by Tim Lynch
Training for trench warfare in Britain. Where would a Maginot Line cross Britain? The Thames? Any invading force, once established ashore from south or east, would cross easy terrain to London.
Some were forced to leave for the astonishing reason that they were losing the furniture from their homes. They had bought it on the hire purchase system and on army pay they were unable to keep up the full weekly payments. So the firms were removing the furniture … Replacements for the men so lost were slow in coming and when they did they consisted of untrained recruits, so the standard of training and fitness if anything fell rather than rose.17
In some ways, though, the KOYLI were luckier than most. The early influx of Reservists into their TA battalions at least gave them a nucleus of trained men able to pass on informally some of the tricks of the trade. In the 2/5th West Yorkshire Regiment training was limited to a maximum of two days per week per man and instructors in such short supply that ‘selected personnel were taught a portion of a lesson overnight and the whole unit was passed through this string of elementary teachers the next day. However, some individual training was achieved and relief from guard duties was promised for Spring.’18 Such individual training was frequently heavily improvised. The 9th Battalion of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, designated as a machine gun battalion for 23rd Division, relied entirely on two German machine guns captured in 1918 and wheeled out of the regimental museum. Also in 23rd Division, men of the Green Howards used a wooden replica built by a local carpenter to train in the use of mortars.
In early 1940, with no sign of action in France, attention turned instead to developments elsewhere. As A.S. Bryant later wrote:
By this time the British, growing conscious of the freedom of choice given by command of the sea, were beginning, as so often in the past, to contemplate offensive adventures for which they did not possess the military power … forgetful of the fact that, with grossly inadequate force and armaments, they were already facing the greatest military and air power in Europe, they proceeded to plan, in concert with their French allies, an expedition as fantastic as ever a British Government had ever launched from its island-base.19
Cartoon from DWR Journal 1940.
Cartoon from West Yorkshire Journal ‘Ca Ira’ 1940.
Over the winter plans had been developed for an Anglo-French intervention in Scandinavia. Norway had declared neutrality but both Britain and Germany had recognised its vital strategic importance since control of the country would mean control of access to the Atlantic and particularly to the approaches to Germany in the south and the Soviet Union in the north. An Allied naval presence there would add significantly to the blockade of Germany’s trade. At the start of the war, Germany imported over 10 million tons of iron ore from Sweden, 90 per cent of it through the port of Luleå in the north. That port, though, freezes over in winter but the alternative route, through the Norwegian port of Narvik, does not. Therefore control of Narvik would mean both a naval base covering the north Atlantic and a blockade of the supply of iron ore crucial to Germany’s war industry.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had signed a mutual non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939 that included a secret clause dividing the countries of Eastern Europe between the two signatories and also stated that Finland would fall under the Soviet ‘sphere of influence’ in the north. After joining the German attack on Poland, the Soviets turned their attention to Finland in the autumn of 1939 and demanded that the Finns agree to move the border 25 kilometres (16 miles) back from Leningrad. It also demanded that they lease the Hanko Peninsula to the USSR for thirty years for the creation of a naval base there. In exchange, the Soviet Union offered Finland a large part of Karelia but the offer was contemptuously dismissed by the Finns as ‘two pounds of dirt for one pound of gold’. In response, on 30 November, Soviet forces invaded Finland and bombed civilian boroughs of Helsinki.20
In December, Hitler met with Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling (National Union) party, who alleged that the Soviet Union would soon attack Norway and that British intervention was imminent. Certainly Britain had its eye firmly on Norway since on 19 September Churchill had told the Cabinet that the transportation of iron ore to Germany had to be stopped and proposed laying mines off the coast at Narvik. The invasion of Finland provided the pretext for Britain and France to make their move and present it as an attempt to defend the neutral states of Norway and Sweden whilst at the same time allowing them to garrison the port.
In February 1940, the Allies offered to help Finland by sending 100,000 British and 35,000 French troops via Narvik, moving to the Finnish front via Sweden and securing supply routes along the way. The Finns were asked to make a formal request for help to avoid German charges that the Allies had invaded and on 2 March, permission to pass through Narvik and northern Norway and through Sweden was officially requested from the respective governments so that the troops could be used to create a defence line against further attacks into Scandinavia. The plan, if successful, would significantly increase the power of the blockade of Germany and would also draw German attention away from the more vulnerable French front. Given the state of the BEF in France, the plan to send such a large force was wildly over-optimistic from the outset, but Churchill was determined to push the plan through. The already under-strength force in France found its supply of weapons and reinforcements diverted to create another Expeditionary Force – much to the anger of commanders in the field. By diverting troops from France and bringing two Territorial brigades up to full strength, a force of four brigades with attached artillery and engineers was eventually assembled.
Among those slated to join the expedition were 146th and 148th Brigades of the 49th Infantry Division and to bring them up to strength the army turned to their duplicate, second line counterparts in 46th Division. As the 1/4th KOYLI made ready, its battalion medical officer examined the men and medically downgraded about 30 per cent of them. To meet the pressing need for troops to take part in the Norwegian expedition, the War Office disallowed his assessment and ordered in a draft from the 2/4th battalion – including a new medical officer.21 As a result, orders reached the 2/4th to ‘send all private soldiers, other than immatures [those under nineteen years of age] to the 1/4th KOYLI.’22 By careful application of the term ‘specialist’, the battalion managed to retain at least some of the longer standing members but at a stroke, it had lost another 212 men, leaving behind a battalion composed almost entirely of NCOs and under-age boys. An infantry battalion of the time was established for 21 officers and 752 other ranks. In a matter of weeks, the 2/4th had lost over half its men before it had even completed its first training exercise. As replacements, two new drafts – one of newly trained conscripts, the other of Reservists recently returned from France – arrived to join the KOYLI.
Having by now completed his basic training at York, Rex Flowers was among those posted to the 2/4th KOYLI at Dewsbury:
We arrived in Wakefield on Saturday about lunchtime, we marched from the station to the drill hall – no one seemed to be about. Eventually we contacted someone but we were left hanging about for some time. Later, after a meal of sorts, we were conducted to an empty chapel and given two blankets each. We were told that there was a snack at teatime and breakfast was at eight, next morning. The old chapel was very cold, and there were no beds. A blanket on the floor was our bed, no messing about here, it was primitive! We were all a bit depressed. Said some lads ‘Right we are not stopping here for the night.’ One who came from my own town said ‘I am going home for the night, I can catch Burrow’s bus and catch it back tomorrow evening.’ I questioned him on this and decided to do the same. Some of these poor chaps lived a long way off and perforce had to stay. It was bitterly cold that Winter. We distributed our blankets and kit around, so that a casual inspection would not reveal our absence, as it happened nobody inspected – no-one was bothered. We proceeded to the bus station, waited a bit. At last the bus came and transported us to that so
ldier’s dream, home. I went to the pictures that night I recall. Next day, after enquiries, I caught the bus and got back to Wakefield without any trouble. We had not been missed!’23
It quickly became common practice for one man to stay at the chapel in case of checks whilst the others went home, taking friends from farther afield with them. Frequently, as the winter wore on, men living nearby were given permission to go home at weekends to save on heating costs.
Also joining C Company at Dewsbury was Val Thomas. After reporting in September, he had been part of a 100-strong KOYLI contingent of Reservists sent to France as a labour force. Together with drafts from various Lancashire regiments, they had formed 12 Labour Company working on the BEF lines of communication in Normandy and Brittany. Like many recalled soldiers, the men of 12 Labour Company were not happy in their new role and an average of 30 field punishments were being handed out every month during that freezing winter. In late January, Thomas had returned home on leave before being sent back to France. Just three weeks later, he was home again. A new War Office directive had recognised the need to stiffen the weak units at home with more experienced men and had ordered that wherever possible, ex-regulars should be sent back to their parent regiments. 78 KOYLIs began the journey back to Pontefract on 27 February. Soon, like Flowers, they would settle into a routine in which so long as they reported for duty every morning no-one questioned where they spent their nights. Thomas was within easy reach of home and took every opportunity to spend time with his new wife.24
Throughout the army, men were constantly on the move. In the TA, the medically unfit and ‘immatures’ were being weeded out of units destined for overseas service and transferred instead to home defence duties. That in itself created yet more problems. In October 1939 General Sir Frederick Pile, Commander-in-Chief of the TA Anti-Aircraft Command, had received an unplanned intake of 11,000 ‘immatures’ from all divisions, and all of them bitter at being refused the chance to serve overseas. He reported that at a ‘fairly representative battery’ an intake of 25 Militiamen included one man with ‘a withered arm, one was mentally deficient, one had no thumbs … one had a glass eye which fell out whenever he doubled to the guns.’ Of 1,000 recruits to 31st AA Brigade, Pile estimated that as many as one in ten was either mentally or psychologically unsuitable ‘even considered against an undemanding standard’.25
Even the ‘undemanding standard’ of the selection boards still left gaps in the ranks that had to be filled. James Laidler, an eighteen-year-old clerk from Durham, had tried enlisting but as an ‘immature’ met with little success. Then, in March 1940, he read an article in the local press about the formation of the 1st Tyneside Scottish and asking for recruits to come forward:
I immediately volunteered and everything went well until the question of my age arose. The officer in charge, having heard what was happening, came along and said, ‘Right, Sonny, today the 15th of March is your birthday.’ And so began my military career. There were twenty of us that day at the recruiting office and when everything was completed we were marched over Tyne bridge in Newcastle to Gateshead where we were billeted in a school. We were a motley crowd – a rent collector, a bus conductor, clerks like myself, a sculptor and two convicts who had been released from Durham jail on condition they joined the Army.
Also among the recruits with him was ‘Smithy’, an awkward sixteen-year-old who had lied about his age to enlist.26 Within six weeks, they would be in France. In nine weeks, Smithy and many of that ‘motley crowd’ would be dead.
Meanwhile, in France, the Regular contingent of the BEF had by now been joined by six more divisions from the first line TA, but was still under-strength. Controversially, during a visit to the front, Hore-Belisha had criticised the intention to leave prepared defences on the border to advance into Belgium in a plan which even the French general Alphonse Georges had dismissed as ‘happy-go-lucky’. ‘If the enemy masks Belgium’ Georges wrote, ‘he can manoeuvre elsewhere. So do not let us pour our resources into this business. Let us stop dreaming.’27 Despite the clear risks involved, the Dyle plan was adopted by the British and French governments and Gort expressed his willingness to comply, primarily because he considered the BEF too small to operate independently but also in no small measure because he himself lacked command experience and plans of his own. Instead, Gort had occupied his time in addressing issues such as which shoulder the men of the BEF should carry their steel helmets when not in use. Hore-Belisha’s interference, if anything, made him more determined not to be directed by a man he despised and so even more eager to go along with the Dyle plan.
Private James Coutts Laidler, 1st Tyneside Scottish.
Recruit Company, 1st Tyneside Scottish. Within a few weeks, armed with rifle and bayonet, these men would face German tanks. (Courtesy Elsie Laidler)
Officers of the 1st Tyneside Scottish.
Hore-Belisha had also been critical of the efforts of the BEF to complete work on permanent positions, claiming that more effort should have been made to exploit civilian expertise by contracting building companies and that by doing so the French were able to construct a pillbox in just three days. He compounded this by pointing to the quality of work completed in a neighbouring French sector as an example of what he thought the BEF should be doing. Gort and his staff were furious. The winter had been the worst in memory and since concrete cannot set in sub-zero temperatures work everywhere was behind schedule. More importantly too for the BEF’s pride, it turned out that in fact the French had fallen so far behind that they had asked for British help. The work Hore-Belisha had admired was, in fact, that of men from the BEF. The claim that the French could build a pillbox in three days also turned out to be a misunderstanding. It could be built in three days, but the preparatory work and delivery of the materials took three weeks for each one. The ‘Pillbox Affair’, as it became known, should have been a storm in a tea cup but Gort had seen his chance to get rid of Hore-Belisha, who, for his part, showed an arrogant refusal to simply apologise for his mistake. It brought matters to a head. Gort finally had the position and influence to launch a campaign to have Hore-Belisha sacked and used the ‘Pillbox Affair’ as the focus. Relations between the Army and Parliament were strained as Gort demanded that politicians not be allowed to criticise the Allied plan. Richard Wilkinson has argued that Hore-Belisha was the founder of the modern army, ‘But was he entitled to influence the conduct of the war? Hore-Belisha thought so because he had to fight the Army’s corner in Parliament and Cabinet and, if military disaster occurred, his head would roll.’28 Nevertheless, Gort mobilised his supporters in a concerted effort to have him removed from office and in January 1940, they succeeded.
‘Father-to-Son’ wrote Time magazine on 15 January 1940:
Thus the Cabinet and the generals were well pleased when Neville Chamberlain picked as his new War Secretary last week a man of character and a great gentleman, Mr. Oliver Stanley, son of the Earl of Derby, who was Secretary of State for War in 1916–18 and again in 1922–24. If the time is coming to send Tommy Atkins to glory, death and victory, quiet Mr. Stanley … will not hold the Army back. Neither will he go-get. That is practically guaranteed by Mr. Stanley’s record right up to last week as a routine President of the Board of Trade and before that as an uneventful President of the Board of Education, Minister of Labor and Minister of Transport. Incidentally, in 1934 it was Hore-Belisha who took over the Ministry of Transport from Stanley and in a few weeks was making world headlines by dotting London streets with brilliant orange ‘Belisha Beacon’ traffic globes set atop zebra-striped poles.
The Army objects profoundly to the zebra touch and War Secretary Oliver Stanley will certainly remember that in World War I the leading roles were legitimately played by Foch, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Haig, Pershing – whereas today no Allied general has had a chance. Socially the new War Secretary is somewhat overshadowed by his clever and beauteous wife. Lady Maureen Stanley, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry who used to be perhaps th
e chief British exponent of appeasing Germany but swung violently around after the rape of Bohemia last spring.
In Canada this week the appointment of Mr. Stanley was viewed askance, for Canadian troops have been writing home rhapsodies about the fine treatment they have been given by ‘The Tommy’s Friend.’ In London the Daily Express of self-made Canadian-born Baron Beaverbrook gloomed: ‘Mr. Oliver Stanley is a most unsatisfactory appointment … He belongs to the Tory hierarchy … Belisha does not belong to that class.’
In his diary entry of 26 October 1937, General ‘Tiny’ Ironside, later to be Gort’s rival for the post of BEF commander, noted:
I had Gort round to see me in the morning. He has been some three weeks as Military Secretary and I found him already almost prepared to give it up. He had been talking with the [Adjutant-General]. He was really very upset with the new Secretary of State. As he put it, he was in the bad position of having to sell him unsound horses and Belisha was too clever to buy duds.29
However many were his failings in the eyes of the public and the common soldier, Stanley had one great advantage over his predecessor. He would not challenge Gort and would buy whatever he was offered.