Operation Market Garden 17 September 1944

Seventy six years ago the largest ever airborne operation was gathering at RAF Barkston Heath in Lincolnshire.

Amongst those who would take off for Arnhem were men of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, some of whom formed the Ordnance Field Park Recce Party whose job it was to seek out large garages and commandeer suitable vehicles to help transport the troops from the drop points. It was a group of seven men, including Private Ted Mordecai who wrote a gripping account of the five days he spent face to face with the enemy.

The beginning was unexceptional. The Dutch civilians, all wearing Marigolds,  welcomed the soldiers as saviours. A small village pub offered beer which they had been told to refuse. Local people gave them cups of ersatz coffee.

With the news that the battalion ahead of them was encountering tough opposition, they were ordered to press forward at all speed. Further orders came that their intended role had been shelved and they were to take an active part in securing the bridge across the river.

Ted's words paint the picture better than mine ever could:

"As we moved up the road parallel to the river we could see the span bridge outlined against flashes of gunfire against the sky. At the same time the Germans on the other side of the river were concentrating all their fire in our direction and at the bridge...the sound of shot and shell was deafening, but we inched our way forward up to the bridge..."

They successfully occupied a house within reach of the bridge. It was 2000 hours on 17 September.

The tough tasks of some of the women of WWII

I want to hear from any ATS, soldier or civilian who worked at RAOC depots in WWII.
Here are the links to pieces in the Bicester Advertiser, the  Shropshire Star, the Nottingham Evening Post , the Ealing Times, the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Melton Times

ATS leaving Hillsea

COD Donnington

I have written, in War on Wheels, the story of a quiet revolution which transformed a vital part of the British Army. During the interwar years it had been made moribund by cautious civil servants and dithering politicians. It became the muscular artery which ensured that the troops landing on D Day had all they needed to do their job.

The organisation was the Royal Army Ordnance Corps whose job it was to supply the Army with all it needed, apart from food and fuel.

The story begins with a massive leap forward from the trenches of the First World War to the motorised world of the 1930’s, a time when companies like Ford, Austin, Hillman and Vauxhall were transforming people’s lives and the economies of towns like Coventry, Luton, Dagenham and Cowley where their factories were located. 

It continues through the stuttering attempt to make real the benefits of mechanisation in the British Expeditionary Force which crossed the channel in support of France but was miraculous rescued by the armada of small ships from the beaches of Dunkirk. 

Dunkirk is where the story of Donnington really begins. From the declaration of war Whitehall had paid lip service to the need to relocate the great arsenal from Woolwich in east London to a place safe from German bombers. So there was a plan, there were contractors, but progress was painfully slow. This was until they began to load railway trucks at Woolwich.

There were to be three vast sheds at Donnington, but in June 1940 only one was near completion and even then lacked the vital overhead crane and lighting! No 2 shed’s floor was still being concreted as the trucks started to arrive. The 1500 houses that would be needed for civilian staff was still in a civil servant’s in-tray. 

Unloading 500 railway trucks in 48 hours was its baptism of fire for Central Ordnance Depot Donnington. The story goes that everyone from the Brigadier downwards took off jacket and rolled up sleeves to clear the railway lines that had become jammed with the Woolwich trucks and the Dunkirk evacuation.

Donnington in the Shropshire countryside had been chosen by the War office as the perfect site for an armaments

depot, exactly the opposite of the depot it was to replace. There were problems. Far from vulnerable conurbations might mean safety from bombing, but it also meant distance from a work force. Hence the need for housing, but that would take time and time was one thing they didn’t have. They say good comes out of bad. One result of the Dunkirk evacuation was that there was no shortage of troops in England and so sufficient numbers were soon drafted into Doddington but to a life under canvas until Nissen huts could be erected, a low priority given the need safely to store what little ammunition there was that hadn’t been left behind in France.

That was the beginning. Under the command of Brigadier de Wolff (‘Wolffy) Donnington grew into a huge depot employing some 15,000 soldiers, 3,200 ATS, 2,000 Italian prisoners of war and 4,000 civilians. It was state of the art and hugely effective in doing it job. It suppled many tanks to Russia. It had some of the first mobile radar. de Wolff had reputation for discipline and he used this well as he blended together the essential business skills of warehousing and distribution with soldiering. An Ordnance depot must have been like a vast ‘Amazon’ distribution warehouse but without computers. Delivery wouldn't be by courier who’d leave card if the customer was out; it was by soldiers often under fire and always under pressure. The King and Queen visited in June 1942.

COD Derby

The Derby Evening Telegraph reported on 31 July 1943 how, in the run up to D Day, Derby school children packed stores which would be landed with the troops on the Normandy beaches. The children were volunteering to help the Royal Army Ordnance Corps with the huge task it was given to pack some 375 million items ready for the invasion. It wasn't only children, but all sorts of volunteer groups.

Turning to the central ordnance depot, I found a daily news sheet first published on 4th October 1943 to give soldiers, ATS and civilians at the Derby RAOC sites news of the war, topics about the depot and forthcoming entertainment, sport and recreation. Just a few examples paint a picture. 

Operation Market Garden, the Arnhem mission, is described day by day without any hype and not hiding the terrible losses. An earlier edition had piece about gaskets and how they have to be handled carefully (later there is a piece telling how, in view of shortages, some gaskets were being made from wrapping paper.) On the subject of paper a new recruit is quoted as asking why there is so much paperwork - the answer, ‘it’s all about checking; if everyone took more care it wouldn’t be needed!’ Entertainments were the expected round of films and dances, but interestingly also discussion groups - on 20 October 1943 one on science and religion. 

Also from COD Derby is a thick book setting out the system and organisation of the depot. Here the reason for all the paperwork becomes clear. Supplies come in from manufacturers (who need paying) but also USA and Canada. The depot needs to be able to predict usage of individual items so that re-ordering can be done before the stock runs out and without excessive stock being held. All this without computers. It must have been like some sort of Amazon warehouse, but seventy years earlier. The depot produced a wonderful little book entitled ‘Good Storekeeping’, all aimed at accuracy and methodical working. 

COD Chilwell

‘A square mile of junk, weeds, railway lines’ was what we might have seen when Brigadier Williams  visited Chilwell one cold November day in 1934; what he saw was the site for the ‘finest depot for the mechanisation of the Army in the world’. Chilwell had been a major Ordnance factory until partially destroyed by an explosion in 1918. It had lain empty since 1926. There was much work to be done. F Perks & Son of Long Eaton did much of this. 

Armies of the 1930’s had to be mobile. Brigadier Williams saw Chilwell as the  place where he could develop an entirely new organisation which would become the blueprint for many other depots and where he could assemble and train regular officers and men to go anywhere in the world where they were needed to open up overseas bases.

A whole new way of doing things was needed. Brigadier Williams picked the brains of the then blossoming motor industry and recruited some of their most able managers. There was a joke at Chilwell that it had become The Rootes Rifles or Lucas Light Infantry. I have read of a coach trip from Chilwell to Fort Dunlop in Birmingham (followed by a night out listening to Larry Adler!). There must have been more. 

There were many visits to Chilwell. Photographs record the Duke of Kent and Captain Margesson, the War Minister. The head of the American Ordnance came, as did General Horrocks. Motor companies came including Commer Cars and Solex Carburettors. 

At Chilwell men and women worked side by side, as did soldiers and civilians. I have read that, at least to begin with, ATS women had the job of delivering lorries, but without windscreens and so a very cold job. Also I have read of an argument about whether ATS could wear trousers (skirts weren’t a good idea when climbing up into a lorry!)

More to come....

The waste of war

My father fought in both world wars; he was sixty when I was born. I have been reading through the scrap books my mother kept when she was his PA and have found some wonderful material painting a vivid picture of that time. 

One particular piece was the text of a speech my father delivered in Halifax in Salute the Soldier Week seeking to encourage more people to put their money in National Savings in order to help meet the ever increasing monetary cost of the war. One sentence in this speech struck me very hard and it was this:

‘War in itself is essentially wasteful and if we are to be victorious we must waste more than the enemy. This is the cost of war.’

My father’s role was to supply the troops with all they needed and so this seems all the more odd; a grim acceptance of a reality.

My father spoke very little about his experiences in the Great War although I recall him saying that in the horror of the Somme quite by chance he met up with his brother. My father was a young officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and my uncle in the Royal Engineers. I wonder what they may have said to each other? Their father had died in 1906 and their mother was alone in England working as a housekeeper at the Conservative Club in St James’ Street, London. 

I remember my uncle telling me with incredulity how on that 4th of August 1914 he and very many other young men had rejoiced in the streets at the prospect of standing up for King and country. The Somme campaign was some two years later. The two Williams boys, as their mother still regarded them, were certainly no longer boys. They had witnessed barbarism on a monumental scale. So, would the conversation have been about the horrors, or, perhaps, on an altogether more banal level. Concern for mother and how she must be worrying, but then perhaps the conversation that any two brothers might have, the telling of stories, a joke or two, then a glass or two. It can only be conjecture. What it tells me though is that during all the horror, somehow life did go on. People thought ordinary thoughts, did ordinary things, had ordinary conversations. 

Yet some things stick. I know my father had nightmares right up until his death. I can’t help feeling that the inherent wastefulness of men and material must have struck him hard in the trenches and then followed him as he strove to do his job and so work for victory against Nazism, but always in the knowledge of the awful waste this entailed.

Some more forgotten men and women of WWII

Earlier this month as the world marked the 70th anniversary of D Day we saw with great admiration veterans of operation Overlord and the battle for France that followed. I watched my TV impressed by the story that the sons of the inventors of the Mulberry Harbour had to tell. I then pondered the simple question of how on earth did all that equipment get to France in the right quantities and when it was needed.

To begin to answer the question, I dusted off the first volume of the scrap book my mother kept of my father's war. He had headed that part of the army (The Royal Army Ordnance Corps, R.A.O.C.) responsible for the task of getting what was needed to the right place at the right time. The book was a treasure trove of press cuttings, speeches, photographs and oddments like the guest lists from formal dinners (formal dinners in wartime?). The content took me wholly by surprise: the scale was far greater than I had ever imagined: so many people, so much organisation and planning, such imagination and creativity, such drive.

This is a story that needs to be told to do justice to those tens of thousands of soldiers, ATS and civilians who worked their socks off to make sure the 'front line' soldiers were properly equipped. I have put 'front line' in inverted commas, since many Ordnance soldiers were very much front line. But it is more than just them, it is about how the skills of so many parts of the world of work were drawn together in this 'great enterprise'. The inverted commas this time come from seeing how my father, and I suspect many others, possibly quite unconsciously used Churchillian idioms when speaking. 

It was the most extraordinary period in the history of these islands (there, I am doing it too!). I have now begun to research the Corps' own records and the story just becomes richer. I plan to try to find some of those who were part of the R.A.O.C. and have their story to tell. 

I plan to write blogs as I progress the project and look forward to any feedback.

Ashley Jackson's Very Short Introduction to the British Empire

Ashley Jackson's Very Short Introduction to the British Empire

This book sets out to answer questions without bias since this subject attracts strong views on both sides. One point he seems to miss early on is just why the British sought to impose their ideas on the peoples they governed. 

Let us suppose that I have a better way of thinking that you have. Common sense would suggest that I keep my secret to superiority rather than share it. The British thought their way was better but then went on to try to share it with most of the world's population. 

I suggest that this was central to the 19th century view that people could be improved and so be more likely to be among the saved of God. It is a mindset we can no longer readily grasp but I think it unlocks some of 19th century thought 

Fighter Boys - The Battle of Britain, 1940 - Patrick Bishop

Why read a book such as this, unless you are flying mad? Well, it's not about flying. There are many flying scenes and the course of the battle is mapped in impeccable detail. The book is about young men and women caught up in a maelstrom.
It is clear from a variety of sources that Hitler both expected a peaceful relationship with Great Britain and wished for one. It was with this in mind that he pressed his attack against the RAF; if it collapsed there would be no need for an invasion. Bishop makes it clear that Hitler's big mistake was switching the battle away from the aerodromes to the civilian population. This was in retaliation for Churchill's decision to bomb Berlin, in turn in retaliation for bombs dropped on London in terrible error. It gave the RAF vital space to draw breath and to be effective in its destruction of the day bombing raids.
The book though is about people. Bishop paints a an utterly human picture with extracts from letters and diaries and interviews with survivors. He traces the shift of mood from almost schoolboy joy at flying, through a conscious light hearted approach to daily event of death, to the raw pain of hate, loss, injury and love.

Churchill's Hours by Michael Dobbs

The focus of this final part of the trilogy is on the USA before Pearl Harbour. Churchill recognised that the only way Hitler could be defeated was by engaging the power of the United States.
All the time British servicemen were fighting, but it seems without a strategy for victory and with the single objective of hanging on until the USA saw the inevitability of the war engulfing them.
Dobbs tells well the pain and cost in human terms of this hanging on. He draws us toward Churchill so that we can see the war from his perspective. This is not the same as Churchill himself might have written, we don't look through his eyes; our eyes are placed next to his.
How I wish Dobbs would write more.

Never Surrender Michael Dobbs

Those of us born after the end of WWII have no idea just how close we were to losing, especially in the early weeks and months. Michael Dobbs captures this perfectly interweaving the capricious US Ambassador, the too clever politicians and the ordinary men who just got on with the job with the astonishing mix that was Winston Churchill. I found it compelling reading for the subject matter but also for the pace and depth of character which Dobbs gives to his readers.
There is a scene of the greatest possible depth on the beach at Dunkirk where the father of one of the main characters has gone over with one of the little boats; he is a priest who has lost his way. He finds it in the need for spiritual support that shouts out from the thousands of stranded soldiers. It is Sunday and he begins to say prayers and lead hymns at the behest of those around him. 'Can we take Communion' one of them asked. Henry Chichester at first objected that he had no bread or wine, but then hunted round for what there was: cognac and chocolate. He rediscovered his faith by seeing the faith others placed in him.

Winston's War by Michael Dobbs

I came to this book about the run up to the first major engagement in WWII with two TV programmes echoing in my mind: The Wilderness Years by Ferdinand Fairfax and The Gathering Storm by Hugh Whitemore. These excellent films take as read that Churchill is the hero. Michael Dobbs is more circumspect. In his epilogue he offers his own view on the vital role played by Churchill, but his fiction allows the reader to ask the questions that Chamberlain must have asked over and over. Was Churchill a war monger; was there even at the final hour a peaceful alternative? Dobbs takes his reader through the politics. A country with a frail economy and growing unemployment needed peace and trade; it got war. Dobbs allows five or so plots to run side by side, and this allows the reader to see the action from a number of different points of view. The stories are fully written; there is a good deal of content in this book. What is so clever is that, whilst we know how it ends, we cannot see how that end will be reached until very near the end.