August 13, 2013

Finest Hour 125, Winter 2004-05

Page 22

ROAD TO VICTORY: OBSERVATIONS

“Trip of a Lifetime”

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By Michael V. Echman
Maps By Sir Martin Gilbert CBE

Mr. Eckman is a retired actuary and a founding member of The Churchill Centre. His 15,000-word diary, from which this report is distilled, is available from the author at [email protected]. Sir Martin Gilbert’s maps are reprinted with his kind permission.


When I learned that the 2004 International Churchill Conference was to be in Portsmouth, England with an option to follow the “Road to Victory,” I was hooked. The chance to see Normandy, the Ardennes and Berlin was too good to pass up. Once I made it clear that I was going, my wife Colleen decided to go also. We added three days in London at the beginning of the trip and opted for an extra day in Berlin at the end.

The conference’s first two days were divided between talks and local trips. The speakers were great as usual, the liveliest being the veterans. Although they talked about a serious subject, D-Day, they all admitted that humor was required to get through the war and interjected some in their presentations. Geoff Barkway’s description of flying his glider in the dark to take Pegasus Bridge kept us enthralled. Landing under water, he decided “there wasn’t much future in that,” and got out quickly. His story demonstrated the extent of his training and the thin line between success and failure.

Safely ashore, Geoff found a Resistance family hiding in a basement, suspecting the “invasion” to be a Nazi trap. When one of the airborne troops tripped over an obstacle and swore, they decided it was safe to come out, because “Only a British soldier would use language like that.” Geoff heard that Polish prisoners arrived the morning after the landing to install stakes as obstacles to glider landings. The British told them they were too late, but the Poles insisted on finishing the project because “If we do not we will be shot.”

Milnor Roberts reported that he too was in the glider force for a while but determined that “gliders are a lose-lose situation.” He landed on the beach and did not inflate his life belt, as he saw that other top-heavy soldiers who did so flipped over.

David and Charles Ramsay reviewed the contribution of their father as commander of OPERATION NEPTUNE. Admiral Ramsay had also run the Dunkirk evacuation—some switch! Like Churchill, he had spent some time out of favor, and was not in fact restored to the active list until 1944. His organizational skills and ability to delegate made him effective in both the improvised evacuation and the extensively planned invasion. David noted that the Battle of Jutland involved 240 ships, while D-Day involved 5,000. Ramsay had to contend with tides, weather, and German opposition, none of which were present in the TORCH landings in Africa.

Admiral Ramsay died in an aircraft accident near the end of the war. Charles closed with the sad commentary that his father received awards from France, the U.S, and Russia, but not from Britain.

On 25 September the professional educators took over. Professor David Stafford reviewed the efforts of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Thanks to Marks & Spencer, SOE had offices in Baker Street and were known as the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI). Like Sherlock Holmes’s BSI, SOE probably could “go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone.”

Churchill, Stafford said, viewed Hitler as one in a long line of European tyrants who would be overthrown by the people, and had faith that guerrillas could be neither caught nor defeated. Britain supported guerrilla activity by air drops. John Keegan has criticized the effectiveness of these activities, citing the sad outcome of the Warsaw uprising as a failure (see page 7). SOE was not involved in Warsaw; alas, Stafford noted, the agency “made enemies in torpid bureaucracies.”

Professor David Reynolds was given an introduction including doctored photographs that seemed to show him with Churchill at all stages of the war—a continuation of a ribbing that began last year in Bermuda. Citing the PM’s belief in and desire for popular uprisings, Reynolds stated that as early as December 1941 Churchill foresaw landings at suitable beaches—not ports—to encourage guerrilla activity. In February 1944, WSC suggested that OVERLORD include an infusion of forces after the landings to help with any uprisings.

Churchill was cautious about direct frontal assaults and wanted to attack the soft (in a political sense) underbelly of Europe to gain bases from which to bomb Germany. Hitler clearly recognized his vulnerability to attack from this direction and defended it, denying the gateway Churchill wanted to Greece and Turkey.

Lord Bramall noted that without the Allied success in Normandy, Hitler would have been able to stabilize the Eastern front, to perfect and to multiply the V weapons, and gain time to develop an atomic bomb. Compared to the first day of the Somme in World War I, with its 60,000 British deaths and little gain, the 10,000 casualties of Overlord look small, especially given the resulting beachhead. Churchill could rightly claim responsibility for a large share of the success as he pushed “Europe First” and argued for 1944 as a reasonable date for the invasion.

Lord Bramall considers Montgomery (“none dare speak his name”) a leader instrumental to the success of OVERLORD. Despite the arguments about his personality and the quality of his memoirs, Monty possessed confidence and the ability to convince others that the operation would work. All of the speakers were willing to admit that Montgomery was difficult, but Lord Bramall underscored his tactical genius in putting the invasion plans together. It is true that Monty thought a lot of himself. People were warned that if asked by the Field Marshal, “Have we met before?,” the proper answer was “yes” or “no” but never “I can’t remember.”

The exhibits in the D-Day museum focus on Portsmouth’s role in the invasion and the civilian’s lot during the war. The film did not really give sufficient background, so that someone not familiar with OVERLORD would not learn much. An impressive tapestry modeled after the one in Bayeux showed the development, execution, and aftermath of the invasion.

We were entranced by the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship, built starting 1509, rebuilt in 1536, sunk with most of her crew in view of the King during an engagement with the French just three miles out of Portsmouth Harbour. The hull, raised in 1982, is being preserved with polyethylene glycol, which will allow it to be displayed in open air. The spraying lasts until 2009; today one views it through glass and spray, rather like looking out your window at something in a rainstorm.

Aboard Nelson’s HMS Victory, we were careful not to bump the low ceilings. Our dining venue was HMS Warrior, the first ironclad, which looks like a larger version of the Victory (and has higher ceilings). Like the crew, we dined between guns, but had a better meal. The guns, we were told, had never been fired in anger.

Before dinner actor Robert Hardy, a CC honorary member who has brilliantly portrayed Churchill, spoke about his connection to the Mary Rose. An expert on the long bow, he was called in to help with the analysis of bows taken from the wreck. He was surprised at the strength of the bows, finding them very powerful, defying conventional wisdom.

On Sunday we heard from more veterans. Jack Cross joined the Royal Marines at age 18 and was sent to the Welsh mountains to study rope handling and semaphore signaling. On D-Day he commanded a Landing Craft Mechanical (LCM) transferring cargo from ship to shore. As the harbor facilities improved, this service ceased and he was transferred to the Far East.

Frank Rosier landed on Gold Beach, was wounded at Le Havre, and spent four years in a hospital. When the battleships fired their big guns in support of the landing, he recalled, “the sea went flat.” After a Bangalore torpedo blew a hole in the barbed wire, he took off running. He is sure that “I hold the record for the 100 meters.”

Lady Soames’s “war story” covered the time she (then Mary Churchill) spent with her father at the Potsdam conference and the 1945 election. She read from the letters that she sent at the time and apologized that the events and feelings she wrote of seem trivial in the light of the historic events that took place. The memories, however, presented a human element and somewhat of a return to normalcy.

It took three weeks to count the votes, so her father spent time on a family holiday. Clementine went to open Chartwell, since win or lose, they would return there. After returning to England for the election results and receiving the bad news, Mary realized she had left a suitcase behind in Potsdam and Lord Moran had left his golf clubs. It seems that they were sure of victory and a return to the conference.

On the 26th we ferried to Caen. After visiting many battlefields I expect to be impressed with their size, but I am always surprised: the field and the characteristics of the terrain never appear as they seem in books. The concrete casements are larger and more solid; one was at an angle because a naval shell had landed next to it and shifted it. Given the bulk of the casement, I gained a new appreciation for the power of a shell.

At Pegasus Bridge three gliders landed on target and the bridge was taken. I bought coffee and postcards at a café extant in 1944, which had housed members of the Resistance. The canal has been widened and the bridge replaced; it is like the original although longer and wider. We could see the maternity hospital where German snipers hid, killing many until the British fired on the hospital with a captured gun.

The Commonwealth cemetery we visited September 28th is laid out like an English garden. This one contained all of those who died in the Bayeux hospital, including Poles, Indians, and about 400 German POWs. The British headstones are made from the same stone used in Westminster. The cemetery is well maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and there is a convenient directory to assist in finding graves. Many stones are marked as “Known Unto God.” Families may add their own inscriptions. One of the shorter ones was, “Someday we may understand.”

Our guide took us for a walk of the terrain and recounted the story of an attack on a German machine gun. We retraced the attack up a narrow path and wondered how anyone could have survived. Another German battery was designed by the navy, with clear sight lines to the sea. It is amazing that the concrete is still in place after heavy bombing and the passage of six decades. One collapsed casement was caused by a RAF pilot who entered to see damage the planes had done. He walked in with a lit cigarette, not knowing that the Germans had stored their powder in the casement and much of it was spilled on the floor. The cigarette ignited the powder and did more damage to it (and the pilot) than the air attack.

At Omaha beach the bus traveled to the airborne landing areas, its video playing “Band of Brothers,” which gave some idea of what it was like to be flown into an area at night, flak exploding, and to jump into the unknown. At some places where the 82nd and 101st Airborne landed, a sign indicated the water level on 5-6 June was over a man’s head; the Germans had flooded the area.

There were memorials in the field and a statue of Iron Mike, a tough looking paratrooper patterned after St. Michael, patron of paratroopers. Coincidentally, September 29th was the Feast of St. Michael.

Utah Beach looked relatively “do-able” compared to Omaha, which just looked plain scary. There troops had landed at a distance of 300 meters, facing cliffs. It is a wonder that the beach was taken. The landing craft should have come in closer. Without the support of armor, the infantry had a difficult time. This has been dramatized in “Saving Private Ryan” and those scenes were shown to us on the bus. We saw the area where the assault dramatized in the film took place. It was moving to stand on the beach, face the cliffs, and see the concrete casements that contained the formidable men and guns defending the Hitler’s Fortress Europe.

At Point du Hoc, craters from the bombing still remain and we could see that the cliff was high and steep. The concrete structures are yielding to age and the exposed edge is deteriorating. We could not walk too close to the edge although people were stepping over barriers to get better pictures. Recently U.S. Rangers, in daylight with proper gear, found the climb extremely difficult. We can only imagine the courage and determination that it took to climb it in the dark lacking proper equipment. This heroism will be revered, even though the guns thought to be at the top were not there and as a result the point was of no strategic value.

To this American, the U.S. cemetery was a sobering experience. It is surrounded by trees, so that you must walk some way until the path turns left. Then you see the 9,386 stones in neat rows and columns. Despite the presence of an impressive memorial and mausoleum with a beautiful mosaic in the ceiling, the stones tell the story. The sound of the sea can be heard.

We laid a wreath at the memorial. Several were there already. Prayers were offered and we sang the National Anthem. Several tour groups, some from schools, were coming through, most speaking French. There were maps on the inside walls of the memorial that described the battles and I am sure that the primary purpose of these tours was education. For us, however, the stones were enough.

We left Bayeux September 30th for Ploegsteert, where Churchill commanded a battalion in 1916. On a field of harvested corn nearby, our guide kicked the ground and uncovered three shell fragments—ninety years old. One of us found an unexploded rifle cartridge. We drove by Laurence Farm, the site of Churchill’s headquarters and scene of some of his first paintings. Despite his painting eccentricity, WSC was well liked and personally brave. He was often in the front line.

Maps indicate the street names used by the British to remind them of home, which for the most part belied the miserable conditions: The Strand, Hampshire Lane, Oxford Circus, Fleet Street, Piccadilly. Mud Lane and Mud Corner were probably true to their names. The German trenches in the area were all named with words beginning with “U”: Umpire Trench, Una Avenue, Umbro Lane, Ultimo Trench, Ulster Trench, Uncle Avenue, and Uncomfortable Crescent. The high water table, miserable weather, and the fact that a war was being fought made any stay in the area a nightmare.The number of deaths is attested to by the number of cemeteries and monuments. Over each of the two central arches of the Menin Gate there is a large panel with the inscription:

TO THE ARMIES
OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
WHO STOOD HERE
FROM 1914 TO 1918
AND TO THOSE OF THEIR DEAD

The gate, large and impressive, forms a canopy over the road into the center of Ypres. At 8pm since 1929, except for the period of Nazi occupation, traffic is stopped and the Last Post played. The ceremony, by the Ypres fire brigade, is moving and heavily attended, so moving almost ninety years after the events here.

It was informative, and I think important, to see these World War I sights on a World War II tour. It helps to explain Churchill’s solemn mood on the eve of D-Day, and why he wanted to delay the invasion until the probability of success was high. He had lived though WW1 not just as a politician—but as a soldier.

MARKET GARDEN was the operation to break out from Normandy and to subdue the V weapon bases toward Holland. Like the airborne of olden time, we used buses to jump ahead to the Son and Nijmegen bridges. Our travels were along Hell’s Highway that XXX Corps had followed to meet up with the airborne. Almost everything went wrong and XXX Corps’s drive was stalled on what was in effect a one-lane road. The bridges had to be abandoned. Like the Allies, we stopped at Nijmegen, ten miles short of Arnhem, the “bridge too far.”

Being in the area helps one to understand what barriers rivers and canals can be. The number and width of the waterways would deter anyone. Of course, the Rhine was the one river every ally wanted to cross and we visited the area where Churchill himself crossed over on two consecutive days, to visit the Americans and British respectively on 24 and 25 March 1945.

On October 2nd we investigated the Battle of the Bulge, traveling the route of the 1st SS Panzer Corps into Belgium. The terrain here is much different from that which we saw at the Somme further north. On our trip, we saw hills, streams, and forests, all of which conspired against fast movement. Since the Germans lacked supplies and petrol, and had less than a three to one advantage, their attack was pretty much doomed from the start. Yet the well preserved Tiger tank we saw at La Gleize was an intimidating reminder of their power.

Moving fast, the Germans vowed to take no prisoners. At Malmédy is a memorial to the execution of eighty-five Americans. Another 109 were rounded up and shot at a nearby crossroad; a plaque on a stone lists the names of the dead. The Stars and Stripes flutters above. The memorial is well maintained: there are still Frenchmen who remember.

Bastogne is not quite as hilly as the area we traveled in the morning. Tank turrets mark the boundary of a small area held by the Americans during the siege. We traveled on the road Patton took into the city to relieve the airborne troops. At the museum I noticed a German Mein Kampf for sale for 50 euros. Since the book is banned in Germany, curious Germans must pick up their copies in other countries. As we left Bastogne, we drove by the area where Easy Company, the “Band of Brothers,” fought. Their fox holes are still visible.

All we saw of Cologne was the exterior of the cathedral and the station where we boarded our train to Berlin. As we zipped through Germany I compared the U.S. practice of preserving whole Civil War battlefields with the Europeans’ tendency to erect memorials. Space is at more of a premium here, and most battlefields have returned to their original use. Even the beaches of Normandy are used for recreation and fishing: the happy outcome of a grim ordeal.

Europeans treat their memorials and cemeteries with great respect and care, showing that those who fought here are remembered for what they did and what they sacrificed. Keeping their memory alive is often more meaningful than preserving a plot of ground because it was a battlefield. One man on the tour mentioned that in Belgium we saw several plaques listing civilians who had died resisting the Nazis, saying, “You just don’t see that in France.” We stopped by one cemetery that had a section of metal crosses for civilian victims of a German bombing raid.

In Berlin we walked northeast toward the Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate. It was Unification Day, and a celebration was in progress. The Siegessäule or triumphal column is in the center of the Tiergarten. Moved from its original site in 1938 from what is now called the Platz der Republik in front of the Reichstag, the 220-foot column stands in the middle of a large square. Built to commemorate the German victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870-71), it was inaugurated in 1873 by Wilhelm I. A 26-foot golden figure of winged victory is at the top, informally dubbed “chick on a stick.” Some pieces of the bronze plaques depicting scenes from the three wars were missing and there were bullet marks in the granite plinth.

Walking east took us by the Sowjetisches Ehrenmal or monument to the Soviet soldiers, constructed with marble from Hitler’s Chancellery, commemorating 300,000 Soviet troops who died in the battle for Berlin and 2,500 buried beneath it. Strangely, the monument is in what was the British sector of the city.

The Brandenburg Gate is impressive. It was in the Soviet sector and a double row of brick in the street marks where the Berlin Wall was. It is hard today to visualize this city split by a barrier lying within sixty feet of the Brandenburg Gate.

The new Holocaust Museum looks like a Jewish cemetery with hundreds of black sarcophagi. Our guide argued against it being so near the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate. Since the Holocaust was an aberration, he said, it should not have so prominent a place. Its layout, he added, allows homeless people to hide in it, and requires constant security. I can understand the practical concerns but think that the memorial deserves its prominence. Aberration though it may be, the Holocaust was the culmination of long-standing anti-Semitism in Europe. People need to be reminded.

At the Allied Museum one learns about the Berlin Airlift, undertaken to supply the city when the Soviets closed ground access in 1948. On the busiest day, a plane was landing every sixty-three seconds. The nearby Checkpoint Charlie Museum is informative with a huge number of exhibits, showing the many ingenious ways people used to escape to West Berlin. One of the most unusual was the man who made romantic overtures to a Western woman who resembled his wife, took her to East Berlin, stole her passport and papers, and used them to transport his wife to the West.

We visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp northeast of Berlin, the first of all concentration camps, which looks small compared to Auschwitz; most of it has disappeared. After liberation, the Soviets used the camp to hold prisoners, but had the gall to build a memorial in it for the prisoners who suffered at German hands. As at Berlin’s 20 July 1944 Museum, which marks the attempt on Hitler’s life, there is much written material, all in German. The Germans appear serious about making these historic sites into learning experiences.

Potsdam, outside Berlin, marks the last summit conference of World War II. Several palaces and other buildings in the park are amazingly preserved, despite the fact that it was in the Soviet sector. The Soviet commander in charge had had some art education, knew the value of the property, and worked to preserve it.

The Potsdam Conference was held in the Schloss Cecilienhof, built in 1917 by Wilhelm II, for his son and his daughter-in-law Cecilie. Though not English she loved England, so the palace was built in the style of an English country manor house.

The conference room was large and impressive, as I expected. Spaces assigned to the participants had their own charms. Since Churchill was a heavy smoker and author, he was put in a large, airy, book-filled office. It had been assigned to Truman but the Soviets were not sure if Truman “liked books” and moved him to smaller office between WSC and Stalin. Truman, who did complain about being between two heavy smokers, must have had a laugh if he ever learned why he did not get Churchill’s room. Since the Soviets provided all of the villas, offices, and furnishings, it is probably safe to assume that all of the places were bugged and Uncle Joe knew exactly what everyone was saying.

Churchill’s villa, now empty, is on the market for 4-5 million euros. We were lucky to get inside, where our tour guide encouraged The Churchill Centre to consider a plaque on the building to commemorate its use by Churchill, as there is on Stalin’s house. The villa was large and comfortable, but without furniture; it was difficult to visualize what it had looked like in 1945.

A river that formed the boundary between East and West ran behind the villas. It is an irony that villas occupied by those trying to forge a common agreement ended up isolated. The most telling photograph from the conference was one of a worried looking Truman, a tired Churchill, and a grinning Stalin. Especially with respect to Poland (Britain’s original casus belli) and Eastern Europe, Stalin knew he would have his way. And in the middle of the conference Churchill left to get the election results, and never returned.

And with Churchill leaving the Potsdam Conference, the 21st International Churchill Conference came to a close. I have never heard so many “trip of a lifetime” descriptions of an event. The words were used even before I went, by those to whom I described the itinerary. We could measure our journey in miles or kilometers from Portsmouth to Berlin; but more importantly, we had traveled through time, with an opportunity to be where history was made.

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