Book signing and reviews

I am looking forward to heading for the excellent Imperial War Museum North in Manchester on Thursday 6 October 2016. Follow this link to find the details. I will be there from 11am until 4pm.

I'm bringing with me some of Mum's albums in which she documented Dad's war and from which I wrote a good deal of the book.

I now write on 7 October having had an enjoyable day at IMW North with great conversation with school children and veterans. 

This follows a talk and book signing at the Lincoln Book Festival on Saturday - what a great audience!

The book is also appearing in shop windows in Lincoln where I live;

Waterstones, Cornhill, Lincoln

Lindum Books, Bailgate, Lincoln

A couple of helpful reviews have also appeared online as well as this in The Truck and Driver:

and this in the Shropshire Star which covers the area of COD Donnington, at massive armaments depot:

and the Derby Telegraph. Also this piece connected with the possible closure of the MoD presence in Shropshire.

The University of Exeter had this to say.

The role of the USA in supplying the British Army

Massive!

Bill Williams visited the USA on five occasions, the first two in the run up to D Day.

The RAOC already had good working relationships with the UK motor industry, but with so many supplies now coming from the US, new links had to be built and quickly.

In April and May 1943 Bill Williams had visited North Africa to learn at first hand the problems which faced Ordnance in the three opposed landings in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. The difficulties stemmed from the invading forces needing to be able to carry out immediate repairs to equipment in the field, under fire. This meant that the right spares had to be packed, that they must be in a size of box that can readily be carried or transported up a beach under fire, that the box can be stacked so as to be accessible, that they are clearly labelled with their contents and that the contents is preserved from damage from sea water or rough handling. Spares will not be handled with care.

Armed with this feedback from users he set out for a two month long trip to the United States, the purposes of which were to build relationships with the manufactures, to see for himself US war production, to stress the importance of spare parts and to explain his new proposals for the packing and preservation of stores. His PA prepared a full report of his visit and it is possible to read between the lines. The British were regarded as brave but possibly second class when compared to the much better organised and equipped US Army. Bill was, by his own admission, overawed by the US: New York was quite simply unlike anything he had ever seen. Nevertheless, he was not to be outdone and his tour showed a man genuinely interested in what he saw and keen to learn. Subsequent visits would see him giving very much as good as he got.

He visited Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Firestone and many other manufacturers as well as the massive US Ordnance Depots. He watched tanks on production lines and in tests. Henry Ford had been a pacifist but joined in the war effort with great energy once the USA joined the Allies. The first priority for Ford was Fordson tractors to address food shortages. 

The San Francisco News reported of Bill that , ‘he left North Africa six weeks ago, having gone there to get what he calls “the customer viewpoint” about how the equipment is proving out under actual campaign conditions’. They quoted him as saying of the Allied victory in North Africa, “a magnificent example of United States, British and French co-operation and a tribute to American equipment.” He singled out the Sherman Tank and the Jeep, “especially when driven by a WAAC, but who doesn’t!” The Los Angles Examiner put it even more strongly, “American made weapons played the major role in the Allied victory in North Africa. General Sherman tanks are the best in the world. They completely smashed Rommel’s panzer divisions.” 

WW1 Tanks and the RAOC nickname

Men of the Army Ordnance Corps had the nickname of 'blanket stackers' in WW1. In WW2 this changed to the Rag And Oil Company.

The reason may be serendipitous.

The Autocar magazine of 16 June 1944 reported on an invasion-eve visit to an RAOC vehicle reserve depot where transport was massed for the assault on France. The article began though with a piece of serendipitous history connected with Woolwich but referring to Chilwell.

'One afternoon in 1921, a number of Mark IV and Mark V tanks, which a few years previously had rumbled over the battlefields of Flanders, were delivered at Woolwich Arsenal, the peacetime depot of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. These tanks were obsolete and clumsy, yet their arrival at Woolwich represented a milestone in the history of the RAOC. It marked the point at which the Corps, not previously concerned with the supply of motor vehicles to the Army, began to set up which is now the greatest distributive system the motor trade of Europe has ever seen or is likely to see.'

Shropshire Star - beginnings of 'Dump' COD Donnington

COD Donnington played an astonishingly important role in WW2. At one time there were 20,000 soldiers, ATS, civilians and PoWs working on site. It must have truly astonishing.

Quite a number of local people have told me their stories and many of these are in the book, giving it a flavour of those remarkable times.

Toby Neal has written this review of the book

The First Tank in action 15 September 1916

I wonder if he saw it?

Bill Williams, my Dad. He was Ordnance Officer to the 19th Division which saw action on the Somme.

If not 100 years ago today, then certainly later he would have seen these beast in action. It must have influenced his thinking on army mechanisation when he set up Chilwell in 1935 and persuaded the powers than be that all types of vehicle, including tanks, should come within its remit.

Our debt of gratitude to the British Motor Industry in WW2

The History Press has published on their website an article I wrote on the British Motor Industry's contribution in WW2 in which Coventry played a major part.

The more I think about it, the more open mouthed I become.

These companies made motor vehicles; they made guns, jerrycans, tin helmets. They made aircraft. The story of the Stirling Bomber, the MacRobert's Reply, which I have written with Phil Jeffs for Story Terrace, has centre stage a Stirling Bomber made by Austin.

The motor industry in the 1930s had been exciting, but far from secure. The Rootes brothers saved Humber and Hillman by buying them.

I am struck by the contrast with the American motor companies where Ford, for example, was turning out massive numbers of vehicles using the techniques of mass production.

Rolls Royce built Merlin engines by hand.

Pictures from the Chilwell depot show similar hand techniques.

With so many men joining the armed forces, many women joined the industry and worked to great effect under the careful eye of those men too old to be call up.

The result was phenomenal. We owe a huge debt of gratitude.

Voices of the time

Part of the joy of writing War on Wheels was to pick up on voices from the period. Here is an extract from the Sunday Pictorial, a popular magazine of the time.

'By 1944 there were established ATS units at most depots and the women themselves had become fully skilled at the tasks they undertook.

'They are dressed in grubby fatigue suits - boiler suits more or less to you - with an old piece of rag to tie up their hair.

'Like twenty-year old Beryl Barnes, for instance. People in Rainham, Essex, probably know her by sound. She used to say, “number please?”, at the end of their telephones.

'Until her particular Second Front started at this depot, which nourishes our armies in the field with nuts and bolts, Beryl was a clerk in the office. She used to watch the trains load and unload, rather bored with the whole thing, if the truth be told.

'Then her Second Front started. “May I leave the office?” asked Beryl. “I would like to work out there.” Perhaps the fact that she’s engaged to an officer in the Sherwood Foresters had something to do with it.

'I know it did in Doris Atkinson’s case. This twenty-two year-old ATS wife from West Mailing is married to a Marine who fought at Narvick, Matapan and Crete.

'Yes, these are men and women we tend to forget. But when the historical moment arrives when we set foot on the first stage of the march to Berlin, I suggest you remember this. Remember that without the sweat and toil of thousands of unsung heroes like them your son and husband would have nothing to fight with. Their private Second Front is almost over. They can do no more.

Pre-publication copy

There is something very exciting about seeing your book 'in the flesh' for the first time.

It is of course an old friend, affection being rekindled by the distance from periods of agony in its creation! I had of course seen the pdf file sent off to the printers. I had seen all the photographs. The total result though was so much better: the clarity of the images especially.

Thank you, History Press for a job well done.

There was one small glitch which has been bothering me. In the 'blurb' on the back page a couple of words have been omitted. I wrote, 'through the near disaster of the BEF, Desert War and Italian invasion, to preparations for D-Day and war in the Far East.'

The words 'the BEF' are missing from the back cover and so it reads, 'from the near disaster of the Desert War and Italian invasion...'

It made me wonder whether, from a supply point of view, the Desert War and invasion of Italy were near disasters.

Neither was perfect. The start of the desert war demonstrated all too clearly the challenges of supplying a mechanised army. The invasion of Italy showed up the drawbacks of having the place of command far removed from the action.

I don't think they were disasters.

The BEF could have been a total disaster, had it not been for Dunkirk. Yet, from a supply point of view, the vast amounts of equipment left behind certainly represented a near disaster.

Having said all this, it is all too easy to be wise after the event.

What was happening in WW2 was all a learning process. It had never been tried before. Had there not been failures, you could argue that those concerned weren't trying hard enough.

The final result though is for me the proof of the pudding as Max Hastings puts it in Overlord:

‘To almost every man of the Allied Armies, the predominant memory of the campaign, beyond the horror of battle, was the astounding efficiency of the supply services.’

Getting the right mix of people

One of the big challenges for the RAOC in WW2 was to get the right skills, and this meant looking to industry, motor manufacturers and distributors and the big retail groups. Those recruited from these companies would have to become soldiers and work alongside seasoned regulars. An regular officer later recalled the challenge.

'The climax came when I received a draft of 350 privates who were mostly ‘departmental managers’ from a vast chain store. Their Managing Director had dug himself into the War Office and was now a field officer with one month’s service. Their wives had driven to the camp in expensive limousines and parked them around the parade ground while they searched for billets….The mutterings among ex-corporals back from France became a steady rumble, especially when one private, with a foreign name, announced incautiously that he expected to be a sergeant in three day’s time…That evening I heard on the telephone the high-pitched voice of the deaf commandant, “I understand you’ve got in your company a Private X who handles a million pounds’ worth of packing a year for Fuchs and Bieber.?”

This man was found and his skills put to good use, nevertheless good management was needed to integrate these skilled men into an Army.

Brigadier de Wolff with the Queen at COD Donnington

The formation of REME

In 1942 Sir William Beveridge chaired a committee to look at making the best use of the technical skills the army had. As part of this the committee recommended that:

There should be established in the Army a Corps of Mechanical Engineers. The success of the Navy in making use of mechanical engineers is not due solely to the fact that the naval problems are simpler to those of the Army. It is due also to the fact that the Navy had had for so long an engineering branch of high authority and has had other technical branches specialised on torpedoes and electricity or ordnance. The Navy is machine minded. The Army cannot afford to be less so. The Navy sets engineers to catch, test, train and use engineers. Until the Army gives to mechanical and electrical engineers, as distinct from civil engineers, their appropriate place and influence in the Army system, such engineers are not likely to be caught, tested and trained as well as in the Navy; there is a danger that they will be missed by men who main interests and duties lie in other fields.

They proposed that the technical elements of RAOC, RASC and Royal Engineers should be combined in the newly formed REME which in future would carry out all major repair work. The RAOC would take over all vehicle and spare part provision.  The RASC would focus on its transporting activities, since, at the same time, it lost its catering activities to the newly formed Army Catering Corps.

From this recommendation REME was born and went on to work closely with the RAOC for the duration of the war.

Post script:
My researches into WW1 indicate that the AOC, as it then was, had extensive repair workshops behind the trenches dealing mainly with artillery. In the early part of WW2 the RAOC had major repair capabilities, not least in setting up the army centre of mechanisation at Chilwell.

Possible prequel to War on Wheels

A possible prequel to War on Wheels.

My father, Bill Williams who lead the mechanisation of the army in WW2, was ordnance officer to the 19th division on the Somme in WW1. He would have seen the Lincoln Tank in action, possibly images like these:

The images are taken from a weekly magazine that my grandfather collected.

Bill's friend and rival Dickie Richards commanded an ammunition train, the core means of transport.

I am researching to see what records and images exist to help tell the story of how the British Army was supplied  in WW1 and am finding some remarkable material.

The story after the Lincoln tank

My Dad was ordnance officer in the 19th division on the Somme. He would have witnessed a scene such as this

On 15 July, at Lincoln Drill Hall, I will be telling the story of how this experience influenced the mechanisation of the army in WW2

The Somme July 1916

On 7 March 1916, Lieutenant Bill Williams, as he then was, was appointed DADOS to the 19th Division.

The Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services (DADOS) had the job of insuring that the troops in the trenches were properly supplied with everything they needed to do their job apart from fuel and food: so armaments and ammunition, boots and uniforms, periscopes, bicycles, pontoon wagons. Speed was of the essence in making sure what was lost was replaced without delay.

It was a front line job, often under fire and immensely hard work. Bill received a letter from General Sir Tom Bridges, who commanded the 19th Division in the battle of the Somme. It said, 'I should like ot have seen you to thank you for the great services you rendered the division since you joined.'

The 19th Division had been held in reserve on the first day of the battle. In a Special Order of the Day dated 4 August 1916, General Bridges wrote 'I thank all ranks of the Division for the way in which during the last 10 days, they have upheld the best traditions of discipline and hard fighting. The Division leaves a name behind it in the Fourth Army which will never be forgotten.'

The experience of very much the sharp end of ordnance work would help equip Bill for the enormous task that would lay ahead for him in WW2. I tell his story and that of his colleagues in Dunkirk to D Day