by Richard Mead
Bill Stirling was horrified, believing that this would be a suicide mission, likely to result in the needless destruction of a force which could be much more effectively employed, and threatening resignation if it were so used. McLeod agreed and work began to get the plan changed. To Boy’s credit he saw the point and on 8 May he wrote to 21st Army Group, proposing that small groups from the SAS Brigade should be sent in after D-Day to establish contact with the French Resistance, disrupt communications and harass any German panzer divisions moving to the front. On 28 May a new plan was issued, which proposed four operations, focused on widely dispersed areas of France from which German reinforcements might be directed. These would be initiated by two-man reconnaissance parties working alongside three-man SOE/OSS/Free French ‘Jedburgh Teams’, which were being parachuted in to make contact with the Resistance. Once conditions were right, the main parties would follow, of anything between 50 and 150 officers and men, equipped with jeeps, explosives and anti-tank guns.
In due course the number of SAS operations in France was to burgeon, utilizing most of the manpower of the brigade and performing outstanding work in the rear areas. Bill Stirling, however, deeply disenchanted, carried out his threat to resign and was lost to the SAS. Boy himself had at best clearly not kept his eye on the ball during the planning period and was to give relatively scant attention to the SAS subsequently, as he was much preoccupied elsewhere. He did, however, take a great deal of pride in the brigade’s achievements.
It was understood from early in the planning of Operation ‘Overlord’ that airborne operations would not necessarily conclude with the landings on D-Day. HQ I Airborne Corps had to be prepared to draw up other plans at short notice and to commit 1 Airborne Division or any other formation which Montgomery required to achieve his tactical objectives. Accordingly it was decided that Boy and a few of his staff would join the Tactical HQ of Second Army, now commanded by his old friend Dempsey, for the early days of the invasion. Having visited as many units of 6 Airborne Division as possible in their transit camps, he boarded Dempsey’s HQ ship, which sailed for France on the evening of 5 June.
Chapter 16
Frustration (6 June–9 September 1944)
Between 6 June and 9 September 1944, no fewer than fifteen airborne operations were planned in support of Allied ground operations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and all of them were cancelled, some at very short notice.1 Boy himself travelled to and from the Continent thirteen times during these three months, initially for several days at a time, latterly more often than not just for the day as the pace of activity increased.
The landings in the early hours of D-Day by 6 Airborne Division and 82 and 101 US Airborne Divisions did not go exactly to plan, but they achieved most of their objectives. The glider borne coup de main operations to seize the bridges over the River Orne and the Caen Canal were outstanding successes, a model of their type. Boy and Gale had both had their doubts about this aspect of the plan, but a demonstration of precision glider landing in a night-time exercise had convinced them of its possibilities and their judgement was rewarded. The parachute landings in the dark, on the other hand, were far too widely scattered in both the British and American sectors, but small groups managed to concentrate as best they could and to carry out their appointed tasks. By the time night fell on D-Day, 6 Airborne Division, with Lord Lovat’s 1 Special Service Brigade under command, was in a relatively strong defensive position at the seaward end of the eastern flank of the beachhead, whilst the Americans had joined up with the landings over Utah Beach and were holding key points pending an advance into the Cotentin Peninsula.
Boy was able to visit Gale during the following days, remarking at one point on the exposed situation of his HQ, but I Corps retained operational control. Between 10 and 13 June the division was engaged in very heavy fighting, culminating in the capture of Bréville. Thereafter it was ordered to adopt a static defence, anchoring the far left of the Allied line, where it met the sea. The division was to remain in Normandy until the break-out and advance to the Seine in mid-August, fighting as normal infantry, but with limited artillery support. It only returned to England in early September, much depleted as there were few trained reinforcements other than in 1 Airborne Division, which was being maintained intact pending future operations. It had achieved everything which had been asked of it, a source of deep satisfaction not only to Gale, but also to Boy.
Boy spent the first week of the invasion at Second Army’s Tac HQ. The first three operations proposed by 21st Army Group and considered by Boy and his planners involved the reinforcement of the Allied forces by part or all of 1 Airborne Division, in the event that it was no longer possible to land troops over the beaches, whilst the fourth proposed landing the division to prevent German reinforcements reaching the front. These essentially defensive operations were all cancelled, the first three because the necessity never arose, the last because it was obviously bound to end in failure. From thenceforward, the operations proposed were offensive in nature, virtually all of them designed to unlock a door to ground troops.
The first was ‘Beneficiary’, timed to take place at the end of June or beginning of July. The plan called for 1 Airborne Division, augmented by 1 Polish Parachute Brigade, 504 US Parachute Regimental Combat Team, 878 US Airborne Aviation Engineer Battalion and a SAS squadron, to land near St Malo and Dinan, capture both towns and the nearby airfield and seize the port and the beaches. US XX Corps of two divisions would then land from the sea and fan out into Brittany. The operation was cancelled because the airborne commanders were unable to guarantee that there would be no opposition to the seaborne landings.
For the first time, HQ I Airborne Corps was to accompany the force and take command of the operations on the ground. This presented some problems. Against Boy’s better judgement, HQ Airborne Troops had not been originally constituted as an operational headquarters, but as a planning and administration organization and, because no operational role was envisaged on D-Day or in its immediate aftermath, it remained that way after its change of name. Now, for the first time, it was being asked to perform such a role without having the full capacity to do so. To be fair to Boy, he had constantly lobbied the War Office to bring his HQ up to its full active service establishment, but had always been fobbed off, on the grounds that other HQs known to be going into action should have priority. As a result, by the end of June he was contemplating taking into the field a HQ which lacked a number of the basic necessities for controlling operations on the ground, notably a dedicated signals unit.
It was far from uncommon for a corps HQ to enter a major campaign without previous experience, indeed this was the case with three of the four British corps in Normandy. However, by this stage of the war, most of their staff officers, from their commanders downwards, would have themselves seen action of some sort, often at a divisional or brigade HQ or at least in a fighting unit, and would have a clear idea of the operational imperatives. This was not the case with I Airborne Corps, which was populated at a senior level largely by those who had gone up the tree with Boy himself in administrative HQs and had no experience of the control of operations. Perhaps most importantly this applied to Walch, who as BGS would have a key role in action as Boy’s right hand man.
Thomas Firbank, who joined the HQ as GSO2 (Ops), and who had himself seen action with 1 Airborne Division’s Reconnaissance Squadron in Italy, was scathing about the situation. ‘Corps Headquarters had been so concerned with bigger issues,’ he wrote subsequently, ‘that it had perhaps overlooked the fact that many of its personnel, though bright at clerking, were rusty from disuse as soldiers.’2 Brian Urquhart moved the men in his Intelligence section out of their comfortable billets around Moor Park and into tents on the golf course, but ‘Even then we had a formidably unmilitary appearance.’3 In order to provide some relevant training, three battle courses, each of a fortnight, were arranged in the Peak District for groups from the HQ: they improved physical fitness but faile
d to instil much tactical awareness.
Operation ‘Beneficiary’ would have included the Polish Parachute Brigade and this formation, now supposedly fully committed to 21st Army Group, was still causing Boy concern. Returning from the initial planning conference in France, he instructed his GSO1 (Ops), Charles Mackenzie, to go up to Scotland to inform Sosabowski that the brigade, which had just begun a two week programme of mobilization for active service, would be required for the operation and to outline its role. Mackenzie arrived on 22 June to be told that the brigade would not be ready for action until early August, on the grounds that it was still deficient in both equipment and training. Sosabowski phoned Boy, who asked him to come down to Moor Park on 25 June. The Polish commander then appealed to his C-in-C, General Sosnkowski, with a view to his intervention if the brigade was ordered into action before it was ready, but they agreed that nothing would be said until the results of the meeting were known.
On the day before the meeting with Sosabowski, Boy convened a preparatory conference, attended among others by Down, who had been back in England since April. It was agreed that, immediately after Boy had seen Sosabowski, Down would visit the Polish Parachute Brigade, taking with him representatives from each branch and service to sort out any issues which were preventing it from declaring full readiness. Moreover, the brigade would move as soon as possible from Scotland to the Stamford-Peterborough area, close to where 1 Airborne Division was concentrated.
The meeting on 25 June, attended also by Down and Walch, was a difficult one. In Sosabowski’s word, Boy’s greeting was ‘stiff and rather curt; our relationship had changed in any case, as previously I had been independent and I was now under his command. I think that our opposing views at this conference affected our attitude to each other for the rest of the war.’4 Cutting short any preliminaries, Boy asked Sosabowski if his brigade would be ready by 6 July and was told that it would not. Boy expressed a view that it was already better trained than 1 Parachute Brigade when it left for Tunisia, which surprised Sosabowski, as he felt that Boy was in no position to judge, having not visited the Polish units since early 1943.5 Boy went on to ask whether, if he insisted on Polish participation in ‘Beneficiary’, Sosabowski would appeal to his C-in-C, to which the Polish commander confirmed that he would. Boy made it clear that he wanted the Poles to be battle-ready by 1 August, to be told that Sosabowski and the Polish Inspector General of Training believed that this would take two months. At this point Boy, who was as ever on a short fuse, snapped, making it clear that 1 August was the deadline and that Down would be available to ensure it was met.
As usual Boy’s temper subsided quickly and the meeting ended on a more conciliatory note, but relations between the two men would never be as cordial as before. Boy, for his part, was confirmed in his view that Sosabowski was, at best, difficult to deal with. It is evident, moreover, from Sosabowski’s own testimony, that the Poles still had another agenda – participation in the liberation of their own country. Towards the end of July, he received secret orders from Sosnkowski to have one parachute company ready to jump into Poland to assist the Home Army in the Warsaw Rising, which was about to start. Luckily for the paratroopers they were never to participate in this tragic episode, but that such an action was even considered reveals a less than full commitment to the campaign in North-West Europe, a stance always suspected by some on the Allied side.
On a more positive note, however, Down stayed on with the Poles and did an excellent job which was much appreciated. On 2 and 3 August Boy attended a full-scale exercise by the Polish Parachute Brigade at Netheravon and on 8 August he declared the brigade fully operational. Two days later he placed it under the command of 1 Airborne Division.
In the meantime, more operations had been considered and rejected, the largest of which was ‘Hands Up’, the capture of the Quiberon Bay area to enable a new Mulberry port to be established there, as Cherbourg was thought at the time to provide insufficient capacity for the American armies. The plan was first considered at a conference in the UK on 9 July and Boy travelled to and from Normandy three times that month to discuss it with General Bradley’s newly formed 12th US Army Group, which would command I Airborne Corps and Patton’s Third US Army. The proposition was for 1 Airborne Division to capture Vannes airfield, into which 52 (Lowland) Division would be flown, the combined force then forming a beachhead on Quiberon Bay itself. It was agreed that the operation would not be launched until Patton had reached a line St Malo-Rennes-Laval, but in the event, he moved so quickly that it was unnecessary.
This was the first time that 52 Division had appeared in the order of battle of the Airborne Corps. This all-Scottish formation had trained extensively for mountain warfare, with a view to being employed in Italy, but it was decided by the War Office that it should be retrained as an air-portable division. The method of approach to battle differed in material respects from the airlanding brigades in the two British airborne divisions. These used gliders to land in open country, whereas 52 Division was to be transported in Dakotas, which meant that it could only be brought in to reinforce the glider forces and paratroops once a suitable airfield had been secured. Its advantage was that it could deploy more and heavier artillery and equipment; indeed once on the ground it looked much the same as a normal infantry division. Boy visited the division on 1 August and two days later it was placed under his command.
In early August another significant event took place. It was thought to be increasingly likely that British and American airborne forces would be used on joint operations, indeed this would have been true of ‘Beneficiary’. Moreover, whilst each nation had used its own air force for D-Day, it seemed that larger operations would require a pooling of resources. Even before the invasion, therefore, the staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) had been considering setting up a combined airborne headquarters and initially recommended, although he was probably unaware of it, that Boy should get the command. There were different reactions to the outline proposal from those consulted. 21st Army Group was in favour, but asked that implementation should wait until SHAEF had assumed direct operational control of ground forces. Bradley, on the other hand, rejected it outright. Boy thought that it would only make sense if it also took under command IX US Troop Carrier Command and 38 and 46 Groups RAF, whilst Leigh-Mallory would only support it if it did not. The US Chiefs of Staff were behind the proposal, but only if the commander was an American. Reconciling these views was impossible, but, with Marshall behind him, Eisenhower took the decision to go ahead with forming First Allied Airborne Army (FAAA) and to appoint Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton as Commanding General.6
Brereton was a senior airman with a chequered wartime history. He had had the worst possible start as Commanding General of the US Far East Air Force in the Philippines, when the majority of his bombers were destroyed on the ground by the Japanese on 8 December 1941. It was not entirely his fault as he had sought, and not been given, the authority to attack Formosa, which would have taken the bombers away at the time of the raid. General MacArthur attached no blame to him, sending him with the remaining bombers to safety in Australia, but Brereton was thought to have felt the disaster deeply. A short period in command of the American air contingent in the ill-fated ABDACOM (American, British, Dutch and Australian Command) was followed by his appointment to lead the USAAF in North Africa in the summer of 1942. There he built up what became Ninth Air Force, notable among other things for the bombing raid on the Romanian oilfields at Ploesti.
In September 1943 Ninth Air Force was transferred to the UK, where it became the tactical component of the USAAF in the European Theatre of Operations, being successfully employed before and during the invasion of Normandy and in support of the American troops on the ground during the campaign. Brereton, however, was not always easy to deal with,7 being actively disliked by some of his compatriots, including Bradley, the most senior US ground forces commander, and it was possibly because of this that Eis
enhower and Marshall decided to move him. Although he had absolutely no experience of airborne operations, he did know both the USAAF and the RAF very well at a senior level.
Boy was not at all happy with this decision. He was slightly senior to Brereton in his appointment as lieutenant general and he knew a great deal more about airborne operations. However, it is quite clear that he would have been totally unacceptable to the Americans, who at this point neither liked nor trusted him. Boy, for his part, did not care much for Brereton, whom he had met in North Africa and more recently in the UK. He nevertheless accepted the appointment as his deputy, whilst remaining GOC of I Airborne Corps, a situation which led to some confusion in the command structure. Although FAAA now took overall responsibility for training, supply and equipment and, through its direct command of IX US Troop Carrier Command and 38 and 46 Groups RAF, coordination with the air forces, the planning of operations fell between several stools. As far as Boy was concerned, his links to 21st Army Group and Second Army remained intact, as did his personal relationships with both Montgomery and Dempsey, and he continued to be the primary recipient of new proposals generated by them.
Another development took place at the same time, the formation of XVIII US Airborne Corps, which took under command 82 and 101 US Airborne Divisions, now returned from Normandy, and also 17 US Airborne Division, beginning to form in the UK under Major-General ‘Bud’ Miley. Ridgway, still highly suspicious of Boy, was appointed to command the new corps, with Gavin replacing him at 82 Airborne Division.
