DESPITE THE SLOWING German advance along the Eastern Front, in Moscow, Washington and London, Allied war leaders were looking at their maps and seeing large swathes of the Soviet Union being absorbed by another rapid enemy advance. The fate of the USSR seemed more precarious than was perhaps the reality; and after Eighth Army’s defeat in North Africa, it was hardly surprising the Allies were worrying.
They were also anxious about public perception and morale. In Britain, the people had already put up with almost three years of war and this first half of 1942 had been bruising. The successes had been all too often smothered by the disasters of Singapore, Malaya and Burma and by recent calamitous reverses in North Africa. Meanwhile in America, it was just as important to ensure that a public not so long ago dead set against war was now behind the war effort and not least the Germany-first policy. The modern world of mass media meant that news was received and digested quickly, and so far, after half a year of war against Nazi Germany, not a whole load seemed to have happened.
It was seen as vitally important that the American people understood the struggle, saw it in terms of a moral crusade and, most importantly, recognized it was a fight that could be won. Propaganda counted every bit as much in the USA as it did elsewhere, whether it be Britain, Nazi Germany or Italy.
It was for this reason that the dashing young men who had already been in the thick of the action were pressed upon the American public – men like Flying Officer Roald Dahl, who had miraculously survived the mayhem of the RAF’s rather-too-small contribution to the Battle for Greece, and with several enemy victories to his name too. Since then, Dahl had briefly seen action in Syria but then had been declared unfit for further flying. An earlier flying accident had done for him; the headaches caused as a result had grown worse and worse until they had become unbearable. However, he was good-looking, charming and proving a dab hand at writing too, and so in April had been sent to Washington to take up a public-relations position at the British Embassy to fly the flag for the RAF in the United States.
After the rough life of a fighter pilot in the Mediterranean, and the austerity of wartime Britain, he was struck by the enormous difference he found in the States. Newspapers were forty pages long, people ate enormous ice creams and there was air conditioning, food galore and under-floor heating. The US seemed unspeakably modern.
His task was not necessarily to tell the truth, but to create an image of British pluck and determination. He gave lectures about his experiences, then began writing about them too – or, rather, fictionalized versions, which were then published in magazines. By July he had written a movie script and was being invited by Walt Disney to come to Hollywood, where he was wined and dined and introduced to movie stars.
He was also, however, carrying out other, clandestine, work for the British Security Coordination (BSC), which had been set up by the Canadian businessman William Stevenson. The BSC had been operating in the US since June 1940, partly to keep an eye on Axis activity over there but principally to encourage pro-British feeling in the States. Stevenson was the British Secret Service’s senior agent in America, albeit one who was known to both Roosevelt and Bill Donovan, and was now in charge of all US Intelligence Services.
Dahl was in many ways an ideal recruit. He was well placed and because of his experiences and charm had the ear of those in Washington society. He was also eager for just a little more frisson in his life. ‘I’d just come from the war,’ he told Stevenson.1 ‘People were getting killed. I had been flying around, seeing horrible things. Now, almost instantly, I found myself in the middle of a pre-war cocktail mob in America.’ One of his first tasks was to befriend Vice-President Henry A. Wallace, who was an outspoken anti-imperialist, pro-Russian liberal. The British viewed him as something of a radical and, with Roosevelt’s frail health, there was a real possibility that Wallace might one day take over as president. After an introduction was made, Dahl was able to develop a growing friendship with Wallace, and soon they were playing tennis together regularly and talking politics.
In the big scheme of things, this kind of intelligence work was decidedly low-grade, but the British weren’t the only ones trying to carry out covert operations in the USA. So too were the Germans. For a totalitarian militaristic state like Nazi Germany, it was, in many ways, extraordinary how unsuccessful they were at running secret agents outside of their own territories. So far not one agent had successfully infiltrated Britain, for example, while their attempt to start a terror campaign in America in the summer of 1942 was equally a spectacular failure. Operation PASTORIUS was dreamed up by the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht’s secret intelligence service. The plan was for eight Germans, all of whom had lived at some point in the US, to sabotage a number of targets with home-made bombs.
From the start, it was a cack-handed affair. The team leader, George Dasch, managed to leave compromising documents on a train, while another of the group got drunk in Paris before they set sail and began boasting that he was a secret agent. When they did finally reach US shores, via a U-boat, they were immediately spotted by a local coastguard. Rather than killing him, they bribed him to keep his mouth shut, whereupon he pocketed the cash then hurried off to report to his superiors what had happened.
It then turned out that both Dasch and another of the team, Ernst Burger, confessed to each other that they hated the Nazis and wanted to compromise the mission – incredibly, Burger admitted he’d spent a year and a half in a concentration camp; how he was ever selected for this task is hard to imagine. Not only did they spill the beans to the FBI, they also handed over $84,000 dollars, PASTORIUS’s entire budget. The team were quickly rounded up, tried and sentenced to death – Dasch and Burger included. These two later had their sentences commuted, but on 8 August the other six were all executed in the electric chair. It is hard to think how such an operation could possibly have been handled worse.
While such shadow operations and intrigues continued, no one could doubt that it was the blunt instrument of war that really counted: battles on the ground, in the air and at sea. That summer, Britain’s and America’s war leaders were still grappling with how best to defeat Nazi Germany. Yes, a direct invasion of north-west Europe was the main aim, but American and British strategy was not focused solely on an invasion of continental Europe; rather, a gradual tightening of the noose around Germany’s ability to wage war, largely through air power and specifically strategic bombing, was also key to their plans. The British may have suffered a wobble over strategic bombing after the devastating revelations of the Butt Report the previous year and ongoing questions about Bomber Command’s efficacy, but the Thousand Bomber Raids had seen Harris get past that, and it certainly remained a central part of US strategy, as outlined in AWPD-1, the Army Air Forces’ prescribed war plans.
On 18 June, the recently promoted Major-General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz had arrived in Britain to take command of the newly formed US Eighth Air Force. The plan was to build up a force of sixteen heavy bombardment groups, each with thirty-two heavy bombers, three pursuit – or fighter – groups of 75–80 fighters each, as well as medium and light bomber groups. The first units would start arriving that summer.
Spaatz held his first full-scale staff conference at Bomber Command’s HQ at High Wycombe on 20 June, stressing the need for both cordiality and co-operation with Bomber Command. ‘The Eighth must do well,’ he said, ‘otherwise our prestige will suffer at home as well as with the British who depend on the US effort.’2 He was quick, though, to stress that, while it was important for the Eighth to make the most of British experience, that did not mean aping British tactics.
In fact, Spaatz and his fellow Army Air Forces commanders were convinced that night bombing was always going to be too inaccurate ever to prove effective, and they had been singularly unimpressed with Bomber Command’s efforts thus far. The answer, they believed, had to be day bombing, and they hoped that their heavy bombers, and particularly the B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ with improved armour and armament, would be able to operate without fighter escort. They would fly in mass formation, hoping that, rather like the convoy system, there would be safety in numbers. There was some ground for this confidence. Unlike Lancasters and Halifaxes, for example, which had a seven-man crew and were equipped with .303 Brownings, already proven to be little more than pea-shooters, the Flying Fortress had a crew of ten and was equipped with thirteen .50-calibre machine guns in eight different positions. The .50-calibre was everything that an air-to-air machine gun needed to be; that is, it had a good velocity and rate of fire and could pack a hefty punch. The B-17 was, quite simply, designed for daylight, not night ops.
Perhaps the most important reason for pursuing daylight operations, however, was that Spaatz wanted the Eighth to operate independently of the British. He did not want them playing second fiddle to the British or to be sharing assets. Moreover, he and others in the USAAF, such as Hap Arnold and the AWPD-1 team, all genuinely believed in their theory of air war and were determined not to sing to the RAF’s tune before testing their own carefully thought-through doctrine first. That this was more a matter of faith than of knowledge based on experience was neither here nor there. As coalition partners with their own doctrine, this approach was entirely fair enough. More to the point, it meant that at some stage in the not too distant future, they would, with the British, be able to deliver round-the-clock bombing. For the Germans, there would simply be no let-up.
One of the first units to reach Britain was the 97th Bombardment Group, whose crews flew in stages from the US all the way to Britain, where they made their home at Polebrook, to the southwest of Peterborough in central England. Bombardier of the All American, a B-17 in 414 Squadron, was 22-year-old Ralph Burbridge. From Missouri in the Midwest, Burbridge had joined the Air Force just before Pearl Harbor. He’d been disappointed not to be a pilot but reckoned so were a lot of other people, so decided to knuckle down to the role given him – one that carried a considerable amount of responsibility. Making sure he dropped their bombs on the spot was crucial, although he also had another task in the crew. When not bomb-aiming, he was expected to man one of the .50-calibre guns.
Eighth Air Force’s first-ever operation over Europe was on 17 August, in a raid against the marshalling yards at Rouen in France, and the All American was one of the Fortresses taking part. For all of the crew, it was understandably a nerve-wracking experience, but they made it there and back in one piece. Overall, it was a good start – the bombers flew over together, dropping their loads from 23,000 feet and fairly accurately too. The rail network at Rouen was certainly put out of action for a while. The experience did, however, make Burbridge realize how under-prepared they were for war. ‘We had a cover of Spitfires,’ he said, ‘but otherwise, I reckon we’d all have been dead.’3
Also now in Britain were Major-General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the new commander of US forces in the European Theater of Operations, and Brigadier-General Mark Clark, his deputy and commander of US II Corps. The pair, and Eisenhower especially, faced a huge challenge. America was new to war, whereas Britain had been in for almost three years. Culturally, they spoke the same language, but in many other ways they were very different peoples. Moreover, they were expected to plan together and fight together, yet they had different approaches to warfare. Finally, Eisenhower was merely a two-star general, who was expected to work with vastly experienced and more senior men such as General Alan Brooke, General Hastings Ismay, General John Kennedy and others – and to more than stand his own.
To help his standing, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General on 10 July, but that same day, at a conference with Brooke, Ismay and Portal, it was made clear the British no longer believed SLEDGEHAMMER was remotely possible in the autumn that year. Since Eisenhower had been sent on his way to Britain with instructions to put into operation just that thing, this was a blow. There was a lack of shipping, the British told him, and failure would have disastrous knock-on effects for the proposed full invasion the following year. This was true. There was also a lack of landing craft – new Landing Craft Assaults (LCAs) were being built and bigger, flat-bottomed Landing Craft Ships too, but they were not ready yet. The Americans had never yet come up against a panzer division; most infantry had never seen even an American tank. Their combat doctrine, such as it was, had been tested only in a handful of manoeuvres in the southern United States. They were a long way from being ready to take on the Wehrmacht.
A week later, the US chiefs arrived in Britain along with Harry Hopkins. The Americans accepted that gaining a toehold in northern France would not be possible and SLEDGEHAMMER was scrapped. But something had to be done – the Americans had promised Molotov, after all, and by this time things were not looking at all good in the Soviet Union. Then, on 20 July, Churchill persuaded his Chiefs of Staff that an invasion of north-west Africa was the only viable option. Even Brooke, who had been dead against it from the outset, came round to the PM’s way of thinking. Hearing this change of heart, the Americans initially refused to be swayed, but when deadlock was reached Marshall confessed he needed to talk to the President for instructions. By this time, however, Roosevelt had begun warming to the North Africa venture, as he had intimated to Marshall before his Chief of Staff had left for London. His response was therefore to urge his delegation to reach an agreement whereby American troops could be used in land operations against the Axis powers sometime that year. Really, that left just one option open: North Africa. Admiral Ernest King, fresh from the US Navy’s victory at Midway, now used this strategic window to press once more for realigning the US priority of operations to the Pacific and even sent the President a letter urging him to do just this. Roosevelt was not impressed. Calling both King and General Marshall, he asked for their detailed plans for the Pacific Ocean alternative. And he wanted to see them that very afternoon.
At that point, both King and Marshall had to admit they were no more ready to send a large army to the Pacific than they were across the English Channel. The problems were exactly the same – in fact, far away in the remote Pacific they were worse. Roosevelt had won an important battle with his Army and Navy chiefs.
None the less, the cancelling of SLEDGEHAMMER was a blow to Eisenhower. ‘Well, I hardly know where to start the day,’ he told his friend and aide, Commander Harry Butcher.4 With the terrible news from the Eastern Front, he feared Wednesday, 22 July could well go down as the ‘blackest in history’.
Be that as it may, momentum had now swung in favour of north-west Africa, or Operation TORCH, as Churchill had renamed it. On 24 July, this was agreed in principle, with the British refusing to accept that it would rule out a cross-Channel invasion the following year. Together, the Joint Chiefs thrashed out a basic plan. A Supreme Commander was needed, which Brooke suggested should be an American. The Brits also proposed that the operation should be led by US troops, partly as a sop to the Americans but also because Vichy French antipathy to the British knew no bounds; France’s former ally had become a hated enemy and in North Africa especially so: it was at Mers-el-Kébir near Oran in Algeria that the Royal Navy had blasted the French Fleet back in early July 1940. Thus any resistance would likely be stiffer against British than American troops. This was agreed. Two simultaneous operations were envisaged – one on the west coast of Africa, the other on the north-west coast. Planning would be conducted from Eisenhower’s headquarters at Grosvenor Square in London, with the US team of a joint planning staff hurrying to the UK as soon as possible, because the date suggested for the landings was in October. That was a mere twelve weeks away.
Eisenhower had not been at this final session, but was briefed by Marshall as he scrubbed himself in his bath. He made it clear he hoped Eisenhower would command the whole thing, but in the meantime Ike was to be given the new title of Deputy Allied Commander in Charge of Planning TORCH, and was to get cracking right away.
A large part of the planning for SLEDGEHAMMER – and now TORCH – had been ensuring there were enough troops sufficiently trained for the job, and because the assumption had always been that a second front would jump off from Britain, that was where most of these men now were. In North Africa, Eighth Army remained, even in the summer of 1942, a force that had been drawn predominantly from Britain’s Empire: Australians, South Africans, Indians and New Zealanders; and while there were plenty of Brits out there – men like Albert Martin and Johnny Cooper, for example – the vast majority of those now in the British Army were still in the UK, and had been ever since the retreat from Dunkirk two summers before.
Bill Cheall was one of them. Having joined the Territorial Army before the war, he had been posted to France with the 6th Green Howards and had managed to make his way back from Dunkirk. After spending much of the Battle of Britain on anti-invasion watch, he had been sent to join the 11th Battalion, which was a training unit of new recruits but which clearly needed some experience mixed in too. Cheall had not minded particularly, although he had begun to tire of moving from one camp to another; they had all been the same: all near the coast and all full of spartan Nissen huts.
Now, though, the battalion was based at Mareham-le-Fen in Lincolnshire, a few miles inland. Since arriving there in early 1942, Cheall had been relieved to discover training had been really stepped up. It was, he thought, not before time. Route marches became a regular occurrence, as did map and compass reading, weapons training was intensified, then so too were training exercises at section, platoon and company level. ‘At last,’ noted Cheall, who had been given the single stripe of a lance-corporal, ‘the lads were beginning to realize that there was more to soldiering than guard duties.’5
Meanwhile, American soldiers were swelling the numbers of servicemen now in Britain, and not least the 34th Red Bull Division based at Omagh in Northern Ireland in yet another Nissen-hut camp. Sergeant Joe Schaps reckoned their quarters looked just like a barrel cut in half.
Another of those who had reached Britain with the Red Bulls was Staff Sergeant Warren ‘Bing’ Evans. From Aberdeen, South Dakota, Evans had been at college at South Dakota State when he’d volunteered to join the National Guard, and that was because a dollar a week for a bit of drill on Thursday evenings had seemed like a good deal to him. Evans had lost his father to cancer when he’d been four and he, his mother and younger sister had struggled to get by ever since. A much-valued newspaper delivery patch had brought in a few extra cents and he’d learned to fight trying to hold on to it. Later, he’d discovered he was pretty good at football too, which had got him a sports scholarship that included his college tuition as well as a room and two meals a day. The extra dollar from the National Guard had given him a bit of much-needed pocket money.
Being drafted into the Army had never been part of the game plan, but that was what had happened in February 1941 – and by that time Evans had been pretty certain America would be in the war before so very long. He wouldn’t have minded so much had he not recently fallen madly in love. He’d met Frances Wheeler at a dance during Thanksgiving Weekend the previous November and sparks had flown immediately. The feeling was entirely mutual and both were distraught that, having found one another, they now had to be parted. Frances promised to wait for him – after all, his active service was only for a year – but that soon changed; after the Louisiana Maneuvers that summer, it was clear to Evans that he wouldn’t be out of the Army any time soon.
With this in mind, Frances drove all the way to New Orleans, where the two of them were able to spend a precious weekend together. After dinner and a night of dancing, Evans proposed and Frances accepted. He’d saved $21 for the ring. After Pearl Harbor, when news arrived that he was heading overseas to Britain, they decided to get married right away, but it was now winter, snow was on the ground and driving anywhere was treacherous. On the long trip to New Jersey, where Evans was about to disembark, Frances was hit head-on by another car. Luckily, she only suffered a cut lip and broken arm, but by the time she was out of hospital it was too late – her husband-to-be had already set sail. Evans was heart-broken, but once again Frances promised to wait. Even so, one night while out on deck, Evans tore up his wedding licence and threw the ring into the ocean. ‘I figured it was bad luck,’ he said.6 He could only hope he’d make it back one day.
Now, however, six months on, he was not in Northern Ireland but in Scotland, having voluntarily left the 34th Division to join a brand-new elite force of troops called the 1st Ranger Battalion, based on the same principles as the British Commandos. This latter force came under the charge of Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was head of Combined Operations, the single headquarters that combined ground, naval and air forces to plan and execute hit-and-run raids on Nazi-occupied Europe.
During a visit to the UK by General Marshall, Mountbatten and the US Chief of Staff had agreed that a number of American officers should be sent to Combined Operations HQ. It had also been agreed that a number of American troops of all ranks would be attached to the Commandos, from which a nucleus of an American commando unit could be formed. The task of finding and forming these volunteers was left to Colonel William Darby, one of the aides on the staff of US V Corps in Northern Ireland.
On 1 June, Darby had put out his call for volunteers, all of whom should possess high leadership qualities with initiative and sound common sense. All were expected to have good athletic ability, stamina and no physical defects at all. Seeing the notice, Bing Evans had decided to volunteer right away. He thought it seemed like a good challenge, and he managed to become one of the first 300 to be accepted.
It was felt that a new and different name was needed, however – ‘Commandos’ would always have a British association – and so ‘Rangers’ was decided upon. On 19 June, the 1st Ranger Battalion was formally activated, with Bing Evans as First Sergeant of E Company. Immediately, they were sent up to Scotland, basing themselves at Achnacarry Castle, in the shadow of Ben Nevis near Fort William. And although they were trying to distance themselves from the Commandos, they were initially trained in much the same way and for similar purposes; even their instructors were the same. It was tough, both physically and mentally. As well as learning hand-to-hand combat, the Rangers were expected to climb mountains, carry out speed marches and river crossings, and swim in ice-cold water, in addition to developing scouting and small-unit tactics. There was also extensive amphibious training. Evans certainly thought both the training and their instructors were pretty thorough. ‘They had their hearts set on discouraging us and didn’t think we could take it,’ he said, ‘but, of course, we were just as intent on showing them we were up to anything they could do.’7
It wasn’t just the first few thousands of American soldiers who were arriving in Britain – there were Canadians too. In fact, the 1st Canadian Division had been the very first from Britain’s Dominions to send troops to the UK, back in December 1939, but further troops were still being sent over, albeit in smaller numbers. Among those reaching Greenock on the River Clyde on a warm late-July morning was Lieutenant Farley Mowat, now twenty-one and bristling with impatience to get into the war after what had seemed to him to be a very long wait indeed.
Mowat was from Saskatoon and had been painting the front porch of the family home back in September 1939 when his father had told him the war had begun. Mowat Senior had fought in the last war, had returned with a damaged right arm thanks to German bullets, but had none the less remained in the Canadian militia, serving with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, known to all as the Hasty Ps.
His son had greeted the news of war with an equal sense of fervour – after all, he may have been only eighteen at the time, but he believed that he and all other freedom-loving liberals were honour-bound to take up arms against the bestial Nazis. His intention, though, was not to join the Army, but the Air Force, so he swiftly signed up and some months later, in May 1940, was finally summoned for a medical – which he failed for being 4 lb under the required weight.
With his dreams of becoming a fighter pilot dashed at the first hurdle, he gave in to his father’s steering, passed his Army medical and joined the 2nd Battalion – the militia – of the Hasty Ps instead, where, after a short stint in the ranks, he was offered a commission. Mowat had assumed that he would be transferred to the 1st Battalion, in Britain already, in quick order, but he was to be disappointed. ‘Sorry, we just can’t do it,’ was scrawled on the bottom of his returned transfer request.8 ‘He looks so damn young there’d be bound to be questions in Parliament about the Army baby snatching!’ Mowat was incensed, but there was nothing he could do but return to the militia with its over-age soldiers and part-timers and hope he soon started to look more his age. Made a field-craft instructor, he reacted to this enforced stint with the 2nd Battalion by playing the fool, getting into trouble and generally proving why the powers-that-be had been right not to send someone so immature off to war.
Then, at long last, that July he and several others were finally posted for an overseas reinforcement draft. ‘Thank heavens, this is it!9 It’s worth two years of waiting,’ he hastily wrote to his parents. ‘Apart from you two, I don’t in the least regret leaving Canada even though there is a chance I may not see it again. If we get a damn good lick in at the Hun, it’ll be worth it.’
And now he was in England and a full lieutenant, although, much to his further frustration, still not with the 1st Battalion. Rather, it seemed the 1st Division was crammed with officers and the only casualties were from venereal disease, so until Mowat and his fellows were needed, they were to stay with the Reinforcement Unit, based near Guildford in Surrey. Put under the charge of Captain Williams, they were immediately taken on a pub crawl through the town. At one pub, Mowat found himself propositioned by a hefty Land Girl who invited him to take a walk along the river bank with her. There, in some bushes, she efficiently stripped him of his virginity, something he’d been trying in vain to achieve since the moment he joined the Army.
‘There you are, luv,’ she said as she fumbled with his fly buttons.10 ‘Captain Willy said you needed doing … and there’s nothink I wouldn’t do for a Canuck!’
Mowat couldn’t help feeling both set up and underwhelmed, and the following day told Captain Williams that if there was any more ‘doing’ to be done he’d rather do it himself. The Captain burst into peals of laughter and from then on insisted on calling him ‘Do-It-Yourself Mowat’.
Meanwhile, Germany’s war heroes were still being feted as much as ever. Upgrades of a Knight’s Cross often involved the recipient’s recall from the front and a trip to visit the Führer himself. If the winner was young, dashing, blond and blue-eyed, then so much the better; chances were, they would soon become very famous indeed. On 8 June, Helmut Lent had been on leave with his wife, the Russian-born Lena, and new baby daughter when he learned he had been awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross, the first night-fighter to win such an honour. Soon after, a large piece about him appeared in the Wehrmacht newspaper, the Wehrmachtbericht, describing one of his actions under the heading, ‘Victory in the Night Sky’. After recounting how Lent had stalked and then shot down a ‘Tommy’ bomber, a vivid description of the crash was given. ‘Fragments fly about like flaming torches,’ wrote official war reporter Josef Kreutz, ‘and then the mighty enemy colossus, many tons in weight, crashes into the earth with tremendous force.11 The bomber continues to burn for a long time. The instantaneous destructive effect of the German night-fighter’s dashing attack gave the enemy crew no chance of escape. This was the 35th aerial victory of our most successful night-fighter, the first holder of the Oak Leaves in this new arm of the Luftwaffe.’
In the desert, Jochen Marseille had just notched up his 101st confirmed victory and promptly been awarded both the Oak Leaves and Swords to his Knight’s Cross, the twelfth German serviceman to receive the honour. He was immediately summoned to Rastenburg to receive the award from Hitler in person, but was reluctant to go – he did not want to leave his comrades, nor did he want to be parted from his new friend, Matthias, a black South African they had captured in Tobruk. Since then, Marseille and Matthias had been bosom pals – ostensibly, Matthias had become his soldier-servant, but Marseille never thought of him in such terms. Rather, he called him the ‘best friend and bartender one could wish for.’12 In Nazi Germany, such a friendship would have been impossible, but Edu Neumann, the Gruppe commander, didn’t mind. He had always recognized that Marseille was a maverick, someone apart from the others.
Marseille left for Berlin on 18 June only after Neumann had promised to take care of Matthias, and he arrived at Tempelhof in Berlin only to find Hitler’s favourite film-maker, Leni Riefenstahl, waiting for him with a film crew.
When he finally reached the Wolf’s Lair to meet Hitler, he did not bother to change into his dress uniform and still wore his rough desert boots. At the lunch that followed he sat next to Göring, who said to him, ‘So you now have, what, over a hundred conquests?’13
‘Herr Reichsmarschall,’ Marseille replied, ‘do you mean aircraft or women?’
Göring nearly choked on his food with laughing, but Marseille, completely unfazed by the entire experience, let it be known that he had little time for the Nazis. One of Hitler’s staff officers asked him if he had considered joining the party. Marseille replied that if he saw a party worth joining, he would consider it, but there would have to be attractive ladies present. He also told Hitler flatly not to rely on the Italians, and when the Führer said to him that Germany would need men like him when the war was won, Marseille told him he thought neither he nor most of the men he served with would still be alive.
When he finally got back to the front in early August, he discovered three of his good friends had been killed and that his Gruppe commander and mentor, Edu Neumann, was desperately struggling to keep the men going as shortages of fuel, food, water, ammunition and just about everything were making it increasingly difficult for them to operate at all.
At the beginning of August, General Brooke and Churchill flew to the Middle East, landing in Cairo on the 3rd. Auchinleck had made his exhausted forces try for one more push along the Alamein Line, but still the Axis positions had held. Churchill had been cracking his whip from London, but at the back of the Auk’s mind had been news of German advances in the Caucasus. Like Eisenhower, he feared imminent German victory in the Soviet Union, and was still fretting about an Axis link between the Caucasus and the Middle East.
He failed, however, to explain this to his commanders, who were all drained, understandably protective of their differing nations’ troops and the responsibility their countries had placed in them, and were bickering badly after ten weeks of battle. The Auk had been unable to stop it, so Pienaar and Gott were still at loggerheads, while General Leslie Morshead, commander both of all Australian forces in theatre and of the Australian 9th Division, had openly quarrelled with the C-in-C.
By the time Churchill and Brooke landed, the PM had already decided that the Auk had to be given the chop, and Brooke, who had originally wanted to go alone, was by now rather agreeing with him. Any doubts were brushed aside when they visited the front a couple of days later.
Churchill went alone for a briefing from Auchinleck and repeatedly demanded he attack again. Auchinleck patiently explained why that was no longer possible, but the PM was in a foul mood and walked out of the C-in-C’s caravan and stood alone, glaring at the desert, before being whisked away by Strafer Gott. Churchill had already decided Gott was the man to take command of Eighth Army. Gott, however, told the PM straight that he needed three months’ leave back in England.
The Prime Minister’s mood was lifted immediately by the startling difference in atmosphere at the Desert Air Force HQ at Burg el Arab. ‘He arrived in an Air Commodore’s rig,’ noted Tommy Elmhirst, ‘to our delight and honour.’14 Their party then flew to Fighter Group HQ, where lunch had been specially sent all the way from Alexandria. It all went down extremely well and Churchill gave them a stirring speech. The airmen were happy and so too was the PM.
Meanwhile, Brooke, too, had spoken with Gott. ‘I think what is required here is some new blood,’ Gott told him.15 ‘I have tried most of my ideas on the Boche. We want someone with new ideas and plenty of confidence in them.’ He was spot on.
Meeting back together in Cairo, Churchill and Brooke agreed that General Sir Harold Alexander should take over as C-in-C Middle East; he was now in England after successfully retreating British Forces in Burma back into India. In fact, he had recently met up with Eisenhower, as he had been earmarked to command British forces in TORCH. Brooke wanted General Montgomery to take over Eighth Army but Churchill insisted it should be Gott, even though the latter had almost begged to be allowed home.
The following day, 7 August, these changes were approved by the War Cabinet in London, but fate had other plans. British radio traffic in the field was not terribly secure at the best of times and it seems Axis intelligence learned that Gott was planning to return briefly to Cairo before taking up his new appointment. As he flew in a lumbering transport plane, he was attacked by six Me109s, shot down and the aircraft strafed on the ground until it was on fire – an uncharacteristically thorough and ruthless act in an air war in which pilots had so far aimed to destroy machines not men. By a twist of fate, the escape hatch jammed and Gott and his fellow passengers were all burned alive.
With Gott dead and the Auk flying home to India, Alexander arrived in time to be briefed by Brooke and the PM, and General Montgomery, Brooke’s original choice for Eighth Army, arrived soon after.
In Cairo, the journalists were briefed about the changes. Alan Moorehead realized very clearly that an era of the war was now at an end. ‘A new army of the Middle East was given birth,’ he wrote, ‘an army that for the first time was going to include Americans as well as British.16 A tide of reinforcement such as the Middle East had never known before was going to come in, and from it a better army was going to be built.’