CHAPTER 9

Wasting Assets

It would have been perfectly logical for Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff to persevere with Operation Pilgrim and its derivatives in April 1941, and the months to come if there had been convincing Intelligence to indicate that a German occupation of Gibraltar or the Atlantic Islands, with or without Spanish connivance, was threatened. The records show, however, that only between October 1940 and January 1941 were there genuine indications of diplomatic activity in that direction and not a sign of military activity in any form. Indeed, in January positive evidence was to hand of Spain rejecting Hitler’s overtures. So it is hard to understand why Churchill and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) harboured such fears and concentrated so hard on Pilgrim, persuading the Chiefs of Staff to double the force originally allocated and, as Keyes pointed out, preventing sufficient forces being allocated for hit and run raids. Speculation must, of need, play its part in the synthesis of Intelligence material and Churchill’s powers of imagination were proverbial in their magnitude. High on his list of policy considerations stood the twin aims of winning the Battle of the Atlantic and fostering the American alliance. President Roosevelt, having gained re-election in November 1940, became bent on a progressively more belligerent attitude to the Axis Powers, safe in the knowledge that a Gallup Poll showed 75 per cent of the American people in favour of supporting Britain even if it led to war. With the passing of the Lend-Lease Bill on 11 March came an assurance that the trickle of American supplies would, in due course, become a torrent without financial restraint. And in a few days’ time a succession of announcements made it easier for America to help Britain and hinder the Axis, notably at sea, but always short of war itself. Nevertheless the Anglo-American joint intent was made abundantly plain when unheralded staff talks between them started early in 1941.

Concomitant with material and psychological aid, America seemed eager to protect herself by assuming duties which relieved the British of the need to garrison or seize key Atlantic bases in order to prevent them falling into Axis hands. The Americans also saw the necessity of stopping the Germans gaining a foothold on the Western hemisphere. Vichy-held Martinique presented a possible German stepping-stone and had to be neutralized by diplomacy, while Greenland became what American newspapers called ‘an unofficial protectorate’, watched over, like Martinique, by the US Navy. Iceland, after the fall of Denmark and Norway, had been occupied by Britain, but a request by Churchill to Roosevelt for the Americans to take over was acted upon, and US Marines landed at Reykjavik on 7 July 1941.

Ironically, the commitment of the Marines in the Atlantic was a sign of American military weakness, for these elite troops normally expected to operate in the Pacific where the Japanese needed close watching. But such was the run-down state of their army that only the US Navy and the US Marine Corps could provide the necessary force; hence their provisional role to land on Martinique, if necessary, and their despatch to Iceland.

Hence, also, the prospective leading role given to the Marines in Operation Gray, a plan laid in Washington, without British participation, to occupy the Azores in order to deter Axis designs on South America. American Intelligence were as prone as their British counterparts to listen to rumours about threats to the Atlantic Islands, although swifter to overcome their fears when it became plain that the Germans were about to invade Russia. This was a welcome about-turn for the State Department who had been left in no doubt about Portuguese objections to any intrusion by any foreign power into her territory.

For conflicting and by no means entirely coherent reasons, Pilgrim remained firmly on the stocks, and grew in magnitude, controversy, frictions and technical problems. In April the naval force which had begun to assemble on stand-by amounted to two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, nine destroyers and several subsidiary ships, plus LSIs and 71 LCAs, LCMs and Eurekas, but no sea-going tank landing ships or craft. This armada would carry two Marine brigades, each of two battalions, four Commandos, the 29th (Independent) Brigade Group, a squadron of light tanks and four batteries of artillery. Later a conflict of ideas and interests over command and control arose, a dispute which was to mirror something more than straightforward disagreements over procedures by the inexperienced. It will be described in its proper place.

Pilgrim’s most important, if fortuitous, contribution was the boost it gave to training and the development of staff requirements and alterations to ships and techniques in the essential acquisition of the knowledge which would be required one day when major invasions became possible. That it was used as a pretext to prevent small raiding was, in the opinion of some, unfortunate, since raiding, too, was an indispensable way of ‘learning lessons by casualties’. Arguably, and there were plenty who so argued, time, as well as opportunities to keep the enemy on the hop, was being wasted by an excess of theoretical debates.

Then, on the morning of 22 June, the Germans changed everything by invading Russia. The war took a violent lurch towards totality. Anglo-American attitudes at once assumed a new direction as the greatest clash in history began in Eastern Europe. It was for Churchill, speaking over the radio that evening, to show which way Britain was going, regardless of any reservations he might personally harbour about Stalin’s Russia.

‘We shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people,’ he said, adding in private, ‘If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons’. Next day he put raiding back into business.