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The Stalingrad of Africa: the story of the battle for Tunis
In 1943, Allied and Axis troops contested one of the most decisive campaigns of the Second World War. Saul David tells the story of the battle for Tunis – as hard-fought as the struggle for the Soviet city
Early on 8 November 1942, Adolf Hitler’s special train was en route from Berlin to Munich when it was stopped at a small station in the Thuringian Forest to receive an urgent message from the Foreign Office. A day earlier, Hitler’s HQ staff had received a “very disturbing signal” from German agents in Gibraltar, informing them that a large Allied troop convoy had passed heading in an easterly direction. Most on the train assumed the convoy was bound for Libya, a colony of Germany’s ally Italy since 1912. But its true destination was revealed by the Foreign Office communiqué: “A US expeditionary corps is disembarking in Algiers and Oran,” ports in French-controlled Algeria. Hitler was aghast. Aware that French North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, controlled by the collaborationist Vichy regime) was an area of the “greatest political and strategic importance”, he asked his advisors what resources were available to meet the threat. The answer was: none. Farther down the line, Joachim von Ribbentrop boarded the train. So concerned was the German foreign minister about the news coming from the Mediterranean that he urged Hitler to put out peace feelers to Stalin, hoping to free up German men and materials to be rushed to north Africa. The Führer refused: “a moment of weakness is not the proper time to negotiate with an enemy.” Instead, Hitler ordered General Alfred Jodl, chief of operations staff of his high command, to “organise the Wehrmacht for the defence of Tunis”, the capital of French Tunisia, which was a short flight or sea journey from Sicily. By securing Tunisia, Hitler hoped to stymie Allied plans to trap Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel’s Italo-German Panzer Army in Libya between General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army, advancing from Egypt in the east, and the forces just landed in Algeria and Morocco to the west. Such was indeed the Allies’ plan – and the subsequent ‘Race for Tunis’ would set the scene for one of the decisive campaigns of the war. The principal objective In December 1941, when the US entered the conflict, the strategy agreed with Britain was ‘Germany First’: win the war in Europe, then deal with Japan. On the question of how to defeat Germany, however, there was less consensus. Prime minister Winston Churchill preferred a ‘peripheral’ strategy, containing Germany by blockade, bombing, small raids and an attack on north Africa until it was sufficiently weakened by its efforts in Russia for a knockout blow on the continent. US president Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) broadly agreed, but his Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that only the earliest full-frontal assault on Germany via France would keep the Soviet Union in the war. The dispute came to a head in July 1942 when the Joint Chiefs told FDR that, if the British insisted on “scatterization” in north Africa, “America should turn to the Pacific for decisive action against Japan”. FDR was not convinced and in late July, after more inconclusive talks in Britain, he told his Joint Chiefs that north Africa was now the principal objective, and that an attack would occur “at the earliest possible date”. The fighting in North Africa had begun almost two years earlier in September 1940 when the Italian 10th Army, hoping to seize the Suez Canal and create for Mussolini a new ‘Roman empire’, invaded British-occupied Egypt from Libya. Defeated by a much smaller British and Commonwealth force, the Italians were saved by the arrival in Libya of the dashing German commander Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps in February 1941. The contest had then ebbed and flowed as first the Germans and then the British took the initiative. But Rommel’s defeat by Montgomery’s 8th Army at El Alamein in Egypt on 4 November 1942, after a 12-day attritional battle, was a key turning point. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-154424305webready-860b5a8.jpg" width="5201" height="3467" alt="A painting showing several green, white or orange balloons dropping to the ground, onto a desert" title="British paratroops land in Algeria, 1943, as painted by military artist Henry Carr. The Allied attack on French North Africa alarmed Hitler (Image by Getty Images)" /> Four days later, three Allied task forces landed in French North Africa as part of Operation Torch, the largest amphibious operation of the war to date. Commanding the Western Task Force was 56-year-old Major-General George S Patton Jr, a hard-charging tank expert who felt he was destined for greatness. Patton’s objectives were three ports on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Despite a number of setbacks – troops dropped late and in the wrong place, and fierce French opposition – Patton kept his cool and, having landed by small boat, took personal charge of the operation. “God was very good to me today,” he noted in his diary. Vichy French forces put up a stern fight at Oran and Algiers, and Allied attempts to capture the two ports in surprise attacks from the sea were repulsed bloodily. But on 10 November, with defeat inevitable, the French authorities – led by Admiral François Darlan, head of all Vichy armed forces – agreed to a ceasefire. That was too late to prevent German and Italian planes and troops from making the short hop across the Mediterranean from Sicily to forestall an Allied takeover of Tunisia. The subsequent ‘Race for Tunis’ was contested by the vanguard of Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson’s First Army and a 15,000-strong Axis force under Generalleutnant Walther Nehring. Anderson, a dogged Scotsman with thin lips and unkempt grey hair, hoped to advance eastwards on two main roads from Algeria to northern Tunisia and capture the ports of Bizerte and Tunis. But Anderson’s British and American armoured columns were harassed by German planes, which had local air superiority, and held up by bad weather and strong German resistance to the west. Attempts were made to outflank the German defences using airborne troops and Commandos, but these were launched too late, and failed. The experience of the 600-strong British Second Parachute Battalion, led by 29-year-old Lieutenant- Colonel John Frost (who later won renown for his exploits at the battle of Arnhem), was typical. Dropped behind enemy lines on a poorly planned mission to destroy German planes before linking up with an Allied armoured thrust towards Tunis, Frost and his men were left without support and suffered heavy casualties as they battled their way to safety. Anderson praised their “epic adventure and great physical endeavour”, but that was little consolation for Frost, whose battalion had been “cut to pieces” on a pointless venture. On 14 December, Anderson informed General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, that his American troops were “green” and “unwilling to listen to advice”, and that prospects of getting to Tunis “before the heavy rains and before the Hun gets stronger than I am” were tiny. He made no mention of his own weaknesses, which included a tangled, inadequate command structure, headquarters too far from the scene of battle and a failure to intervene decisively when disaster beckoned. Setback at Longstop Prodded by his American superior – Lieutenant General Dwight D ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, a brilliant organiser with a “sharp, orderly mind” – Anderson made one last attempt to capture Tunis before Christmas, launched on 22 December. Despite rain and insufficient air cover, it made good progress up the lower ridges of the 275-metre-tall Longstop Hill guarding the river corridor from Medjez to Tebourba and on to Tunis. But poor intelligence failed to identify a second area of high ground and, after three days of bitter hand-to-hand fighting by British and US troops, and with ammunition running low, the Allies withdrew to Medjez. “We took Longstop three times,” noted a bitter American casualty, “but the Germans took it four.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-3293973webready-cd8288f.jpg" width="2881" height="1921" alt="A black and white photograph showing three men, all in military uniforms. The men on the left and in the middle are looking at the man on the right" title="‘Ike’ Eisenhower (centre) with fellow Allied generals Alexander (left) and Patton, March 1943 (Image by Getty Images)" /> By now, the opposing forces had swelled to 134,000 Allies – 54,000 British, 73,800 Americans and 7,000 French – and 195,000 Axis troops (though 70,000 were service rather than combat) renamed the Fifth Panzer Army and commanded by Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, who had replaced Nehring. The Allies used substantial air and sea forces to try to throttle Axis reinforcements. Because Tunis and Bizerte were less than 150 miles from ports and airfields in western Sicily, though, it was difficult to intercept Axis transports, and by late January 1943 a total of 243,000 men and 870,000 tonnes of supplies had reached Tunisia. As the battle raged, Allied leaders met at Casablanca to discuss strategy. Again, Churchill persuaded FDR to delay the cross-Channel invasion – this time because of a slower than expected build-up of forces and a shortage of landing craft. Instead, the next target would be Sicily: to safeguard Mediterranean shipping, tie down German troops, threaten mainland Italy and perhaps drive that Axis partner out of the war. Also at Casablanca, Ike was warned that his “neck was in a noose” if he did not conquer north Africa quickly. To assist him, General Sir Harold Alexander (‘Alex’) was given command of land operations, leaving Ike to solve “political and inter-Allied problems”. Alex’s strategy was to link up Anderson’s First Army with Montgomery’s Eighth Army which, since its victory at El Alamein in Egypt in early November 1942, had pursued the remnants of Rommel’s Panzer Army more than 1,000 miles to Tunisia’s southern border. Before the junction could take place, however, the German theatre commander, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, ordered Rommel and von Arnim to attack and defeat the two converging Allied armies one after the other, beginning in the mountains of central Tunisia where Anderson’s defensive line was at its thinnest. “After Stalingrad, our nation is badly in need of a triumph,” said Kesselring. At this point, Axis troops were holding Tunisia’s coastal plain, while the Allies were strung out along the Eastern and Western Dorsals – two mountain ranges that join in the north but diverge farther south to form an inverted ‘V’. The only way of breaking into the Allied position was round its southern tip, at Gafsa, or through a double defence line of mountain passes. The first, Faïd in the Eastern Dorsal, was captured from the (non-Vichy) French on 30 January. Two weeks later, in Operation Spring Wind, four battle groups from von Arnim’s 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions surged out of the Faïd and Mazila passes and, in a double pincer attack, defeated elements of the US First Armored and 34th Infantry Divisions near Sidi Bou Zid. Rommel denied Rommel tried to exploit this success further south with Operation Morning Air, an advance through the Kasserine and Sbiba passes in the Western Dorsal via Gafsa, and on towards the rail and road hub of Tebessa in Algeria, HQ of the US II Corps. Rommel captured Gafsa and 200,000 tonnes of abandoned Allied supplies on 15 February. But his request to use all three panzer divisions in Tunisia – the 10th, 15th and 21st – for the second phase of his plan was rejected by Kesselring, who also altered the axis of advance: it would now be north towards Le Kef in northern Tunisia via Thala, not east toward Tebessa in Algeria. It was, wrote Rommel, “an appalling and unbelievable piece of shortsightedness” because it meant that, instead of executing a sickle-stroke deep into the enemy’s rear, the thrust would be “far too close to the front and was bound to bring us up against the strong enemy reserves”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2HX5DEXwebready-7e349f2.jpg" width="1848" height="1232" alt="A black and white photograph of a line of men standing with their arms up in surrender, with two men with guns accompanying them" title="German and Italian troops surrender after the Allied counterattack in the Kasserine Pass in early 1943 – a turning point that would lead to more Axis defeats (Image by Alamy)" /> On 19 February, Rommel’s armoured spearheads failed to capture Allied positions in the Kasserine and Sbiba passes. The following day, Rommel renewed the assault at Kasserine with panzers, rocket launchers and five battalions of Panzergrenadiers. They were up against 2,000 inexperienced US troops defending a 3-mile front. Surprised by Germans infiltrating along the heights, the flank company of the US 19th Engineer Regiment was the first to crack, and by 5pm the whole line had disintegrated. Hundreds surrendered, the rest fled, and some 20 tanks and 30 armoured troop carriers were captured, with Rommel marvelling at how “fantastically well equipped” the Americans were. On 21 February, Rommel sent battle groups north to Thala and west to Tebessa, but both were stopped short of their objectives by stout Allied resistance. Believing the enemy had grown “too strong for the attack to be maintained”, Rommel ordered a withdrawal through the Kasserine Pass. He was convinced that, but for Kesselring’s caution, they might have been able to “thrust far beyond” Tebessa to the north before meeting any serious opposition. In just eight days, the Axis forces had advanced up to 80 miles, taken more than 4,000 prisoners and destroyed nearly 200 tanks. But they had failed to win a decisive victory – and the tide in Tunisia now turned against them. Promoted to command the newly formed Army Group Afrika, Rommel fought his final battle at Medenine in southern Tunisia on 6 March. He attacked Montgomery’s veteran Eighth Army from three directions with all his remaining armour – 160 panzers – but was stopped in his tracks by well-sited anti-tank guns, artillery and tanks. “Rommel absolutely bought it yesterday,” Monty crowed to Alex on 7 March. “He lost over 30 tanks knocked out, many more hit and damaged.” On 9 March, convinced that the campaign was lost, Rommel flew to Hitler’s southern Werwolf HQ, at Vinnitsa (now Vinnytsia) in Ukraine, to persuade the Führer to withdraw all Axis forces from Tunisia before it was too late. Hitler, basking in the glow of Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein’s successful counter-offensive against the Soviets at Kharkiv (which put a temporary halt to the retreat after Stalingrad), said no. Tunis, he declared, “is a strategic position of the first order. It is of decisive importance for the outcome of the war, and all available resources must be used to hold it.” Rommel was sent to a sanatorium to recover his health, never to return to north Africa. Axis fate sealed There were more tough battles ahead, but the fate of the Axis garrison – now commanded by von Arnim – was sealed. Tunis finally fell on 7 May, following a brilliantly planned two-day Allied offensive known as Operation Strike. This assault deployed armour, infantry, artillery and tactical air support in overwhelming force to punch a hole through the Axis defences in the Medjerda valley and reach the French Tunisian capital in just two days. The end came on 13 May: Maresciallo d’Italia Giovanni Messe surrendered the remnants of his First Italian Army to Bernard Freyberg, commander of the British X Corps, north of Enfidaville (now Enfidha). Von Arnim and his staff had been captured a day earlier. “Sir, we are masters of the north African shores,” Alex reported to Churchill, who was ecstatic: “We have struck a blow equal to Stalingrad,” he told the US Congress on 19 May. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2ND04KPwebready-102ad72.jpg" width="3000" height="2000" alt="Maresciallo d’Italia Giovanni Messe arrives at a British prisoner-of-war camp after his army’s surrender on 13 May 1943, cementing the final Allied victory in north Africa (Image by Alamy)" title="Maresciallo d’Italia Giovanni Messe arrives at a British prisoner-of-war camp after his army’s surrender on 13 May 1943, cementing the final Allied victory in north Africa (Image by Alamy)" /> For the Western Allies, the scale of the Tunisian victory was unprecedented. At a cost of just over 70,000 casualties – including 10,000 dead – they had captured more than a quarter of a million Axis troops. The victory “signified to friend and foe alike”, wrote Ike, “that the Allies were at last upon the march”. It also welded together a team of Allied commanders – including Ike himself, Patton, Omar N Bradley, Alex, Monty and Arthur Coningham – that would go on to direct all major Allied operations in the Mediterranean and Europe for the rest of the war. With Stalingrad in Russia and Guadalcanal in the Pacific, the battle for Tunisia was one of three Axis defeats in 1943 that changed the course of the war. Historians have recognised the significance of the others, but Tunisia is often either ignored or characterised as a sideshow. Yet it ended Axis seapower in the Mediterranean and destroyed more than 2,400 Axis aircraft, 40 per cent of the Luftwaffe’s strength. More German and Italian troops were captured in Tunisia than at Stalingrad. Such was the scale of the defeat that the German public dubbed it ‘Tunisgrad’. Ultimately, the catastrophe led to the dissolution of the German-Italian Axis in Europe. For Hitler, it was the beginning of the end. 8-10 November 1942 The Allies unleash Operation Torch. Three task forces land in Vichy-controlled French North Africa and, after a fierce but brief struggle, capture the ports of Casablanca in Morocco, and Oran and Algiers in Algeria 15 November - 6 December 1942 Led by Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson, the British First Army narrowly fails in its attempt to reach and capture Tunis, the Tunisian capital, before enough Axis troops are in place to stop it 22-25 December 1942 A brutal see-saw contest for Longstop Hill, a strategically vital area of high ground en route to Tunis, ends with German troops in possession 14-24 January 1943 American and British leaders meet at the Casablanca Conference in French Morocco. Winston Churchill persuades President Franklin D Roosevelt to delay the cross-Channel invasion until 1944. British General Sir Harold Alexander is appointed deputy to US Lieutenant General Dwight D Eisenhower in Tunisia 14-16 February 1943 Operation Spring Wind sees Axis troops score a spectacular victory as four battle groups from Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army surge out of mountain passes in the Eastern Dorsal and, in a double pincer attack, destroy elements of two US divisions near Sidi Bou Zid 15-22 February 1943 German Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel (right) sends his panzers through the Kasserine Pass in the Western Dorsal in a bid to disrupt the Allied rear, but the attack runs out of steam in the face of dogged Allied defence, and Rommel is forced to withdraw his troops 6 March 1943 Rommel’s final battle in north Africa – fought at Medenine in Tunisia – ends in disaster as his attacking panzers are stopped in their tracks by the well-placed anti-tank guns, artillery and tanks of General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army 6-7 April 1943 Monty’s frontal attack on the First Italian Army’s strong position at Wadi Akarit, in the Gabès gap, seems doomed to failure until the veteran Fourth Indian Division breaks through on the left, a significant development that enables the First and Eighth Armies to join forces 6-7 May 1943 Operation Strike, a brilliantly planned offensive that uses a combination of armour, infantry and artillery, sees Allied troops punching a hole through Axis defences and reaching Tunis in just two days 13 May 1943 Maresciallo d’Italia Giovanni Messe’s First Italian Army surrenders to the British X Corps. They are the last of 250,000 German and Italian troops to become PoWs – the Allied victory in north Africa is now complete
Hours before the assault on Normandy’s beaches got under way, British airborne troops launched an attack on targets in the French countryside. At stake, writes Saul David, was the success of the entire D-Day landings.
The 28 men of D Company, 2nd Ox and Bucks Light Infantry sat in silence. As the huge plywood and steel glider – 67 feet in length and with a wingspan of 88 feet – began its final descent to the target, all that could be heard was air swishing down the fuselage and the co-pilot, John Ainsworth, counting down the seconds on his stopwatch, lit by a small hand-held lamp. Ainsworth then instructed pilot Jim Wallwork to turn 90 degrees to starboard. The second of these turns brought the glider on to a northerly heading. Directly ahead, clearly visible by moonlight, was the familiar outline of the Caen Canal Bridge that the pilots knew so well from the detailed model. Listen to this article, voiced for HistoryExtra Long Reads in partnership with the RNIB The five sappers and 23 officers and men seated behind the pilots were lost in their thoughts, each man contemplating what was to come and those he had left behind. Major John Howard had visions of his wife, Joy, and two children sleeping peacefully in their beds in Oxford. He could feel the small lump in his tunic’s breast pocket where he had placed one of his son’s first pairs of red leather shoes. Out of the open door he could see the river Orne and knew they were on course. With the glider losing height rapidly, and rocking from side to side, Ainsworth yelled: “Hold tight!” It was the signal for the men to adopt the brace position by linking arms and lifting their legs off the floor. Gripping their weapons tightly, the men tensed their bodies for impact. “I gritted my teeth,” recalled Howard, “and tried to pray but all I could think was ‘Please God, please God’ as we came in to land with a terrific crash, a splintering noise and sparks flying past outside the doorway.” Skidding and bouncing twice on the uneven ground, the glider lost its wheels and landed on its metal skids at 80 miles per hour. Howard thought they were under fire, but in fact the flashes were just caused by the skids striking the stony ground. With a final roar, the glider came to a juddering halt with its nose through the bridge’s barbed wire defences, just as Howard had requested. It was 12.16am on Tuesday 6 June 1944, and the D-Day landings had begun. Read more | "Hitler slept through D-Day", plus four other facts about the Normandy Landings you might not know... Howard’s glider was the vanguard of Operation Tonga, the British airborne component of Operation Overlord, the long-awaited Allied plan to use 5,300 ships and 12,000 aircraft to land or drop 150,000 men and 1,500 tanks on or behind five beaches in Normandy. Tonga required the insertion of 8,500 glider-borne infantry and paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division on the eastern flank of the D-Day beachhead. At the same time, 13,000 men of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would secure the western flank. The 6th Airborne had four key objectives: to secure intact and hold two road bridges over the Caen canal and Orne river; to neutralise an enemy artillery battery at Merville near the coast; to secure a bridgehead between the rivers Orne and Dives; and to prevent enemy reinforcements (including panzer units) moving towards the British left flank from the east and south-east. The first task – given to the 180 sappers and men of Howard’s D Company – was arguably the most important. They would land in six Horsa gliders at around midnight and capture the two bridges. Their possession was vital, not only to defend the eastern flank of the D-Day beachhead from a German counterattack, but also to allow an Allied breakout once the landings were secure. On the outcome of this single mission might the success or failure of the whole Normandy invasion depend. Learn more | HistoryExtra Academy: D-Day and the Normandy campaign Precious resources Almost exactly four years earlier – in June 1940 – in the wake of defeat in Belgium and France, and the miracle of the Dunkirk evacuation, Winston Churchill had called for the raising of “parachute troops on a scale equal to 5,000” as one way of taking the fight to Nazi Germany’s ‘Fortress Europe’. It took years to get anywhere near that number. This was largely because the RAF, fixated on strategic bombing, was unwilling to divert more than a few of its precious resources to the training and transporting of paratroopers and glider-borne troops who were mostly recruited from the British Army. But Churchill’s unwavering fervour, and the single-minded determination of key pioneers like Louis Strange, John Rock, Eric Down, Richard ‘Windy’ Gale and Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, meant that the size and scope of airborne operations became increasingly ambitious. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/2T1MMCFwebready-5c9777a.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Major General ‘Windy’ Gale with men of the 5th Parachute Brigade at RAF Harwell in the hours before Operation Tonga. The success of the operation was pivotal to the entire campaign. (Photo from Alamy)" title="Operation Overlord (the Normandy Landings)- D-day 6 June 1944 The Airborne Assault: Major General R N Gale OBE MC, the commander of 6th Airborne Division, talking to troops of 5th Parachute Brigade before they emplane at Royal Air Force Harwell on the eve" /> Handicapped during its early years by inter-service rivalry and a chronic lack of suitable aircraft and equipment, Britain’s airborne force gradually expanded from a single battalion of 500 men to three 10,000-strong airborne divisions: the 1st, 6th and 44th Indian, each composed of parachutists and glider-borne troops. Wearing their distinctive maroon berets, steel helmets and Dennison smocks, the ‘Red Devils’ served with distinction in every major theatre of the conflict, including north Africa, Sicily, mainland Europe and the far east. They would play a starring role in some of the most iconic airborne operations in history: the Bruneval Raid of February 1942; the capture of the Primasole and Arnhem Bridges in July 1943 and September 1944 respectively; and Operation Varsity, the largest single-day airborne operation in history, near Wesel in Germany in March 1945. Early missions were dogged by poorly trained pilots, the wrong type of aircraft, ill-chosen landing zones, overly optimistic objectives and inadequate planning and faulty intelligence. Despite these missteps, airborne troops proved their worth in an impressive number of roles, from small-scale raids and fighting like traditional infantry, to their favoured option: dropping behind enemy lines to secure vital ground and infrastructure in conjunction with a ground offensive. It was in this final capacity that Britain’s airborne force was expected to make a vital contribution to Allied victory on D-Day. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/2X0306Nwebready-2603829.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Men of the 6th Airborne Division receive a briefing ahead of Operation Tonga. These troops were specialists in landing behind enemy lines and securing vital infrastructure. (Photo from Alamy)" title="THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 1939-45 - Men of 22nd Independent Parachute Company, 6th Airborne Division being briefed for the invasion, 4 - 5 June 1944 British Army, 6th Airborne Division" /> The man tasked with capturing the two bridges on 6 June 1944 was 31-year-old Major John Howard, born in a tiny two-up, two- down house in Camden, north London, in December 1912, the eldest of nine children. He was “proud of having come up from the ranks to achieve his position”, noted one of his men, “having once been an Oxford City Police sergeant, and he took his responsibilities very seriously indeed”. This meant that his company “had to be the best at everything, be it sport, marches, field exercises or physical and endurance training”. And it was. On 15 April 1944, shortly after taking part in a full-scale divisional exercise, Howard was told by his commanding officer: “Your company will be the spearhead for the invasion... I feel absolutely confident that you will be able to pull it off.” Over the next month, Howard worked tirelessly to fine-tune his plan: studying intelligence reports, maps, aerial photographs and a detailed model of the two bridges, which was constantly updated. He decided to target each bridge with three gliders, each carrying a platoon of men. The first platoon would pierce the enemy defences, race across the bridge and take out any opposition on the far side. The second platoon would mop up the inner defences, while the third, if it arrived safely, would help whichever platoon was most in need. The sappers were to go straight for the chambers on the bridge holding the explosive (placed there in case the Germans wanted to demolish the structure), “cut wires, de-prime and remove it”. Drilled to destruction The last-minute training for the operation involved the ‘capture’ of two similar crossings in Devon. Howard worked his men until they ached, insisting that every platoon practised each of the jobs, “so that no matter who landed where and in what order, they would all automatically know what to do”. So it proved on 6 June. Briefly knocked unconscious by the impact of the landing, Howard opened his eyes to see “the smashed doorway, the air full of dust, the holes torn in the side of the glider”. Up front the pilots were “groaning in the smashed cockpit”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/2T1MBTCwebready-79004f3.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The glider that bore Major Howard and his men to Pegasus bridge, pictured on 8 June 1944. The glider’s crash landing into the bridge’s barbed wire defences signalled the start of D-Day. (Photo from Alamy)" title="The British Army in the Normandy Campaign 1944 A Horsa glider near the Caen Canal bridge at Benouville, 8 June 1944. This is glider No. 91, which carried Major John Howard and Lieutenant Den Brotheridge with No.1 Platoon, 'D' Company, 2nd Battalion Oxford" /> Wrenching off his safety harness and grabbing his Sten gun, Howard rolled head-first out of the broken doorway. Directly ahead, barely 50 feet away, stood the large water tower on the east side of the canal bridge (later dubbed ‘Pegasus’ Bridge after the division’s winged-horse shoulder flash). The pilots had clearly done a marvellous job. Turning to the platoon commander, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, Howard said: “Get cracking with your first section.” In his rich Brummie accent, Brotheridge shouted “Come on lads!” and started running towards the bridge with his platoon in close pursuit. They were spotted by a lone German sentry on the bridge who fired a white ‘Very’ light which made him the target of multiple Sten guns. While one section peeled off to deal with a pillbox, Brotheridge led the charge across the bridge, “firing from the hip as he went”. Private Denis Edwards remembered: “As we neared the far side of the bridge, still shouting, firing our weapons and lobbing hand grenades, the Germans jumped to their feet and ran for their lives, scattering in all directions. Relief, exhilaration, incredulity – I experienced all these feelings upon realising that we had taken the bridge.” There were two fatalities: Brotheridge, who had been shot in the throat and mortally wounded; and a lance corporal who was knocked unconscious and drowned when the third glider landed in a pond. Numerous other casualties left Howard, within a few minutes of landing, with only one officer left, and that was, recalled Howard, “Sandy Smith, who only had the use of one arm”. Meanwhile, thanks to a navigational error, only two of three gliders had landed near the neighbouring road bridge over the river Orne, half a mile away. But there was little opposition and the reduced force was able to capture the bridge after destroying a machine gun post with a mortar round. When Howard got the news, he told his radio operator to tap out the success signal, “Ham and Jam!” The Red Devils had captured both bridges intact; now they had to hold on to them. The first counterattack was by German armoured vehicles of Panzerjäger Battalion 716, which approached the canal bridge from the west. The only anti-tank weapon possessed by Howard’s men was a hand-held PIAT – its 21⁄2-pound projectile capable of penetrating 4 inches of armour – with an effective range of only 50 yards. Lying beside the road, Sergeant Charles ‘Wagga’ Thornton was “shaking like a leaf” as he lined up his PIAT’s sights on the lead vehicle. Knowing he would not have time to reload, he waited until the black shape was just 30 yards away before squeezing the trigger. The armoured halftrack exploded “with a mighty bang”, followed by more “deafening cracks and thuds” as its load of ammunition ignited. Read more | 5 tanks that changed the course of the First World War Fearing the defenders of the bridge were armed with formidable 6-pounder anti-tank guns, the Germans withdrew. This gave the relieving troops of the 7th Parachute Battalion time to reach both bridges, though they were 90 minutes behind schedule and down to a quarter of their strength because many had been blown off course or dropped in the wrong place. For the next 12 hours, the men of 7 Para – including a young Lieutenant Richard Todd, the future film star – fought off a series of vicious German counterattacks from the west. They, and the rest of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades – also much reduced in fighting capacity – were fortunate that the 110 tanks and two panzergrenadier regiments of the veteran 21st Panzer Division, stationed nearby, were not given the order to fight back until 8am, by which time it was too late. Elsewhere, the men of Major Terence Otway’s 9th Parachute Battalion – reduced by mishaps to just a quarter of its size – had stormed and put out of action the four guns of the Merville Battery near the coast. “It was,” read the divisional report, “a disappointment to the battalion to find that the guns were of 75mm [calibre] only, and these were destroyed by Gammon bombs. It does not detract however from a magnificent feat of arms, and a display of absolute determination to overcome all handicaps.” Whole ground shaking As the sun rose on the morning of 6 June, just a few miles from the captured bridges and battery, the greatest amphibious assault in history was gathering momentum. At 5.30am, the British battleships Warspite and Ramillies began the Allied naval bombardment of the Germans’ coastal defences. “It was as though you could feel the whole ground shaking towards the coast,” recalled John Howard. Quiz | How well do you know your warships? What Howard and his colleagues had achieved that morning was critical to the success of the D-Day landings. If Operation Tonga had failed, and the Germans had been able to retake the bridges, there might have been two immediate consequences: the isolation and destruction of the bulk of 6th Airborne Division east of the river Orne; and an armoured counterattack by the whole of the 21st Panzer Division against the eastern flank of the five D-Day landing beaches. Such an assault would have caused untold casual- ties and threatened the very success of the invasion itself. Listen | D-Day: Land, Air and Sea, a three-part podcast series from HistoryExtra But Tonga did not fail. Despite the inaccuracy of the drops (thanks to damaged Eureka radar sets, not enough Pathfinder teams, poorly trained aircraft crews and adverse weather), the 6th Airborne Division achieved all four main tasks set for it on D-Day. Over the next 10 weeks, the division was able to consolidate the bridgehead east of the Orne and beat off repeated enemy attacks. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/2T1MH58-2webready-ad87e54.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="British airborne troops pictured in Normandy on 6 June 1944. These soldiers would be called on to fight off repeated German counterattacks. (Photo from Alamy)" title="D-day - British Forces during the Invasion of Normandy 6 June 1944 Commandos of No. 4 Commando, 1st Special Service Brigade, and troops of 6th Airborne Division in Benouville after the link-up between the two forces, 6 June 1944." /> On 18 August 1944, the division crossed the Dives Canal – as part of the Allied breakout from the Normandy bridgehead – and by the 27th had captured Pont Audemer on the river Risle, just 10 miles from the Seine. It had, recalled Terence Otway, advanced 45 miles in nine days, “largely on foot against heavy enemy opposition and through difficult country”. High praise indeed Lieutenant General Harry Crerar, commanding the First Canadian Army, congratulated Major General ‘Windy’ Gale on the “immense contribution” his division had made during the recent fighting, particularly the impressive “determination and speed with which his troops have pressed on in spite of all enemy efforts to the contrary”. By the time it re-embarked for England in early September, to prepare for its next big airborne operation, the division had lost 4,457 men: 821 killed, 2,709 wounded and 927 missing. But it is for its valiant efforts on D-Day, and not the Normandy campaign as a whole, that the previously un-blooded 6th Airborne will forever be remembered. “It is doubtful,” noted a British newspaper report of 22 June, “whether there has ever been a body of troops who have been brought to a higher pitch of physical fitness, self-reliance and fighting skill. The gallant deeds of that magnificent division made history... As General Montgomery said yesterday: ‘The men of that division who died did not die in vain.”’ <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/GettyImages-1837699721webready-65c9766.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="From left, Major John Howard (1912-1999) and Captain David Wood (1923-2009) of the 6th Airborne Division of the British Army stand beside the Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal during a first anniversary visit to World War II battlefields in Normandy, France on 29th June 1946. Major Howard and Captain Wood of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry led a glider-borne assault to capture the Caen Canal and Orne River bridges on D-Day, 6th June 1944. (Photo by James Jarche/Popperfoto via Getty Images)" title="Revisiting Normandy Battlefields One Year On" /> Taking the fight to fortress Europe Five more British airborne operations that shaped the course of the Second World War Operation Colossus, 10–12 February 1941: X Troop explodes into action The first British airborne operation of the war, Colossus tasked 36 officers and men of X Troop, 11th Special Air Service (later 1st Parachute) Battalion with parachuting into southern Italy and blowing up the Tragino aqueduct that provided water for the whole province of Apulia. They succeeded, though all 36 were captured as they tried to escape (and one, an Italian, was shot as a traitor). While the mission did not achieve its strategic objective of discouraging Italy from fighting a war on two fronts – in Albania and north Africa – it was a tactical and moral victory, and proved the worth of Britain’s fledgling airborne force. Operation Biting, 27/28 February 1942: Frost’s lighting strike <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/0829688webready-7c9fc2b.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Bruneval Raids 1942 The famous photograph of the German radar installation at Bruneval which led to the commando raid in early 1942" title="Bruneval Raids 1942The famous photograph of the German radar installation at Bruneval which led to the commando raid in early 1942" /> Led by Major John Frost (of Arnhem fame), 120 sappers and men of C Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion attempted one of the most daring raids of the war. Their mission was to parachute into northern France to capture part of the new Würzburg early-warning radar system from Bruneval on the coast, and bring it back to Britain. Though some men landed in the wrong place, and opposition was fierce, Frost’s troops dismantled the radar and took it and two prisoners to a nearby beach where they were picked up by the Royal Navy. “We thus became,” wrote Winston Churchill, “the possessors of vital portions of a key piece of equipment in the German radar defences and gathered information which greatly helped our air offensive.” Operation Freshman, 19/20 November 1942: Gliding into trouble Operation Freshman was a bold, even foolhardy, attempt to land a glider-borne force of four pilots and 27 airborne sappers in southern Norway to destroy German stocks of ‘heavy water’, a vital component of nuclear research. Poor weather and faulty navigational aids dogged the assault on the Norsk Hydro plant, resulting in both gliders crashing miles from the target. Those not killed on impact were captured and executed by the Germans, the first victims of Hitler’s infamous ‘Commando Order’. Three months later, six Norwegian SOE operatives blew up the plant after parachuting into the country, a feat immortalised by the British war film Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris. Operation Market, 17–26 September 1944: The bridge too far This was the airborne component of Field Marshal Montgomery’s hugely ambitious plan to shorten the war by seizing river and canal crossings as far as Arnhem on the lower Rhine, 64 miles behind enemy lines. The British 1st and US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were to provide a ‘carpet’ for the ground troops of the British XXX Corps to advance over (Operation Garden). Despite a litany of mishaps – poor planning, intelligence ignored, faulty radios and flawed command decisions – and fierce resistance by SS panzer troops, John Frost and 700 men were able to hold the north end of the Arnhem road bridge for almost twice the 48 hours they had been asked to. But ultimately it was ‘A Bridge Too Far’ – the title of Cornelius Ryan’s bestselling history – as the ground troops took too long to reach them and almost 8,000 of the original 10,700 men of the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Parachute Brigade were killed or taken prisoner. Operation Varsity, 24 March 1945: The greatest wave The combined force of 14,300 paratroopers and glider-borne infantry – from the British 6th and US 17th Airborne Divisions – made this the largest single-day airborne operation in history. They landed on the east bank of the Rhine near Wesel in north Germany to support an amphibious crossing by the British Second Army (Operation Plunder). Learning the lessons of Arnhem, the troops were dropped in a single wave as close to their objectives as possible, and only after the ground troops were across the river. By the end of 24 March, they had linked up with the ground forces. It was, wrote General Eisenhower, “the most successful airborne operation we carried out during the war”. Saul David is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book, Sky Warriors: British Airborne Forces in the Second World War, was published in April 2024. This article was first published in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
British Redcoats: everything you wanted to know
Saul David answers listener questions on the evolution of the British Army from the Civil War to the Victorian era
Was the Duke of Marlborough Britain's greatest ever military commander? How did Britain face down the challenge of an expansionist France? And did soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars feel that they were living in the shadow of the Royal Navy? Military historian Saul David talks to Spencer Mizen about the evolution of the British Army between the 17th and 19th centuries. View Green Video on the source website
The Charge of the Light Brigade: who blundered in the Valley of Death?
The Charge of the Light Brigade is one of the most notorious fiascos in British military history. But who should shoulder the blame for this suicidal assault on Russian guns? Saul David considers the evidence...
“By Jove,” shouted an eagle-eyed member of Lord Raglan’s staff. “They’re going to take away the guns!” It was 10.40am on 25 October 1854. Three hours earlier Lord Raglan, the British commander in the Crimea, had watched helplessly from his vantage point on the Sapouné Ridge as a huge force of Russian infantry overwhelmed three of the Turkish-held redoubts (earthwork forts) on the Causeway Heights, a low east-west range of hillocks that divided the plain below him into a north and south valley. The loss of these redoubts had left the British supply port of Balaklava, situated below the south valley, at the mercy of the Russians. But much to Raglan’s relief, two subsequent attempts by Russian cavalry to take the port had been gloriously repulsed by a ‘Thin Red Line’ of Highlanders and an uphill charge by the Heavy Brigade of British horse. At 10am, keen to follow up these successes, Raglan had ordered his cavalry “to advance and take any opportunity to recover the [Causeway] Heights”, and to use the support of infantry who were en route. But Lord Lucan, the cavalry commander, chose not to move until the infantry arrived. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Crimean War As Raglan fumed at Lucan’s inactivity, a staff officer alerted him to activity in the redoubts. Peering through his naval telescope – specially modified so he could use it with his one remaining hand (he had lost his right arm at the battle of Waterloo) – Raglan could see the Russians bringing forward horses and lasso tackle to remove the British 12-pounder naval guns that had been sited in the earthworks. He assumed the Russians were about to withdraw and take the captured guns with them. His mentor the Duke of Wellington had never lost a gun, and Raglan was anxious to retain the same proud record. Turning to his senior staff officer, he dictated the following momentous order: “Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy from carrying away the guns.” Why did the Charge of the Light Brigade happen? The pencil-written order was handed to Captain Louis Nolan, the finest horseman on the staff. It was an unfortunate choice: no officer had more contempt for the cavalry commanders, Lucan and his deputy Lord Cardigan, than the quick-tempered Nolan. He felt they were far too timid. Within 15 minutes, Nolan had reached the valley floor and located Lucan on rising ground at the near end of the Causeway Heights. He handed over the order, which Lucan read with alarm. Now he was being asked to recover the guns without infantry support. He complained to Nolan about the “uselessness” and “dangers” of such an operation. “Lord Raglan’s orders,” retorted Nolan, “are that the cavalry should attack immediately.” If, as seems likely, Nolan used the word “attack” on his own authority, it was a fatal intervention. The order had made no mention of an attack. So did Lord Raglan perhaps have a different objective in mind? “Attack, sir!” said Lucan. “Attack what? What guns, sir?” Waving his hand vaguely eastwards in the direction of the redoubts, Nolan said contemptuously: “There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!” Lucan claimed later that from his position he could see “neither enemy nor guns”, and that Nolan’s gesture was towards “the further end of the [north] valley”. There, clearly visible, was a Russian battery of eight cannon, the sun glinting off their polished barrels. At this critical moment, according to one eyewitness, Lucan “appeared to be surprised and irritated at the impetuous and disrespectful attitude and tone of Captain Nolan”. He “looked at him sternly but made no answer, and after some hesitation proceeded to give orders to Lord Cardigan to charge the enemy with the Light Brigade”. If Lucan had only questioned Nolan further, he must surely have discovered that his objective was to recover the captured naval guns on the Causeway Heights, rather than seize the battery of Russian guns in the north valley. But so irritated was he by the taunting tone in Nolan’s voice that he chose not to continue the conversation. What was the Charge of the Light Brigade? Stung into action, Lucan made his final plans: Cardigan’s Light Brigade of Cavalry would lead the attack down the north valley, with the Heavy Brigade in support. The message was taken to Cardigan by Nolan who, when the Light Brigade commander voiced his objections, asked if he and his men were afraid. “By God!” responded a furious Cardigan. “If I come through this alive, I’ll have you court-martialled for speaking to me in that manner.” Instead of returning to Raglan, Nolan rode over to his old friend Captain William Morris, commanding one of the Light Brigade’s lead regiments, and got his permission to accompany the attack. Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War Cardigan, meanwhile, had sent one of his aide-de-camps to query Lucan’s order. This caused Lucan to return in person. “Lord Cardigan,” he said, “you will attack the Russians in the valley.” “Certainly, my lord,” replied Cardigan, “but allow me to point out to you that there is a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and the ground is covered with Russian riflemen.” In other words, the north valley was a death trap from which they were unlikely to escape. “I cannot help that,” responded Lucan. “It is Lord Raglan’s positive order that the Light Brigade is to attack the enemy.” Into the Valley of Death At 11.10am, stationed with his two staff officers at the head of the Light Brigade, Lord Cardigan turned to his trumpeter: “Sound the advance!” As one, the men and horses of the Light Brigade of Cavalry – which numbered around 676 – moved forward at the walk. Leading the way were the 17th Lancers and 13th Light Dragoons, deployed side by side in two lines, followed 100 yards further back by the 11th Hussars, and with a similar gap to the 8th Hussars and the 4th Light Dragoons. The brigade had just accelerated to a trot when Captain Nolan surged ahead of the first line, shouting and waving his sword. He may have realised that Cardigan was not going to wheel to the right to attack the redoubts, and was trying to correct the error; or he may simply have been urging the brigade on. We will never know. With just 50 yards separating him from Cardigan, a shell burst between them. Nolan gave a ghastly shriek and dropped his sword. A twitch of his bridle hand caused his horse to turn and gallop back through the advancing squadrons. He then fell to the ground. A fragment of shell had pierced his heart, killing him instantly. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/12/GettyImages-590499274-de204c7-e1677149284308.jpg" width="619" height="412" alt="The charge of the light brigade at Balaclava led by Lord Cardigan during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War" title="The charge of the light brigade at Balaclava led by Lord Cardigan during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War" /> Onward the brigade rode into that terrible crossfire. “Hell had opened upon us from front and either flank,” recalled a private in the 17th, “and it kept upon us during the minutes – they seemed like hours – which passed while we traversed the mile and a quarter at the end of which was the enemy. The broken and fast-thinning ranks raised rugged peals of wild, fierce cheering that only swelled the louder as the shot and shell from the battery tore gaps through us…” The private continued: “‘Close in! Close in!’ was the constant command of the squadron and troop officers… But the order was scarcely needed, for of their own instance and, as it seemed, mechanically, men and horses alike sought to regain touch.” A corporal of the 13th was “struck by a shot or shell full in the face, completely smashing it, his blood and brains spattering us who rode near”. A sergeant of the 17th had his head taken off by roundshot, “yet for about 30 yards further the headless body kept the saddle, the lance at the charge firmly gripped under the right arm”. With the front rank just 80 yards from the battery, the Russians fired a point-blank salvo of grapeshot that brought down men and horses in heaps. Five officers were among the dead, but Cardigan rode on unscathed. As he approached the bank of white smoke that masked the battery, he shouted: “Steady! Steady! Close in!” Seconds later the front rank swept into and around the battery, sabring and spearing Russian gunners as they tried to tow the guns to safety. In the smoke and confusion, Cardigan became separated from his men and made his own way back to the British lines. The remnants of the brigade were rallied by the surviving officers and led in a desperate attack against a mass of Russian cavalry beyond the guns. “It was the maddest thing that was ever done,” noted a Russian officer. “They broke through our lines, took our artillery, and then, instead of capturing our guns and making off with them, they went for us… They dashed in amongst us, shouting, cheering and cursing. I never saw anything like it. They seemed perfectly irresistible, and our fellows were quite demoralised.” Having driven the Russian cavalry back on the Chernaya river, at the top of the north valley, the survivors fought their way back to the British lines. How many of 'the 600' survived the charge of the Light Brigade? When the battered remnant of the around 676 men of the Light Brigade formed up near the same ground they had charged from 25 minutes earlier, only 195 men were still mounted. Even with the return of stragglers, the losses were crippling: 107 men killed, 187 wounded and 50 missing (most of them captured). The number of dead horses was almost 400. What happened after the Charge of Light Brigade? Even after the fatal charge, Lord Raglan was keen to use his infantry to retake the captured redoubts. He was dissuaded by General Canrobert, his French counterpart, on the grounds that troops could not be spared from the siege lines for their garrisons. Thus the charge was the last action of the battle of Balaklava which, though far from conclusive, was a Russian victory of sorts – their first of a war that had begun the previous March when the Russian tsar refused British and French ultimatums to withdraw his troops from Ottoman empire territory. Determined to protect the Ottomans by neutralising Russian power in the Black Sea, the Allies had landed on the Crimean peninsula in early September 1854. Within a month they were besieging the great naval base of Sevastopol from the Chersonese Plateau to its south. Though the Russian attack of 25 October had fallen short of its original objective – to capture the British-held port of Balaklava and sever the supply line to Raglan’s troops on the plateau – it still had severe consequences for Raglan’s army. By taking the Causeway Heights, the Russians denied the British the use of their main supply route from Balaklava to the plateau via the Woronzow Road. In fine weather this was not a problem as a shorter route known as the Col was just as good. But as winter set in, and the road up the Col disintegrated, it became impossible to get enough supplies to the troops in the trenches. By the end of November, so overwhelmed was the Commissariat (the department in charge of resupply), and so poor the single road up to the plateau, that many of the goods that did reach Balaklava were left to rot on the quays. “The English,” wrote a French officer, “will actually exchange their boots for something to eat… It’s pitiful to see such superb men asking permission to gorge themselves on the dregs in our mess tins.” With no fuel, inadequate shelter and insufficient food, the British troops fell easy prey to disease, particularly cholera and typhus. “The noblest army England ever sent from these shores,” wrote the editor of The Times, “has been sacrificed to the grossest mismanagement. Incompetence, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, favour, routine, perverseness, and stupidity reign, revel and riot in the camp before Sevastopol, in the harbour at Balaklava… and how much nearer to home we do not venture to say.” By the time the war ended – following the fall of Sevastopol – with a qualified Allied victory in March 1856, 21,000 British soldiers had lost their lives, only a quarter from enemy action. Most died of disease and malnutrition during the terrible winter of 1854/55. Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade poem The immortal status of all who took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade was guaranteed when Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet laureate, wrote his eponymous verse of the famous action in late 1854, three weeks after reading a report of the battle in The Times. The second stanza begins: “Forward, the Light Brigade! Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldiers knew Some one had blundered” So who had blundered? Writing three days after the battle, Lord Raglan blamed Lucan. “From some misconception of the order to advance,” he wrote in his official dispatch, “[Lucan] considered that he was bound to attack at all hazards.” Lucan was duly recalled to London where he tried – and failed – to clear his name. Did he deserve to shoulder the blame? Lord Cardigan, his former brother-in-law, was not in any doubt. “[Lucan] ought,” wrote Cardigan, “to have had the moral courage to disobey the order till further instructions were issued.” Who was to blame for the Charge of the Light Brigade? In truth, all three principals – Raglan, Lucan and Nolan – bear some responsibility. Even if it had been interpreted accurately, Raglan’s final order to Lucan was probably unnecessary. After all, the naval guns had been spiked and could not be fired, the infantry had nearly arrived, and even a “demonstration” by cavalry along the Causeway Heights would have incurred casualties. He should, moreover, have taken into account the fact that Lucan’s view of the battlefield was much more limited than his and made the final order more precise (by mentioning the ‘Heights’, for example). Lucan should have insisted on clarification from Nolan. But he allowed his pride to get the better of him. As for Nolan, so contemptuous was he of Lucan’s ability, so desperate for the cavalry to show its worth, that he failed in the one essential duty of a staff galloper: to provide the officer in receipt of the message with the necessary clarification. If the written order was imprecise, then how much more was Nolan’s insolent gesture: “There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!” Read more | 8 battles that shaped the Crimean War It seems, moreover, that he used the word ‘attack’ when Raglan had intended a mere show of force. If so, Nolan bears the chief responsibility for what followed. Such was the opinion of most cavalrymen, according to Lieutenant Frederick Maxse RN who was serving on Raglan’s staff, and whose papers have only recently come to light. After the charge, Maxse inspected the ground and, “on looking to the left, saw poor Nolan lying dead who 10 minutes before I had seen eager & full of life, galloping down to Lord Lucan, anxious & determined to make him do something with the cavalry (of which he is a member, he was always very indignant at the little they had done in this campaign & bitter against Lord L). All the cavalry lay this disastrous charge on his shoulders & say that he left no option to Lord L to whom they say his tone was almost taunting on delivering the message – if he was to blame he has paid the penalty.” Nigel Kingscote, another staff officer, agreed. If Nolan had lived, he told Raglan’s son, he “would no doubt have been broke by court martial”. Why Lucan’s eyes deceived him The communication breakdown between Lord Raglan and his cavalry commander is perhaps explained by the topography of the Balaklava battlefield, says Saul David It is hard to comprehend how the Light Brigade could have been misdirected until you stand on the spots where the main actors were situated when they made their fatal decisions. The site on the edge of the Sapouné Ridge, from where Raglan and his staff are said to have observed the battle of Balaklava, is today marked by a viewing platform. When I visited it, I was struck by the panoramic view it afforded of the battlefield. Directly below the platform is a large plain covered with vineyards and other crops – just as it was in 1854 – and bisected by a tarmac road that snakes from right to left. This is the famous Woronzow Road that, for much of its length, runs along the range of hills known to the British during the Crimean War as the Causeway Heights. From Raglan’s vantage point, the Heights appear to be little more than a slight rise in the ground and are dwarfed by the hills that fringe the plain to the north and east. Does this explain why Raglan felt justified in issuing those two orders to Lucan and the cavalry: first to advance and take any opportunity to “recover the Heights”; and then to “advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy from carrying away the guns [from the Heights]”? He was not – as some commentators have suggested – ordering cavalry to attack fixed positions up a steep hillside; but instead wanted Lucan to move the cavalry forward on both sides of a relatively gentle slope, and possibly even along it, to hasten the Russian withdrawal and encourage them to abandon the British guns. Just as revealing was my visit to the approximate location where Lucan had received Raglan’s orders, on a slight knoll of ground between the two valleys. From there Lucan’s view of the captured redoubts would have been obscured by rising ground. So when Nolan gestured vaguely (“There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!”), it is easy to understand why Lucan mistook the Russian battery for Raglan’s true target. This article was first published in the Christmas 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
There were eight battles in the Zulu War. So why do we only remember Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana? Saul David argues that the British commander's 'spin' – and Hollywood – are to blame
At ten in the morning of Sunday, 28 March 1879, Colonel Redvers Buller was just about to order his small force off the summit of Hlobane Mountain in northern Zululand when the scouts drew his attention to activity in the valley below: marching in five great columns towards the base of the mountain were 20,000 heavily-armed Zulu warriors. “We were 30 miles from [Kambula] camp,” recalled Buller. “Our horses had been under saddle since 3am. I saw that we had not a chance of getting back the way we had come.” Three hours earlier Buller’s small force of 350 horsemen and 300 African auxiliaries had easily captured Hlobane, the mountain stronghold of the abaQulusi tribe of Zulus, and begun rounding up cattle. But the abaQulusi had since regrouped and the sudden arrival of the main Zulu army meant that Buller’s only hope of escape was down the Devil’s Pass, an almost perpendicular descent of rocks and boulders on the far side of the mountain. He gave the necessary orders, but when his hard-pressed men arrived at the head of the pass, closely followed by the abaQulusi, they discovered that the covering force on the plateau below had departed. Buller later wrote: “We had to get down under a constant and ever increasing fire, but we should have done tolerably and safely I believe had not my stupid rearguard ceased firing, mistaking Zulus for friends. In a moment the Zulus were among us in the rocks”. Captain Cecil D’Arcy of the Frontier Light Horse was halfway down the terrifying descent when a rock “the size of a small piano” struck his horse on the rear leg, “cutting it right off”. As he struggled to release its saddle he heard a scream. “I looked up,” he recorded, “and saw the Zulus right in among the white men, stabbing horses and men. I made a jump and got down somehow or other”. Others were not so lucky, and the casualties would surely have been greater than the 17 men killed if Buller had not organised a stand at the base of the cliff. Even so, many lost their horses and were overtaken by fleeter-footed Zulus during the long retreat to their camp, bringing the total dead that day to 90 Europeans and over a hundred black auxiliaries. The survivors got their revenge the following day when they and the remainder of Brigadier Evelyn Wood’s No 4 Column defended the fortified camp at Kambula against waves of Zulu attacks, inflicting upon the previously jubilant Zulu army a morale-sapping defeat that would prove to be the turning point of the war. Yet few remember the battles of Hlobane and Kambula today because of the far greater prominence accorded, then and now, to the earlier actions at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. The Zulu War in context The Zulu War, like so many 19th-century imperial conflicts, was not sanctioned by the British government. Instead Disraeli's Tory administration – preoccupied with the Russian threat to Constantinople and Afghanistan – made every effort to avoid a fight. "The fact is," wrote Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the colonial secretary, in November 1878, "that matters in Eastern Europe and India… wear so serious an aspect that we cannot now have a Zulu war in addition to other greater and too possible troubles". But Sir Bartle Frere, the man to whom this letter was addressed, had other ideas. Frere had been sent out to the Cape Colony as governor and high commissioner the year before with the specific task of welding the hotch-potch of British colonies, Boer Republics and independent black states into a Confederation of South Africa. He quickly came to the conclusion that South Africa could not be unified under British rule until the powerful Zulu kingdom had been suppressed. So Frere exaggerated the Zulu threat and, when the home government still refused to authorise a war, took matters into his own hands in December 1878 by presenting the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, with an unacceptable ultimatum. It demanded, among other things, the disbandment of the Zulu army and the acceptance of a British resident. Frere knew that Cetshwayo could not comply with such harsh demands and keep his throne. He was bound to resist, which is what Frere wanted him to do. Cetshwayo asked for more time to discuss the demands with his council, but Frere would not give him any. On 11 January 1879, the day after the expiry of the 30-day ultimatum, Lord Chelmsford's No 3 Column splashed across the Buffalo River at Rorke's Drift and entered Zululand. Frere's war had begun. Spinning the news The man chiefly responsible for this skewing of history was Baron Chelmsford, the British commander in South Africa. "You have saved Natal," he told Lieutenants John Chard and Gonville Bromhead during the morning of 23 January 1879 after they and a hundred fit soldiers of the 24th Regiment had successfully defended the supply depot at Rorke's Drift from repeated attacks by 3,000 Zulus. It was a feat immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu and rewarded with 11 Victoria Crosses, the most for a single action. Natal was never in serious danger because the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, had ordered his warriors not to invade. But Chelmsford had good reason to exaggerate. By emphasising the heroism and importance of the defence of Rorke's Drift, he hoped to diminish the impact of the far more significant defeat at Isandlwana a day earlier – when a surprise attack by the main Zulu army had destroyed his camp and butchered 1,350 soldiers (itself the subject of a bigger-budget but much less memorable film, Zulu Dawn). What if… Britain and France went to war during the 1898 Fashoda Incident? The ruse bought Chelmsford enough time to fight and win two subsequent battles at Gingindlovu and Ulundi, in April and July 1879 respectively, before he was finally recalled. Yet neither of these victories was as pivotal as the earlier battles of Hlobane and Kambula, fought by Wood and his deputy Buller. Both officers had impressed Chelmsford during the 1878 war against the Xhosa tribes of the eastern Cape: Wood as an independent column commander; Buller as chief of a newly-raised body of irregular cavalry. And at the outset of the Zulu War, in January 1879, they were assigned to No 4 Column, the most northerly of the four columns due to invade Zululand and converge on the capital of Ulundi. But the destruction of No 3 Column’s camp at Isandlwana on 22 January, just 11 days into the campaign, left Chelmsford’s strategy in tatters. We must go forward Wood received news of the disaster in the early hours of 24 January and knew at once the implications: it would take weeks for Chelmsford to reform No 3 Column; meanwhile he was out on a limb and vulnerable to attack. So he withdrew closer to the border and established a new camp at Kambula Hill which, he told Chelmsford, he “anticipated being able to hold against the whole of the Zulu army”. His new position was a good one, lying as it did on a narrow, open ridge that fell away steeply to the south but more gently to the north where several miles of open veldt provided little or no cover to an attacker. Wood, however, could not relax. “I never slept more than two or three hours at a time,” he remembered, “going round the sentries for the next three months at least twice a night. We shifted camp five times”. He was eventually coaxed out of his secure position by a letter from Lord Chelmsford who by mid-March, thanks to the arrival of reinforcements, had recovered his confidence and was planning to lead a force to relieve the Southern Column which had been besieged in the mission station of Eshowe since late January. “If you are in a position to make any forward movement about the 27th [March],” wrote Chelmsford to Wood on the 17th, “so that the news of it may reach the neighbourhood of Eshowe about the 29th, I think it might have a good effect”. Read more: Victorians and war: which conflicts were fought during the Victorian era? This “forward movement” was Buller’s ill-fated assault on Hlobane Mountain, authorised by Wood despite the fact that he knew little about the terrain or the number of defenders (the estimates ranged from 1,000 to 4,000). Spies, moreover, had warned him that the main Zulu army was heading north. But they got the date of its departure wrong by two days, causing Wood to believe that the Hlobane attack could take place without hindrance. He was wrong, and but for Buller’s heroics the defeat would have been greater. During the chaotic retreat to Kambula camp, Buller personally rescued at least three men by galloping back and taking them up behind him. “Buller is a man of iron nerve and extraordinary courage,” noted Chelmsford, “and is able to lead those under him where others would fail. How he escaped being killed himself I cannot understand, as he was, I believe, the very last man in the retreat and must have had any number of Zulus all around him.” His reward was a Victoria Cross. Listen | Saul Dubow responds to listener questions on the Boer Wars, Victorian Britain’s bitter conflict with two southern African republics Finding victory in defeat Hlobane did, however, have one positive outcome for the British: by diverting the main Zulu army from its original line of march, it delayed the attack on Kambula camp by at least a day, giving Wood time to fine-tune his already formidable defences. The keystone to his position was an elongated earthwork fort he had built on a narrow ridge of tableland to the front of the camp. In it were two of his cannon; the other four were in the open between the redoubt and the main wagon laager, which was 20 yards lower and 300 yards to its rear. The lack of a defensive laager – or circle of wagons – was the chief reason the camp at Isandlwana had been taken. This one was a veritable fortress with each wagon pole lashed to the wagon in front, a rampart of earth sealing off the gaps between the wheels, and a mealie-bag wall with firing embrasures along the outside buckrail. The column’s 2,000 cattle were kept in a smaller wagon laager that was situated just below and to the right of the fort. The two were connected by a wooden palisade. The Zulu army approached Kambula camp at 1pm on 29 March in its distinctive ‘horns of the buffalo’ formation: the left horn advanced up the valley to the south of the camp; the ‘chest’ climbed the eastern end of the Kambula ridge; and the right horn marched round to the north. King Cetshwayo later claimed that, having learnt the lesson of Rorke’s Drift, he had ordered his commander, Chief Mnyamana, not to attack a fortified position. And yet the success of the Zulus at Hlobane had “greatly elated” the younger warriors, who “thought if they attacked the camp the next day they would obtain an easy victory”. The warriors of the right horn were the first to charge – goaded into making this premature assault by Buller’s mounted men who rode out and fired into their flank – and Chief Mnyamana ordered the ‘chest’ and left horn to follow. “On came the Zulus in thousands,” recalled Lieutenant Slade of the Royal Artillery, “and by 3.30pm they had actually driven our infantry out of and occupied the cattle laager which was only 40 yards from my guns. I fired round after round of case [shot] into them, hitting oxen and Zulus alike, and a merry hail of bullets were pouring into us”. As the battle reached its crisis point, Wood spotted large numbers of Zulus in the ravine to the south of the main laager, with their leaders encouraging them to charge. To pre-empt this he ordered two companies of the 90th Light Infantry to leave the main laager and break up the attack. “At first the advance was successful,” recorded an officer of the 90th, “a large number of men giving way before the two companies and retiring from the crest down the slope. But coming under a heavy and well-directed crossfire from other quarters, the two companies were ordered to retire, having lost two officers and about 25 men killed and wounded”. Shortly after, Buller broke up a second assault by warriors of the left horn with another bayonet charge from the main laager, this time by a company of the 1/13th. More Zulu attacks came in, including one by the right horn at 4.30pm, but they were uncoordinated and not pressed with any vigour. By 5.30 the cattle laager had been cleared and the Zulus were falling back. It was time to release the horsemen. “We were up and at them,” recalled Buller. “Had it not been dark their loss would have been very heavy, still I cannot think that the killed and wounded in the pursuit was less than 300.” In all the Zulus lost 2,000 dead at Kambula; the British just 18 killed and 65 wounded. Cetshwayo was furious with Chief Mnyamana for disobeying his orders. He now knew that victory was no longer possible, and that even a negotiated peace was probably beyond his grasp. The fighting spirit of his soldiers – so high after Isandlwana – had been sapped by the sickening slaughter of three successive battles. Never again would his warriors show the same dash and disregard for their safety as they had at Isandlwana and Kambula; never again would the British risk a battle in the open without overwhelming firepower. Of the final one-sided battle of the war at Ulundi on 4 July, Wood wrote: “I was rather disgusted that the Zulus made such a feeble attempt. An Induna [chief]… who was wounded at Kambula and surrendered yesterday, said: ‘Our hearts were broken at Kambula. I did not go within shot of you this time’.” King Cetshwayo fled his capital but was captured by a British patrol on 28 August and subsequently sent into exile at Cape Town. His kingdom was broken up into 13 independent chiefdoms and, after years of civil war, finally annexed by the British in 1887. Wood and Buller were among the few Britons to emerge from the war with any credit. Wood was knighted and rose to the rank of field marshal; Buller became a full general and commanded British troops at the start of the Boer War of 1899–1902 (though not with the same brio he had demonstrated in Zululand). But thanks to the actions of Lord Chelmsford – and two Hollywood feature films – their finest hours during the key battles of the Zulu War have been largely forgotten. 8 battles of the Zulu War in 1879 Isandlwana, 22 January 1879 Catastrophic British defeat as a huge Zulu impi of 20,000 warriors overwhelms the No 3 Column’s unfortified camp at Isandlwana after Lord Chelmsford, the overconfident British commander, had ridden out of camp that morning with the majority of his force. Fatalities: 950 Europeans and 400 African auxiliaries; 2,000 Zulus. Rorke’s Drift, 22/23 January 1879 Heroic defence of the No 3 Column’s supply depot on the Buffalo River by a tiny British garrison of 140 men, many of them sick and wounded. They repel repeated attacks by 3,000 Zulu warriors, the reserve of the victorious Isandlwana impi (force). Fatalities: 17 Europeans; 1,000 Zulus. Nyezane, 22 January 1879 The 2,000-strong vanguard of Colonel Pearson’s No 1 Column easily defeats an attack by 6,000 Zulus under Chief Godide near the Nyezane River in southern Zululand. British troops use the Gatling-gun in combat for the first time. Fatalities: 14 Europeans; 400 Zulus. Ntombe Drift, 12 March 1879 The temporary camp of a company of the 80th Regiment, sent to rescue a supply convoy cut off by flood water near the Boer settlement of Luneberg on the Transvaal-Zululand border, is captured by 1,000 Zulus in a surprise dawn attack. Fatalities: 64 Europeans and 15 African auxiliaries; 40 Zulus. Hlobane, 28 March 1879 Badly-timed attack on the abaQulusi tribe’s mountain stronghold in northern Zululand by mounted troops and African auxiliaries of Brigadier Wood’s No 4 Column. The attacking force, led by Colonel Buller, is surprised by the sudden appearance of a huge Zulu impi and many are killed during the chaotic retreat. Fatalities: 90 Europeans and 100 African auxiliaries; 100 Zulus. Kambula, 29 March 1879 Brigadier Wood’s No 4 Column gains revenge for Hlobane when, a day later, it fights off an attack by 20,000 Zulu warriors on its fortified camp at Kambula. Their morale sapped by heavy losses in three successive battles, the Zulus never fight again with the same courage and determination. Fatalities: 29 Europeans; 2,000 Zulus. Gingindlovu, 2 April 1879 Having learnt the lesson of Isandlwana, Lord Chelmsford’s relief force of 5,500 men easily defeats 12,000 Zulus who fail to get within 30 yards of its heavily fortified wagon laager in southern Zululand. The following day Pearson is relieved in Eshowe after a two-month siege. Fatalities: 13 Europeans; 1,000 Zulus. Ulundi, 4 July 1879 The final and most one-sided battle of the war as 20,000 Zulus make a half- hearted attempt to defend their capital by attacking the hollow square formed by Lord Chelmsford’s 5,000-strong column. The Zulu attack fails and hundreds are cut down during the cavalry pursuit. Fatalities: 13 Europeans; 1,500 Zulus. Fact and fiction in the Zulu War All historical films take a few liberties with the truth and Cy Endfield's stirring 1964 feature Zulu, depicting the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift, is no different. It gives the impression that the defenders were mostly Welshmen when in fact the majority came from the industrial slums of England and Ireland. It paints the two officers Bromhead and Chard – memorably played by Michael Caine and Stanley Baker – as the heroes of the hour, conveniently ignoring the far greater contribution made by a former NCO called James Dalton who persuaded them not to abandon the post and was a tower of strength thereafter. And it falsely portrays Private Henry Hook, one of the 11 VC-winners, as an old sweat who liked a drink and was always in trouble – the archetypal likeable rogue. He was, in fact, a 28-year-old teetotaller with a spotless record who had been in the battalion for less than two years. So enraged were Hook’s descendants by this character assassination that they refused to attend the film’s premiere. Historical novels are no less guilty when it comes to playing fast and loose with the truth – and I discovered why when I wrote my own debut work of fiction, Zulu Hart. As a historian of the period, I began with the intention of making the book as authentic as possible, and most of the main events in Africa prior to and during the war were as I describe. For the purposes of plot, however, I did take some minor liberties with the historical record by giving real people underhand motives for their actions. My excuse is that I remained true to their characters. All were capable, if not necessarily guilty, of the misdeeds that I attribute to them in the book. This article was first published in the February 2009 edition of BBC History Magazine
“It was astonishing bravery – and cold-blooded bravery, too”: Saul David on the Special Boat Service
Saul David speaks to Rob Attar about his new authorised history of the Special Boat Service in the Second World War, explaining how the secretive maritime operations unit played a pivotal role in Allied victory
Rob Attar: Could we begin by discussing the genesis of this book? The story of how it came about is a little unusual. Saul David: It’s very unusual. A couple of years ago I was contacted by my agent, who asked me if I would be interested in writing the authorised history of the Special Boat Service (SBS). And of course my initial reaction was: who wouldn’t? But the reason my agent asked me is that they also happened to represent Paddy Ashdown, who was a former member of the SBS and had been commissioned to write the book. Very sadly, Paddy died rather suddenly towards the end of 2018, before the book was finished. So the question was: what happens next? Does someone finish Paddy’s text or write a new version? My agent approached me with both possibilities, and sent me the manuscript. It was very good but it was not what I would have written. Paddy came from the perspective of a practitioner – he was very close to the unit. His writing was very emotive, whereas I’ve always tried to keep an objective distance, as any historian does. Having read his early chapters, I decided it would make more sense to start from scratch. So we agreed that I would write the book in my own way, but would give due acknowledgement to Paddy in terms of the genesis. This is an authorised history of a secretive organisation. How much access did you get? Were any aspects off limits? They weren’t, actually. If there was a problem at all it was that the archives could have been fuller. One thing about a secret organisation is that it doesn’t encourage its members to keep first-hand accounts – certainly not at the time. Writing diaries and even letters during operations is considered a bit of a no-no. But, as far as the unit was concerned, and in terms of access to its archives down in Poole, I was given carte blanche to see everything. The other important thing is that I decided what to put in the book. There was no “You can’t put that in” from the SBS’s perspective. Even so, I did get good access to documents and also to people, which was invaluable because it helped me understand where the unit is today and how it takes its bloodline from the Second World War very seriously. Saul David will be talking about SBS: Silent Warriors in a virtual HistoryExtra LIVE event on Thursday 21 October, at 7pm BST. Find out more and book tickets A basic but important question: what exactly is the SBS? Today it’s known as the Special Boat Service. In the Second World War, it went by a number of different names. If we go back to the beginning, a key player in the story was Roger “Jumbo” Courtney, recognised today by the SBS as the father of the unit. He’s the one who, towards the end of 1940, created the first maritime special operations unit, known as the Folbot Troop. (Folbots are folding canoes, which are incredibly useful for special operations because they allow you to move very low to the water and stealthily into your objective.) Gradually, as the war developed, not only was the SBS created, but also sister organisations: the COPPists [Combined Operations Pilotage Parties] and, later, the RMBPD [Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment]. Why was the SBS needed in the Second World War? It came directly out of the Army Commandos, so we have to first explain why they were needed. If you think about the situation in June 1940, Britain was really in a hole. We’d been chased off the continent, so how on Earth were we going to stop the Germans from dominating Europe on the one hand and invading the UK on the other? Churchill, being the pugnacious and rather optimistic character he was, quickly came to the understanding that we needed a force to strike back. Even if it wasn’t going to achieve huge material damage, it would be a major psychological and PR success if we could show that we were still taking the fight to the enemy. So he came up with this idea of Army Commandos – this huge force of raiders who you could land on the coast anywhere around Europe. One of them was “Jumbo” Courtney, who thought: “OK, we can land in big groups and we can do a lot of damage, but we can also land in small groups – really small groups.” Because if you think about it, a canoe has at most two people in it. And those canoes would enable people to get in and get out almost unseen. He believed that, even with a small number of people, you could create an awful lot of havoc. What kind of men joined the SBS? The type of person Courtney was looking for then is very much the type of person the SBS recruits today. You want unshowy, determined problem-solvers. They’re not big, muscular, shouty, punching types; rather, they are the type of people you wouldn’t notice in a crowd, but they have a very particular skill set. They are very self-disciplined. Listen | Saul David discusses his new history of the Special Boat Service – a daring maritime unit that played a crucial role in Allied victory in WW2 When was the SBS first properly tested? The unit was formed towards the end of 1940 and, a few months later, it was taken out into the Mediterranean with the rest of 8th Commando. Courtney was looking around for opportunities, and he came across a man called Nigel Willmott. Now, Willmott is the second of the three key figures in the story of the SBS. Having been a veteran of the Narvik Operation in Norway, he always realised the importance of beach reconnaissance. In the early days, Courtney was thinking of SBS soldiers as saboteurs – as people who were going to cause havoc on a coastline. But Willmott was of the opinion that you go in quietly, you get information and then you leave. He told Courtney what he was planning and that he’d been given the job of getting as much information as possible about the beaches on Rhodes, because a big operation was planned to land there. And Courtney said: “I think we can do it with canoes.” So the first operation, in the spring of 1941, was carried out by Courtney and Willmott, these two giants of the story. They accomplished the mission, though it was daredevil stuff. Courtney almost drowned, they almost got bumped by German sentries, but they came back with this amazing cache of material that allowed the British to begin to prepare the invasion. Now, as it happened, the invasion never took place, but that didn’t matter – it was proof of concept. They could now use canoes launched off submarines – and, of course, submarines could get anywhere in the world. Operation Frankton must be the most dramatic episode in the story of the SBS. What happened there? I’d better say a word first about the leader of the operation, Herbert “Blondie” Hasler, the third of the giants in the story. He was a regular Royal Marine who was very fit, very determined and very single-minded. Hasler was interested in blowing up ships in harbour, and in mid-1942 he was given the go-ahead to create the RMBPD. It was effectively a cover name for a secret Royal Marine commando unit whose job was to destroy shipping. Frankton was an unbelievably optimistic operation. They were going to drop off six canoes, each manned by two people, at the entrance to the Gironde estuary [near Bordeaux, then in occupied France]. They would then paddle, over a period of three days in December 1942, 60 miles up the estuary, deep into enemy territory. And when they got to Bordeaux harbour they would sink some fast merchant ships that had been moving vital supplies back and forth between Axis ports. Your guide to National Service in Britain Only five pairs of men started the mission from the submarine, about five miles off the coast, because one of the canoes got damaged. And only two got all the way to Bordeaux. The fate of the others didn’t become known until after the operation: two of those canoes had overturned, and another pair were captured on their way in. So just two pairs reached Bordeaux. When it got dark, they began their attack. It was an incredibly dangerous operation: they were almost spotted on a number of occasions, and there were moments when they almost gave the game away – but they didn’t, and they managed to put limpet mines on five ships. And then they began their exfiltration. This was where things got particularly tricky, because they had to escape through occupied France into Spain. Given that very few of the men could speak foreign languages, there was little chance of success. And so it proved: of the two crews who carried out the operation, only Hasler and his canoeist, Bill Sparks, after more amazing drama, managed to get to Spain. Does this highlight just how dangerous SBS missions were? It was arguably one of the most dangerous things to do in the Second World War. Just imagine being on one of these canoes, one of two men heading to lonely shores to carry out missions, with no backup and hardly any firepower. And, from October 1942 [following Adolf Hitler’s Commando Order], they faced the likelihood that if they were caught, they would be executed – which is exactly what happened to six of Hasler’s men. Yet I haven’t found a single instance, all the way through the Second World War, in which someone said: “Do you know what? I’m not doing it.” It was astonishing bravery – and cold-blooded bravery, too. There was rarely a big firefight; you were just moving slowly into a coast. The beach reconnaissance aspect came to the fore in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy. What was the role of the SBS in those two operations? This was really the job of the COPPists. By the end of 1942, Nigel Willmott was given authorisation to create a dedicated unit that would be involved in beach reconnaissance. He’d argued that we needed proper information about what was on the beaches, the exits, the firmness of the beaches, and of course the gradients leading into the beaches and any defences that were there. So they created this amazing unit, COPP. Within COPP there were navigators like Willmott, but also SBS-trained engineers who would go in and get all the military information from the beaches. It was an all-purpose unit that began to prove its worth in Sicily, which was its first deployment. Though the invasion of Sicily took place in July 1943, the COPPists had been on the coast as early as March. They need to be doing this work months in advance and, though a lot of them were lost in the early operations – they drowned, they were captured, they were killed in firefights – there was very much a sense that it worked. If it was done properly, it could get the information to guarantee, as far as possible, that the huge landings planned for D-Day would succeed. How much did the SBS shape the planning for D-Day? This would be the greatest amphibious invasion in history, so the Allies needed to know that those beaches were firm enough to take all the wheeled transport and tanks that would be rolling over them within hours of the first troops landing. So the first and most crucial job given to the COPPists was to land on a couple of those beaches – the ones at the intersection between Juno and Gold, where the Canadian and British soldiers were going to land – and find out whether the beaches were firm enough. There was a suspicion they might not be, and until they knew for sure, all planning was on hold. Willmott picked two of his best people – Major Logan Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith – to swim into the heavily guarded beaches of Normandy and gather information during the night of New Year’s Eve 1943. They did a pretty good survey of the beaches and their defences, and obtained the most important information of all: that those beaches would hold the wheeled traffic. A month later, they carried out a second beach reconnaissance surveying the defences at Omaha. There they got crucial information about the sophistication of the German defences. As well as gathering information in advance, COPP also guided in the forces during the actual landings, both as pilots on the landing craft and also, even more importantly, using Midget submarines to put up markers to show the landing craft the right way to go. On D-Day itself, in places where they used these Midget submarines – that is, in the Canadian and British sectors – everyone got to the right place and landed properly. But the carnage on Omaha, in my view and in the view of the SBS at the time, was partly the result of the Americans not trusting the SBS to put up markers prior to the arrival of their landing craft. The result of this, combined with the bad weather and strong tides, was that enormous numbers of American troops at Omaha landed at the wrong place. The Americans were worried that these markers would give the game away, which of course was a very serious danger. But there was a calculation among the British in their planning for D-Day that it was better to get to the right place and risk the chance of the operation being discovered. And they were proved right. Overall, how important was the SBS to the Allied war effort? It is a hugely underestimated contribution that made a real difference in a number of ways. In a psychological sense, it really gave the British a chance to strike back, from the earliest days. These operations were happening all the time, and they were heavily publicised: if there was a major success, you can be damn sure people were told about it. And there was also the material effect they had, particularly in the Mediterranean, where a lot of railways and coastal infrastructure was destroyed. But the single most important contribution was the beach reconnaissance, because it had a major impact on all the big landings – Sicily, Italy, Normandy – and also in the far east. If there’s one thing I hope my book does, it’s to give due recognition, particularly to the COPPists but to all those who come under the broader SBS banner, for the contribution they made, which has not been properly recognised up to now. Saul David is the author of SBS Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History (William Collins, 2021) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones That’s an interesting point – because an equivalent service, the SAS, is very well known today. Why do you think the SBS seems to have lived in that unit’s shadow? It’s partly because of the ways they operated. There’s this great comparison between the SAS and the SBS, then and now: the SAS likes to burst in through the front door, making a lot of noise, whereas the SBS comes in the back door – stealthily, and leaving without being known. I think the sort of people who go into a unit like that are the sort of people who don’t like shouting about their achievements. They didn’t in the Second World War, they didn’t after the war, and arguably they still don’t even today. I think one of the reasons this book has been authorised is because the SBS certainly does want its history to be acknowledged. It’s been long enough now. They want to be recognised for what they did then, and I think there’s a sense that there will be a bit of reflected glory for what they do now. Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including Crucible of Hell: Okinawa. The Last Great Battle of the Second World War (William Collins, 2020) and Operation Thunderbolt (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015) This article was first published in the October 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
Alternate history: what if Britain and France went to war in 1898?
A territorial dispute in 1898 may have been a small-scale confrontation over an unimportant patch of land in Africa, but it could have had "huge consequences" for the course of the 20th century. Jonny Wilkes talks to historian, novelist and broadcaster Saul David about the Fashoda Incident, and how it could have led to a very different looking World War I
Each month BBC History Revealed asks a historical expert for their take on what might have happened if a key moment in the past had turned out differently. This time, Jonny Wilkes talks to Saul David about what might have happened had the Fashoda Incident of 1898 escalated into war… On 4 November 1898, the old adversaries of Britain and France stepped back from an escalating situation that threatened to add another bloody chapter to their long history of warfare. The so-called Fashoda Incident may have seemed like a small-scale territorial dispute over an unimportant patch of land in modern-day South Sudan, but it caused fear and warmongering back in Europe. If fighting did break out, it would have had “huge consequences for international relations and the course of the 20th century,” says historian and author Saul David. Africa in the late-19th century was being carved up, claimed and colonised by European powers in what is often referred to as the ‘Scramble for Africa’. Britain and France had footholds across the continent, and wished to connect their colonial acquisitions. Britain was ambitiously planning a railroad from South Africa to Egypt; France was looking to establish a line of control from east to west. And right in the middle, where their respective ambitions intersected, was a small town called Fashoda. The French were determined to get there first. In 1896, an expedition set out from Gabon made up of around 150 men – including 11 French officers and a large number of Senegalese troops – under the command of Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand. Following a gruelling trek across Central Africa, in which they kept getting lost and had to drag their boat across hundreds of miles of land, they reached Fashoda on 10 July 1898. Although comprising little more than an abandoned fort in ruins, the strategic town was now in the hands of Marchand and his men. Fashoda would strengthen France’s trade route from West Africa to its outpost in Djibouti, and act as a base from which to force the British out of Egypt. Marchand’s audacious expedition could not be ignored. The British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, ordered a force under Major-General Horatio Herbert Kitchener to advance south along the Nile River. Kitchener was on campaign to reconquer Sudan for British-controlled Egypt, having decisively defeated the Muslim Mahdists in the battle of Omdurman and occupied Khartoum. He reached Fashoda on 18 September 1898 and met with Marchand. A second French expedition had set out from Djibouti in the east to reinforce Marchand’s men, but, despite having a shorter distance to cover, was forced to turn back while travelling through Ethiopia. This left the French with approximately a tenth of the British force. Kitchener stated his position that French presence in Egyptian territory could not be accepted and made it clear that, while he would not instigate a conflict, he would not back down. The French commander expressed the same, fully aware his enemy outnumbered his force 10 to one and was supported by gunboats. A standoff began as both sides waited for their governments to make their moves. On the brink of war Despite both men remaining calm, news of the Fashoda Incident sparked a political crisis in Britain and France. Newspapers were filled with rhetoric and patriotic fervour. The Royal Navy was put on alert and the fleet in the Mediterranean readied for action. There were calls for war in parliament. France attempted, unsuccessfully, to ensure Russian support in an imminent conflict. The longer that things went unchanged in Fashoda, the closer Europe seemed to get to all-out war. In truth, neither side wanted that to happen. Lord Salisbury refused to send an ultimatum to Paris and the French had become consumed by other concerns, namely the Dreyfus Affair. The ongoing scandal had divided opinion between those who believed army captain Alfred Dreyfus had been rightly convicted of treason several years earlier, and those who believed he was the innocent victim of a military cover-up and anti-Semitism. In context: what really happened in the Fashoda Incident? The Fashoda Incident of 1898 culminated in a tense standoff between British and French forces over an abandoned fort in Africa. A 150-strong French expedition had secured the town of Fashoda (Kodok in South Sudan) in British-controlled Egypt, and had refused to back down when confronted by 1,500 men under Horatio Herbert Kitchener. As the standoff dragged on, the political situation in Europe worsened as Britain went on a war footing. On 4 November, however, the small French force withdrew, ensuring Britain maintained control over the area. The boundary of their respective dominions would be set at the Nile and Congo rivers with the French to the west and the British in Egypt. A few years after the Fashoda Incident, in 1904, the two nations signed the Entente Cordiale, an agreement that greatly improved relations, ended colonial rivalries, and laid the foundations of the alliance against Germany in the First World War. But the situation at Fashoda could have changed, believes David. A stray bullet, a moment of lapsed leadership, or a piece of miscommunication could have seen the British and French come to blows. If a firefight had occurred, Marchand would likely have lost badly due to Kitchener’s overwhelming numerical supremacy. While a quick victory may be have been enough to sate the British, the French would have been humiliated and all-too easily sought retaliation. With Britain and France going to war, alliances would have been drawn up. The Russians were certainly hostile to the British due to the ‘Great Game’ – diplomatic and political confrontations over Afghanistan, Central and South Asia – so may have sided with the French, and Germany may have allied themselves with Britain. It could have quickly become a world war if fighting were to consume colonies, which could have benefitted the British as they had a clear advantage at sea thanks to the Royal Navy. Whatever the outcome, the greatest result of an armed conflict would have been the loss of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. “Fighting would have kept Britain out of the loose ‘alliance’ with Russia and France that Germany found so threatening in the lead up to the First World War,” says David. “Would this have prevented the war? Probably not. Germany had already embarked on its policy of world power, building up its navy to challenge Britain’s. That arms race would have continued.” Yet a war in 1898 provoked by the Fashoda Incident may have kept Britain out of that world war entirely, continues David, drastically changing the complex networks of alliances that formed, how the war was fought, and who would have won. The Central Powers – Germany and Austria-Hungary – could have emerged victorious. “That would have meant an authoritarian, anti-Semitic, nationalist government dominating mainland Europe for the foreseeable future, with much of Eastern Europe reduced to slave state status, and those in the west subordinated to Germany.” More alternate history What if... Alexander the Great hadn't died so young? What if... Boudica had defeated the Romans? What if... the Spanish Armada had landed in England? This content first appeared in the September 2021 edition of BBC History Revealed
The Special Boat Service: WW2’s silent heroes
Saul David discusses his new history of the Special Boat Service – a daring maritime unit that played a crucial role in Allied victory in WW2
Historian Saul David discusses SBS – Silent Warriors, his new authorised history of the Special Boat Service in the Second World War. He explains how this daring maritime unit played a crucial role in Allied victory and highlights some of its most spectacular operations. Saul David is the author of SBS - Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History (HarperCollins, 2021) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
Queen Victoria's reign witnessed a massive expansion of the British empire. Saul David explains how such huge growth was accompanied by a constant series of wars of conquest
Kensington Palace, London, six in the morning. Princess Victoria is woken by her mother and told that two men are there to see her. She rises quickly, throws a dressing-gown over her nightdress and, with her fair hair still loose about her shoulders, receives the two visitors in her sitting-room. She recognises them as Lord Conyngham, the portly lord chamberlain, and Dr William Howley, the septuagenarian archbishop of Canterbury. They have come from Windsor Castle and their presence can only mean one thing: her uncle, King William IV, is dead. The king “had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning”, she records later in her journal, “and consequently I am Queen”. Victoria was just 18 when she became Queen on 20 June 1837. At the time, Britain was the world’s leading industrial power with apparently limitless supplies of coal and iron and a virtual monopoly of steam power. London was not only the largest city in the world, but its principal financial exchange. Victoria’s navy was recognised as the ultimate arbiter of world affairs, while her army basked in the reputation it had won at Waterloo. Yet the British Empire was, if anything, in decline. The American Revolution had helped to sour the notion of empire and powerful commercial interests were arguing for free trade and against the protectionism of the 18th-century imperial system. In 1837 the empire consisted of a jumbled collection of territories acquired in bits and pieces over the generations, administered partly by government and partly by chartered companies. It is hard to believe, then, that during the period known as the Dual Monarchy, from Victoria’s accession to the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861, the British Empire almost quintupled in size thanks to territorial acquisitions in Asia, Africa, the South Sea and the Far East. By the end of the 19th century it had become the greatest empire the world has ever known, covering a quarter of the earth’s surface and a quarter of its population. What made this huge initial period of growth possible was a series of ruthless wars of conquest. The one constant in this period of unprecedented expansion, always at the centre of the imperial web, was the formidable figure of Queen Victoria herself: shaping, supporting and sometimes condemning her government’s foreign policy – but never ignoring it. Though British monarchs no longer had the power to make or break governments, they still had, in the words of Walter Bagehot, the great constitutional historian, “three great rights”: to be consulted, to advise and to warn. Aided and abetted by her hugely underrated husband, Prince Albert, Victoria made full use of these rights to influence government policy. Doing the right thing Of course Victoria took time to find her political feet. During the lead-up to the First Afghan War of 1839–42, for example, she was briefed by her ministers but played a largely passive role. Told by her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, on 28 October 1838 that the Indian government had done the “right thing” by mobilising its troops for an invasion of Afghanistan, she made no objection. Young and inexperienced, she was content to follow the advice of her prime minister. At first all went well, with the Anglo-Indian invasion force capturing Kabul and installing the pro-British Shah Shuja as its new sovereign in August 1839. But after just two years of Shuja’s hugely unpopular rule, a major revolt broke out in Kabul and quickly spread to the other major towns, effectively trapping the British garrisons in their forts and cantonments. With little hope of relief, the British commander at Kabul brokered a deal for the safe conduct of all British troops to the Punjab. So began the disastrous Retreat from Kabul which ended, on 13 January 1842, with the arrival of a single Briton, Dr William Brydon, at British-held Jelalabad. The rest of the 4,000 strong force, not to mention 12,000 camp followers, had been killed or captured during the horrific march through the snow-covered passes of Eastern Afghanistan. Queen Victoria’s chief concern, now, was for the fate of the British hostages, many of them women and children. For much of the summer, as the war swung in the balance, she agonised over their predicament. Finally, in November, came the welcome news that British troops had recaptured Kabul and released “all” the hostages. Such “brilliant successes” deserved recognition, wrote Victoria, and she was only too happy to approve honours for her senior commanders and a campaign medal, the first of its kind, for the troops. A further two major and eight medium-sized wars were fought by the British during the first quarter century of Victoria’s reign. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (her first-cousin whom she married in 1840) took a keen interest in all of them, and were staunch supporters of generals and pro-consuls who, they felt, had done their duty in difficult circumstances. So when Lord Ellenborough, the governor-general of India, was recalled in 1844 by Sir Robert Peel’s Tory government for launching an unauthorised war against Sind, Victoria voiced her disapproval. The decision to sack him was, she told Peel, “very unwise at this critical moment, and a very ungrateful return for the eminent services Lord Ellenborough has rendered… in India”. This time her objections were not heeded, though she would have more success supporting Lord Raglan, the British commander in the Crimea. It helped that after the break-up of the Tory party in 1846 (over the repeal of the Corn Laws), ushering in a long period of coalition and minority governments, the monarch often held the balance of power – and Victoria was not afraid to use it. In 1850, she told Lord Palmerston, the headstrong Whig foreign secretary, that once she had “given her sanction to a measure”, she did not expect it to be “arbitrarily altered or modified by the minister”. When, a year later, he failed to consult either her or his cabinet colleagues over his approval of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état in France, he was forced to resign. Victoria’s chief concern, if British interests were involved, was whether her government understood the military consequences of its aggressive foreign policy. “The Queen wishes to ask, before she sanctions this draft,” she wrote to the foreign secretary in 1856, “whether the Cabinet have fully considered the consequences of this declaration to the Persians, which may be war; and if so, whether they are prepared to go to war with Persia, and have provided the means of carrying it on?” The royal couple were most closely involved, both emotionally and practically, with the two major wars of the period: the Crimean War of 1854–6 and the Indian Mutiny of 1857–9. They worked hard to keep Britain out of the former war – the first European conflict for 40 years – but when it became inevitable they threw their energies into supporting the troops. On the departure of the Scots Guards to the seat of war, Victoria wrote: “They formed line, presented arms, and then cheered us very heartily, and went on cheering. It was a touching and beautiful sight; many sorrowing friends were there, and one saw the shake of many a hand. My best wishes and prayers will be with them all”. Socks knitted by the Queen Later, when it became clear that British troops were suffering in the Crimea from a want of supplies and organisation, Queen Victoria personally superintended relief committees, knitted winter clothing (and encouraged her daughters and ladies-in-waiting to do the same) and eagerly seconded the efforts of Florence Nightingale. She also visited crippled soldiers in hospital and in 1856 instituted the Victoria Cross, the first all-ranks gallantry award, making it retrospective for those who had served in the Crimea. Albert was instrumental in the setting up of the Patriotic Fund which raised £1m for the widows and orphans of the dead. During the Indian Mutiny Victoria’s sensitive and broad-minded reaction to rebel atrocities – “They should know there is no hatred of brown skin” – did much to calm the near hysterical cries among the British press and public for “fire and sword” retribution. And it was she who insisted that the 1858 “Proclamation”, announcing the transfer of authority from the East India Company to the Crown, contained a clause guaranteeing religious freedom. Albert’s clever diplomacy may even have averted a war between Britain and the United States in December 1861. But Albert's death a few days later was very much the end of an era, not only because the Queen withdrew from public life for years, but also because, even when she did return in 1866, she was never as effective or influential as she had been with him at her side. Disraeli admitted as much when he wrote: “With Prince Albert we have buried our Sovereign. This German Prince has governed England for 21 years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our Kings have ever shown”. Albert’s demise coincided, moreover, with a shift in the axis of imperial expansion from Asia to Africa that reflected the changing commercial and strategic concerns of the British government. During Albert’s marriage only a couple of minor wars were fought in Africa (on the Cape frontier), whereas 10 were fought in Asia. Yet, of the 15 significant wars fought by Victoria’s troops after his death, 11 took place on the so-called “dark continent”. Lastly there was a change in the fundamental character of empire. Before the Indian Mutiny most Britons saw the empire as a “powerful force for the spread of civilisation”. So bloody were the events of the mutiny, however, that when it was over many Britons concluded that the subject peoples of the empire were not capable of being civilised. Imperial rule became, therefore, not a mission but a duty: or, as Rudyard Kipling so eloquently put it, “the White Man’s burden”. Saul David is the author of three acclaimed books on the wars of the Victorian period. Victoria’s Wars: The Rise of Empire is published by Viking This article was first published in the May 2006 issue of BBC History Magazine
Did conkers help win the First World War?
When Britain's war effort was threatened by a shortage of shells, the government exhorted schoolchildren across the country to go on the hunt for horse chestnuts. Historian and broadcaster Saul David explains why...
In the autumn of 1917, a notice appeared on the walls of classrooms and scout huts across Britain: “Groups of scholars and boy scouts are being organised to collect conkers… This collection is invaluable war work and is very urgent. Please encourage it.” It was never explained to schoolchildren exactly how conkers could help the war effort. Nor did they care. They were more interested in the War Office’s bounty of 7s 6d (37.5p) for every hundred weight they handed in, and for weeks they scoured woods and lanes for the shiny brown objects they usually destroyed in the playground game. The children’s efforts were so successful that they collected more conkers than there were trains to transport them, and piles were seen rotting at railway stations. But a total of 3,000 tonnes of conkers did reach their destination – the Synthetic Products Company at King’s Lynn – where they were used to make acetone, a vital component of the smokeless propellant for shells and bullets known as cordite. Cordite had been used by the British military since 1889, when it first replaced black gunpowder. It consisted chiefly of the high-explosives nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose (gun-cotton), with acetone playing the key role of solvent in the manufacturing process. Prior to the First World War, the acetone used in British munitions was made almost entirely from the dry distillation (pyrolysis) of wood. As it required almost a hundred tonnes of birch, beech or maple to produce a tonne of acetone, the great timber-growing countries were the biggest producers of this vital commodity, and Britain was forced to import the vast majority of its acetone from the United States. An attempt to produce our own acetone was made in 1913 when a modern factory was built in the Forest of Dean. But by the outbreak of war in 1914, the stocks for military use were just 3,200 tonnes, and it was soon obvious that an alternative domestic supply would be needed. This became even more pressing during the spring of 1915 when an acute shortage of shells – the so-called ‘shell crisis’ – reduced some British guns to firing just four times a day. The British government’s response was to create a dedicated Ministry of Munitions, run by the future prime minister David Lloyd George. One of Lloyd George’s first initiatives was to ask the brilliant chemist Chaim Weizmann of Manchester University if there was an alternative way of making acetone in large quantities. Weizmann said yes. Read more | The First World War: Was it worth it? Developing the work of Louis Pasteur and others, Weizmann had perfected an anaerobic fermentation process that used a highly vigorous bacterium known as Clostridium acetobutylicum (also known as the Weizmann organism) to produce large quantities of acetone from a variety of starchy foodstuffs such as grain, maize and rice. He at once agreed to place his process at the disposal of the government. In May 1915, after Weizmann had demonstrated to the Admiralty that he could convert 100 tonnes of grain to 12 tonnes of acetone, the government commandeered brewing and distillery equipment, and built factories to utilise the new process at Holton Heath in Dorset and King’s Lynn in Norfolk. Together they produced more than 90,000 gallons of acetone a year, enough to feed the war’s seemingly insatiable demand for cordite. (The British army and Royal Navy, alone, fired 248 million shells from 1914 to 1918.) But by 1917, as grain and potatoes were needed to feed the British population, and German U-boat activity in the Atlantic was threatening to cut off the import of maize from the United States, Weizmann was tasked to find another supply of starch for his process that would not interfere with the already limited food supplies. View Riddle on the source website He began experimenting with conkers, aware that they grew in abundance across the country, and found that the yield of acetone was sufficiently high to begin production. This, in turn, prompted the nationwide appeal for schoolchildren to collect the conkers and hand them in. The government was determined not to reveal the real reason for the great chestnut hunt of 1917 in case the blockaded Germans copied their methods. The only official statement was printed in The Times on 26 July 1917. It read: “Chestnut seeds, not the green husks, are required by the Government for the Ministry of Munitions. The nuts will replace cereals which have been necessary for the production of an article of great importance in the prosecution of the War.” When questions were asked in the House of Commons, the veiled response was that the conkers were needed for “certain purposes”. So suspicious did some members of the public become that they accused the government of using voluntary labour for private profit. Read more | Beyond the western front: the forgotten clashes of WW1 The actual production of acetone from conkers was, despite Weizmann’s assurances, never that successful. Teething problems meant the manufacturing process did not begin in the King’s Lynn factory until April 1918, and it was soon discovered that horse chestnuts did not provide the yields the government had hoped for. Production ended after just three months. So did conkers really help to win the war? They played their part, certainly, even if their role was more walk-on than centre stage. The real star of the show was Chaim Weizmann, whose brilliant solution to the acetone shortage – using a variety of natural products from maize to conkers – helped to solve the shell crisis and get Britain’s guns firing again. A leading Zionist, Weizmann was rewarded for his vital contribution to Britain’s war effort when the cabinet – prompted by Lloyd George, prime minister since late 1916 – approved the signing of the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917. Taking the form of a letter from Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leading British Jew, it promised government support “for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, and was the first step on the long road to Israeli statehood. When the state of Israel was finally established in 1948, Weizmann became its first president. For good or ill, conkers were partly responsible. This article was first published in the November 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine