Undesirable Reporting

I've started following @ukwarcabinet on Twitter; it posts a short summary of Churchill's meetings with his ministers, in a kind of realtime format but sixty years ago. It works as a handy reminder that whatever mess you think you're in, there've been worse, and in living memory.
You can click through and download the full document from the archive, free and gratis. Halfway down this week in 1940 we find this note:

6. The Minister of Information said that he was investigating
the circumstances in which a false report had been allowed to appear
in some of the earlier editions of that morning's newspapers stating
that five divisions of troops were said to be massed on the French
beaches opposite the south-east coast, ready to embark for an
attempted invasion and that they had been bombed by the R.A.F.
It was agreed that it was very undesirable that rumours of this
kind should be published.

I love the understatement. Lots more like this available from the National Archives.

On the Beaches

From France230509

To Dunkirk to retrace the steps of the doomed British Expeditionary Force almost exactly sixty five years earlier. And to buy wine, oh definitely to buy wine. That's one of the great things about France, the way they sell alcohol there. They let you taste it first. How civilised is that? We bought quite a lot in a cellar in Boulogne then drove up to the Dunkirk area for a night in neighbouring Gravelines.

I kept thinking about the young men who found themselves defeated and exhausted here at the end of a tumultous May in 1940. And of the poor civilians who remained in the town, which was razed to the ground. We wandered around the museum then along the seafront. Could it really be here that a desperate beach commander had driven lorries into the sea to create a makeshift pier for his men to walk along? Among them Ms T's Grandad.

Then driving out across the flat canal filled land at the back of the town where hundreds of French and Allied soldiers laid down their lives in a bitter unequal defence against the Panzer units so as to let their mates escape; people tend to forget that bit. Could all this have happened in this green and tranquil landscape? That's the power of northern France to me, the knowledge of massive sacrifices amid the mundane beauty.

My Favourite General

In between long stressful shifts on the newsdesk and cooling swims in the pool I'm spending time reading up about one of this country's best army commanders, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and having a number of long held assumptions gathered from films etc shattered in the process.

Teetotal Monty was at his best when he did all his planning and went to bed early. He had made his dispositions, was comfortable that he had done so to to the best of his considerable ability, and appeared to sleep well - even though people would be killed the following day.

Monty was at his worst when like many celebrities, he began to believe in his own PR. He was good but not infallible. After he started to believe totally in his infallibility along came the dreadful adventure at Arnhem. Part of the problem was he couldn't admit that plans had to change when new circumstances came along unexpectedly.

Monty had no sense of 'otherness' to his troops. He had a system of Liason Officers who travelled everywhere, quizzed everyone, then reported directly to him about what was going on to the point where he was better informed than every other commander. He toured the lines, addressed all ranks from the top of his car and told them what he was doing; explaining to troops personally what his objectives were and what was expected of them.

In return he appeared to be bothered about their welfare, their food, their clothing and appeared to recognise how much the average infantryman cared about his own survival. They responded to him and he got the best out of them - even though they were a long way from home, poorly equipped when compared to the Wermacht and sometimes weren't even from his own country; he often found himself leading Poles, French and even Americans when there was a failure of leadership post D-Day.

My Dad, a corporal in WWII saw Monty on at least one occasion. This was a period when the majority of commanders were generally well behind the lines and within reach of a bar and a decent golf course. He broke the mould and brought himself and us victory in the process.