15
Lord Cork Appointed to the Supreme Command at Narvik — His Letter to Me — General Mackesy’s Protest Against Bombardment — The Cabinet’s Reply — The Eighth Meeting of the Supreme War Council, April 22 — German and Allied Strength on Land and in the Air — The Scandinavian Tangle — Decisions upon Trondheim and Narvik — A Further Change in Control — Directive of May 1 — The Trondheim Operation — The Namsos Failure — Paget in the Andalsnes Excursion — Decision of the War Cabinet to Evacuate Central Norway — The Mosjoen Fiasco — My Report of May 4 — Gubbins’ Force — The German Northward Advance — German Superiority in Method and Quality.
ON APRIL 20, I had procured agreement to the appointment of Lord Cork as sole Commander of the naval, military, and air forces in the Narvik area, thus bringing General Mackesy directly under his authority. There was never any doubt of Lord Cork’s vigorously offensive spirit. He realised acutely the danger of delay; but the physical and administrative difficulties were far greater on the spot than we could measure at home. Moreover, naval officers, even when granted the fullest authority, are chary of giving orders to the Army about purely military matters. This would be even more true if the positions were reversed. We had hoped that by relieving General Mackesy from direct major responsibility, we should make him feel more free to adopt bold tactics. The result was contrary to this expectation. He continued to use every argument, and there was no lack of them, to prevent drastic action. Things had changed to our detriment in the week that had passed since the idea of an improvised assault upon Narvik town had been rejected. The two thousand German soldiers were no doubt working night and day at their defences, and these and the town all lay hidden under a pall of snow. The enemy had no doubt by now also organised two or three thousand sailors who had escaped from the sunken destroyers. Their arrangements for bringing air power to bear improved every day, and both our ships and landed troops endured increasing bombardment. On the twenty-first, Lord Cork wrote to me as follows:
I write to thank you for the trust you have reposed in me. I shall certainly do my best to justify it. The inertia is difficult to overcome, and of course the obstacles to the movements of troops are considerable, particularly the snow which, on northern slopes of hills, is still many feet deep. I myself have tested that, and as it has been snowing on and off for two days the position has not improved. The initial error was that the original force started on the assumption they would meet with no resistance, a mistake we often make, e.g., Tanga.1 As it is, the soldiers have not yet got their reserves of small-arms ammunition, or water, but tons of stuff and personnel they do not want….
What is really our one pressing need is fighters; we are so overmatched in the air. There is a daily inspection of this place, and they come when there are transports or steamers to bomb. Sooner or later they must get a hit. I flew over Narvik yesterday, but it was very difficult to see much. The rocky cliff is covered with snow, except for rock outcrops, round which the drifts must be deep. It is snow down to the water’s edge, which makes it impossible to see the nature of the foreshore.
While waiting for the conditions necessary for an attack, we are isolating the town from the world by breaking down the railway culverts, etc., and the large ferry steamer has been shelled and burnt…. It is exasperating not being able to get on, and I quite understand you wondering why we do not, but I assure you that it is not from want of desire to do so.
Lord Cork decided upon reconnaissance in force, under cover of a naval bombardment, but here General Mackesy interposed. He stated that before the proposed action against Narvik began, he felt it his duty to represent that there was no officer or man in his command who would not feel ashamed for himself and his country if thousands of Norwegian men, women, and children in Narvik were subject to the proposed bombardment. Lord Cork contented himself with forwarding this statement without comment. Neither the Prime Minister nor I could be present at the Defence Committee meeting on April 22, as we had to attend the Supreme War Council in Paris on that day. Before leaving I had drafted a reply which was approved by our colleagues:
I presume that Lord Cork has read the bombardment instructions issued at the outbreak of war. If he finds it necessary to go beyond these instructions on account of the enemy using the shelter of buildings to maintain himself in Narvik, he may deem it wise to give six hours’ warning by every means at his disposal, including if possible leaflets, and to inform the German Commander that all civilians must leave the town, and that he would be held responsible if he obstructed their departure. He might also offer to leave the railway line unmolested for a period of six hours to enable civilians to make good their escape by that route.
The Defence Committee endorsed this policy, strongly expressing the view that “it would be impossible to allow the Germans to convert Norwegian towns into forts by keeping the civilians in the towns to prevent us from attacking.”
* * * * *
We arrived in Paris with our minds oppressed by the anxieties and confusion of the campaign in Norway, for the conduct of which the British were responsible. But M. Reynaud, having welcomed us, opened with a statement on the general military position which by its gravity dwarfed our Scandinavian excursions. Geography, he said, gave Germany the permanent advantage of interior lines. She had 190 divisions, of which 150 could be used on the Western Front. Against these the Allies had 100, of which 10 were British. In the previous war, Germany, with a population of sixty-five millions, had raised 248 divisions, of which 207 fought on the Western Front. France on her part had raised 118 divisions, of which 110 had been on the Western Front; and Great Britain 89 divisions, of which 63 had been on the Western Front, giving a total of 173 Allied against 207 German divisions in the West. Equality had been attained only when the Americans arrived with their 34 divisions. How much worse was the position today! The German population was now eighty millions, from which she could conceivably raise 300 divisions. France could hardly expect that there would be 20 British divisions in the West by the end of the year. We must, therefore, face a large and increasing numerical superiority which was already three to two and would presently rise to two to one. As for equipment, Germany had the advantage both in aviation and aircraft equipment and also in artillery and stocks of ammunition. Thus Reynaud.
To this point, then, had we come from the days of the Rhineland occupation in 1936, when a mere operation of police would have sufficed; or since Munich, when Germany, occupied with Czechoslovakia, could spare but thirteen divisions for the Western Front; or even since September, 1939, when, while the Polish resistance lasted, there were but forty-two German divisions in the West. All this terrible superiority had grown up because at no moment had the once victorious Allies dared to take any effective step, even when they were all-powerful, to resist repeated aggressions by Hitler and breaches of the Treaties.
* * * * *
After this sombre interlude, of the gravity of which we were all conscious, we came back to the Scandinavian tangle. The Prime Minister explained the position with clarity. We had landed thirteen thousand men at Namsos and Andalsnes without loss. Our forces had pushed forward farther than had been expected. On finding that the direct attack on Trondheim would demand a disproportionate amount of naval force, it had been decided to make a pincer movement from the north and south instead. But in the last two days these new plans had been rudely interrupted by a heavy air attack on Namsos. As there had been no anti-aircraft fire to oppose them, the Germans had bombed at will. Meanwhile, all German naval vessels at Narvik had been destroyed. But the German troops there were strongly fortified, so that it had not yet been possible to attack them by land. If our first attempt did not succeed, it would be renewed.
About Central Norway, Mr. Chamberlain said that the British Command were anxious to reinforce the troops who had gone there, to protect them against the German advance from the south, and to co-operate subsequently in the capture of Trondheim. It was already certain that reinforcements would be required. Five thousand British, seven thousand French, three thousand Poles, three British mechanised battalions, one British light-tank battalion, three French light divisions, and one British Territorial division were to be available in the near future. The limitation would not be the number of troops provided, but the number that could be landed and maintained in the country. M. Reynaud said that four French light divisions would be sent.
I now spoke for the first time at any length in these conferences, pointing out the difficulties of landing troops and stores in the face of enemy aircraft and U-boats. Every single ship had to be convoyed by destroyers, every landing-port continuously guarded by cruisers or destroyers, not only during the landing, but till ack-ack guns could be mounted ashore. So far the Allied ships had been extraordinarily lucky and had sustained very few hits. The tremendous difficulties of the operation would be understood. Although thirteen thousand men had now been safely landed, the Allies had as yet no established bases, and were operating inland with weak and slender lines of cummunication, practically unprovided with artillery or supporting aircraft. Such was the position in Central Norway.
At Narvik the Germans were less strong, the port far less exposed to air attack, and once the harbour had been secured, it would be possible to land at a very much faster rate. Any forces which could not be landed at ports farther south should go to Narvik. Among the troops assigned to the Narvik operation, or indeed in Great Britain, there were none able to move across country in heavy snow. The task at Narvik would be not only to free the harbour and the town, nor even to clear the whole district of Germans, but to advance up the railway to the Swedish frontier in strength commensurate with any further German designs. It was the considered view of the British Command that this could be done without slowing down the rate of landing at other ports beyond the point to which it was already restricted by the difficulties described.
We were all in full agreement on the unpleasantness of our plight and the little we could do at the moment to better it. The Supreme War Council agreed that the immediate military objectives should be:
(a) The capture of Trondheim, and
(b) the capture of Narvik, and the concentration of an adequate Allied force on the Swedish frontier.
The next day we talked about the dangers to the Dutch and Belgians and their refusal to take any common measures with us. We were very conscious that Italy might declare war upon us at any time, and various naval measures were to be concerted in the Mediterranean between Admiral Pound and Admiral Darlan. To this meeting General Sikorski also was invited. He declared his ability to constitute a force of a hundred thousand men within a few months. Active steps were also being taken to recruit a Polish division in the United States.
At this meeting it was agreed also that if Germany invaded Holland the Allied armies should at once advance into Belgium without further approaches to the Belgian Government; and that the R.A.F. could bomb the German marshalling-yards and the oil refineries in the Ruhr.
* * * * *
When we got back from the Conference, I was so much concerned at the complete failure, not only of our efforts against the enemy, but of our method of conducting the war, that I wrote as follows to the Prime Minister:
Being anxious to sustain you to the best of my ability, I must warn you that you are approaching a head-on smash in Norway.
I am very grateful to you for having at my request taken over the day-to-day management of the Military Co-ordination [Committee], etc. I think I ought, however, to let you know that I shall not be willing to receive that task back from you without the necessary powers. At present no one has the power. There are six Chiefs [and Deputy Chiefs] of the Staff, three Ministers, and General Ismay, who all have a voice in Norwegian operations (apart from Narvik). But no one is responsible for the creation and direction of military policy except yourself. If you feel able to bear this burden, you may count upon my unswerving loyalty as First Lord of the Admiralty. If you do not feel you can bear it, with all your other duties, you will have to delegate your powers to a deputy who can concert and direct the general movement of our war action, and who will enjoy your support and that of the War Cabinet unless very good reason is shown to the contrary.
Before I could send it off, I received a message from the Prime Minister saying that he had been considering the position of Scandinavia and felt it to be unsatisfactory. He asked me to call on him that evening at Downing Street after dinner to discuss the whole situation in private.
I have no record of what passed at our conversation, which was of a most friendly character. I am sure I put the points in my unsent letter, and that the Prime Minister agreed with their force and justice. He had every wish to give me the powers of direction for which I asked, and there was no kind of personal difficulty between us. He had, however, to consult and persuade a number of important personages, and it was not till May 1 that he was able to issue the following note to the Cabinet and those concerned.
May 1, 1940.
I have been examining, in consultation with the Ministers in charge of the service departments, the existing arrangements for the consideration and decision of defence questions, and I circulate for the information of my colleagues a memorandum describing certain modifications which it has been decided to make in these arrangements forthwith. The modifications have been agreed to by the three Service Ministers. With the approval of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Major-General H. L. Ismay, C.B., D.S.O., has been appointed to the post of Senior Staff Officer in charge of the Central Staff which, as indicated in the memorandum, is to be placed at the disposal of the First Lord. Major-General Ismay has been nominated, while serving in this capacity, an additional member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. N. C.
Defence Organisation
In order to obtain a greater concentration of the direction of the war, the following modifications of present arrangements will take effect.
The First Lord of the Admiralty will continue to take the chair at all meetings of the Military Co-ordination Committee at which the Prime Minister does not preside himself, and in the absence of the Prime Minister will act as his deputy at such meetings on all matters delegated to the Committee by the War Cabinet.
He will be responsible on behalf of the Committee for giving guidance and directions to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and for this purpose it will be open to him to summon that Committee for personal consultation at any time when he considers it necessary.
The Chiefs of Staff will retain their responsibility for giving their collective views to the Government and, with their respective staffs, will prepare plans to achieve any objectives indicated to them by the First Lord on behalf of the Military Co-ordination Committee, and will accompany their plans by such comments as they consider appropriate.
The Chiefs of Staff, who will in their individual capacity remain responsible to their respective Ministers, will at all times keep their Ministers informed of their conclusions.
Where time permits, the plans of the Chiefs of Staff, with their comments and any comments by the First Lord, will be circulated for approval to the Military Co-ordination Committee, and unless the Military Co-ordination Committee is authorised by the War Cabinet to take final decision, or in the case of disagreement on the Military Co-ordination Committee, circulated to the War Cabinet.
In urgent cases it may be necessary to omit the submission of plans to a formal meeting of the Committee, but in such cases the First Lord will no doubt find means of consulting the Service Ministers informally, and in the case of dissent, the decision will be referred to the Prime Minister.
In order to facilitate the general plan outlined above and to afford a convenient means of maintaining a close liaison between the First Lord and the Chiefs of Staff, the First Lord will be assisted by a suitable central staff (distinct from the Admiralty Staff) under a senior staff officer who will be an additional member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
I accepted this arrangement, which seemed a marked improvement. I could now convene and preside over the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, without whom nothing could be done, and I was made responsible formally “for giving guidance and direction” to them. General Ismay, the senior staff officer in charge of the Central Staff, was placed at my disposal as my staff officer and representative, and in this capacity was made a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. I had known Ismay for many years, but now for the first time we became hand-and-glove, and much more. Thus the Chiefs of Staff were to a large extent made responsible to me in their collective capacity, and as a deputy of the Prime Minister I could nominally influence with authority their decisions and policies. On the other hand, it was only natural that their primary loyalties should be to their own Service Ministers, who would have been less than human if they had not felt some resentment at the delegation of a part of their authority to one of their colleagues. Moreover, it was expressly laid down in the memorandum that my responsibilities were to be discharged on behalf of the Military Co-ordination Committee. I was thus to have immense responsibilities, without effective power in my own hands to discharge them. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that I might be able to make the new organisation work. It was destined to last only a week. But my personal and official connection with General Ismay and his relation to the Chiefs of Staff Committee was preserved unbroken and unweakened from May 1, 1940, to July 27, 1945, when I laid down my charge.
* * * * *
It is now necessary to recount the actual course of the fighting for Trondheim. Our northern force from Namsos was eighty miles from the town; and our southern force from Andalsnes was one hundred and fifty miles away. The central attack through the fiord (“Hammer”) had been abandoned, partly through fear of its cost and partly through hopes of the flanking movements. Both these movements now failed utterly. The Namsos force, commanded by Carton de Wiart, hastened forward in accordance with his instructions against the Norwegian snow and the German air. A brigade reached Verdal, fifty miles from Trondheim, at the head of the fiord, on the nineteenth. It was evident to me, and I warned the staffs, that the Germans could send in a single night a stronger force by water from Trondheim to chop them. This occurred two days later. Our troops were forced to withdraw some miles to where they could hold the enemy. The intolerable snow conditions, now sometimes in thaw, and the fact that the Germans who had come across the inner fiord were like us destitute of wheeled transport, prevented any serious fighting on the ground; and the small number of scattered troops plodding along the road offered little target to the unresisted air power. Had Carton de Wiart known how limited were the forces he would have, or that the central attack on Trondheim had been abandoned – a vital point of which our staff machinery did not inform him – he would no doubt have made a more methodical advance. He acted in relation to the main objective as it had been imparted to him.
In the end, nearly everybody got back exhausted, chilled, and resentful to Namsos, where the French Chasseur Brigade had remained; and Carton de Wiart, whose opinion on such issues commanded respect, declared that there was nothing for it but evacuation. Preparations for this were at once made by the Admiralty. On April 28, the evacuation of Namsos was ordered. The French contingent would re-embark before the British, leaving some of their ski troops to work with our rear guard. The probable dates for leaving were the nights of the first and second of May. Eventually the withdrawal was achieved in a single night. All the troops were re-embarked on the night of the third, and were well out to sea when they were sighted by the German air reconnaissance at dawn. From eight o’clock in the morning to three in the afternoon, wave after wave of enemy bombers attacked the warships and the transports. We were lucky that no transport was hit, as no British air forces were available to protect the convoy. The French destroyer Bison, and H.M.S. Afridi, which carried our rear guard, were “sunk fighting to the end.”
* * * * *
A different series of misfortunes befell the troops landed at Andalsnes; but here at least we took our toll of the enemy. In response to urgent appeals from General Ruge, the Norwegian Commander-in-Chief, Brigadier Morgan’s 148th Infantry Brigade had hastened forward as far as Lillehammer. Here it joined the tired-out battered Norwegian forces whom the Germans, in the overwhelming strength of three fully equipped divisions, were driving before them along the road and railway from Oslo towards Dombas and Trondheim. Severe fighting began. The ship carrying Brigadier Morgan’s vehicles, including all artillery and mortars, had been sunk, but his young Territorials fought well with their rifles and machine-guns against the German vanguards, who were armed not only with 5.9 howitzers, but many heavy mortars and some tanks. On April 24, the leading battalion of the 15th Brigade arriving from France reached the crumbling front. General Paget, who commanded these regular troops, learned from General Ruge that the Norwegian forces were exhausted and could fight no more until they had been thoroughly rested and re-equipped. He, therefore, assumed control, brought the rest of this brigade into action as fast as they arrived, and faced the Germans with determination in a series of spirited engagements. By the adroit use of the railway, which fortunately remained unbroken, Paget extricated his own troops, Morgan’s Brigade, which had lost seven hundred men, and some Norwegian units. For one whole day the bulk of the British force hid in a long railway tunnel fed by their precious supply train, and were thus completely lost to the enemy and his all-seeing air. After fighting five rear-guard actions, in several of which the Germans were heavily mauled, and having covered over a hundred miles, he reached the sea again at Andalsnes. This small place, like Namsos, had been flattened out by bombing; but by the night of May 1, the 15th Brigade, with what remained of Morgan’s 148th Brigade, had been taken on board British cruisers and destroyers and reached home without further trouble. General Paget’s skill and resolution during these days opened his path to high command as the war developed.
A forlorn, gallant effort to give support from the air should be recorded. The only landing-“ground” was the frozen lake of Lesjeskogen, forty miles from Andalsnes. There a squadron of Gladiators, flown from the Glorious, arrived on April 24. They were at once heavily attacked. The Fleet air arm did their best to help them; but the task of fighting for existence, of covering the operations of two expeditions two hundred miles apart, and of protecting their bases, was too much for a single squadron. By April 26, it could fly no more. Long-range efforts by British bombers, working from England, were also unavailing.
* * * * *
Our withdrawal enforced by local events had conformed to the decision already taken by the War Cabinet on the advice of the Military Co-ordination Committee with the Prime Minister presiding. We had all come to the conclusion that it was beyond our power to seize and hold Trondheim. Both claws of the feeble pincers were broken. Mr. Chamberlain announced to the Cabinet that plans must be made for evacuating our forces both from Namsos and Andalsnes, though we should in the meanwhile continue to resist the German advance. The Cabinet was distressed at these proposals, which were, however, inevitable.
* * * * *
In order to delay to the utmost the northward advance of the enemy towards Narvik, we were now sending special companies raised in what was afterwards called “Commando” style, under an enterprising officer, Colonel Gubbins, to Mosjoen, one hundred miles farther up the coast. I was most anxious that a small part of the Namsos force should make their way in whatever vehicles were available along the coastal road to Grong. Even a couple of hundred would have sufficed to fight small rear-guard actions. From Grong they would have to find their way on foot to Mosjoen. I hoped by this means to gain the time for Gubbins to establish himself so that a stand could be made against the very small numbers which the enemy could as yet send there. I was repeatedly assured that the road was impassable. General Massy from London sent insistent requests. It was replied that even a small party of French Chasseurs, with their skis, could not traverse this route. “It was [seemed] evident,” wrote General Massy a few days later in his dispatch, “that if the French Chasseurs could not retire along this route, the Germans could not advance along it…. This was an error, as the Germans have since made full use of it and have advanced so rapidly along it that our troops in Mosjoen have not had time to get properly established, and it is more than likely that we shall not be able to hold the place.” This proved true. The destroyer Janus took a hundred Chasseurs Alpins and two light A.A. guns round by sea, but they left again before the Germans came.
* * * * *
We have now pursued the Norwegian campaign to the point where it was overwhelmed by gigantic events. The superiority of the Germans in design, management, and energy were plain. They put into ruthless execution a carefully prepared plan of action. They comprehended perfectly the use of the air arm on a great scale in all its aspects. Moreover, their individual ascendancy was marked, especially in small parties. At Narvik a mixed and improvised German force, barely six thousand strong, held at bay for six weeks some twenty thousand Allied troops, and though driven out of the town lived to see them depart. The Narvik attack, so brilliantly opened by the Navy, was paralysed by the refusal of the military commander to run what was admittedly a desperate risk. The division of our resources between Narvik and Trondheim was injurious to both our plans. The abandonment of the central thrust on Trondheim wears an aspect of vacillation in the British High Command for which, not only the experts, but the political chiefs who yielded too easily to their advice, must bear a burden. At Namsos there was a muddy waddle forward and back. Only in the Andalsnes expedition did we bite. The Germans traversed in seven days the road from Namsos to Mosjoen, which the British and French had declared impassable. At Bodo and Mo, during the retreat of Gubbins’ force to the north, we were each time just too late, and the enemy, although they had to overcome hundreds of miles of rugged, snow-clogged country, drove us back in spite of gallant episodes. We, who had the command of the sea and could pounce anywhere on an undefended coast, were outpaced by the enemy moving by land across very large distances in the face of every obstacle. In this Norwegian encounter, our finest troops, the Scots and Irish Guards, were baffled by the vigour, enterprise, and training of Hitler’s young men.
We tried hard, at the call of duty, to entangle and embed ourselves in Norway. We thought Fortune had been cruelly against us. We can now see that we were well out of it. Meanwhile, we had to comfort ourselves as best we might by a series of successful evacuations. Failure at Trondheiml Stalemate at Narvikl Such in the first week of May were the only results we could show to the British nation, to our Allies, and to the neutral world, friendly or hostile. Considering the prominent part I played in these events and the impossibility of explaining the difficulties by which we had been overcome, or the defects of our staff and governmental organisation and our methods of conducting war, it was a marvel that I survived and maintained my position in public esteem and parliamentary confidence. This was due to the fact that for six or seven years I had predicted with truth the course of events, and had given ceaseless warnings, then unheeded but now remembered.
* * * * *
“Twilight War” ended with Hitler’s assault on Norway. It broke into the glare of the most fearful military explosion so far known to man. I have described the trance in which for eight months France and Britain had been held while all the world wondered. This phase proved most harmful to the Allies. From the moment when Stalin made terms with Hitler, the Communists in France took their cue from Moscow and denounced the war as “an imperialist and capitalist crime against democracy.” They did what they could to undermine morale in the Army and impede production in the workshops. The morale of France, both of her soldiers and her people, was now in May markedly lower than at the outbreak of war.
Nothing like this happened in Britain, where Soviet-directed Communism, though busy, was weak. Nevertheless, we were still a Party Government, under a Prime Minister from whom the Opposition was bitterly estranged, and without the ardent and positive help of the trade-union movement. The sedate, sincere, but routine character of the Administration did not evoke that intense effort, either in the governing circles or in the munition factories, which was vital. The stroke of catastrophe and the spur of peril were needed to call forth the dormant might of the British nation. The tocsin was about to sound.