"An Unprincipled Rogue"

Vic Wilson - "an unprincipled rogue" (Mark Smith)

In a week when I was lucky enough to be part of the latest Football & War Seminar, hosted by the excellent Charlton Athletic Museum, it was fitting that the day after the event, a trail that I had thought had gone cold, suddenly and unexpectedly came back to life with a phone call out of the blue. Regular readers, may remember that in January 2018, following a post on the club's message board, I had made some enquiries about Vic Wilson, who is mentioned in Alfred Allbury's book "Bamboo and Bushido", which describes the author's experiences as a Prisoner of War at the hands of the Japanese following the fall of Singapore in February 1942.

Vic and Alfred both came from Greenwich and were close friends who served together in a Territorial Army Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery. Alfred described Vic in the narrative as "...an unprincipled rogue with a delightful wry sense of humour and a healthy hatred of the war that kept him from his wife and young baby back in Charlton."

First Edition cover of Bamboo and Bushido (author's collection)

The phone call came from Mark Smith, who is married to Vic Wilson's great granddaughter. After introducing himself, Mark explained that Vic's daughter, Val Jacob, who I had written to and subsequently had a long telephone conversation with, was sadly in hospital having suffered a nasty fall and had therefore not been able to pursue her promise to try and find me a photograph of her father, hence my thinking that the trail had gone cold. Mark had discovered my initial letter to Val and kindly offered to pick up the baton and sure enough, the next day, two photographs of Vic arrived by email - one of which can now be seen at the top of the page.

A few things in this story had intrigued me; it isn't often that my little backwater of Southeast London gets a mention in a book that doesn't concern football and the fact that the two men served in the Royal Artillery - a local regiment - meant that we were quite possibly looking at men from my immediate locality and perhaps who supported the same football club. Unfortunately, Allbury's book didn't say with which regiment of the Royal Artillery they had served but a delve in one of my many reference books provided the Order of Battle and this informed me that a local Territorial Army Battery - 118th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery - was present at the fall of Singapore and this encouraged me further.

A search of the excellent Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, as it so often does, provided the basis for my research. It told me that Gunner Victor Charles Wilson had sadly not survived the war but had indeed served with 118th Field Regiment. Vic had died in captivity on 27 July 1943 and was buried at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery in Burma, which indicated that he was one of the many who perished whilst being employed as slave labour of the Japanese on the infamous Burma Railway.

Further research showed that Vic had been born in Greenwich in 1918 and lived at 49 Chevening Road. During the third quarter of 1939, Vic married Violet Elizabeth Brown from 60 Inverine Road, Charlton and in the first quarter of 1940, Violet gave birth to a baby daughter, Valerie. With the onset of the Blitz, Valerie and Violet were evacuated to the relative safety of Hampshire but Vic and his colleagues, being members of the Territorial Army, had been mobilised upon the declaration of war.

The War Diary of 118th Field Regiment RA reveals early mobilisation plans (author's photo)

In normal times, 118th Field Regiment was based at their Drill Hall in Grove Park, Southeast London but inspection of the Regimental War Diary reveals that the process of mobilisation began as early as 23 August 1939 with the call-up of civilian transport and by the evening of 1 September, an advance party of 150 officers and other ranks marched from Grove Park to Cambridge Barracks at nearby Woolwich, to take up their wartime duties. Apart from a brief spell in late November 1939 when the Regiment took part in an exercise in the Ramsgate area, they remained at Woolwich Garrison until mid-January 1940 at which point they moved to Eastbourne to take up coastal defence duties. The Regiment was equipped with a mixture of 18 pounder field guns of Great War vintage and 4.5" howitzers, of similar ancestry. From late June 1940, they moved to the Norfolk coast to take up anti-invasion duties and whilst here, were re-equipped with 75mm artillery supplied from the USA. In September 1940, a further move occurred, this time to Worstead during which time the Regiment was finally re-equipped with the iconic 25 pdr pieces so beloved of the Royal Artillery. Yet another move to the Scottish Borders followed in January 1941 and it was whilst here that the War Diary first mentions the possibility of a deployment to a "Tropical Climate" with training being arranged accordingly. In early April 1941, the Regiment moved to the Staffordshire area, where training continued. Study of the War Diaries tends to lend the lie to the usual perception that the British were forever unprepared for war and muddling through - the politicians may have been unprepared but the Regiment was making preparations for mobilisation over a week before the declaration of war and then training to fight in the Far East some eight months before the entry of Japan into the war.

The Regiment sailed from the Clyde on 30 October 1941 as Convoy CT 5 in eight large troopships, which in peacetime had been better known as the ocean liners ANDES, DUCHESS OF ATHOLL, DURBAN CASTLE, ORCADES, ORONSAY, REINA DEL PACIFICO, SOBIESKY and WARWICK CASTLE. The convoy took the troops as far as Halifax, Nova Scotia where they arrived on 7 November 1941. The next phase of the voyage saw them trans-shipped to six American Troop Transports, the JOSEPH T DICKMAN, LEONARD WOOD, MOUNT VERNON, ORIZABA, WEST POINT and WAKEFIELD. This particular aspect of the voyage is fascinating as the Americans were by now openly assisting their British allies some two months before their official entry into the war and were transporting the British soldiers to potentially fight against an enemy who had also not yet entered the war!

The American ships sailed as Convoy WS 12 X (a British convoy designation) even though the naval escort at this stage was entirely provided by the US Navy and proceeded via Port of Spain to Cape Town, where they arrived on 9 December 1941, two days after the USA's official entry into the war. From Cape Town, the naval escort was a mixed Royal Navy and US Navy affair and the convoy proceeded via Mombasa to Bombay, where they finally arrived on 27 December 1941. From here, the troops transferred to British ships for the final leg of the voyage to Singapore, where they arrived in mid-January 1941, barely one month before the surrender of the colony to the Japanese.

General Arthur Percival (IWM)

The fall of Singapore was arguably the biggest debacle in British military history and is a story of poor preparation, poor command and a classic case of resources being spread too thinly. Despite this, the Allied forces enjoyed a huge numerical superiority over the Japanese, consisting of some 85,000 British, Australian, Indian and Malay forces against some 36,000 invading Japanese. The Allies however, had no tanks in Singapore and were initially convinced that any Japanese assault would come from the seaward side and not via the Malay Peninsular. The air cover was also insufficient, consisting at first of obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters and later, small numbers of Hawker Hurricanes, which were no match for the Japanese fighters and were quickly overwhelmed. As a result, there were constant air raids on Singapore and the British commander General Percival, faced with a civilian catastrophe as well as a military defeat, surrendered his forces on 15 February 1942. It was an utter humiliation and one from which British prestige in the region never really recovered.

Alfred Allbury wrote eloquently of the final hours before the surrender:

"My co-driver Vic Wilson and I sallied forth on nightly excursions to ammunition dumps scattered around the island-no transport could survive ten minutes on the road by day. Once our 15cwt was loaded, we had to deliver the shells to our guns. This called not so much for a knowledge of map reading as for the gift of clairvoyance. Jap planes and the unsuitability of the terrain for effective artillery positions kept our battery commanders roving the island in a desperate search for potential gun-sites. Those found and occupied were speedily made untenable by the sustained accuracy of the Japanese counterfire." 

"Vic Wilson and I had long been friends. He was an unprincipled rogue with a wry sense of humour, and a healthy hatred of the war that kept him from his young wife and baby back home in Charlton."

"On the morning of February 14th the first tentative shells landed among our supply-dumps. They quickly found the exact range and soon a searing bombardment developed that sent us scuttling into our fox-holes. The Japs were ranging on us from heights that overlooked the town. Bukit Timah was theirs after the bloodiest of struggles, the reservoir was stained crimson with the blood of those who had fought so bitterly to hold it, and the little yellow men whom we had ridiculed and despised were in swarm across the island. It was already theirs." 

"Next morning Vic and I set off on a last mad jaunt taking ammunition to ‘A’ Troop who were dug in behind a Chinese temple to the north of Racecourse Road. Vic drove like a maniac. He had, I found, been sampling a bottle of ‘John Haig’. We thundered along deserted roads, pitted and scarred with bomb craters. Wrecked and burnt-out vehicles lay everywhere, strewn at fantastic angles. The trolley-bus cables hung across the road in desolate festoons which shivered and whined as we raced over them. A few yards from the charred remains of an ambulance were a knot of troops gathered round a cook’s wagon. From them we scrounged a mug of hot tea and found out the guns of ‘A’ Troop were only a few hundred yards distant. We delivered our ammunition and an hour later rejoined Battery HQ close by the Raffles Hotel." 

"But late that afternoon came the news that we had surrendered. There was to be a cease-fire at four o’clock. We had fought and lost. And the ashes of defeat tasted bitter. At three o’clock all but a few of the guns were silent. Ammunition had been expended. From the hills there still came the occasional bark of a Japanese gun followed by the whine and crash of its shells. But by six o’clock, save for the spluttering of flames and the occasional explosion of ammunition, all was quiet over the island of Singapore. The carnage of the last ten days was quieted now, and in eerie silence our troops sat huddled together in puzzled but fatalistic expectancy."

"Vic and I returned to our lorry, ate some tinned bacon and biscuits and stretched ourselves luxuriously for our first uninterrupted sleep for many days. We took off our boots, smoked, talked and listened to the distant caterwauling of the Japanese." “They’ll probably,” said Vic “be crawling round us in the night, cutting off our ears.” 

"But we stretched out and slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, while around us into the tropic rose a barbaric and discordant dirge: the victory song of the triumphant Japanese." 

With the fall of Singapore, some 80,000 Allied personnel became Prisoners of War. The Japanese had already signalled their scant regard for humanity when the day before the surrender, they had captured the Alexandra Hospital. A British lieutenant, clearly displaying a white flag, approached the Japanese in order to act as an envoy and explain the presence of a military hospital but was killed with a bayonet. As Japanese forces entered the hospital, they killed soldiers undergoing surgery and bayoneted doctors and nurses with no regard to their non-combatant status. The following day, a further 200 patients and staff were dealt with in the same manner. This was just the beginning of the now-familiar tale of atrocities committed by the Japanese.

With the exception of small parties who escaped Singapore by small boats, including a group of nineteen from the 118th Field Regiment, who safely arrived in India in April 1943 after an odyssey that lasted some fourteen months, the vast majority of those who surrendered went into captivity. After initially being held at Changi Prison, many of the men were sent to work as slave labour on the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway and this is where the story of Vic Wilson ended, succumbing to Beri-Beri on 27 July 1943 and thus never returning home to his wife and daughter.

The Nominal Roll records Vic Wilson's death (authors image)

The Regiment somehow managed to maintain a Nominal Roll which records the fate of Vic and his colleagues, despite the writer of the Roll being imprisoned at Changi and the Regiment being scattered far and wide. It makes heartbreaking reading and a manual count by this writer revealed that of the 744 Officers and Other Ranks that went into captivity at Singapore, 188 died whilst POWs, which represented a loss rate of 25.27%. The vast majority of these men died from disease but inspection of the Nominal Roll reveals some who died from acts of brutality, with for example, one cause of death recorded as "Fractured skull caused by rifle butts." Sadly, this is not uncommon, all of which confirms the Japanese lack of regard for Allied Prisoners of War. 

Despite the sad loss of Vic's life, this story does have an uplifting ending, as following further research, I was able to ascertain that Vic's daughter Valerie is still with us and lives in the local area. I rather tentatively wrote her a letter, explaining who I was and asking whether or not she was aware that her father featured in a book covering the fall of Singapore. I was delighted to receive a phone call a day or so later from Val and had a pleasant conversation with her. She doesn't really remember her Dad, as she was only a baby when he went overseas for what proved to be the final time and neither was she aware of Alfred Allbury's book. Val's Mum had of course told her something of her father and had frequently told Valerie that she shared many of Vic's characteristics. She also confirmed that as far as she had been told, Vic was a Charlton football fan and had attended matches at The Valley before going overseas. I sent copies of the pages in which Vic had been mentioned and subsequently had another long chat on the phone. 

The second photo that I received from Mark, courtesy of Val's son Paul was of Vic, together with a slightly disgruntled looking Val sitting on his knee, in the garden of what looks like a bomb damaged house - perhaps this is the reason for the move away from Inverine Road to the relative safety of Hampshire?

Vic and Valerie (Mark Smith)

It is always pleasing when a story finally comes together and when it happens unexpectedly when one had thought that the trail had gone cold, it is even more satisfying and thanks to the efforts of Mark, we now know the identity of a Charlton Athletic supporter and "unprincipled rogue" who now rests far away from Southeast London.

Published Sources:

Bamboo and Bushido - Alfred Allbury, Robert Hale Limited, London 1955

Unpublished Sources:

National Archives WO 166/1530 - 118th Field Regiment RA, War Diary 01 August 1939 - 30 September 1941
National Archives WO 361/235 - 118th Field Regiment RA, Malaya: Missing Personnel
National Archives WO 361/1300 - 118th Field Regiment RA, Thailand, Casualties
National Archives WO 361/2092 - 118th Field Regiment RA. Far East, Prisoners of War, Nominal Roll

Jacob family archive and reminiscences

'Get off my bloody ship!'

HMS Peterel's crest

By the time of the Japanese entry into the war in December 1941, most of Britain's Eastern Fleet, the so-called 'China Squadron' had been withdrawn to home waters or the Mediterranean in order to counter the Axis threat and as a result, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, typical of the British defences of her overseas interests in the Far East was the River Gunboat HMS Peterel, under the command of 62 year old Lieutenant Stephen Polkinghorn RNR.

Incidentally, the spelling of the Peterel's name, though incorrect, was a perpetuation of a mistake made by a clerk in the Admiralty at the time of the first ship to bear the name in 1777. Built by Yarrow Shipbuilders in 1927, Peterel was armed with two 3 inch guns as well as eight Lewis machine guns dating from the First World War and her job, along with her sister ship Gannet and many other similar gunboats was to patrol the inshore waters of Britain's eastern empire protecting her interests, defending the numerous British merchant ships in the area and generally 'showing the flag' to keep up morale of the expat population. Any serious fighting would be left to the larger warships of the China Station. The trouble was that by December 1941, there were practically no larger friendly warships left in the region and the River Gunboats would just have to do the best that they could.

Polkinghorn was a New Zealander whose peacetime job was as the master of small coastal steamer but on the outbreak of war had been appointed to command the Peterel. War with the Japanese had long been considered likely but their sneak attack on Pearl Harbour had taken everyone by surprise. Nevertheless, Polkinghorn had already rigged scuttling charges on the Peterel so as not to allow her to fall into Japanese hands should war break out and now, on 8th December 1941, war became inevitable.

The Peterel's ship's complement had been reduced from her normal fifty five to a mere twenty one, three of whom were ashore overnight on the night of 7th/8th December. She was moored in the Whangpoo River, Shanghai and with her reduced complement, was acting as a floating W/T Station for the British Consulate. Downstream from the Peterel, lay the American gunboat Wake, which was performing a similar task for the American Consulate. Further downstream, lay the Japanese cruiser Izumo as well as a Japanese destroyer and a gunboat. An Italian gunboat, the Lepanto was also moored nearby, although she was to take no part in the action that followed.

HMS Peterel (NavalHistory.net)

In the early hours of 8th December, a motor launch flying the Japanese flag came in view and was obviously approaching the British gunboat. In the stern of the launch were several senior naval officers and the boat was also crammed full of heavily armed Japanese marines. The scene was described by Desmond Wettern as follows:

"Up on the fo'c's'le Able Seaman Tipping handed Able Seaman Mariner the Quartermaster's pistol and belt. Mariner watched the Japanese launch come alongside and saw a senior Japanese naval officer come on board. He heard the officer say 'We want to keep the peace of Shanghai.' 'Come into the wardroom,' Polkinghorn replied. Mariner gripped the pistol more tightly. The rest of the conversation was lost to him.

The next thing both Munn (another Able Seaman) and Mariner heard was Polkinghorn saying 'Get off my bloody ship.' The Japanese officer, who they later heard was chief of staff to the flag officer in the port, climbed back into the launch after handing a copy of the surrender demand to Polkinghorn. The launch started to move back downstream.

Lieut Stephen Polkinghorn RNR

Polkinghorn and Munn watched the Japanese launch move away from the ship. It had not gone more than a few yards when two red Very lights were fired from it.

After the Japanese launch had left the ship, the Japanese guns on the French Bund and across the river on the Pootung side had joined with the Izumo as well as the destroyer and the gunboat, in firing on the Peterel. As soon as he saw the Very lights go up from the launch, Polkinghorn gave the order for the ship's two manned Lewis guns to open fire. From 'A' gun deck, Petty Officer Linkhorn poured a steady stream of fire into the Japanese launch. Mariner manned the other gun and joined with Linkhorn in firing on the launch. Several of the men in it were hit. Neither had time to realise that they were the first Englishmen to open fire on the Japanese in the war.

The fire from the Japanese ships war murderous. One destroyer only 200 yards away was pumping shells into the tiny gunboat. Fortunately, one shell in the action parted the forward cable and the ship swung across the river, leaving one side comparatively safe from the enemy's fire."

Polkinghorn and the seventeen crew members aboard at the time managed to escape the blazing gunboat but only twelve survived, the Japanese machine gunning several of them whilst in the water. The survivors managed to get aboard a neutral Panamanian registered merchant vessel that was laying in the river but in a clear (and sadly typical) violation of international law, the Japanese boarded this vessel and removed the survivors, the majority of whom spent the remainder of the war in Japanese internment camps in China, although in May 1945, some were moved to camps in Japan itself. All survived the war and upon release in 1945, Polkinghorn was awarded the DSC in recognition of his refusal to surrender despite impossible odds.

A new HMS Peterel entered service with the Royal Navy in 1976 and rather endearingly perpetuated the original incorrect spelling of the name. She was sold as a result of one of the endless rounds of defence cuts in 1991 and with the vastly reduced size of the modern Navy, it is unlikely that we shall see another ship bearing the same name. Stephen Polkinghorn lived in retirement in New Zealand until the age of 97, whilst Jim Mariner, who fired those first shots against the Japanese Navy, spent twenty eight postwar years as a Police Officer in Bournemouth and passed away aged 90, in 2009.

Published Sources:

The Lonely Battle - Desmond Wettern, WH Allen 1960

The War at Sea - editor John Winton, Hutchinson 1967

Warships of World War II - HT Lenton and JJ Colledge, Ian Allen 1973

July during the Second World War

As we 'enjoy' our current wet summer, perhaps now is a good time to look back in history to see what was happening during the corresponding weeks during the Second World War. The month of July has always been one when the British civilian population at least, even in wartime, looked forward to some warmer weather and perhaps even a few precious days off. For those in the fighting services, wartime whether in July or December presented the same fears, trials and tribulations.

July 1940

Field Marshal Alanbrooke (courtesy IWM)

The first July of the War saw Britain at bay; her army, defeated in France had withdrawn across the Channel, culminating in the evacuation from Dunkirk which completed in early June and with further withdrawals from the Channel and Atlantic ports up until the middle of that month when France capitulated on the 18th June. The British Army, licking it's wounds was beginning the process of rebuilding and re-equipping following defeat in France. At this time, a then little known Lieutenant General by the name of Alan Brooke was the recently appointed Commander in Chief of Southern Command, the area likely to bear the brunt of the expected German invasion. Brooke was somewhat daunted by what he found; his diary entry for 2nd July, following a visit to the 50th Division in the West Country read "The more I see the nakedness of our defences, the more appalled I am! Untrained men, no arms, no transport and no equipment........The ghastly part of it is that I feel certain that we only have a few more weeks before the Boche attacks!"

Brooke, supported by his subordinate commanders including a certain Major General Bernard Montgomery was a superb trainer of men and as the weeks and months passed, he was to prove instrumental in rebuilding the Army and can indeed be justly described as one of the founders of the recovery of the British Army which was to return to Europe in triumph a little under four years later.

At sea, the Royal Navy continued with it's routine tasks around the globe. North Atlantic convoys to be marshalled and escorted across the 'pond', the Mediterranean to police and an as yet peaceful Far East to patrol. Often employed on unglamorous duties, the Royal Navy was solid and dependable.

In the air, this week saw the opening of what we now describe as The Battle of Britain, a conflict that was to last until the end of October 1940 and which saw the beginning of the Blitz against London and other British towns and cities but which was to ultimately represent the first meaningful of the Third Reich in battle and which was to ultimately avert any threat of invasion to this country due to the inability of the Luftwaffe to wrest command of the skies from the RAF. Without such air supremacy, any invasion fleet would have been blown out of the water by the Royal Navy. 

July 10th 1940 saw the opening skirmishes in the Battle; Channel convoys were attacked and seventy German bombers attacked Swansea and Falmouth, killing thirty people and causing damage to shipping, railways and a power station. A train was also strafed near Newhaven in Sussex, killing the driver and severely injuring the Guard. The losses on each side reflected what was to become the pattern of the Battle; thirteen German bombers were lost for the loss of six British fighters. We shall return to this epic battle in the weeks ahead.

July 1941

One year later saw Britain in a much stronger position, although still standing alone. Brooke was still GOC Southern Command. Although the threat of invasion had largely passed, Brooke was still determined to get the Army trained to the peak of it's abilities. He was also beginning to have his first encounters with Winston Churchill, something which was to become all too familiar for him in the coming years following his promotion to Chief of the Imperial General Staff or CIGS - the professional head of the British Army. In North Africa, the Army had enjoyed it's only true successes against the Axis but had already fallen back following the dilution of it's forces into the Greek and Crete campaigns and had fallen back to Sollum leaving Tobruk beseiged and beginning the British association with those place names from the North African desert which were to become so familiar with both public and military alike over the next couple of years - Sollum, Tobruk, Sidi Barani, Bardia and of course, El Alamein amongst others. 

HMS Hood

The Royal Navy had fought another major action in May of 1941 when the German battleship Bismarck had made it's brief foray into the North Atlantic, sinking the pride of the Navy, HMS Hood but herself being overwhelmed by the Home Fleet a few days later. In the North Atlantic, the convoy battles continued unabated, although July 1941 saw the British enjoying the fruits of the 'Ultra' decrypts of the German 'Enigma' code traffic and at this time were able to successfully re-route convoys around Donitz's Wolf Packs and keep merchant ship losses to a minimum.

The RAF, with the Battle of Britain safely won and with the commanders of that battle, Dowding and Park scandalously dismissed, were embarking on the disastrous policy of 'leaning towards the enemy' with huge fighter sweeps over occupied France, resulting in heavy losses and proving that the new commanders Sholto-Douglas and Leigh-Mallory had learned nothing from the experiences of the Luftwaffe only a year previously. Fighters flying over enemy territory which were lost meant almost certainly losing the highly trained aircrew as well as the aircraft. Aircraft could easily be replaced but replacing the men was a different matter. RAF Bomber Command was not yet really able to truly go onto the offensive; in July 1941, it's main operations were still mining German ports and attacking German shipping, usually with unimpressive results. It's day was still to come.

July 1942

Britain was no longer fighting alone and the Second World War had become a truly global conflict. Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941 had brought the USA into the war. The subsequent loss of Singapore and Hong Kong as well as Britain's other possessions in the Far East had brought Great Britain into conflict with a new and even more unpleasant enemy than Nazi Germany. Somewhat bizarrely, Hitler declared war on the United States, thus ensuring ultimate Allied victory in the longer term. As with the beginning of the German war, this conflict also began disastrously for the Allies. When Singapore fell on 15th February 1942, the British and Commonwealth Armies lost 130,000 men as prisoners to the Japanese - the biggest disaster in British military history. The Americans had also suffered similar humiliating reverses in the Philippines, losing some 75,000 prisoners to Japanese captivity and with all the privations and brutality that went with it. 

The ruins of Cologne in 1945 (US Dept of Defense)

Russia had also been attacked by the Germans. Operation Barbarossa had commenced on 22nd June 1941 with the intention of invading Russia and taking them out of the war. Had this succeeded, the brief respite enjoyed by the British would have quickly ended, with the entire might and fury of the Nazis once again turned towards the west. It was therefore vital to keep the Soviet Union in the war and this meant keeping the Russians supplied. The Russian Convoys became a millstone around the necks of the Royal Navy as well as the merchant navies of the Free World. Convoy PQ17 was to become an infamous bloodbath, when the British Admiralty under the nit-picking direction of Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, ordered the convoy to scatter on 4th July 1942 due to faulty intelligence that German heavy units were at sea. This information was nonsense and the scattering of this convoy merely served up the vast majority of the convoy into the arms of the Luftwaffe and waiting U-Boats. Of the thirty six merchant ships that sailed from Reykjavik, Iceland on 27th June 1942, twenty three were sunk by U-Boat and air attack. Two more returned to Iceland, which meant that a mere eleven made it through to Russia. It was difficult enough to operate convoys through this part of the World when the daylight was permanent as it was at this time of the year but Pound's interference and faulty dispositions made this a shameful event in Allied naval history. As a result of this fiasco, the Russian convoys were to be suspended until the onset of darkness and it was not until September 1942 that the next Artic convoy was to set out. Future convoys were to be much more heavily escorted and the advent of the Escort Aircraft Carrier was also to help tip the scales in favour of the Allies.

By July 1942, RAF Bomber Command had a new chief. Sir Arthur Travers Harris, known to his aircrew as 'Butch' (short for Butcher) and to the public as 'Bomber' had assumed command in February 1942. He immediately changed the mindset of the Command by going onto the offensive and targetting German cities with the express aim of undermining the morale of the German civilian population. Lubeck had been the first German city to feel the Harris touch, when on 28th March 1942, the historic city centre perished in a firestorm. By 30th/31st May 1942, Harris had upped the stakes by unleashing the first 1,000 bomber raid on the city of Cologne. Germany was indeed beginning to reap the whirlwind and much worse was to follow for the German public in the months and years to come.

July 1943

By now, the Allies were firmly on the front foot in Europe at least. By the summer of 1943, the Axis forces had been cleared from North Africa and were looking forward to the invasion of Sicily. To try and throw the Germans off their guard, an ingenious if somewhat macabre scheme was hatched, which was called Operation Mincemeat, or perhaps better known as immortalised in the film 'The Man Who Never Was' in which the corpse of a fictitious 'Major Martin' was floated ashore in Spain from a British submarine. The body was loaded with fake documents which all pointed towards an Allied invasion of Sardinia, rather than the obvious choice of Sicily. It was a huge gamble but knowing that the Spanish regime was basically friendly towards the Nazis, it was a gamble worth taking. The Germans swallowed 'Mincemeat' and diverted vital Army units to face a non-existent invasion of Sardinia and whilst the invasion of Sicily was no picnic, many Allied lives were saved and the Allies had their foothold on mainland Europe.

The RAF's bombing offensive continued. The famous Dambusters raid had occurred in May 1943 but for the rest of Bomber Command, German cities remained the main target. In July 1943, 115,021 tons of bombs were dropped by the RAF alone on German cities. The USAAF added to the weight of bombs by daylight.

On the Eastern Front, the Battle of Kursk started on 5th July 1943 and was to ebb and flow until 23rd August by which stage both sides had fought themselves to a standstill. Kursk was to see the largest tank battle in history, with each side employing in the region of 3,000 tanks.

July 1944

The Normandy landings had taken place on 6th June 1944. Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious invasion in history. By July 1944, the Allied armies were still building up their strength and were in danger in becoming bogged down in the bocage country around Caen. Whilst ultimate Allied victory was probably never in doubt, the fear of the warfare becoming a static affair was always at the back of Allied minds. The ground commander, General Montgomery was coming under pressure for his perceived over-cautious approach. This pressure was not only forthcoming from some of his American colleagues but also from those on the British side who should have known better, some of whom like the airmen Tedder and Coningham were driven by an intense personal dislike of Montgomery. The British General was never an easy person to understand or to get along with and was by this stage of his career a hugely conceited character, although undoubtedly 'a winner'. It is to the immense credit of the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower that he allowed Monty to continue in command, although his relationship with the British General was never an easy one. 

On the Home Front, the first V-1 Flying Bomb had fallen on the Capital on 13th June 1944. By July, despite improved countermeasures, they were still falling regularly on London. On 18th June, the Guards Chapel had fallen victim with the loss of 121 lives in the worst single incident involving these weapons. On 30th June another of these weapons had fallen in the Aldwych between Adastral House, home of the Air Ministry and Bush House with the loss of some 46 lives. It was clear that whilst the conventional Blitz was long over, London was being subjected to a new terror of 'robots' as these bombs became known. The capture of the Pas de Calais launch sites put paid to this threat in September 1944 but it had been extremely unpleasant while it lasted, with some 6,000 becoming victims to these weapons. Worse was to follow later in the year when the first of the V-2 rockets was to fall on London and this particular weapon was to blight London almost until the end of the war in Europe. On the Eastern Front, the Russian advance continued relentlessly, with the German Army Groups Centre and South being destroyed in the Lvov and Belorussian offensives.

At sea, the focus of the war in Europe remained the convoys across the Atlantic and to Russia and the U-Boats, although on the back foot, were far from defeated. The fleet facing the Japanese started to build and on 17th July, the submarine HMS Telemachus destroyed the Japanese submarine I-166 in the Malacca Straits. The submarine war in this theatre was the prelude to much wider ranging operations both in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

July 1945

The European War was over; Germany had unconditionally surrendered in May 1945 and the Allies were now faced with administering a ruined country and with the first murmurings of distrust within the great alliance with the Russians which was to culminate in the distrust and the eventual start of the Cold War.

On July 5th 1945, the first General Election was held in Great Britain for almost ten years. Winston Churchill, who had led the country to victory in the wartime coalition government was widely expected to be returned to power. The counting of the votes was an unusually protracted affair since the hundreds of thousands of servicemen's votes had to be returned to the UK for counting. However, when the count was complete and the result was announced on 26th July, Churchill had been voted out and the Labour Party under Clement Attlee had been voted into power in a landslide victory. The British people wanted change and no return to the social injustices of the 1930's and they saw Attlee rather than Churchill as the man most likely to introduce these changes and to bring Britain into the modern age.

Churchill had been attending the Potsdam Conference, the final meeting of the so called "Big Three" and had returned home for the result, no doubt expecting to return to the conference shortly afterwards. It was not to be and Mr Attlee was to take his place as Prime Minister alongside Harry Truman, himself newly installed as American President following the passing of Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. This Conference was to shape postwar Europe and the administration of Germany for the next 45 years.

In the Far East, the war against the Japanese continued and was expected to continue for possibly another two years, culminating in a conventional land invasion of mainland Japan, which had it occurred, would have cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen. The Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to dramatically shorten the war by avoiding the need for an invasion. The 240,000 civilian casualties as a direct result of the bombs as well as the many thousands of subsequent deaths from radiation burns and other related illnesses are the subject of another debate.

Rangoon had fallen to the British Fourteenth Army in May and the remainder of Burma was liberated by the end of July. The final campaign in the Tenasserim Province cost the Japanese ten thousand troops at minimal cost for the British. The next stage of the campaign was to have been an amphibious assault to re-take Malaya but once again, the Atomic Bombs forestalled this, although the operation, codenamed 'Zipper' was still undertaken post-war as the quickest method of occupying Malaya.

At sea, the East Indies and British Pacific Fleets were in the thick of the action and although the latter fleet tended to be overshadowed by the vast American effort in this theatre, it was nevertheless the largest fleet ever put together by the Royal Navy and acquitted itself was great distinction. On 17th July, the British Pacific Fleet, aka Task Force 37 was operating as part of the US Third Fleet, attacking airfields and shipping north of Tokyo and would be at the forefront of the action right up until the Japanese surrender on August 15th and beyond.

So, as we can see the month of July throughout the Second World War was often the backdrop for momentous events in history. Obviously a blog such as this can merely scratch the surface in describing the events mentioned above. To study them in more detail, the following source reading is recommended.

Printed Sources:

The Black Bull: From Normandy to The Baltic with 11th Armoured Division - Patrick Delaforce, Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993
Bomber Command 1939-45 - Richard Overy, Harper Collins, 1997
Decision in Normandy - Carlo D'Este, Penguin,  2001
The Forgotten Fleet - John Winton, Douglas-Boyd, 1989
Hitler's U-Boat War - Clay Blair, Cassell, 2000
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster, Tri-Service Press, 1990
War Diaries 1939-45 Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke - Alex Danchev & Daniel Todman (ed.), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001
The War at Sea - John Winton (ed.) - Hutchinson, 1967