Forces In Battle History"
pp. 18-24 · Read in the full issue
Britain Now “One of Mightiest Striking Forces In Battle History"
Remarkable American Tribute to What the Old Country Has Done and is Doing
rj I HE following is a condensation of a remarkable article by Harvey Klem mer, in the August issue of “The National Geographic Magazine”.
This writer succeeds, as few have done, in getting the position of Great Britain into correct focus in relation to World War 11. We publish the following extracts, because the whole Pacific situa tion now is bound up with the “global war”; and the courage and strength of Britain soon will be joined to the high spirit and tremendous strength of Amer ica, and the amazing tenacity and forti tude of Russia, in taking control of the “global war”; and shaping the destiny of the world.
Every word of this American tribute to our common Motherland is soundly based. Let us never forget that it was Britain that saved European civilisation from the Hun and the Jap, in August- September, 1940.
TWO years ago the German hosts, drunk with victory, stood on the English Channel and prepared exul tantly for the conquest of Britain.
The Nazis had swept everything before them—Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, France. There remained only a cluster of islands nearly the size of the State of Oregon to complete the
subjugation of western Europe.
It looked like an easy job. The British had been thrown out of Norway. They had been sent reeling back from the front in France and Belgium, their fight ing strength nearly exterminated on the beach at Dunkirk. Italy had come into the fray and Japan hovered expectantly in the background.
Perhaps the British, seeing what had happened to their allies, would adopt the course of wisdom and sue for peace. If they didn’t, if they persisted in being stubborn —well, the Fuehrer had had an answer for everything so far, and he probably had an answer for Britain.
THE weeks went by. The British didn’t sue for peace and Hitler got ready to administer the coup de grace. Long-range guns were mounted on the French coast; invasion barges were assembled; troops were moved into position: supplies were brought up; air fields were made ready for a kind of assault unknown to the Spaniards in the days of the Armada and unknown to Napoleon. With binoculars one could see from Dover the German preparations.
Britain braced herself for the blow.
There was no thought of surrender, regardless of what the odds might be.
Machine-guns were mounted by the sea.
Coastal areas were closed, barricades erected, tank traps installed.
The great weakness, of course, was the lack of equipment. Nearly a thousand cannon had been lost in France. Tanks were few. There were not even enough rifles to go around. The outlook wasn’t very bright in Britain that summer, and we who were privileged to be there felt like mourners at the bier of a friend.
The Germans massed for the kill. But something happened. The kill didn’t come off. The German guns were answered, shell for shell. The invasion
barges were dispersed. The Luftwaffe was sent scuttling back to its lair.
Britain stood.
It was no accident that Hitler failed to take the British Isles. He tried hard enough. He failed because he under estimated the British will to resist and the British capacity to take punishment.
Above all, he failed because he under estimated the scope of the British war effort.
Hitler is not the only one to err in the latter regard. Again and again, since returning to America, I have been sur prised at the lack of understanding here concerning the resources of Britain and the manner in which those resources have been massed to build up the coun try’s military strength. This, in my opinion, is one of the great stories of the war.
ONE explanation for our failure to grasp the magnitude of Britain’s war effort is the British habit of understatement. The Luftwaffe was pub licised to the point where it was gener ally regarded as invincible. We heard very little about the Royal Air Force; yet, when the showdown came, it was the RAF which came out on top.
I saw thirty or forty air battles in Great Britain. I never saw one in which the RAF boys weren’t tearing the Nazis to pieces. The simple fact is that the Nazis aren’t nearly so good as they said they were, while the British are a whale of a lot better.
Another explanation for our lack of understanding stems from the emphasis placed on “life as usual” during the blitz.
In an effort to minimise the effect of German bombs, the British —and their friends as well —got into the habit of portraying a country where everything went on as before, including activities which have no place in a beleaguered fortress. To say that everyone is work ing hard, and that soldiers, sailors, air men are at their posts, does not make much of a “story”.
Britain, even under fire, was forging the greatest military machine in the his tory of the Empire and one of the mightiest striking forces in battle history.
Some nations are strong in the air. some on the sea, some on the land. Britain manages to be strong in all three branches The United States may displace her in the air, on the sea, and on the land, but I do not believe that it is any exaggera tion to rate Britain, as of June 1, 1942, as the greatest all-round military force on earth.
The Colonies and Dominions have helped splendidly, of course, but the bulk of this incredible job has been done by a little country with a third the popu lation of the United States, a fourth of the industrial capacity, and about a thirty-third of the area. The all-out assault of the Axis enemy has been met by an all-out response.
The foundation upon which the Brit ish war effort rests is a simple obligation known as National Service. Everybody in Britain is expected to contribute to the common cause.
Nine million men are registered for service in the armed forces or employed in vital war work. Another 5,000.000 are registered for fire watching. Every two weeks a new age group is called upon to register.
Men are liable for military service between the ages of 18 a and 51. So many men have been taken into the Army that there has been a clamor for the release of coal miners, agricul tural workers, and others considered necessary to keep up production of muni-
Uons and food. The military has yielded llttl€ - MORE than five million women have registered for work in tbo „ n i. formed services, in civil defence, in armament facories, or in some other branch of the war effort. Like men, women are liable to compulsory service up to the age of 51, although only unmarried women between 20 and 30 are now being recruited. Married women between those ages may volunteer.
Women even serve with combatant units—with anti-aircraft batteries for example—but such service is voluntary.
The three branches of military service air, sea, and land—all have women’s auxiliaries. Women, by doing work formerly done by men, have done much to release men for combatant service A million and a half boys and girls from 16 to 18 years old have signed up
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E exploits of the RAF are by now a familiar saga. The boys of the RAF stopped the Nazis at a time when they might well have over-run the British Isles and those remaining portions of western Europe still undespoiled by virtue of the existence of a free Britain.
The achievements of the RAF came as a thrilling surprise to many of us who were abroad at the time; we had heard so many stories of the size of the German Air Force, of the Reich’s great research facilities, and the superiority of planes. miVh? hJ S ah£ k^ n foST had % e RAF might be able to take care of itself came to erourttai from the British put an umbrella of
planes over the French coast and kept it there for three days while some 335 000 men were saved from death or capture.
Later I met a plane builder who did not seem to be at all worried about the prospects in the air, and still later I talked with an airman who said: “We have air superiority over these islands.
Eventually we shall gain air superiority over the Continent. That will be the beginning of the end.”
This was on the eve of the Battle of Britain. The airman’s assertion proved to be true. The Germans were never able to gain mastery over more than a fringe of British coast and they were soon forced to relinquish that. When they lost 185 planes in a single day, they stopped coming in the daytime. For eight, months they came over at night but eventually they decided that these raids, too, were not worth the expense of putting them on.
The British concentrated on fighting quality rather than quantity in the pro duction of planes.
There is no doubt that Great Britain is first in the air. The RAF may or may not be the biggest air force in the world, but it is certainly the strongest Eventually the United States, with its larger population and superior industrial capacity, should rule the skies. As this is written, Britain enjoys that distinction From the beginning of the war to date, the British—the Dominion and Allied squadrons operating with them—have brought down 10,000 German and Italian planes. RAF losses have been around 4,000.
The most deadly months for the Axis were August and September of 1940 when some 2,400 planes were lost over Britain compared to less than 800 lost by the RAF. The British were knocking them down so fast during the summer and fall of 1940 that people began to
joke about which was the greater men ace, falling bombs or fallinl bombers' i A ag ?, the pe ?P le of Britain were cleaning up the wreckage caused bv Per- To-day, bombers are going the , ,ot h er dll ! ectlon - More than a thousand P lanes m a single night now i? ai ov ’ er Gerrnan y and the occupied strewing countless incendiaries and o«?P2 m ? hl ? h ' ex P losi ve bombs of a size and destructiveness never before achieved, Raids are planned with the co-opera tion of the Ministry of Economic War fare to insure maximum destruction of Plants and supplies necessary to the enemy war effort. Railway centres come m for special attention. The British deny any intention to punish the civilian population, but one would have to be extremely naive to deny that civilian casualties are bound to result from such raids.
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Thundering night assaults completely kn °cked out the Baltic war-supply ports of Lubeck and Rostock. Then came the attack on Cologne by more than a thousand planes, featuring Britain’s mighty four-engined bombers. In 90 minutes pn the night of May 30 eight s Q u are miles of Cologne were laid waste, with ar mament and engine factories smashed or burned.
Thousands of men are now becoming available through the Empire Training Scheme, which is for men of the British Dominions.
The additional thousands being trained in the United States are chieflv English men There ls a lack of space in B?Uata and plenty of space in the United States.
Americans now as a rule join the US Army Air Forces.
THE backbone of British defence has hitherto been the Royal Navy. If we accept Admiral Mahan’s classic hypothesis that seapower consists of fighting ships plus merchant vessels plus bases, then Britain is first at sea.
We may outbuild her in merchant ships from now on, but at this point the Brit ish merchant marine is equal to that of the rest of the free world put together.
Britain has bases everywhere.
At the outbreak of war, the Royal Navy included 15 battleships, seven air craft-carriers, 58 cruisers, 205 destroyers, and 57 submarines. Many ships have been lost, of course, including such fam ous vessels as the “Hood”, “Repulse”, and the new “Prince of Wales”. British shipyards, however, have turned out a substantial amount of new tonnage, and 50 over-age destroyers were secured from the United States. As a result, the Navy to-day is stronger than it was at the beginning of the war.
SIDE by side with the Royal Navy go the vessels of the Merchant Navy.
British shipping has suffered griev ously in this war, as in the last. Hun dreds of ships have been sent to the bot tom and thousands of sailors have lost their lives.
It takes a special kind of courage to go to sea to-day. Death by drowning or by torpedo blast is about the best fate to which a seaman may look forward.
The experiences of men in lifeboats have become so commonplace that many are hardly reported in the newspapers; yet some of them make the epic of Bligh of the “Bounty” look like a Sunday school picnic. There are men who have spent a month in a lifeboat in the North Atlantic in the middle of winter. Liter ally hundreds have died in a sea of blaz ing oil.
British shipyards, in addition to naval vessels, have also been pushing ahead with all possible speed on the construc tion of merchant ships.
Even bombs do not silence the roar of the riveters. Work goes on dav and night, and it now appears that, with the aid of America’s huge building pro gramme, British seapower will once more be able to weather the strain of a major conflict. rpHE British Army, with the possible X exception of the Russian, is by far the most democratic in Eurone. A large proportion of its officers, including its generals, have, for a century past, risen from the ranks. To-day, every offi cer must pass through the ranks.
The Regular Army consisted of appro ximately 250.000 men in time of peace To-dav it embraces 2.250.000, to which must be added some 1,750,000 members of the Home Guard.
The Home Guard Is a unioue force.
It sprang into being in May. 1940, when onerations of Nazi parachute troons in France, Norway. Belgium, and the Neth erlands made the British realise their own danger from such attacks. After the fall of France, when everyone ex pected that the Germans would imme diately trv to invade the British Isles the force increased enormously. The men of Britain just seized whatever weapons they could get their hands on and went into the fields to watch for parachutists.
Those who could not get rifles used shot guns; those who could not get shotguns used nitchforks; those who could not get pitchforks used clubs.
Men of the Home Guard range from 17 to 65 years of age—officially. Actu ally, I have seen boys under 17 in the
fields, and many below that age are now enrolled in a cadet force and other juvenile organisations. As for the older men, many a village patriarch who cannot remember when he was 65 is prepared to resist invaders with whatever weapon may come to hand.
Smce December, 1941 membership in the Home Guard has been compulsory for men between 18 and 51 not called for Members of the Home Guard serve in their spare time and without pay. They £9, ads ’ guard strategic points, and meanwhile prepare to impede the enemy ln everypossible way. ...
They have received special training in guerrilla warfare, and if an enemy should succeed m setting foot on the soil of Britain he would find himself opposed by thousands of guerrillas skilled in the art
of individual combat and animated bv a fierce determination to die rather than submit to an alien conqueror This determination to defend their islands is a fanaticism with the British It has been in their blood for a thousand years, and it is a factor which prospec tive invaders would do well not to ignore 6 rpHERE has been much speculation as 1 land in the summer of 1940. To us in London the first intimation that some thing was afoot came when a group of German prisoners passed through.
We were used to seeing German air men in the railway stations. These men, however, were not airmen; they were infantrymen, and immediately the country began to seethe with rumours
that the Germans had attempted an invasion and had been repulsed with heavy losses.
The British have never settled the matter officially. The only evidence I encountered of an attempted invasion was the report of a friend on the south east coast who said that splintered barges and some bodies were being washed ashore. Hotelkeepers in the vicinity were said to have secured enough wood for the winter from the barge remnants.
Joe Harsch, formerly Berlin corres
pondent for the “Christian Science Moni tor,” later told me that he had seen trainloads of wounded soldiers passing through Berlin at the time of the rum oured invasion attempt. William Shirer, in “Berlin Diary,” mentions these same trains.
My personal opinion is that the Germans were all set to invade, but that the RAF succeeded in smashing up the invasion fleet before it was able to get under way.
The British Army is the third strong est in existence. The great land powers of the moment are Germany and the Soviet Union. The question of which is the greater is now being resolved. On the land, as on the sea and in the air, the United States is growing rapidly in power. But to-day Britain is supreme, after Germany and Russia.
The British, realising that with their limited population they cannot hope to compete with Germany on a quantity basis, are attempting to train a force of unexcelled striking power. Churchill describes his men as “hardened, nimble and alert.”
According to those who have seen them in action, this is another understatement.
The men are getting the hardest kind of battle training.
SPECIALLY trained to raid the enemy coast are the famed Commandos.
These tough troopers, under the brilliant leadership of Lord Louis Mount batten, have made daring raids into enemy territory and no doubt will make many more.
An individual Commando raid may not be important, but this type of warfare has great possibilities for confusing and harassing the enemy. English raids were highly successful in the Napoleonic Wars, and they have begun auspiciously in this war The enemy never knows where the Commandos will strike next, and he never knows when a raid may develop into an invasion. When the United Nations invade —as they eventually will —the disconcerting attacks of the Com mandos undoubtedly will play an im portant part in the operation.
Much has been said and written, but little is actually known about the Com mandos. The men must be good physical specimens; they must have a thorough knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting, and they must be extremely resourceful.
They have some unique weapons, includ ing a combination knife-knuckle duster, which is said to be very useful at close quarters.
Landing in the face of enemy fire is one of the most difficult of all military operations. The fact that Hitler couldn’t do it when he had everything on his side shows what the United Nations are going to be up against when it is their turn to invade.
THE defeats suffered by Britain thus far in the war have led some to question her ability ever to chal lenge Germany on land. There are two explanations for these defeats: One is the fact that such landings as the one iQ Greece were lost causes from the beginning, undertaken only as delaying actions and to fulfil commitments which could not honorably be disregarded.
A second explanation involves what must inevitably be the pattern of Brit ain’s land strategy until she gets sub stantial assistance from her allies —the hit-and-run attack as distinguished from pitched battles in the classic sense.
Britain has neither the arms nor the men to slug it out with Germany. She must pursue a different kind of strategy, one that will permit her to make use of her overwhelming superiority in sea power and her developing superiority in air power.
Britain, with Germany, is like a pack of dogs harrying a bull. The bull is stronger than any one of the dogs, and he can break out of the ring at will. He can’t escape, though, and eventually the dogs bring him down.
The RAP, the Royal Navy, and the armies of the British Commonwealth are the dog pack which has been harass ing the Nazi bull for nearly three years.
With the Russians holding the front on the east, and with our help on the other sides, the pack eventually should be able to close in and bring this encounter to an end. rE all-out war effort has not been achieved without a harrowing ex penditure of blood and suffering.
There is a miserable canard to the effect that Britain lets others do her fighting for her. The Nazis employ this canard on every possible occasion, and they change it to appeal to whatever country they happen to be “softening up” at the moment.
According to Goebbels, Britain is always fighting to the “last Frenchman,” the “last Dutchman,” the “last Greek.” Now Britain is supposed to be fighting to the “last American.” We had a variant of this canard some years ago under the title, “England Expects Every American to Do His Duty.”
I am happy to help spike this kind of propaganda. The British are not angels, nor are they supermen. They are sub ject to all the frailties and the limita tions of others. There is one thing, how ever. that can’t truthfully be said about them. That is that they are afraid to do battle when it is necessary to do battle in defence of their country. A million Britons laid down their lives in the combined effort to win the last war.
The British are prepared, if necessary, to do it again.
Empire casualties for the first two years of the war aggregated 183,550. Of these, 48,973 were killed, 46,363 wounded, 58,458 taken prisoner, and 29,756 re ported missing. Seventy out of every 100
men killed or wounded in land fighting have been British.
The ravages of the Battle of Britain, it goes without saying, were borne more or less exclusively by the inhabitants of the islands. Some 43,000 men, women, and children have been killed to date in this ghastly encounter. More than fifty thousand have been seriously injured, many of them maimed for life. rERE are a thousand bomb victims still lying in the hospitals of Brit ain, and 1,500 war orphans are available for adoption by the kind hearted people of the world.
Property losses of the war—bomb dam age, sunken ships, destroyed or captured installations, lost supplies, and so on — run into many billions.
It takes money to win a war, and the British are spending money to the limit of the national exchequer. More money was spent in the first two and a half years of this war than in the four and a quarter years of the last war.
Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade, describes Britain’s present sys tem as “fortress economics.’’ Business goes through the motions of producing at a profit, and labour goes through the motions of working for wages, but the whole thing boils down to a kind of Spartan socialism under which employer and employee alike work for the State and are allowed to retain just enough of the necessities of life to enable them to
keep going.
It’s the same system used by the Axis, except that this one is voluntary and the producers hope to get rid of it, or at least to ameliorate it, when the war is over.
BRITAIN is definitely beginning to look shabby. The people try to keep up appearances, to keep their cities clean and their clothes in repair, but the facilities and the materials just aren’t available. Meanwhile, food is rigorously plain and scarce.
The basic sugar ration is half a pound a week per person. The ration for fats is the same, for bacon or ham four ounces, jam four ounces, cheese three ounces, tea two ounces. The fat ration, which includes two ounces of butter a week, is about half the amount per per son consumed here. Meat is rationed by price, each person being allowed 24 cents’ worth of meat per week.
Milk is rigidly controlled. Expectant and nursing mothers, and children under five, are allowed a pint a day; others get two pints a week, plus one tin of canned milk a month and one tin of dried skimmed milk per family per month. Milk is supplied free to per sons in the first group if the family income is below a certain figure.
Eggs are like nuggets. The allotment is three a month, but few people are able to average more than two.
Clothing is rationed by coupon to about half the peacetime average.
Soap is also rationed, each person being allowed about a pound a month. Coal is allocated at a rate of roughly one ton a month. Motoring for pleasure has been abolished.
Shortages are rapidly becoming acute.
Country housewives are lighting fires with flint to save matches. Ten million goldfish are starving for want of im ported food. Bottles are standardised to save glass. Business executives use kit chen tables in lieu of desks. It is always
difficult and sometimes impossible to get anything repaired.
THE British carry on. Their morale is incredible. Out of the thousands of persons I met in Britain, only one was willing to concede the possibility of defeat.
They pan the Government and heckle speakers and vote unpopular candidates out of office. They growl at Churchill and Churchill growls back. They criti cise the military and clamor loudly for a second front. A Nazi, planked down in their midst, would think that it was all over, that Hitler and Goering and Goebbels and Himmler had only to walk across the Channel and take charge.
It’s a mistake that has been made before. These people take their democ racy seriously. They insist on the exer cise of their civil liberties with an enemy at the door. They insist on the right to overthrow, through the exercise of the ballot, any Government which does not prosecute the war to their satisfaction.
They insist that the sacrifices they are making, and will make, shall not be in vain. Britons in every walk of life envision a land where the lust for power is supplanted by the will to do good, where the evils of the factory system are cured, where the cruelties of the struggle for existence are assuaged, where the inequities of an archaic social system are removed.
And the people of Britain, in dream ing of this new land, envision it as part of a world where nations are able to trade with one another and exchange people and spread culture and grow great
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without the periodical recourses to arms which have characterised world history up to now.
The people of Britain have gone all out to win the war. I think we may count on their co-operation in the even more difficult job of winning the peace.