1957-04-27 — Page 6

D

IT

✅ THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1957.

Invasion 1940: The New Facts

(AND INCIDENTALLY, MOST PEOPLE DIDN'T REALLY THINK IT WAS

VERY NEAR... AND EVEN IF SO, THE GERMANS WOULD LOSE ...)

-but they were wrong

T was just like a dream. Church bells would herald the landing of the German armies. We would defend our homes with rook-rifles and beer bottles filled with petrol. But, somehow, we felt sure that it would never happen. It could never happen to

US.

Yet how nearly it did happen! How near we were to hearing the grinding of German tank tracks in the High Street. How nenr we were to seeing Hiler on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Just how neur we

wero

is told in

• sew book with

the chilling title, "In- by

vasion 1940,' by

Peter

Fleming

Supert Harl-Davis, TOM

We were very near indeed.

POCOCK

The British, who had not been over- whelmed by invadera for nearly 900 years, seemed incapable of understand- ing that this could happen again. Norway and Deumark, the Low Countries and France might fali but the British maintained, ny Colonel Fleming writes, that Bensc of privilege, of ultimate Immunity, which mitigates the horrors of a sightware. It could never happen to us.

Perhaps, now, we like to think of ourselves as heroes. Colonel Fleming secs his fellow country- men differently:

"They were stubborn, angry, and, for the most part, brave; but below these qualities, und Tenforcing them, resided the in- nocence, aut of the child or oven

Meanwhile, in Britain, the entire population,

faced by the threat of lavasion, has bean SEMTO Into • stato of complete panic."

sion would prove, in the end, to self had learned command of be only a burl dream."

true.

The bad dreum nearly aume

The Army Was no bulwark. Colonel Fleaning writes: "AL the time of Dunkirk the British Army was quite incapable of prevent ing the Germans, if they eluded the Royal Navy, from landing on the coast; and is ability to out- ght an invading force of any Kize once it had got ashore was, to say the least, open to doubt."

OUR HOPE

the sea and command of the air was indivisible. In the arrow seus, the Fleet needed its fighter cover as it neered its destroyers and its minesweepers.

The RA.F. stood in the vnt. But But on the last day of the evacuation from Dunkirk only 331 serviceable Spitfires and were available to Hurricanes

The margin

Fighter Command. Wie narrow indeed.

But what the British Incked in their armoury they tried to make

enthusiasmi with

and

THINK BACK

TO YOUR

LIFE THEN...

17

Yes, it really is

years

АКО

and life was like this — LEFT: viewed humorously by Pont, one of the war's greatest car-- toonists; and in reality (RIGHT) 45 the bombs began 10 fall the London streets.

The Norwich Museunt yielded not only ancient muskets but a sentry box of the same period.

Essex an unexpected wind- fall made possible the formation of a cutlass platoon, 24 strong, under the command of a former naval rating.

"Hook-rifles kukris, assegais, ancestral sabres, golf clubs, and many improvised variants of the Those bludgeon and spear... were weapons with which many of us were preparing to defend ourselves only 17 years ago.

on

Warlike preparations

the amateur ingenuity.

ground were not all so primi- Weapons were often Ա

but most had an air of orthodox: "In Manchester several tive,

melodrama. Royal Navy, weakened rules used in the ludian Mutiny amateur

Guerilla were obtained from the Zoolog to operate behind the limes

"striking forces" ware by losses in the fighing o{T

formed

of some Norway unxi France,

Four dozen rusty cal Gardens. they "stood out

Lee Enfields, relics of some for- the German invaders, in the

In Kent and Sussex, which gotten tableau or drama, were discovered

stage were rightly supposed to be the the among properties at Drury Lane.

the fool, but of the simpleton. THE Like bumpkin admitted for the frst time to the hall of great histork were awed and impressed." But there reinaked the inner con- frustrating viction that nightmare of inva-

mansion,

stili general ruin as the one force capable of the conqueror's dealgns," But now the Navy 11

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Paratroops wore to descend on

Maiorially, the raid was a wasted short, But it tweaked Hitler's nose. Furiously, ho ordered hts squadrons abandon their deadly blows at Fighter Command and cost their bombs on Landen.

to

This temperamental Impulso' gave Fighter Command and the airplane factories time to

gladi themselves for the final and, for them, victorious battle.

The fate of Operation Sea Ling was sealed. The German Air Force had filed to master Fighter Command and had failed to crack British, moralo.

Without commned of the air, without command of the sea, Operation Sea Lion would have been suicido.

It was not until February 1942 that the German forces баг marked for the invasion of Britain were officially released trom their role.

GAS USED?

***was

IT not until after the

Allied landings in Nor- mandy that Britain relaxed har defences against invasion, de fences which Churchill wrute

"were prepared to go to all lengths. As ի Last resort custard gas, Colonel Fleming maintains, would have been used against the invaders.

Could the invasion have succeeded? Yes-believes Colonel Fleming-but only If the Ger- mans could have thrown thres UT four divisions ACTOSS the Channel early in June 1940, when Britain, "though outwardly de- fant, bod not really got its second wind" after Dunkirk.

A WAND

A London street, September 8, 1940

countries first be invaded, the Lost Boys' subterranean Eastbourne-13,400 men; between Fieming himself then of the home in the second act of Peter Beachy Head and Brighton- Grenadier Guards was chosen Pan,"

20,100 mea to organise the "stay-behind But Peter Fleming's "stay- parties."

behind parties, the Home the Downs behind Folkestone COLONEL FLEMING stima These

guerillas Kerally Guard and the Army itself, and Brighton.

up thus: "went to ground." Large venti- never had to tum the British

And that was, of course, only **Invasion, throughout

the lated

dugouts,

well-stocked countryside into

soldier's

the beginning.

sunumer a dagger Binted at his with weapons. ammunition, battlefield.

enemy's heart, became for sabotage equipment, rations, and

On the morning of August 24 month thereafter merely radio sets, had been secretly

the Germans had seen that the other of the magician's wands

good. They began like peace, and terror, and sub- prepared by the Royal Engineers.

signs were heavy bombing of key Fighter version which Hitler waved One was in the cellars of

Command stalions. But, that successively or simultaneously dercilet country house, another

They were to have landed on night, they made a mistake that over his enemy's head. But his in the enlarged labyrinth of the English coast at down proved mortal. A dozen bombers spells failed to work upon the

sett lending badger's

from on September 21, 1940, on three lost their way and accidentally British, and he beat the air In

beaches. The first assuli forces bombod London. overgrown chalk pit,

Next night vain. Fleming writes: "The domestic were formidable: between Folke "with Churchillian alacrity" the And yet, even now, it is sOKO- economy of these lairs bore & stone and St. Leonards-28,800 R.A.F.

bombed how dimcult to believe that all vengefully between Bexhill and Berlin. general resemblance to that of men;

this really happened to 'uí,

"I don't

The GermEAS never

Operation Sea Lion, as Hitler's plan to invade Britain was call- ed, never was launched,

think St

ET us be frank. The British winter is a poor thing

on

we'll leave

JOHN'S

WOOD"

an-

worse it goes on and on like the anecdote of the club bore. Every now and then it seems to have come to an end but it starts up again. If you seek diversion in the was a curious anti-climax that have confidence that the British the Town Hall of the Borough theatre you can hardly hear the actors because of the affected us all. audience coughing. If you play golf you will drive off in the sunlight and come in water-logged with rain. Just to show the cursed spite of the climate there is nearly always perfect weather on Mondays when we return to our indoor tasks.

Do you wonder that we

sometimes think of joining

In the emigration rush to

climate will yet soften its at and hang the Aldermen anid One night a bomb felt in our arelive but regrettable brash- the Councillors, to say nothing neighbourhood with the add ness, Lady Peel (allas Beatrice of the Mayor,,: result that although it was a Lillie) lived there for a time in I mast explain that St John's quarter of a mile away the the war having married the Wood is part of the Borough of vibration caused a parlat col baronet descendant of the great St Marylebone which includes lapse of the garden wall between Sir John Pedi.

ruch historic spots as Madame

By Sir Beverley Baxter, MP

Canada where houses are to be denied by sulking skies our house and the one next door. She had brought the giri modern, where dishes wash or cruel winds,

a knob and the whole house is kept to a controlled tem- perature by oil or gas?

A fortnight later the sun re-

of Tussaud'e wax-works, pari Next day my neighbour crossed laughter from Toronto to Lon Regent's Park and the alleged themselves and a steak is

the street and ported a letter don in the 1914 war, that in the house of Sherlock Holmes, cooked by the twiddling of lents and suddenly the glant addressed to me. Eventually it death struggle wit

Hidler's

Other local councils ire Lon- pear tree in the garden bursts arrived, is purpose being that maddened Germany she had

ada don have recently, adopted Juliet were to be wedded there into blossom as if Romeo and he and I might meet and dis- son who was a junior officer in most hideous new street lamp

cuss the necessary repairs of the the such wall, We had never been in each GrOne day then and now the wicked Mayor and in the open air, It is

battleship “Bismarck" Council of St Marylebone are shear enchantment that one other's house but that is Lon- put to are and H.M.S. HOOD, threatening to accept this new looks at

One has friends and ac- the radiant canopy of don.

and out fangled lighting although outraged blossoms until

and force it on of the ship St John's Wood like quaintances but no neighbours, gunned, was one crying with the poet: "O be less

went to intercept her. It may beautiful or be less brief!"

have been supert German gun-

The wretched lamp consiste of neck like a gigantic boa- the nery or just the malice of for constrictor that rears. He bead tune but the HOOD was hit by high up into the sky and then her death with every available The light from te thamined ground fice is a horrible gleaming yel- tow and the whole effect is hideous and make-like beyond belief.

In contrast condder the grate fire in the morning noon of the Baxter London house in St John's Wood which is a re- sidential district come tem minutes from Regent's Park

Lord's Cricket Ground All day long and into the night,

one feels

Each Spring

at this time of the year, the But is our prayez answered?

迎

No.

bia

I

However, on this occasion called on him to discuss matter and we became friends and his wife came to our place

at once. Two years later he a salvo and went gallantly to bends it towards the

And Friends

for lunch which is what you gun firing. unkier control. At any rate in might describe as impetuous the process the ancient wall was duly restored which what

a

really mattered.

sense

Some survivors were picked up but young Peel

not

had made thousands cry

break house had come 40 John's Wookt.

with

St

The Mollah Aldermen, and Come Blore contend that it w

01

logs chuckle and crackle de fight a cold malignant wind Suddenly in the deed of Samuet Pickwick and friends

comes up from the sea and in were due to arrive at the morning the terrace arry moment.

When the com- covered with the corpses of pany is good I have known a thousand blossoms. log nearly split its sides with tho

What memories linger about. The interesting thing is that among them, Beatrice Lille who lower the number of street-a- Imeridment.

this garden!

During the Blitz St John's Wood has not only a It is true that

we have n

well we used to sit there as the light definite personality but a highly aughter now wept alone. Het cidents. The proud answer central heating system as

developed community

the St John's Wood Society began to fade and wait with

that which seems to have difficulty bombed out friends who

It would be better to die There is the Parish Church Just had

than live in such ginring" ugli- finxing the centre. Thus found shelter in our house for up the Terrace with the names One day in Parliament in news. My committer keep TON It will ignore the drawing room the nightly bombing raid. How of the fallen dead of the 1914/16 1840 I happened to mention to gully informed of everything and where our guests have

gathered

and punctunk the Germans ware! was engraved in stone and Anthony Eden that a doi juntor. I give before dinner but will achieve

plaque for those who did not Canadian officers were coming if you read some time, that riots I give them my blait But 80 degrees in the box Toom Just us twilight deepened to

return from the Hiller

war.

to my house for a tumphinzarek where we keep empty aulicases, dusic we would hear the sirens But the winds and the rain have evening meal. Eden, who joined have been out ini, Marylebone and the militia have been But that is part of the charm ki the distance like whining worn away. the stone until those Churchill's Government, whipped called up you will know akt of a 150. year-old house. Mero cats, growing in strength, until names that face the North and out his engagement book and it is our Society of Preservers existence. in it is an adven the howling of

by the time

it reached un it was the East are almost undeclp- turned over the pages.

al Work. It is the only chance ture.

thousand herable.

Would you mind if I came of a monkanent in my honour annin.co. Then Bilence

up and met them for a few but I wish that a Boadicea Each Winter complete silence, Five, six, or

minutes?" be asked.

who in the chief a gapiser would Uten minutes without #

Never have I seen Eden more. And someone with more mortale Begularly overy winter we except perhaps a solliary motor Opposite our house there tappy than on that night in my blood in his velink to lead them. decide to sell the house and car mushing to cover. The very used to live

a lttle Scottish house. He not only talked eagen- move into a fat. By the time heart bent of London seemed to doctor who ministered to

the ty and

archerstertainingly but he my wife gele through her have stoppað.

sick and the aging. During the listened with intenso interest to calculations we have Far away, like the pizzicato

nights of the bombing I used to what the Canadians it to my. Tomorrow there will be 'mòre :: only to move into a flat and notes of a base violin wo would throo-handed bridge with him know, drained as a plot in ing from their long, long sleep. Crose to his house and piny Ho, too, had a con who, as you Bowers in my garden awakecry Life's problems are over. The hear the first sound savings

of and his

This medical compatriot Western Canada and went to his Soon I shall be able to sit in mro eo colossal, that

Then louter and still, louder and Alexander Fleming. Fierce were death in action agatret, the the sun and listen to that distant after a few years we would be suddenly the gum in Hyde Park able to buy

before enemy, house in St would boast the ears with note the night way out, many a six-

controversies, and,

from.

Lord's act But you John's Wood and start all over while the German planen over penéo changed hands.

you must not think that ground as England scores an we people of St John's Wood tts anricked like maniacs as they

other run. We might be in the But there was a twinkle in only fight battles in retrospect. heart of the country on the Then just as we are all of awooped and swerved and dived Fleming ayo, and a kindly Six months ago I was elected summer is crally come

mich on the subject the to avons she instrument-directed mile when the sixpenny President of the St John's Wood faw.com suddenly, begin to ap im Gro.

cel.

0310

逝

*

the

The Neighbours

And Tomorrow

"My daughter' is having - Home poar in our old world garder Hichard. Wegner would have batics had ended for the night. Society, whose purpose to trouble at the place with Mozart httle lonely and little gone mad with delight at the serene for he gave Penicilin to the chamater, of our district, my moncor is on Mozart Our Ho fnd good reason to be prevent vandal hands spolting They cannot both be right and British ortzentral

magnificarse of the the world

Believe me there is much catamart, mean a file, petal growing, wewentmont going on move in the bevere and airob

that soy day schr. I park worst opicions nice found

in their defiance of the west Bite When the Germans drow The house immediately not Theirs in the right to be born off dark night and the

of the Baxter abode is

aguits esach springtime sad they wounded the chilled monotone patiens faving been built as Tactantly be Tomoedi why not allow their immortality to my that all was clear there promoter as the 1920'w but we Society to bead a procenion to St John's Wood yet awhile