most of the children were badly wounded. Two were jammed in the fireplace.’ Six children later died in hospital, while hundreds of parents hunted desperately for the missing. The girl in the playground was never identified.
Schumann’s plane was one of twenty-eight Focke-Wulf fighter-bombers that had taken off at noon from an airfield in German- occupied France. Escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, they were on a mission to attack any large targets of opportunity in what the Germans called a Terrorangriff (terror attack). It is not known whether the pilot had realized that his target, which was several storeys high, was a school rather than a block of flats or factory – though the raid was apparently intended as a retaliation for the RAF bombing of Berlin three days earlier. Schumann himself was killed in action that November.
The devastation was not confined to the school. According to reports in newspapers the next day, nine or ten people were killed by bombs dropped on a bank and public house, while three women and six young children died when another bomb hit a café. The raiders, flying at roof-top height, also machine gunned a train approaching London as well as a railway station, killing several people, including children and, in another district, shot at shoppers and at men working on their allotments. A team of girls were hoisting a barrage balloon when it was hit, caught fire and fell blazing, trapping them beneath. Several were taken to hospital with serious burns.
In accordance with the rules of British wartime censorship, the precise location of each incident was not given, for fear the enemy could use the information to fine-tune future attacks. German broadcasters nevertheless seized on the day’s attacks as proof of their ability to cause the kind of damage to London by day that the RAF could manage against Berlin only at night. The Times was having none of it. ‘Yesterday’s daylight raid by a small number of fighter bombers was, among other things, a revelation of German reactions to the increasing inferiority of the Luftwaffe to the air strength arrayed against it in and around Europe,’ a leader thundered.123 ‘No military damage worth mentioning was done by the attack. None indeed could have been inflicted by so small and lightly armed a force; and the killing of school children and the machine-gunning of suburban streets make up the sum of the raiders’ achievement. As a sequel to the two recent British attacks on Berlin this raid may be described as both retaliatory and propagandist.’
The school, in Minard Road, was just four miles east of Beechgrove, but Lionel and Myrtle had been out at the time of the attack. Although minor compared with the relentless bombardment London had suffered during the Blitz, the raid served as a reminder that the Germans were still capable of striking at the heart of their enemy. ‘I returned home to find we had been machine gunned,’ Myrtle wrote almost matter-of-factly to Laurie on 8 February. ‘The Huns just came over at treetop height, then flew up and down the hill gunning the houses. Nobody hurt, but one of our attic windows was smashed. We had had a nasty raid on the previous Sunday, which was just like old times and I did my dodge under the table.’
Myrtle’s mood nevertheless remained remarkably upbeat. In late January, she received a telegram from Antony, announcing he was coming down from Scotland for a belated Christmas celebration. ’Kill the fatted goose,’ he wrote. When he arrived at Beechgrove, the family sat down to a dinner of Australian ham followed by a plum pudding. Myrtle made the most of her youngest’s brief stay; most days the two of them went out to the cinema or to see a show, and Valentine came round to visit almost every night after work.
The weather was also smiling on them, allowing Myrtle to busy herself in the garden and look after their growing collection of animals. ‘We are having the most divine winter: warm with lovely sunshine. The best ever,’ she wrote to Laurie. ‘I have three young families of bunnies, which is rather unusual and they are all about 14 days old. My hens [are] laying bigger and better eggs upon minced raw potato peelings and minced acorns for their night meal... How I wish you were home to disbud the Azalea from last year’s flowering. I am afraid my blooming this year may be scant, however it will be interesting to see ... We are all well darling and so is your family, so don’t worry about any of us. Val envies you tremendously, he’s working so hard at getting wonderful experience.’
In the same letter, Myrtle told Laurie they had finally solved the mystery of his location: ‘We have just received an aerogram from you in which you describe the marvellous view of Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro,’ she wrote. ‘So it must be Nairobi.’
Antony, meanwhile, was about to leave the peace and quiet of Scotland for his first taste of war. His destination was North Africa. Although Operation Torch had got off to a strong start, Eisenhower had not been able to achieve his goal of taking Tunisia. His forces had instead been halted in the bleak, bare hills a day’s march from Tunis, the capital. Therefore, while the British Eighth Army pushed westwards from El Alamein, it was decided to assemble a far larger force than had been initially dispatched to attack from the west. The British element in this force was the First Army, within which was the 24th Guards Brigade, which included the 1st Battalion, in which Antony was serving.
Since moving to Ayrshire the previous November, the battalion had been in a state of readiness for what was expected to be a rapid deployment; instead it remained in Scotland. Finally there came the order to move: on 26 February, after a brief train journey to Gourock, they boarded a coastal steamer that took them to the SS Samaria, a former ocean liner, moored about three miles out in the Clyde. The ship lay at anchor until the night tide of 1 March and then set sail; the Samaria was accompanied by six other vessels and an escort of three destroyers and three corvettes. On the afternoon of 9 March, the Samaria docked in Algiers rather later than planned after an enforced detour to avoid U-boats. As the men waited to disembark, they came under attack from German fighters, but two of the planes were shot down. From there they moved on by boat to Bône and then had a long drive westwards to Bej, before moving off again and taking up defensive positions between there and Medjaz-el-bab. No sooner had they got themselves settled than they were on the move again, this time to relieve the Coldstream Guards, who were being sent to the rear for training. The Scots Guards formed the centre battalion of the brigade, with the Irish Guards on their left and the Grenadier Guards on their right. Their main activity was patrolling, but it was a perilous business: they were almost completely surrounded by minefields and most days came under attac
k from Stuka dive-bombers.
Over the following few weeks Antony and his fellow Guards were involved in fierce fighting, some of the bloodiest of which was on 28 April when they launched an attack on the Bou, a hill on the east of the River Medjerda. Their objective lay about two miles away through cornfields; the Guards were told to deploy to a distance of ten feet between men. A vivid account was provided by a Guardsman named Spencer. ‘From the moment we started until the time we were held up we were under heavy machine-gun and mortar fire,’ he wrote:
We hadn’t advanced far before we had casualties. A mortar bomb fell in the midst of No. 16 Platoon H.Q., injuring four men. One man Guardsman Doherty died shortly after through his wounds. This did not deter the other men, who kept the three lines as if they were on a parade ground. Captain Stockton, who up to this time had shown no fear at all and was a shining example to the other men in the company was killed by a mortar bomb which fell right in front of him. This was a sad blow.
Other casualties swiftly followed. ‘By this time we were a very depleted force, and wounded were lying all over the place,’ Spencer continued. ‘Practically all the N.C.Os were wounded and we had only one stretcher bearer with us – Guardsman McDonald – who was doing the work of four men.’
Antony was among the wounded, having been hit by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. He was roughly bandaged but warned that there were no medics nearby and told to hold on to his side. He was then pulled under a jeep, where he had to wait for some time before help came. He was unconscious for four days.
While Antony was being treated in hospital for his injuries, the Guards pressed on. On 7 May, the British 7th Armoured Division captured Tunis, while the US II Army Corps took Bizerte, the last remaining port in Axis hands. Six days later, the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. ‘It is an overwhelming victory,’ the King recorded in his diary.124 In a telegram to Churchill, he spoke of the campaign in North Africa reaching a ‘glorious conclusion’, attributing its success to the Prime Minister’s ‘vision and unflinching determination in the face of early difficulties’, adding: ‘The African campaign has immeasurably increased the debt that this country, and indeed all the United Nations, owe to you.’125 Churchill replied in similar fashion.
The victory was seized on by the King as a reason to visit his armies in North Africa and to share with them his pride in what they had achieved. He knew his presence would not just boost the morale of the British and Imperial troops of the First and Eighth Armies; it would also be good for relations with the Americans and the French.There was a personal motivation too; it was three years since his last visit abroad, to the British Expeditionary Force in France, and he was desperate for a break from the daily routine of working at his desk, granting audiences and holding investitures.
The King had first raised the idea with Churchill in March, by which time it was clear that it was no longer a matter of if but when the Allied forces in North Africa would prevail. Churchill was supportive and, a few days later, the war cabinet gave the King the necessary assent for the trip when he dined with them at 10 Downing Street. Plans were drawn up under conditions of extreme secrecy; it was decided the King would travel incognito as ‘General Lyon’. Although he was looking forward to being with his troops again, he had last-minute doubts as to whether he should leave Britain at such a critical moment. A nervous flyer, he was also not looking forward to the journey. The day before his departure, the King summoned his solicitor and put all his affairs in order. ‘I think it is better on this occasion to leave nothing to chance,’ he wrote in his diary.126
The trip was set to begin on 11 June. That morning came news that the Italians had surrendered the heavily fortified island of Pantellaria, described by Mussolini as ‘the Gibraltar of the Central Mediterranean’. The King flew off from Northolt airport that evening aboard a specially fitted York transport aircraft accompanied, among others, by Hardinge, his private secretary. The original programme had called for a refuelling stop in Gibraltar, but the Rock was shrouded in dense fog and they had to continue straight to North Africa. In the light of the misgivings the King had expressed about the flight, the change of plan caused alarm in London. The Queen told Queen Mary she had experienced an ‘anxious few hours’, in which she ‘imagined every sort of horror & walked up & down my room staring at the telephone’.127
The King’s plane finally landed in Algiers shortly after noon the next day. In the two weeks that followed, he travelled more than 5,000 miles across Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in the stifling heat, meeting the British commanders, Generals Alexander, Montgomery and Wilson, and their divisional and corps commanders, as well as Generals Eisenhower and de Gaulle, who had moved his headquarters from Britain to Algiers in May so as to be again on French territory. The King also made a point of visiting his troops, not just on the parade ground but also at play, turning up unannounced on a beach where 500 of them were bathing – earning him an ovation and a rendition of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. At his villa in Algiers he hosted a garden party for 180 British and American soldiers. The future Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, recently appointed Minister Resident to Allied Forces Headquarters, proclaimed it a ‘tremendous success ... H.M. did very well and was most gracious to everybody. The Americans were really delighted, and letters about it will reach every distant part of the U.S.A.’128 In Tunisia, the King watched a performance by an Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) troupe on a white marble terrace in the grounds of a villa in Hammamet. Among those performing was the actress Vivien Leigh. ‘It was a night of perfect beauty with a huge moon which shone on the sea only about 30 yards behind where the audience was sitting,’ she recalled. Afterwards she and other members of the cast were presented to the King. ‘He was looking extremely well and never stuttered once the whole time,’ she noted.129
The stress, coupled with high temperatures and an upset stomach, also brought out the less pleasant side of the King’s character. Macmillan found him often difficult and uncooperative. Sometimes he snapped: when one of the commanders, Brigadier Robert Hinde, was presented to him, the King asked if they had met before.
‘I don’t think so,’ replied Hinde.
‘You b-b-b-bloody well ought to know,’ the King spluttered back.130
On his way to Britain, the King made a brief visit to the ‘island fortress’ of Malta whose highly strategic position in the Mediterranean had earned it a battering from the Germans. It was a risky undertaking: the island was still being subjected to enemy air raids, and Sicily, sixty miles to the north, remained in the hands of Axis forces. Nevertheless, on the night of 19 June, in conditions of extreme secrecy, the King set off from Tripoli abroad the cruiser Aurora. Shortly after eight the next morning, in brilliant sunshine, the King, in his white naval uniform, stood on a specially constructed platform in front of the bridge as the ship slowly made its way into the Grand Harbour at Valletta. He had a lump in his throat as he lifted his hand in salute to the thousands of islanders who had turned out to cheer him. He spent the whole day touring the island and received an enthusiastic reception from crowds lining streets that had been hastily decorated with flags and flowers. ‘You have made the people of Malta very happy today, sir,’ the Lieutenant Governor told him as he prepared to board the Aurora back that evening.
‘But I have been the happiest man in Malta today,’ the King replied.131
He landed back at Northolt aboard a four-engine bomber, escorted by a squadron of Spitfires, at 6 a.m. on 25 June. Tanned and dressed in the tropical uniform of a Field Marshal, he was met by Churchill at the airport and they talked about his trip as they drove back together to Buckingham Palace.
Two weeks later, Logue was summoned by the King for what would be their first meeting of the year. The hiatus in their relationship was not for want of trying on Logue’s part. That March, he had sent the King a note suggesting they recommence their sessions. ‘Your Majesty,’ he wrote. ‘In your greatly valued letter to me on December 26th la
st, you were gracious enough to say that you would like to continue our weekly appointments about March as they had been of value to you. This letter is to say that I am at your command & will be only too pleased to make any appointment you desire.’
The King did not take up the offer, but he did have another pleasant surprise for Logue: on the eve of the Coronation in 1937, he had been made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. Now, in the 1943 Birthday Honours, published on 2 June, he was promoted to the rank of Commander in the order. ‘I am deeply grateful and very touched at your Majesty’s thought for me, and I hope to be a loyal commander of the order,’ Logue wrote back. He was formally confirmed on the King’s official birthday, celebrated on the second Thursday of June, though the investiture was not held until just over a year later.
During their meeting, the King told Logue about his experiences in North Africa. ‘He apologized for not seeing me the day he got back, but the War Cabinet came along at my time and he had meant to ring me up all morning,’ Logue recorded in his diary. ‘He said the trying part of the trip is the vibrations in the plane – which gets on your nerves. The water and food had affected them all and they all had tummy troubles. He had loved the swimming and the climate. When he got back he had changed and put on heavy clothes, only to have to change again as he was too hot’. As Logue went to leave, the King surprised him with an unexpected – and candid – tribute to the importance of the help he had given him over the years. ‘I wonder where I would have been now, if I never met you, Logue,’ he said. ‘In a mad house, I should think.’
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