Presently the red bulbs showed that the majority of our squadrons were engaged. A subdued hum arose from the floor, where the busy plotters pushed their discs to and fro in accordance with the swiftly-changing situation. Air Vice-Marshal Park gave general directions for the disposition of his fighter force, which were translated into detailed orders to each Fighter Station by a youngish officer in the centre of the Dress Circle, at whose side I sat. Some years after I asked his name. He was Lord Willoughby de Broke. (I met him next in 1947, when the Jockey Club, of which he was a Steward, invited me to see the Derby. He was surprised that I remembered the occasion.) He now gave the orders for the individual squadrons to ascend and patrol as the results of the final information which appeared on the map-table. The Air Marshal himself walked up and down behind, watching with vigilant eye every move in the game, supervising his junior executive hand, and only occasionally intervening with some decisive order, usually to reinforce a threatened area. In a little while all our squadrons were fighting, and some had already begun to return for fuel. All were in the air. The lower line of bulbs was out. There was not one squadron left in reserve. At this moment Park spoke to Dowding at Stanmore, asking for three squadrons from No. 12 Group to be put at his disposal in case of another major attack while his squadrons were rearming and refuelling. This was done. They were specially needed to cover London and our fighter aerodromes, because No. 11 Group had already shot their bolt.
The young officer, to whom this seemed a matter of routine, continued to give his orders, in accordance with the general directions of his Group Commander, in a calm, low monotone, and the three reinforcing squadrons were soon absorbed. I became conscious of the anxiety of the Commander, who now stood still behind his subordinate’s chair. Hitherto I had watched in silence. I now asked: “What other reserves have we?” “There are none,” said Air Vice-Marshal Park. In an account which he wrote about it afterwards he said that at this I “looked grave”. Well I might. What losses should we not suffer if our refuelling planes were caught on the ground by further raids of “40 plus” or “50 plus”! The odds were great; our margins small; the stakes infinite.
Another five minutes passed, and most of our squadrons had now descended to refuel. In many cases our resources could not give them overhead protection. Then it appeared that the enemy were going home. The shifting of the discs on the table below showed a continuous eastward movement of German bombers and fighters. No new attack appeared. In another ten minutes the action was ended. We climbed again the stairways which led to the surface, and almost as we emerged the “All Clear” sounded.
“We are very glad, sir, you have seen this,” said Park. “Of course, during the last twenty minutes we were so choked with information that we couldn’t handle it. This shows you the limitation of our present resources. They have been strained far beyond their limits to-day.” I asked whether any results had come to hand, and remarked that the attack appeared to have been repelled satisfactorily. Park replied that he was not satisfied that we had intercepted as many raiders as he had hoped we should. It was evident that the enemy had everywhere pierced our defences. Many scores of German bombers, with their fighter escort, had been reported over London. About a dozen had been brought down while I was below, but no picture of the results of the battle or of the damage or losses could be obtained.
It was 4.30 p.m. before I got back to Chequers, and I immediately went to bed for my afternoon sleep. I must have been tired by the drama of No. 11 Group, for I did not wake till eight. When I rang, John Martin, my Principal Private Secretary, came in with the evening budget of news from all over the world. It was repellent. This had gone wrong here; that had been delayed there; an unsatisfactory answer had been received from so-and-so; there had been bad sinkings in the Atlantic. “However,” said Martin, as he finished this account, “all is redeemed by the air. We have shot down one hundred and eighty-three for a loss of under forty.”
Although post-war information has shown that the enemy’s losses on this day were only fifty-six, September 15 was the crux of the Battle of Britain. That same night our Bomber Command attacked in strength the shipping in the ports from Boulogne to Antwerp. At Antwerp particularly heavy losses were inflicted. On September 17, as we now know, the Fuehrer decided to postpone “Sea Lion” indefinitely. It was not till October 12 that the invasion was formally called off till the following spring. In July 1941 it was postponed again by Hitler till the spring of 1942, “by which time the Russian campaign will be completed”. This was a vain but an important imagining. On February 13, 1942, Admiral Raeder had his final interview on “Sea Lion” and got Hitler to agree to a complete “stand-down”. Thus perished Operation “Sea Lion”. And September 15 may stand as the date of its demise.
No doubt we were always over-sanguine in our estimates of enemy scalps. In the upshot we got two to one of the German assailants, instead of three to one, as we believed and declared. But this was enough. The Royal Air Force, far from being destroyed, was triumphant. A strong flow of fresh pilots was provided. The aircraft factories, upon which not only our immediate need but our power to wage a long war depended, were mauled but not paralysed. The workers, skilled and unskilled, men and women alike, stood to their lathes and manned the workshops under fire as if they were batteries in action—which indeed they were. At the Ministry of Supply Herbert Morrison spurred all in his wide sphere. “Go to it,” he adjured, and to it they went. Skilful and ever-ready support was given to the air-fighting by the Anti-Aircraft Command under General Pile. Their main contribution came later. The Observer Corps, devoted and tireless, were hourly at their posts. The carefully-wrought organisation of Fighter Command, without which all might have been in vain, proved equal to months of continuous strain. All played their part.
At the summit the stamina and valour of our fighter pilots remained unconquerable and supreme. Thus Britain was saved. Well might I say in the House of Commons: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
CHAPTER XIII
“LONDON CAN TAKE IT”
THE German air assault on Britain is a tale of divided counsels, conflicting purposes, and never fully accomplished plans. Three or four times in these months the enemy abandoned a method of attack which was causing us severe stress, and turned to something new. But all these stages overlapped one another, and cannot be readily distinguished by precise dates. Each one merged into the next. The early operations sought to engage our air forces in battle over the Channel and the south coast; next the struggle was continued over our southern counties, principally Kent and Sussex, the enemy aiming to destroy our air-power organisation; then nearer to and over London; then London became the supreme target; and finally, when London triumphed, there was a renewed dispersion to the provincial cities and to our sole Atlantic life-line by the Mersey and the Clyde.
We have seen how very hard they had run us in the attack on the south coast airfields in the last week of August and the first week of September. But on September 7 Goering publicly assumed command of the air battle, and turned from daylight to night attack and from the fighter airfields of Kent and Sussex to the vast built-up areas of London. Minor raids by daylight were frequent, indeed constant, and one great daylight attack was still to come; but in the main the whole character of the German offensive was altered. For fifty-seven nights the bombing of London was unceasing. This constituted an ordeal for the world’s largest city, the results of which no one could measure beforehand. Never before was so wide an expanse of houses subjected to such bombardment or so many families required to face its problems and its terrors.
The sporadic raiding of London towards the end of August was promptly answered by us in a retaliatory attack on Berlin. Because of the distance we had to travel, this could only be on a very small scale compared with attacks on London from nearby French and Belgian airfields. The War Cabinet were much in the mood to hit back, to raise the stakes, and to defy the enemy. I was sure they w
ere right, and believed that nothing impressed or disturbed Hitler so much as his realisation of British wrath and will-power. In his heart he was one of our admirers. He took of course full advantage of our reprisal on Berlin, and publicly announced the previously-settled German policy of reducing London and other British cities to chaos and ruin. “If they attack our cities,” he declared on September 4, “we will simply erase theirs.” He tried his best.
From September 7 to November 3 an average of two hundred German bombers attacked London every night. The various preliminary raids which had been made upon our provincial cities in the previous three weeks had led to a considerable dispersion of our antiaircraft artillery, and when London first became the main target there were but ninety-two guns in position. It was thought better to leave the air free for our night-fighters, working under No. 11 Group. Of these there were six squadrons of Blenheims and Defiants. Night-fighting was in its infancy, and very few casualties were inflicted on the enemy. Our batteries therefore remained silent for three nights in succession. Their own technique was at this time woefully imperfect. Nevertheless, in view of the weakness of our night-fighters and of their unsolved problems it was decided that the anti-aircraft gunners should be given a free hand to fire at unseen targets, using any methods of control they liked. In forty-eight hours General Pile, commanding the Air Defence Artillery, had more than doubled the number of guns in the capital by withdrawals from the provincial cities. Our own aircraft were kept out of the way, and the batteries were given their chance.
For three nights Londoners had sat in their houses or inadequate shelters enduring what seemed to be an utterly unresisted attack. Suddenly, on September 10, the whole barrage opened, accompanied by a blaze of searchlights. This roaring cannonade did not do much harm to the enemy, but gave enormous satisfaction to the population. Everyone was cheered by the feeling that we were hitting back. From that time onwards the batteries fired regularly, and of course practice, ingenuity, and grinding need steadily improved the shooting. A slowly increasing toll was taken of the German raiders. Upon occasions the batteries were silent and the night-fighters, whose methods were also progressing, came on the scene. The night raids were accompanied by more or less continuous daylight attacks by small groups or even single enemy planes, and the sirens often sounded at brief intervals throughout the whole twenty-four hours. To this curious existence the seven million inhabitants of London accustomed themselves.
In the hope that it may lighten the hard course of this narrative I record a few personal notes about the “Blitz”, well knowing how many thousands have far more exciting tales to tell.
When the bombardment first began the idea was to treat it with disdain. In the West End everybody went about their business and pleasure and dined and slept as they usually did. The theatres were full, and the darkened streets were crowded with casual traffic. All this was perhaps a healthy reaction from the frightful squawk which the defeatist elements in Paris had put up on the occasion when they were first seriously raided in May. I remember dining in a small company when very lively and continuous raids were going on. The large windows of Stornoway House opened upon the Green Park, which flickered with the flashes of the guns and was occasionally lit by the glare of an exploding bomb. I felt that we were taking unnecessary risks. After dinner we went to the Imperial Chemicals building overlooking the Embankment. From these high stone balconies there was a splendid view of the river. At least a dozen fires were burning on the south side, and while we were there several heavy bombs fell, one near enough for my friends to pull me back behind a substantial stone pillar. This certainly confirmed my opinion that we should have to accept many restrictions upon the ordinary amenities of life.
The group of Government buildings around Whitehall were repeatedly hit. Downing Street consists of houses two hundred and fifty years old, shaky and lightly built by the profiteering contractor whose name they bear. At the time of the Munich alarm shelters had been constructed for the occupants of No. 10 and No. 11, and the rooms on the garden level had had their ceilings propped up with a wooden under-ceiling and strong timbers. It was believed that this would support the ruins if the building was blown or shaken down; but of course neither these rooms nor the shelters were effective against a direct hit. During the last fortnight of September preparations were made to transfer my Ministerial headquarters to the more modern and solid Government offices looking over St. James’s Park by Storey’s Gate. These quarters we called “the Annexe”. Here during the rest of the war my wife and I lived comfortably. We felt confidence in this solid stone building, and only on very rare occasions went down below the armour. My wife even hung up our few pictures in the sitting-room, which I had thought it better to keep bare. Her view prevailed and was justified by the event. From the roof near the cupola of the Annexe there was a splendid view of London on clear nights. They made a place for me with light overhead cover from splinters, and one could walk in the moonlight and watch the fireworks. Below was the War Room and a certain amount of bomb-proof sleeping accommodation. The bombs at this time were of course smaller than those of the later phases. Still, in the interval before the new apartments were ready life at Downing Street was exciting. One might as well have been at a battalion headquarters in the line.
One evening (October 17) stands out in my mind. We were dining in the garden-room of No. 10 when the usual night raid began. My companions were Archie Sinclair, Oliver Lyttelton, and Moore-Brabazon. The steel shutters had been closed. Several loud explosions occurred around us at no great distance, and presently a bomb fell, perhaps a hundred yards away, on the Horse Guards Parade, making a great deal of noise. Suddenly I had a providential impulse. The kitchen at No. 10 Downing Street is lofty and spacious, and looks out through a large plate-glass window about twenty-five feet high. The butler and parlourmaid continued to serve the dinner with complete detachment, but I became acutely aware of this big window, behind which Mrs. Landemare, the cook, and the kitchen-maid, never turning a hair, were at work. I got up abruptly, went into the kitchen, told the butler to put the dinner on the hot plate in the dining-room, and ordered the cook and the other servants into the shelter, such as it was. I had been seated again at table only about three minutes when a really very loud crash, close at hand, and a violent shock showed that the house had been struck. My detective came into the room and said much damage had been done. The kitchen, the pantry, and the offices on the Treasury side were shattered.
We went into the kitchen to view the scene. The devastation was complete. The bomb had fallen fifty yards away on the Treasury, and the blast had smitten the large, tidy kitchen, with all its bright saucepans and crockery, into a heap of black dust and rubble. The big plate-glass window had been hurled in fragments and splinters across the room, and would of course have cut its occupants, if there had been any, to pieces. But my fortunate inspiration, which I might so easily have neglected, had come in the nick of time. The underground Treasury shelter across the court had been blown to pieces by a direct hit, and the four civil servants who were doing Home Guard night-duty there were killed. All however were buried under tons of brick rubble, and we did not know who was missing.
As the raid continued and seemed to grow in intensity we put on our tin hats and went out to view the scene from the top of the Annexe buildings. Before doing so, however, I could not resist taking Mrs. Landemare and the others from the shelter to see their kitchen. They were upset at the sight of the wreck, but principally on account of the general untidiness!
Archie and I went up to the cupola of Annexe building. The night was clear and there was a wide view of London. It seemed that the greater part of Pall Mall was in flames. At least five fierce fires were burning there, and others in St. James’s Street and Piccadilly. Farther back over the river in the opposite direction there were many conflagrations. But Pall Mall was the vivid flame-picture. Gradually, the attack died down, and presently the “All Clear” sounded, leaving only the blazing fires. We went
downstairs to my new apartments on the first floor of the Annexe, and there found Captain David Margesson, the Chief Whip, who was accustomed to live at the Carlton Club. He told us the club had been blown to bits, and indeed we had thought, by the situation of the fires, that it must have been hit. He was in the club with about two hundred and fifty members and staff. It had been struck by a heavy bomb. The whole of the façade and the massive coping on the Pall Mall side had fallen into the street, obliterating his motor-car, which was parked near the front door. The smoking-room had been full of members, and the whole ceiling had come down upon them. When I looked at the ruins next day it seemed incredible that most of them should not have been killed. However, by what seemed a miracle, they had all crawled out of the dust, smoke, and rubble, and though many were injured not a single life was lost. When in due course these facts came to the notice of the Cabinet our Labour colleagues facetiously remarked: “The devil looks after his own.” Mr. Quintin Hogg had carried his father, a former Lord Chancellor, on his shoulders from the wreck, as Æneas had borne Pater Anchises from the ruins of Troy. Margesson had nowhere to sleep, and we found him blankets and a bed in the basement of the Annexe. Altogether it was a lurid evening, and considering the damage to buildings it was remarkable that there were not more than five hundred people killed and about a couple of thousand injured.
Another time I visited Ramsgate. An air raid came upon us, and I was conducted into their big tunnel, where quite large numbers of people lived permanently. When we came out, after a quarter of an hour, we looked at the still-smoking damage. A small hotel had been hit. Nobody had been hurt, but the place had been reduced to a litter of crockery, utensils, and splintered furniture. The proprietor, his wife, and the cooks and waitresses were in tears. Where was their home? Where was their livelihood? Here is a privilege of power. I formed an immediate resolve. On the way back in my train I dictated a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kingsley Wood, laying down the principle that all damage from the fire of the enemy must be a charge upon the State and compensation be paid in full and at once. Thus the burden would not fall alone on those whose homes or business premises were hit, but would be borne evenly on the shoulders of the nation. Kingsley Wood was naturally a little worried by the indefinite character of this obligation. But I pressed hard, and an insurance scheme was devised in a fortnight which afterwards played a substantial part in our affairs. The Treasury went through various emotions about this insurance scheme. First they thought it was going to be their ruin; but when, after May 1941, the air raids ceased for over three years they began to make a great deal of money, and considered the plan provident and statesmanlike. However, later on in the war, when the “doodle-bugs” and rockets began, the accounts swung the other way, and eight hundred and ninety millions were soon paid out. I am very glad this was so.
The Second World War Page 47
