Dowding had written officially to the Air Ministry on 16 May, effectively repeating what he had said to the Cabinet the day before. Once the volte face had been decided, however, his letter unwittingly became a decisive protest against the frantic fighter squadron decisions that day. It has since become one of the most famous letters written during the war. ‘I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country,’ Dowding concluded, ‘if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organized to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war single-handed for some time. But,’ he warned, ‘if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.’
Dowding was certainly not beating about the bush; his letter was quite deliberately stark and intended for wider circulation. He was also stating clearly and logically the terrible dilemma facing the British. It is important, however, no matter how memorable the lines, not to over-egg the influence of Dowding’s letter. But it was the case that his superior, Air Chief Marshal Cyril Newall – despite offering home-based squadrons for France on the evening of the 16th – was, however, now firmly in accord with Dowding’s point of view. The next day, 17 May, he circulated Dowding’s letter with a memo of his own, in which he equally powerfully argued against sending any further fighters across the Channel. If they continued to do so, he warned, ‘a time will arrive when our own ability to defend this country will disappear’.
Yet while it was clear that the Germans were winning in France, the French were not completely beaten yet. Despite the defeatism of Reynaud, Daladier and Gamelin, Churchill, for one, could not accept that France had passed the point of no return. After all, they still had vast numbers of troops, thousands of artillery pieces, and many, many tanks. If only a counter-attack could be quickly planned and executed, then surely the lightning German advance could be stalled. And while there was a chance, he believed Britain had a moral obligation to stand by her ally. On the other hand, if he was wrong, and it was too late for France, with every British fighter plane that was shot down across the Channel, Britain’s own chances of survival were diminishing.
Such were the terrible, impossible conundrums facing the British in May 1940.
13
New Appointments
MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY POWNALL, Chief of Staff of the BEF, reckoned that 19 May was the most worrying day they had had yet. Very early that morning, accompanied by Major Osmund Archdale, liaison officer at French 1st Army Group, Général Gaston Billotte had come to see the British. The French commander was particularly downbeat. On the way over he repeatedly told Archdale, ‘I am exhausted and against these German panzers I can do nothing.’ When Gort had asked him what he could do to rectify the situation, Billotte had replied that he had ‘no reserves, no plan, and little hope’.
Gort had tried to remain bullish over the previous few days, but Billotte’s visit had shattered such optimism. As the morning wore on, liaison officers had arrived at Command HQ at Wahagnies reporting that the French had nothing left, that they were falling back, had disappeared or had given up the ghost. ‘It seemed,’ jotted Pownall, ‘that there was a complete void on our right with only a disorganized mass of fag-ends from the First Army to fill it.’ This was an enormous problem, because the BEF was now falling back to the River Escaut, as planned, but with no French right, it meant the British southern – or right – flank would have to be protected, otherwise the Germans could skirt around and attack them from behind. Gort and Pownall managed to move 50th Division south to deploy along La Bassée Canal, which ran roughly west–east along their flank, and had already created a scratch force of brigade strength hastily cobbled together under Major-General Noel Mason-MacFarlane – the Director of Military Intelligence at GHQ rather than a field commander – called ‘Macforce’ and sent to cover the River Scarpe east of Arras.
Nonetheless, there was no getting around the problem that a huge gap was now developing between the British and remaining French units in the north and the French forces to the south of the River Somme. Maybe, if they managed to buck themselves up in lightning-quick time, the gap could be closed. But what if it couldn’t? It was something Gort and Pownall had to consider and as far as they could see there was only one viable option should that be the case: to fall back to the coast, using the Douai–La Bassée–Aire Canal and other water obstacles to help them. ‘But,’ noted Pownall, ‘the withdrawal ended at the sea at Dunkirk, from which hopes of evacuation of personnel were small indeed.’ Gort summoned his corps commanders, General Brooke and General Evelyn Barker, and put them in the picture while Pownall warned the War Office in coded language for fear that the line was being tapped. Later in the afternoon, Pownall rang again and this time was emphatic. If the gap was not closed by an urgent, strong and co-ordinated counter-attack from the north and south, withdrawal to Dunkirk would become inevitable.
In these dark hours, the appalling paucity of information and the hopeless lack of communications was really debilitating Allied efforts. Reports arrived at Arras, then at Wahagnies, by despatch rider or by liaison officers in person. Journeys of ten to fifteen miles could take an age because by this time the roads were clogged with refugees. Arthur Hughes had been shocked by the sight of so many. So too had Henry Pownall. ‘There are many most distressing sights,’ he scribbled, ‘the old women are indeed sad to see, poor old things – never a smile on the faces of many thousands I have seen. Why should there be indeed?’ This, of course, made the co-ordination of the kind of forces necessary for such a counter-attack difficult. It also made it very hard to keep abreast of just precisely where the Germans were.
As it happened, the Germans hardly knew themselves. Since the collapse of the Meuse front, all three spears of Army Group A had sped west at an astonishingly untroubled rate. Hans von Luck and the reconnaissance troops of Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division had been charging through the French countryside of Champagne. ‘Keep going, don’t look to left or right, only forward. The enemy is confused; we must take advantage of it’ were Rommel’s orders, echoing what Guderian and General Reinhardt were urging upon their men a short distance further south. Hans and his men reached Avesnes on the 16th, some fifty miles from their crossing point on the Meuse; by dawn the next day, having pushed on through the night, they had reached another major obstacle, the River Sembre, a dozen miles further west. French troops moving forward to the front had no idea it had already reached them. Astonished to see German troops so far west already, they had not blown the bridges and Rommel’s men had crossed the river with barely a shot fired. Half an hour later, Hans had reached the town of Le Cateau, nearly seventy miles from the Meuse.
‘La guerre est finie, je m’en fou,’ Hans heard French soldiers say as he and his men thundered past through the clouds of dust along the way. Apart from the orders they received, the reconnaissance troops had no idea what the wider situation was along the front; they only knew what they saw in front of them, and that was French troops being overrun and surrendering in droves. ‘We had the feeling of being alone at the head of a division advancing tempestuously,’ noted Hans. ‘“Forward!” was the cry.’
The same day, 18 Squadron, having finally moved airfields – to Crécy – was told its Blenheims were needed as bombers as well as reconnaissance aircraft. Their target was the 7th Panzer Division on the Cambrai–Le Cateau road. Arthur Hughes took off at around 10 a.m. Around Le Cateau, the country looked devastated to him. Here and there vehicles and buildings were burning. Spotting a load of motor transport along the road to the south-west of the town, he peeled down and dropped his four 250 lb bombs from about 700 feet. Suddenly, though, it seemed to him that the figures diving frantically out of the way of his attack were wearing khaki. He couldn’t tell for certain, though, but he was sure that he had bombed the right place. Once again, Arthur made it back in one piece, but two other crews were not so lucky.
&n
bsp; Whether he had hit Allies or Germans, Rommel’s advance seemed in no way slowed. On the 19th, he captured Cambrai, the scene of a famous victory for the British in 1917 when they had used tanks in strength for the first time. Now it was German panzers that were doing the damage – or rather, a few lead elements. Fortune favours the brave, and in this case the French defenders saw a large cloud of dust approaching and fearing a far larger German force than was really the case, they fled with barely a fight.
Panzer Corps Guderian crossed the old Somme battlefield on the 19th, having successfully fought off counter-attacks by de Gaulle’s tanks. It would have reached there earlier but Guderian had been once again discovering that his senior officers were a greater thorn in his side than the enemy. A whole day had been lost on 17 May when von Kleist, still concerned that his impetuous panzer commander might be overreaching himself, had ordered him to halt to allow the infantry to catch up. This had only been resolved once Guderian, outraged, had resigned and then hastily been reinstated. By the evening of the 19th, however, the panzer spearheads were all more or less now in line with one another. Guderian’s 10th Panzer protected his southern flank along the River Aisne, while 1st and 2nd Panzer were poised to burst their way towards Amiens and Albert the following day. To the north Reinhardt’s 8th Panzer Division had heroically made its way through the gridlock of the Ardennes and had caught up with 6th Panzer, while to the north of Rommel at Cambrai were 5th Panzer and 3rd and 4th from Army Group B. Furthermore, hot on Rommel’s tails was the Waffen-SS Totenkopf Division. While most Wehrmacht infantry divisions barely had a couple of trucks to rub together, the Nazi military arm could pull all manner of strings that enabled inexperienced units like the Totenkopf to already be one of the best-equipped divisions in the entire German army. Placed under the direct command of Rommel, its resources were much needed at this latest critical moment in the battle.
Suddenly, the mad, frenetic panzer rush west was beginning to become a more solid, unified front, and thanks to their superior communications, the Germans were able to co-ordinate their actions and strengthen their line swiftly and efficiently. There were still isolated pockets of French resistance behind in the wake of the German advance but as the infantry began pouring out of the Ardennes, these were rapidly being mopped up. By dawn on the 20th, the Allies’ chances of counterattacking and successfully plugging the now gaping-wide gap were slipping away with every passing hour. They needed to act, and act fast.
By 19 May, there were only thirty-seven squadrons in Fighter Command ready for battle compared with the minimum of sixty that were required were the Luftwaffe to attack Britain in strength. This was some shortfall. Still, a corner had been turned, which was a great relief to Newall and Dowding: now that Gort was thinking in terms of evacuation, plans were put in place to get most of the RAF Component back to England too. No doubt Dowding and Newall’s stark warning had made an impression, but it was the reality of the unfolding disaster that spoke louder than words. Thus the Prime Minister finally accepted that to send good after bad to France was a futile exercise. That same day, he sent a memo to Ismay ordering that no more fighters be sent to France but warning that, should it be necessary to evacuate the BEF, then a strong covering force would be needed from English bases. With this note, Churchill was reversing a trend that had placed Fighter Command in deadly peril since the outset. Instead of bolstering the position in France, all fighter resources were now to be used for what they had originally been designed for in the event of war: defending Britain and her armed forces only. Later that day, the eight half-squadrons sent to France began returning. The next day, most of the remaining fighter squadrons flew back to England. By the 21st, only three RAF Hurricane squadrons – those with the Advanced Air Striking Force – were still in France.
Bee Beamont had gone home on the 20th. It had come like a bolt from the blue. One minute he was watching a shot-down Hurricane plunge into the ground on the far side of the airfield, and almost the next his CO was offering him or one of the other pilots a flight home on a DC-2 that was about to take off. They tossed for it, and Bee won, finding himself a short while later on a Dutch KLM transport plane along with a number of other RAF fighter pilots.
He was landing back down at Hendon before the realization that he had been plucked from the maelstrom of war really sank in. From Hendon, he and a few others went into central London, its streets crammed with shoppers, buses, tradesmen and people going about their daily business with what seemed like no concern at all. They stopped at the RAF Club near Hyde Park Corner. Just a few hours before they had been in the heat of battle; now a group of dirty, unshaven pilots were standing in the middle of London with the nation’s masses wandering past them as though there was no war on at all.
This was not really the case, however. Most in Britain were still half expecting German parachutists to float down from the sky at any moment. Daidie Penna saw a train-load of wounded troops pull into her local station on the 19th; she thought everyone out and about seemed very tense, although over the next couple of days the news seemed brighter. ‘We seem to be holding the Germans at present,’ she noted on the 21st.
In fact, Churchill, from the moment he became Prime Minister, was determined not to shield the public from the reality of the situation. This was sensible because should the situation deteriorate – and clearly it was doing so – then the public would have already been prepared, whilst at the same time it would be more likely to trust the Government. Certainly, his new Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, was very much of the same mind. Credible openness was to be the policy, while Churchill hoped that his rhetoric could stir the nation to fall in behind him. If Daidie Penna was hearing news that things were looking up in France then that was not because of any deliberate hoodwinking on the part of the Government, but because the BBC and the press, and in turn those running the War Office and at the Ministry of Information, were not fully in the picture at the time the news was given out. As Harold Nicolson noted on 21 May, ‘The situation is terribly obscure’ – and he was now working as Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Information.
Nicolson had been asked to join the Ministry of Morale – as it was known – on 17 May, one of the last of the junior ministers to have been given a post. Having just heard the news of the calamitous German breakthrough at Sedan, he received a telephone call and a moment later the Prime Minister was on the line.
‘Harold, I think it would be very nice if you joined the Government and helped Duff at the Ministry of Information,’ the PM said to him.
‘There is nothing I should like better,’ Harold replied immediately.
‘Well, fall in tomorrow. The list will be out tonight. That all right?’
‘Very much all right,’ said Harold.
‘OK,’ said Churchill and then rang off.
As asked, he was at work the following day at the Ministry’s offices in Senate House at London University, and had been given the post of Parliamentary Secretary with the specific job of keeping tabs on civilian morale. There was a War Room, in which there was a large map full of pins and different-coloured wool marking out the positions of the armies and kept as up to date as possible. Twice a day there were conferences, at 10.30 in the morning and 5.30 p.m., and a press conference at 12.30 p.m. ‘I have a nice sunny little room,’ noted Harold, ‘and if the bombing starts, I shall sleep here. They say that the shelter under our tower is proof even against a direct hit.’
Despite his excitement at being part of the Government and able to do something useful, Harold and his colleagues faced a difficult task. Unlike Churchill, Chamberlain’s Government had insisted on bullish optimism. Both the defeat in Norway and now the unfolding disaster on the Continent had staggered the majority. ‘It must be remembered that the defence of the Low Countries had been continually built up in the press,’ ran one public opinion survey. ‘Not one person in a thousand could visualise the Germans breaking through into France.’ By 22 May, the Ministry had set up a Home
Morale Emergency Committee to work on measures that might prevent a widespread break in morale. As Josef Goebbels well knew in Germany, propaganda was a key weapon of a modern war. The importance of the will of the people, in both a totalitarian state and a democracy, could not be underestimated.
There had been another key appointment in Churchill’s new Government, and one that brought a glimmer of hope to Air Chief Marshal Dowding, and that was Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, as the first ever Minister for Aircraft Production, complete with his new ministry. A Canadian from Ontario, he had made his first million, as a financier and investment banker, before he was thirty, then, in 1910, when still only thirty-one, had moved to England and become a Liberal Unionist MP, whilst at the same time buying large shares in the Rolls-Royce motor car and engine company. He sold out a few years later, and then embarked on building a hugely successful newspaper empire, which included the London Evening Standard and Daily Express.
By 1917, he was a peer, choosing ‘Beaverbrook’ after an area near his boyhood home, having played a key role in ousting Asquith as Prime Minister and helping Lloyd George to take over. By 1918, he was the first Minister of Information, and, although it was a short-lived post, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with his ever-increasing power as the first real press baron of Fleet Street, his influence remained considerable.
He was also a close friend of long standing with Winston Churchill. As with all friendships, the two had drifted apart at times and they by no means saw eye to eye on everything. Beaverbrook had been notoriously opposed to war right up until the last moment, for example, but since then a closer relationship had returned. Back in November, Churchill, then at the Admiralty, had urged Chamberlain to bring his friend into the Government. ‘When I talk to him,’ Churchill wrote, ‘I have a feeling of knowledge, force, experience, which I do not find – at my age – with most I meet. We need this kind of thing.’
The Battle of Britain Page 21