35.Glenday to Godwin-Austin, 15 August 1940, Godwin-Austen 5, LHCMA.
36.‘Notes on the Employment of “B” Company . . .’, n.d., CAB106/905, TNA; ibid., Nixon to Barton, 6 November 1946.
37.Mideast to AHQ Aden, 9 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA; ibid., ‘Situation Report, No. 3906’, Somaliforce, 10 August 1940.
38.Colonel Reggie Price to Barton, 25 March 1947, CAB106/906, TNA.
39.Mideast to Troopers, 10 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA; ibid., Troopers to Mideast, 13 August 1940; ibid., Mideast to Troopers, 13 August 1940.
40.Ibid., ‘Situation Report, No. 3906’, Somaliforce, 10 August 1940.
41.‘Notes on the Employment of “B” Company . . .’, n.d., CAB106/905, TNA; ibid., Nixon to Barton, 6 November 1946; HMAS Hobart to SNO Red Sea, 9 August 1940, MP1185/8, 1810/2/234, NAA; ‘A “Minor Episode” during World War II’, Hindsight (Sea Power Centre – Australia) (Issue XX, Aug. 2010); ‘Australians’ Gallantry in Somaliland’, The Times (London), 24 August 1940; ‘Somaliland Battle, R.A.N, Gunners in Land Action, Posted Missing’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 1940. Following the evacuation the three naval ratings were initially listed as ‘missing believed killed’ but they were eventually liberated in April 1941 from an Eritrean prisoner of war camp.
42.Mideast to AHQ Aden, 12 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
43.‘Obituary: Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, VC: Camel Corps Officer’, The Times (London), 30 December 2008.
44.‘Rector’s “Timid” Son Becomes V.C. Hero’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 29 March 1941’; ‘Obituary: Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, VC’, Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2008.
45.Connell, Wavell: Soldier and Scholar, pp. 254–255; Ronald Lewin, The Chief: Field Marshal Lord Wavell, Commander-in-Chief and Viceroy, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1980), pp. 23–26; Raugh, Wavell in the Middle East, pp. 94–95.
46.Schofield, Wavell: Soldier and Statesman, p. 143.
47.Diary, 30 July 1940, Richard Dewing Papers, LHCMA.
48.Mideast to Troopers, 9 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
49.Ibid., Mideast to C. in C. Mediterranean, 14 August 1940.
50.Wavell to Chater, 8 July 1940, WO201/257, TNA.
51.‘Decisions of a “Q” Conference held at GHQ Middle East on 9th August, 1940’, n.d., CAB106/919, TNA; ibid., ‘Instruction to Base Commandant, Berbera for Layout and Maintenance of Base’, 9 August 1940.
52.ACM Longmore to Deputy Chief General Staff, 9 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
53.‘Obituary: General Sir Reade Godwin-Austen’, The Times (London), 21 March 1963.
54.Troopers to Mideast, No. 78569, 10 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA; ibid., Troopers to Mideast, No. 78566, 9 August 1940; Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Smith, ‘Obituary: General Sir Reade Godwin-Austen’, The Times (London), 30 March 1963.
55.Major-General Arthur Smith, ‘Instructions to Major-General Godwin Austen’, 10 August 1940, Reade Godwin-Austin Papers, Godwin-Austen 1, LHCMA.
56.Somaliforce to Mideast, No. 3985, 14 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
57.Ibid., Somaliforce to Mideast, No. 3989, 14 August 1940.
58.Lieutenant-Colonel W. Robertson, ‘Note of an interview with Major-General A.R. Godwin Austin on the 23rd September, 1943’, 25 September 1943, WO106/2353A, TNA.
59.Somaliforce to Mideast, No. 155, 15 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
60.Ibid., Somaliforce to Mideast, No. 155, 15 August 1940.
61.Field-Marshal Lord Wilson, Eight Years Overseas 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1950), p. 41.
62.Ibid., p. 42.
63.Troopers to Mideast, No. 79047, 15 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
64.‘Notes on a Visit by Major R.G. Thurburn to Aden and Jibuti etc.’, 17 July 1940, WO201/263, TNA.
65.Wavell to War Office, 1 September 1940, WO106/2336, TNA.
66.Only later was it confirmed to the Chiefs of Staff in London that those men from the Camel Corps who had been rescued had been formed into an armoured car unit which retained their title and was still serving in the region; Colonel Hollis to Eastwood (C.O.), 28 November 1940, CAB21/2605, TNA.
67.‘Extract from report on Visit by Colonel J.K. Edwards . . .’, n.d. (28 May 1940?), WO201/257, TNA.
68.Cited in, ‘A “Minor Episode” during World War II’.
69.Ibid.
70.‘Account of Evacuation from British Somaliland’, 25 November 1940, MP1185/9, 406/201/71, NAA.
71.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, p. 178.
72.Mideast to Somaliforce, 15 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
73.Blake to Cunningham, 17 August 1940, Andrew Cunningham Papers, Add. 52569, BL.
74.Ibid., Cunningham to Blake, 29 August 1940.
75.Glenday to Lord Lloyd, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 5 September 1940, CO535/136/24, TNA.
76.Captain G.C. Foster, ‘British Somaliland’, n.d., pp. 66–67, CAB44/160, TNA.
77.J.L. Garvin, ‘The Battle of Empire – Axis and Africa’, Observer (Manchester), 11 August 1940; ‘We Capture Passes Says Italy’, Daily Mirror, 12 August 1940.
78.‘Bombing the Italians in Somaliland’, Manchester Guardian, 12 August 1940; ‘Italians Repulsed in British Somaliland’, Manchester Guardian, 14 August 1940.
79.Garvin, ‘The Battle of Empire’.
80.‘Italians Advancing along Coast’, The Times (London), 16 August 1940.
81.‘Evacuation of Somaliland’, Manchester Guardian, 20 August 1940; ‘British Leave Somaliland’, The Times (London), 20 August 1940.
82.‘The Loss of Somaliland’, The Times (London), 20 August 1940; ‘Withdrawal from Somaliland’, Manchester Guardian, 20 August 1940.
83.Kenneth Williams, ‘The East and Somaliland Evacuation’, Great Britain and the East (London), 29 August 1940.
84.‘Fortunes of War in Africa’, The Economist (London), 24 August 1940.
85.‘Retreat from Somaliland’, The National Review (Vol. CXV, July–Dec. 1940), p. 265.
86.Saturday 10 August 1940, in Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds), Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain’s Finest Hour, May to September 1940 (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), p. 315.
87.Ibid., p. 316.
88.Ibid., Tuesday 20 August 1940, p. 347.
89.Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960), pp. 193–194.
90.The Abyssinian Campaigns, p. 18; Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 131.
91.Diary, 7 August 1940, p. 227, Lord Halifax Diary, A7/8/5, BIA.
92.Ibid.
93.Weekly War Office Intelligence Commentary No. 56, 12 September 1940, Chartwell Papers, CHAR20/16/18–19, CAC.
94.Troopers to Mideast (Wavell to Wilson), 15 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
95.Minute by Churchill to General Ismay for Chiefs of Staff Committee, 19 August 1940, The Prime Minister’s Personal Minutes (August 1940), Chartwell Papers, CHAR20/13/5, CAC.
96.Mideast to Armindia, 20 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
97.General Sir Archibald P. Wavell, ‘Operations in the Somaliland Protectorate, 1939–1940’, The London Gazette (1946), p. 2719.
98.Churchill, Their Finest Hour, p. 383.
99.Desmond Morton to R.W. Thomson, 21 August 1961, R.W. Thomson Papers, Thomson 1/2, LHCMA; Carlo D’Este, Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 490–491.
100.Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), p. 211; Churchill to Eden (Secret and Personal), 13 August 1940, cited in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers: Vol. II, Never Surrender – May–December 1940 (London: Heinemann, 1994), p. 657; Churchill to Eden, 13 August 1940, Chartwell Papers, CHAR20/2, CAC.
101.Godwin-Austin to Barton, 3 April 1950, CAB106/912, TNA. Cunningham wrote in his obituary of Godwin-Austen’s ‘absolute reliability, complete integrity – and above all his courage and fortit
ude’, and clearly appreciated the support he had provided; General Sir Alan Cunningham, ‘Obituary: General Sir Reade Godwin-Austen’, The Times (London), 26 March 1963.
102.‘Conversation with the Fuehrer, 29 August 1940’, cited in Malcolm Muggeridge (ed.) [trans. Stuart Hood], Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (London: Odhams Press, 1948), p. 386.
103.Cowie, War for Britain, p. 207.
104.‘Translation – Notes on Italian Conquest of British Somaliland’, n.d., CAB106/919, TNA.
5: Preparing for the Counter-offensive
1.General Sir William Platt, The Campaign against Italian East Africa 1940/41: Lees Knowles Lectures 1951 (Camberley: Army Staff College, 1962), Lecture I, p. 7; David Shirreff, Bare Feet and Bandoliers: Wingate, Sandford, the Patriots and the Liberation of Ethiopia (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2009), pp. 29–64.
2.M.R.D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946 (London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 252; Kirk, The Middle East in the War, p. 45; ‘An Epic of Abyssinia’, Great Britain and the East, 20 February 1941.
3.Barton (with handwritten notes by Fabin) . . ., 11 July 1945, CAB106/904, TNA.
4.Schofield, Wavell: Soldier and Statesman, p. 173.
5.The Abyssinian Campaigns, p. 57; Duncan McNab, Mission 101: The Untold Story of the SOE and the Second World War in Ethiopia (Stroud: The History Press, 2012), p. 88; Fort, Archibald Wavell, pp. 135–136.
6.Barton (with handwritten notes by Fabin) . . ., 11 July 1945, CAB106/904, TNA.
7.Ibid.
8.Ibid.; ‘Selassie Ready to Pounce’, Daily Mirror, 4 November 1940.
9.Barton (with handwritten notes by Fabin) . . ., 11 July 1945, CAB106/904, TNA.
10.Lieutenant-Colonel A.G. Simonds to Barton, 1 July 1947, CAB106/906, TNA.
11.Blewitt to his father, 30 April 1941, Blewitt Papers, 08/88/3, IWM; ‘Haile Selassie is Back Again in the Country’, The War Illustrated, 7 February 1941.
12.Foot, SOE, p. 252.
13.‘Southern Theatre: Revolt in the Desert’, Time, 22 July 1940.
14.‘War Cabinet – Future Strategy’, WP(40)362, 4 September 1940, CAB66/11/42, TNA.
15.Badoglio to Aosta, 1 August 1940, CAB146/374, TNA.
16.Captain Sir James Duncan, House of Commons Debate, ‘War Situation’, 20 August 1940, Hansard, Vol. 364, c 1203.
17.‘The Role of British Forces in Africa’, George Young (11th African Division), Box 19, No. 309, MSS. Afr.s.1715, ODRP.
18.Colonel D. Fabin to Barton, 14 September 1944, CAB106/903, TNA.
19.Badoglio to Aosta, 13 August 1940, CAB146/374, TNA.
20.‘The Role of British Forces in Africa’, Young, ODRP.
21.Badoglio to Aosta, 13 August 1940, CAB146/374, TNA.
22.Ibid., Badoglio to Aosta, 26 August 1940.
23.‘Daily Summary No. 314’, 13 July 1940, WO106/2139, TNA; Major D. Fabin, ‘Review of Events (1st to 10th August, 1940)’, 14 August 1940, WO106/2341, TNA.
24.GOC East Africa to War Office, 15 August 1940, WO201/270, TNA.
25.‘Precis of Reports by Colonel W.A. Ebsworth to General Headquarters, Middle East, 22 August to 17 October 1940’, WO201/2084, TNA.
26.‘War Cabinet – Future Strategy’, WP(40)362, 4 September 1940, CAB66/11/42, TNA.
27.‘Order of Battle’, n.d., J.E. Barton Papers, 7203–33–2, NAM.
28.Kenneth Williams, ‘Wardens of the Empire’s Marches – Prospects of East African Campaign’, Great Britain and the East, 30 January 1941.
29.Crosskill, The Two Thousand Mile War, p. 79.
30.Eden to Churchill, 24 September 1940, Wavell Papers, AW.
31.Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 64.
32.Prime Minister’s Personal Minute to Eden and Dill, 22 November 1940, M.330, Wavell Papers, AW.
33.Haining to Dill, 8 October 1940, Wavell Papers, AW.
34.War Office to C. in C. Middle East, 26 November 1940, Wavell Papers, AW.
35.Schofield, Wavell: Soldier and Statesman, p. 150.
36.‘Turtle in the Desert’, Time, 7 October 1940.
37.Major George Fielding Eliot, ‘The War Moves into Africa – Continent Waits to be Carved’, Life, 7 October 1940.
38.Amery to Cranborne, 29 November 1940, Leo Amery Papers, AMEL2/1/31, CAC.
39.John Agar-Hamilton to Liddell Hart, 14 February 1959, Liddell Hart Papers, LH 4/39, LHCMA.
40.Andre Wessels, ‘The First Two Years of War: The Development of the Union Defence Forces (UDF), September 1939 to September 1941’, Scientia Militaria – Military History Journal (Vol. 11, No. 5, June 2000); Ian van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2015), p. 198.
41.General Kenneth van der Spuy, ‘Briton and Boer in the Battle for Freedom’, The Listener, 8 August 1940.
42.Ian van der Waag, ‘The Union Defence Force Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939’, Scientia Militaria – South African Journal of Military Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, 2000), p. 218.
43.Suzanne van den Bergh, ‘Ouma Se Stories’, South African Military History Society, April 2006, pp. 44–47. At its peak in January 1941, approximately 100 vehicles were arriving each day and by May of that same year more than 13,000 had reached East Africa.
44.‘Notes on Conference Held at Khartoum at 0900 hours 29th October 1940’, n.d., WO106/2340, TNA.
45.C. in C. East Indies to Admiralty, 18 November 1940, WO106/2339, TNA.
46.Badoglio to Aosta, 7 September 1940, CAB146/374, TNA; Mideast N.L. East Indies to C. in C. East Indies, 31 December 1940, WO106/2339, TNA.
47.Birkby, It’s a Long Way to Addis, pp. 99–101.
48.Joe Garner, The Commonwealth Office (London: Heinemann, 1978), p. 203; John Colville, Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle (New York: Wyndham, 1981), pp. 173–174.
49.Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London: Constable, 1966), p. 53.
50.‘Comments by Major L.F. Turner (Union War Histories)’, n.d. (1950), CAB106/912, TNA.
51.Ibid., ‘Comments by Major-General C.C. Fowkes – Chapter H’, n.d. (1950).
52.Wavell to Dill, 29 October 1940, Wavell Papers, AW; Smart, Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War, p. 84. Dickinson, in fact, struggled to find another meaningful job and was eventually appointed as the major-general in charge of Western Command’s administration before retiring from the army in 1944.
53.Nosworthy led a corps again in Tunisia and finished the war as Commander-in-Chief of West Africa Command but this incident led Dewing to note it had ‘impressed on me how great a part chance plays in the careers of soldiers’; Diary, 9 October 1940, Dewing Papers, LHCMA.
54.Michael Craster, ‘Cunningham, Ritchie and Leese’, in Keegan (ed.), Churchill’s Generals, p. 203.
55.Diary, 27 August 1940, Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (eds), War Diaries 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), p. 102; Andrew Stewart, ‘“Necessarily of an Experimental Character”: The Inter-War Period and the Imperial Defence College’, in Doug Delaney and Robert Engen (eds), Military Education and Empire (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017 [forthcoming]).
56.Lloyd to Moore, 29 October 1940, CO967/159, TNA.
57.Ibid., Moore to Lloyd, 3 December 1940.
58.Ibid., Lloyd to Moore, 29 October 1940.
59.Blewitt to Mama, 22 December 1940, James Blewitt Papers, 08/88/3, IWM.
60.General Sir Archibald P. Wavell, ‘Operations in East Africa, November 1940 to July 1941’, The London Gazette (1946), p. 3528.
61.‘Comments by General Cunningham – Chapter K’, 24 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA.
62.Ibid., ‘Comments by General Cunningham – Chapter H’, 24 February 1950. When the advance finally began there was still a shortage of drivers and a number of Africans were used despite only having had a fifteen-day basic course of instruction.
63.Wavell, Generals and Generalship, p. 14.
64.Van den Bergh,
‘Ouma Se Stories’, p. 46. Throughout the course of the war they provided 360 water tankers, 120 water purification trucks and 2,200 water-tank trailers.
65.Van der Spuy, ‘Briton and Boer in the Battle for Freedom’, The Listener, 8 August 1940; van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa, pp. 196–197.
66.‘22nd East African Infantry Brigade, Intelligence Summary No. 30’, 25 October 1940, Military Intelligence Reports 1940–1941, DC/MBT/3/4/2, KNADS.
67.‘Daily Summary No. 552’, 11 March 1941, WO106/2139, TNA.
68.‘Force Headquarters Intelligence Summary No. 5 – Disposition of Troops’, 25 October 1939, Military Intelligence Report and Survey 1938–1939, DC/LDW/2/18/4, KNADS.
69.United Kingdom High Commissioner in the Union of South Africa to Dominions Office, Most Secret and Personal, 5 November 1940, DO35/1008, TNA.
70.‘Notes on interview with Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham, 7th November 1945’, CAB106/904, TNA.
71.War Office to C. in C. Middle East, 26 November 1940, Wavell Papers, AW.
72.Wavell to Dill (Private), 2 December 1940, WO106/2340, TNA.
73.John Bierman and Colin Smith, Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia and Zion (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 175–176.
74.Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War, p. 191; Porch, The Path to Victory, p. 133; F.H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War: Vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1979), p. 380.
75.Terraine, The Right of the Line, p. 320.
76.M.O.1 (Records), ‘East Africa . . .’, n.d., WO106/2337B, TNA.
77.Gillan, ‘The Importance of the Sudan’, The Listener, 28 November 1940.
78.Ronald Scobie to Barton, 20 January 1947, CAB106/906, TNA.
79.‘An eye-witness account of the battle of Gallabat, Sudan, 6 November 1940’, n.d., Conf. 3620, JSCSC.
80.Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, The Tanks: The History of the Royal Tank Regiment, 1914–1945: Vol. II, 1939–1945 (London: Cassell & Co., 1959), p. 293.
81.Duncan Anderson, ‘Slim’, in Keegan (ed.), Churchill’s Generals, pp. 304–305. The general had apparently acquired the nickname when he was a schoolboy at Wellington College.
82.Fort, Archibald Wavell, p. 182; Anthony Clayton, The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the Present (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2007), p. 221.
The First Victory Page 32
