A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  The fighting began in extremely hot weather on 19 July, and it soon became apparent that the capture of Sferro would be no easy matter. Under heavy German shell-fire, 5th Black Watch was pinned down, and it took a great deal of effort to clear the town. During the fighting both 1st and 5/7th Gordons lost the use of their radio sets and were forced to use runners. According to Felix Barker, 5/7th Gordons, Sferro was ‘nothing more than a handful of houses at a T-junction’ but it proved to be an awkward position to attack.

  The name of the place was in such small type that you had to peer close to the map to read it. Sferro. Yes according to the reports that was where the opposition was coming from. Sferro. Just a handful of houses. It was a little village of negligible importance, for years a lazy insignificant place housing a few poor peasants. Yet here destiny had decided that an important and bitter battle should be fought out. A little too fanciful perhaps to attribute it all to destiny! After all, as you could see from the map it was really because the enemy had seen that the land rose quite steeply behind, provided excellent cover and concealment for its 17 millimetre guns.32

  On 10 July the first elements of 5th Division had come ashore southwest of Syracuse, the plan being for two brigades to secure the beachhead and to allow 13 Brigade to pass through it and to push inland. This was achieved successfully, and a number of Italian prisoners were taken, but before the brigade concentration area could be secured 2nd Cameronians had to take the small town of Floridia, which dominated the high ground on the north–south road. This was duly accomplished, with the battalion losing thirteen casualties killed and wounded. From there the division made its way north to Augusta where the road was littered with the detritus of war – crashed aircraft, burning vehicles and dead bodies. From there the battalion moved with the rest of the division into the Plain of Catania, which was described in the war history in the following terms:

  . . . a flat, naked depression, stretching for some twelve miles to the north, bounded on the right, or eastern side by the sea, with the port of Catania in the North-East corner. From Catania westwards ran the foothills of Etna to the high ground above Gerbini and Sferro, some fifteen miles inland to the West. The plain was principally divided by the river Simeto and its Southern tributary, the Dittaino, which both ran in the plain from West to East. From South to North the main coastal road went to Catania as did the railway, running almost parallel, but a mile or so further inland. Several secondary lines and roads served the few houses, farm buildings and signal boxes that were infrequent dots in this vast expanse.33

  It was unpromising territory, but it had to be secured if the advance was to maintain its timetable. Unfortunately, it was also a countryside which was made for defence. Towering over the plain was the smoking bulk of Mount Etna, which the enemy used to good effect to observe the Allied movements. The Germans also enjoyed air superiority, and although some airfields had been captured by the Allies, it took time for aircraft to arrive and to mount sorties against the enemy. Topographical considerations prevented Montgomery from utilising his superiority in armour and artillery, and the lack of a decent road system meant that the infantry had to return to foot-slogging. The presence of civilians in the battlefield areas was also a hindrance. In short, after the freedom of movement enjoyed in North Africa, the Eighth Army found itself hemmed in, and the Plain of Catania proved to be a difficult hurdle. On the night of 13/14 July an airborne operation by 1 Parachute Brigade failed to take the vital bridges at Primasole, and as a result Catania remained in enemy hands.

  During this phase of the advance 2nd Cameronians was able to act with armoured support from the County of London Yeomanry, although use was also made of aggressive infantry patrols. In one action on 2 August, a fighting patrol led by Lieutenant J. M. Porter destroyed two German machine-gun positions and took ten German prisoners, including an officer. Porter was awarded the Military Cross, and Corporal R. Smith the Military Medal. The next objective was the River Simieto which had to be crossed to allow the battalion to attack the town of Paterno, which fell on 6 August. Although the Germans began withdrawing a week later, it was not the end of the fighting as they took up strong defensive positions at Gerbini, six miles to the south-east, which contained an airfield as well as a railhead. The delays stymied Montgomery’s plan to push rapidly up the eastern side of Sicily – Patton had made better progress on the left – and it took another week before the Allies were in a position to move jointly on Messina. By then the German and Italian high command had decided that the island was indefensible, and had laid plans to begin the evacuation on 11 August.

  While the operation had taken longer to complete than the Allies had planned, Sicily fell on 16 August. Some of the gloss was taken off the victory when over 100,000 German and Italian soldiers were evacuated across the Straits of Messina to fight again in Italy, but the battle for the island showed that British and US forces could work in tandem against a determined enemy.

  Before the culmination of the campaign, 6th Seaforth was taken out of the line to refit and to begin training with 5th Division for the next stage of the campaign in Italy, while the Seaforth and Cameron battalions in 51st (Highland) Division returned to Britain to start training for the long-awaited invasion of France. There was also a change of job for its experienced commander, Major-General Douglas Wimberley, who had led it so well in North Africa and Sicily: he was sent back to Britain to become commandant of the army staff college at Camberley. Before he left he issued an Order of the Day to All Ranks of the 51st (Highland) Division thanking them for their ‘spirit, discipline and behaviour’, and reminding them that the member regiments could not rest on their laurels. He also included a verse which he felt summed up the spirit of the Highland soldier, be he a Scot from the Highlands or Lowlands, or one of the many Englishmen who had served in the division.

  Ye canna mak’ a sojer wi’ braid an’ trappins braw,

  Nor gie him fightin’ spirit when his backs ag’in the wa’.

  It’s the breedin’ in the callants [young men] that winna let them whine,

  The bluid o’ generations frae lang, lang syne.34

  Similar sentiments could have been addressed to the soldiers fighting in Burma. During this same period, the spring and summer of 1943, the first concrete steps had been taken to retrieve the position in Burma by adopting a more offensive attitude to the Japanese forces. For the first time, specially trained British and Indian soldiers had shown that they were capable of taking on and beating Japanese soldiers in the fastnesses of the Burmese jungle.

  The author of the turnaround was Major-General Orde Wingate, a remarkable gunner officer of Scottish descent, and possessed of unorthodox opinions. Before the war he had served in Palestine, where he had emerged as a Zionist supporter, and after being recruited by SOE he had helped the Emperor Haile Selassie to return to his throne in Ethiopia in 1941. He believed that the Japanese could be beaten by inserting long-range penetration forces which would fight behind their lines and destroy vital objectives. From the outset there was a Black Watch connection. Crucially, Wingate was able to win the support of Wavell who had started his army career in The Black Watch; in the previous year he had been transferred from the Middle East to become commander-in-chief in India, and he quickly became interested in Wingate’s ideas. Amongst others attracted to the new concept was Major Bernard Fergusson, a Scot from an Ayrshire background, who had served with 2nd Black Watch in the Middle East.

  Basically, Wingate rethought the traditional brigade structure and refashioned it to fight in the jungle. Fighting in eight columns supplied from the air, one of which was commanded by Fergusson, the new force was called the Chindits, after the Burmese word ‘chinthe’, the mythical winged beasts which guarded Buddhist temples, and it went into action in February 1943. Operation Longcloth (as it was known) was a mixed success. The Mandalay–Myitkyina railway line was cut, but the cost was appalling. Of the 3,000 men who carried out the operation, only 2,182 came back; around 450 had been kill
ed in action, and the remainder were either lost or had been taken prisoner. Only 600 of the force were able to return to soldiering. However, on the credit side, it sowed confusion in the minds of the Japanese high command who feared it was a precursor to a larger attack, and as result large numbers of enemy troops were used to hunt down the Chindits. Above all, Wingate had shown that the Japanese could be fought on their own terms, and on that level the Chindits were a huge propaganda success, so much so that a second operation was planned for the spring of 1944.

  This time it would consist of a much larger force made up of battalions in the 70th Division which was under the command of Major-General George Symes, an experienced soldier who showed great dignity by agreeing to serve as Wingate’s second-in-command, even though he was senior to him. Partly this was his soldier’s duty but partly, too, Symes had been influenced by Auchinleck, the new commander-in-chief in succession to Wavell who became Viceroy of India in 1943. When it became clear that Wingate intended to break up the division’s brigade and battalion structure to create new columns, Symes had been asked to stay on to reconcile his men to the Chindit concept.

  In essence, a Chindit column was a reinforced rifle company of 250 men consisting of four infantry platoons; a heavy weapons platoon equipped with a Vickers .303 medium machine-gun and three-inch mortar; a commando platoon; a reconnaissance platoon; and a section of guides provided by the Burma Rifles. The changeover could have caused difficulties because the 70th Division was made up of regiments which were a roll-call of the British Army, and as Symes pointed out, many of them, including The Black Watch, had histories which stretched back over two centuries. Wingate remained oblivious to the upset he was causing by breaking up the cherished regimental system, and in the planning papers Symes fought what he called ‘a battle royal’ to retain individual identities ‘by allotting column numbers where possible to conform with the old regimental numbers of the regular battalions’.35 Thus it was that when 2nd Black Watch was broken up to provide two columns to the new Chindit force, they were numbered 42 and 73 (the regimental numbers of The Black Watch). The senior column, 73, was commanded by the new commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel George Green, while the 42 column came under the command of Major David Rose.

  The other Scottish regiment represented in the Chindit force was 1st Cameronians, but with them Wingate showed a less certain touch. The battalion formed 111 Brigade with 2nd King’s Own Royal Regiment and 3/4th and 4/9th Gurkha Rifles, all under the command of Brigadier W. D. A. ‘Joe’ Lentaigne. Each battalion was divided into two columns in the Cameronians’ numbered 26 and 90 to reflect the numbers of the regiment’s predecessors. Training began in earnest in August 1943 with the intention that two brigades (77 and 111) would be flown in by air to create ‘strongholds’ at positions known as Broadway and Piccadilly, while 16 Brigade under Fergusson would march into the Indaw area from Ledo in the north. When Lieutenant-Colonel John Masters, a Gurkha officer who was later to replace Lentaigne, came to write his memoirs, he produced a telling description of the Cameronian soldiers who had been chosen to do battle against the Japanese in the fastness of the Burmese jungle.

  They recruited most of their men from the streets of Glasgow, and had the reputation of being one of the toughest regiments in the British Army, in peacetime. They waged street fights with secreted bayonets and broken bottles, and, on at least one occasion in Calcutta, with rifles and ball ammunition. They carried razor blades in the peaks of their caps, with which to wipe the grin off opposing faces by a careless back swipe from the bonnet; and potatoes in their pockets, in which razor blades were stuck. No one but their own officers could handle them, and their touchy discipline vanished altogether for a week around the great Scottish fiesta of Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve.36

  Masters was also astute enough to notice that Wingate caused considerable offence to the battalion while it was training in Gwalior. Wingate was steeped in the language of the Old Testament – he counted Plymouth Brethren and the Free Church of Scotland amongst the influences on his background – and with his beard and Wolseley helmet he cut an eccentric, almost prophet-like figure. It was his habit to visit units in training and to give talks which were peppered with biblical allusions. However, when he addressed 1st Cameronians, Wingate made the mistake of telling them that many would perish in the attempt to retake Burma. As related by Masters, this was badly received by the men: ‘I could sense an almost visible rising of the regimental esprit de corps against the general. The regiment decided he was trying to frighten them into bravery, and the real worth of Wingate’s remarks – a message about sacrifice – was lost.’37

  On 25 March 1944, the Chindit force began flying into Burma, where they landed at an airstrip codenamed ‘Aberdeen’ to be greeted by Wingate with the observation that they were the first Scottish troops to land at a Scottish airport in Burma. (Wingate’s wife Lorna came from Aberdeenshire.) They were amongst his last official words: that same day his B-25 Mitchell aircraft crashed in an electric storm while it was transporting him to Imphal. Wingate’s unexpected death changed the complexion of the operation and coloured what happened next to the Cameronian and Black Watch columns. Instead of employing the long-range penetration tactics for which they had been trained, the Chindit columns rapidly reverted to regular infantry tactics, with the exception that they were fighting in small groups in a hostile environment. Nevertheless the Black Watch columns were still able to conduct operations according to the guidelines laid down by Wingate. Both combined to conduct a well-planned ambush on the Banmauk–Indaw road on 4 April, and a week later Rose’s 42 column carried out an attack on a Japanese arms dump at Singgan. Having reconnoitred the position they called up air support by radio and attacked the position on 10 April in tandem with US Air Force Mitchell and Mustang strike aircraft. It was the first time that the regiment had used such revolutionary tactics. Air support was also used to re-supply and for taking out wounded, although much depended on the skills of the columns’ medical officers who often had to treat wounds and carry out operations under trying conditions. One man suffering from appendicitis was operated upon using the bent handles of mess tins for clamps and an officer’s sponge for a swab.

  Because Wingate died at a crucial juncture in the operation, and was unable to influence future events, it is difficult to give a complete estimate of the achievements of 1st Cameronians and 2nd Black Watch, and the other battalions which served as Chindits. The force lost 1,034 casualties killed and 2,752 wounded (Cameronian losses were 10 officers killed or wounded and 237 other ranks killed or wounded), but against that they accounted for over 10,000 casualties in the Japanese army, 5,764 of whom were killed. In his planning notes for the operation, Wingate had laid it down that no column was to fight in Burma for longer than three months at the maximum, but the exigencies of the campaign meant that both Black Watch columns were in the jungle almost twice as long. During that time they were forced to endure conditions which tested men’s patience and strength. Over seventy soldiers succumbed to typhus, food was usually in short supply and the going on the ground was always hard.

  During the operation the Chindits suffered dreadful privations from illness and lack of food, and came out of Burma a much-weakened and emaciated force, but the battlefield accountancy should not just be confined to figures. After landing in Burma they had operated freely against the enemy’s lines of communication and sowed confusion in the minds of Japanese commanders who were never entirely certain of the force’s whereabouts or intentions. As a result, a large number of troops were used in countering the threat, including one reserve division and two battalions which would otherwise have been used in the army attacking Imphal and Kohima. In that respect the suffering endured by 1st Cameronians and 2nd Black Watch made a substantial contribution to the success of the Allied war effort in Burma.

  11 Victory in Europe and the Far East

  No sooner had the US joined the Allied war effort than their military planners had made a strong ca
se for an early attack on the European mainland. In fact the decision to press ahead with the invasion of north-west Europe had been taken as early as May 1943 at an Allied conference (codenamed Trident) in Washington, and planning for it began under joint US–British direction immediately after the summit had ended.

  The main desiderata for the cross-Channel amphibious attack were quickly established: a landing area with shallow beaches and without obstacles which was within range of Allied air power; the neutralisation of local defences to allow a build-up which would equal the strength of the German defenders; and the presence of a large port for reinforcement and re-supply. Deception also formed part of the plan: the idea was to persuade the Germans that the assault would be made across the narrowest part of the English Channel at Pas de Calais where the beaches were shallow and led into the hinterland without the obstacles of cliffs and high ground. It also offered the opportunity to make a quick strike into the Low Countries, and from there into Germany. All those reasons made Pas de Calais the ideal place for invasion, but because it was the obvious location it was quickly discounted as the Allied planners realised that their German counterparts would deploy the bulk of their defensive forces there. By the end of the summer the plan was shown to the Allied leadership at the Quadrant conference in Quebec, which amongst other matters discussed the tactics to be used in the invasion of Europe. The chosen landing ground was the Baie de la Seine in Normandy, between Le Havre and the Cotentin peninsula, an area which met all the criteria, including a deepwater port at Cherbourg.