A Young Officer’s Letters Home in WW2
I’ve been going through a cache of letters that my
father, Michael, wrote to his mother and father, mainly during the middle years
of WW2 (1942-3). Michael was a career army officer, in the Royal Engineers. He was
born in 1916; so was in his mid to late 20s in the early 1940s.
As will appear, Michael was keen to be “in action”,
but was frustrated in that ambition for much of the War – but not in the end.
There were vast disparities
in what being “at war” (or having lost the war, temporarily at least) meant for
different countries and peoples. Fighting on the Eastern Front, or the
Occupation in central Europe reached levels of savagery far beyond most of what
occurred in other places (I except the Far Eastern theatres).
By 1943, life in the UK was
profoundly changed by universal mobilisation of military and civilian alike.
But, outside the strategic cities and ports (the targets of bombs and rockets),
life went on in a recognisable, if austere, way, especially for those too old
or disabled to be directly subsumed in the war effort.
Such were the circumstances
of Michael’s parents in England – he now an invalid as a result of illnesses
contracted in India, and she her husband’s carer, as well as being beyond
service age.
It was not only civilians who
lived for lengthy periods in a twilight zone between peacetime and wartime.
The great military machine,
operating on many fronts, comprised, in addition to fighting troops, a vast
number of administrators and planners – the much-mocked “staff” officers. Also,
given the massive expansion of the armed forces, and the technical demands of
modern warfare, career soldiers were needed to train new recruits. These
factors combined to the paradoxical effect that many professional soldiers were
kept away from frontline duties for long periods of time.
Thus it was that Michael
spent nearly the first 4 years of WW2 either as an instructor or on the staff
of various headquarters.
His surviving letters home
start at the end of 1942, when he was posted to Algiers, the HQ of the British
Army of North Africa. At that point the allies were pressing the Germans and
Italians from East and West – the British victory at El Alamein in October 1942
leading to a rapid German retreat to Tunisia; and the successful Anglo-American
invasion of the Vichy France colonies of Morocco and Algeria creating a pincer,
which, after setbacks, resulted in the surrender of the remaining German and
Italian forces in the Spring of 1943.
Michael kicked his heels in
Algiers away from the front. At the beginning of 1943, he had seen no action –
although his voyage to Algiers had been eventful. The troopship was torpedoed.
Luckily (for most), the immediate result was a slow but fatal leak. The ship
took a long time to sink. Afterwards Michael wrote:
Even though there were casualties naturally enough, I
never considered for a minute that I should even lose my kit….I was not even on
deck when the back etc bent away and the ship was listing, as I was taking my
time in the cabin finding my fountain pen and other knickknacks. The only time
I felt like hurrying was when I went down about an hour later to find an
unsoiled lavatory [and a fire broke
out]… but the nature of things at that
moment precluded hurrying so that was that. But I can’t say that I got on deck
too soon after that as we left fairly hurriedly as the fire spread
rapidly.
Life was one of office
boredom and a few diversions: Some lovely
bathing recently…….Went to a party..The local French female population. Dancing
etc. Ended at 3am. Quite amusing again and good for the French. (Possibly
some unspoken news there.)… Typical C of
E service – very very slow, not very uplifting but quite amusing. I shall go
again.
Our daily routine…Breakfast at 8.29 ¾. The mess [army dining room]
shuts at 8.30 when they don’t serve anybody. This consists of semolina or
something very like it called “cereal”, pancakes, treacle & bacon! Or bacon
and eggs (we have these alternately – one gets very tired of the pancakes),
bread, jam & coffee. Lunch at 12.15. Soup, spam & vegetables, tinned
fruit & coffee and high tea at 6.15 – meat & vegetables, tinned fruit,
red wine & tea which tastes horrid. No tea in the afternoon unfortunately.
It is all American army food & hence the odd times.
He became increasingly
frustrated with life on the Staff. Then, in August 1943:
I am at last off as a squadron commander in 7th
Armoured Division. I leave as soon as possible, as soon as I can get some means
of getting to where it is. I had been on the point of joining the Airborne
Division…I had been accepted in an interview and was all set to go.
This was after the allied
invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and just before the invasion of Italy in
September, in which Michael participated:
..this is what I have waited about four years for and I shall make the
best of it.
He was an engineer officer,
in charge of clearing mines and rebuilding numerous bridges:
The Germans have been surpassing themselves with
endless well executed demolitions which take a bit of getting over..
He did not lack for self
confidence (aged now 27):
[There are] a lot of technical difficulties which I
find despite everything that I can always solve the best.
His letters imply that he was
pretty fearless (or perhaps just brave – see later, in Palestine). He was cool
in appreciating the risks to himself and his troops (not too great, most of the
time).
He does not dwell much, in
these letters to his parents, on unpleasantness and death, although there is
mention of the deaths or capture of family acquaintances. But when he gets to
Italy, and sees the villages and towns fought over and liberated, he is clearly
shocked by the destruction, and the poverty – The Germans have not been behaving very well… I am not sceptical of the
atrocity stories any more.
Amongst all the grand dramas
and tragedies of war, there was also domestic sorrow. Michael’s father was
chronically unwell. His letters, although addressed to both parents were
clearly mainly read only by his mother, as they often contained resigned
comments about his father:
I am sorry to hear Daddy’s graph is still very wavy
with ups and downs..
In October 1943 his father
died, aged 62. Michael’s response is pretty low key (given the long illness;
and perhaps in wartime any death is not so much the hard hitting event of
peacetime):
Poor old Daddy. You say that he had a sad life. I very
much hope he didn’t and I wonder if he would have agreed. I feel that the only
thing that has always been a bit difficult is that like many other families
with India ties we never really got over a slight barrier because of his never
being much at home.
(This, I know, somewhat
understates family history. Michael had been shipped back “Home” at a very
tender age, to the care of aunts, and was in boarding school by the age of
seven.)
The wartime letters in my
possession go up to the end of 1943. In 1944, Michael was posted back to
England, first as an instructor, and then once more as an engineer officer in
the allied advance on Germany after D-day in June 1944. He helped bridge the
Rhine when the northern armies assaulted it in March 1945.
The final memento of the
1940s is from Palestine. Michael was posted there as the British Mandate (from
the 1920s) drew to a close and the first bloody conflict between Jews and Arabs
drew closer. The British, in the middle, were subjected to a
guerrilla/terrorist campaign (take your pick of terms) by armed Jewish groups,
including assassinations and bombings.
One bombing attempt was
against a radar station (used to track ships bringing in unauthorised Jewish
immigrants). Michael later wrote an account (anonymising his role) for an army
journal, describing how an “officer” managed to defuse the five times booby-trapped
bomb.
So far, so much in the line
of dangerous duty. But what occurred next was rather remarkable. The commander
of the Jewish “active service unit” (to use the IRA’s term) wrote anonymously
to the British authorities:
January 28th 1946
Sir,
I wish to express my genuine appreciation of the brave
man who with great danger to his life dismantled the explosive charge placed by
my men at the Radar Station. Disregarding the fact that we missed our goal ie
blowing up the Radar Station, I am happy that our telephone call spared the
lives of brave and innocent men. Circumstances may render our struggle still
fiercer, for there is no choice on our part, and we have to fight it
out.
We shall not always be able to send our warning in
time, and thus there may be innocent victims. But it is, and always will be,
our firm intention to spare human lives. If human lives are lost in this
fateful struggle of our people, we shall feel deep regret for those victims,
whoever they be, your men or ours.
COMMANDER,
JEWISH RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
(in this case, the Haganah,
which later formed the core of the Israeli army)
The letter, or a copy of it,
was preserved among Michael’s papers. One view of the matter is that he was
moved by it, and recognised in the Other a sense of honour and decency – both
of which virtues he himself possessed in abundance.
However, the letter could be
viewed in a more sinister light. In his later account of the incident, Michael
notes that the primary timed fuse on the bomb had proved to be a dud. Only
after the fuse failed was the warning call, giving “30 minutes” notice made.
Michael implies that the bombers’ intention was to panic the radar crew into
trying to move the bomb before the fictitious 30 minutes expired, thereby
detonating the booby traps and the bomb itself, with inevitable casualties.
If Michael has told the story
accurately, the letter is an exercise in hypocrisy, as the warning was designed
to have precisely the opposite effect of saving “innocent lives” (and the
primary fuse, had it worked, would have detonated the bomb without any
warning). But perhaps there remains, on any view, a genuine appreciation of
Michael’s coolness and bravery.
Sept 2016.
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