The Wednesday and The Saturday: Birthday Presents from Hell

The week following Easter 1941 saw London enjoying a short lull in the Blitz. The raids had died down from the intensity of nightly raids and though there had been raids throughout the early months of 1941, there had not been a serious raid on London since the 19th March. Londoners were not to know it but Hitler's thoughts were beginning to turn towards the invasion of the Soviet Union, for which task he would need to divert a considerable amount of his Luftwaffe resources from the Blitz on British towns and cities.

However, all this was in the future and before the worst was over London was to suffer three more heavy raids, culminating in the heaviest of them all on the night of 10th/11th May 1941, which we have examined previously in this blog.

In this short article, we shall examine what proved to be the penultimate two raids of the First Blitz, on the nights of 16th/17th April and 19th/20th April. These raids were so heavy that they became known in Londoners' folklore as 'The Wednesday' and 'The Saturday' respectively. Both of these raids were laid on as a strange sort of present to commemorate Hitler's birthday on 20th April, although 'The Wednesday' was also a revenge raid for damage caused to the Berlin State Opera House on the 9th April, in one of the RAF's early raids on the German capital. Indeed, a forewarning of the raid that would go down in history as 'The Wednesday' was given by William Joyce, aka 'Lord Haw Haw' in one of his 'Germany Calling' broadcasts from Hamburg, when he announced "There's going to be a bombing" although naturally, he did not give away the actual date of the planned raid.

These raids were savage in their intensity and affected parts of London that had hitherto only received light attention from the Luftwaffe, as well as re-visiting other areas that had already seen plenty of damage inflicted. So it was that as well as the East End and southeastern suburbs of London, areas such as Chelsea, the West End and St Marylebone were heavily hit in these two raids and though there is insufficient space in a blog of this nature to visit every target, we can at least examine some of the more notorious incidents across London on these two nights.

One famous London landmark destroyed on 'The Wednesday' was Chelsea Old Church, the home of Sir Thomas More's private chapel. Apart from the near total loss of a fine historic building, today happily restored, this tragic incident also saw the loss of five Fire Watchers, including the Canadian AFS volunteer, Yvonne Green, whose story has been told in a previous post in this series. Elsewhere in Chelsea, the famous Royal Hospital, home of the Chelsea Pensioners was also severely damaged on 'The Wednesday' when the Infirmary was destroyed by a Parachute Mine. These deadly blast weapons, converted from naval mines were used in large numbers during these later raids of the Blitz and it was one of these which cost the lives of fifteen in pensioners and Royal Hospital staff in this one incident. One of those killed was 101 year old Henry Augustus Rattray, a veteran of the Zulu Wars who had served with the 24th Regiment of Foot. The building itself had been designed by Sir John Soane and built in 1809 and had the damage been incurred today, then probably this fine historic building would have been restored. As it was, damaged buildings in wartime London, now matter how historic were invariably pulled down as unsafe. The site was cleared and is now the location of the excellent National Army Museum; a new infirmary was finally opened on a new site within the Hospital grounds in 2008.

Moving away from Chelsea, we move to the West End, which like Chelsea had suffered relatively little until now. The City of Westminster, then as now encompassed the bustling West End as well as the seat of government and it was in the former part of the borough that we examine our next incident, which resulted in the death of one of Britain's singing stars of the day. Al Bowlly was a major star of stage and screen, whose popularity had transcended national barriers which had made him popular on both sides of the Atlantic, which was quite an unusual achievement for a British star in those days. On 'The Wednesday', Bowlly had played a concert in High Wycombe and had been given the opportunity of staying overnight in the Buckinghamshire town but had eschewed this offer in order to catch the last train home to Marylebone in order to sleep at his own apartment in Duke Street, just off Jermyn Street. It was to prove a fatal decision as in the early hours of the morning another deadly Parachute Mine exploded outside. When rescuers found his body, it was unmarked and in a final touch of irony, it was discovered that he had died from a severe blow to the head, caused by the heavy bedroom door being blown off it's hinges and striking him a fatal blow.

We move now to 'The Saturday', the second of the raids to commemorate The Fuhrer's birthday and travel across London to the historic Borough of Greenwich, already heavily hit during the earlier raids of the Blitz. As now, this borough was the home of such historic buildings as the Royal Naval College, The Queen's House and National Maritime Museum, in 1941 it was also the home to a considerable amount of industry and another of these historic buildings was located in what was then a somewhat run down part of the town centre. The parish church of St Alfege has been located on the current site since the year 1012, where it reputedly marked the site of the martyrdom of Alfege, Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered at that location by Danish Vikings on the 19th April 1012. The second church, dating from 1290 was the location of the future King Henry VIII's baptism in 1491. The present church, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, dates from 1718 and is the site of the tombs of amongst others, Thomas Tallis and General James Wolfe, victor of the Battle of Quebec in 1759 and whose statue looks down over Greenwich from the heights of Greenwich Park.

In a strange quirk of history, the interior of this fine church was to be largely destroyed on the 929th anniversary of Alfege's murder when incendiary bombs lodged in the roof timbers and brought the whole structure blazing into the main body of the building where it burned out of control. The aftermath can be seen in the photograph at the head of this page. Fortunately, the sturdy stone structure survived and the church was rebuilt after the war and rededicated in 1953. Today, the church stands proudly over the busy, rejuvenated town centre and is well worth a visit.

Following these two heavy raids, London again enjoyed a short lull before what was to prove the last and largest raid was unleashed on the night of 10th/11th May 1941.

Published Sources:

A Wander through Wartime London - Clive Harris & Neil Bright, Pen & Sword 2010
London at War 1939-1945 - Philip Ziegler, Pimlico 2002
Westminster in War - William Sansom, Faber & Faber 1947

Leonard Rosoman OBE R.A.

The Falling Wall, Shoe Lane

Leonard Rosoman, who died aged 98 on 21st February 2012, was the last surviving member of the select band of official British War Artists and is a name familiar to regular readers of this blog. His name was recalled during the post made on 12th August 2011, when this writer reported on the unveiling of the memorial plaque to Auxiliary Fireman Sidney Alfred Holder and recounted the story of how Rosoman himself had narrowly avoided Holder's fate of being buried alive beneath tons of red hot masonry.

So moved was Rosoman by this incident that he painted his now famous work entitled "House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane" which helped make his name as an artist and which brought him to the attention of Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery and chairman of the War Artists' Advisory Committee and which eventually ensured his appointment as an official War Artist in 1945. Ironically, Rosoman himself did not particularly care for the painting which made his name, feeling it too raw a depiction of an event which haunted him for the remainder of his life but none the less, it set him on the path to a successful career as an artist and illustrator in war and peacetime. I make no apology for showing Rosoman's haunting image once again above.

Leonard Rosoman was born in London on 27th October 1913 and won a scholarship to the Edward VII School of Art in Durham and later studied at the Royal Academy Schools and the Central School of Art in London. In 1938-39, still struggling to make a name for himself, he taught at the Reinmann School in London and in 1939 returned from Honfleur, France just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Rosoman immediately enlisted in the Auxiliary Fire Service and served throughout the London Blitz and beyond. Apart from his painting of the Shoe Lane incident, he continued to paint in an unofficial capacity and his depiction entitled "A Burnt-out Fire Appliance" was regarded by him as being one of his first successful works.

HMS Formidable after being hit by a Kamikaze (IWM)

Following his appointment as an official War Artist, Rosoman was commissioned as a Captain in the Royal Marines and sent on his way to the Far East in the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable as an official War Artist to the Admiralty. He soon found himself once more in the thick of the action, including being on board when the carrier was struck by a Japanese Kamikaze aircraft whilst operating in the British Pacific Fleet off the Sakishima Gunto on 4th May 1945 (pictured above). Today, all of Rosoman's war work is in the care of the Imperial War Museum, London.

After the war, Rosoman had his first solo exhibition in 1946 at the St George's Gallery before returning to teaching the following year, firstly at the Camberwell School of Art, then from 1948-56 at the Edinburgh College of Art and later at the Royal College of Art, where one of his pupils was David Hockney. In addition to his teaching, Rosoman worked extensively as an illustrator for publications such as the Radio Times and also painted large-scale murals for the Festival of Britain, for the Royal Academy of Arts Restaurant at Burlington House as well as a ceiling that formed part of the restoration of the bomb-damaged Private Chapel at Lambeth Palace. He also exhibited widely in London and New York and was elected to the Royal Academy as Associate in 1960 and a full Academian in 1969. He was appointed OBE in 1981.

Leonard Rosoman was married twice, firstly to Jocelyn Rickard in 1961 which ended in divorce in 1969 and secondly to Roxanne Levy in 1994 who survives him.

Thanks to the work of Leonard Rosoman and his fellow War Artists, we have an invaluable illustrated record of the social history of the Second World War which otherwise may have been lost, or at best confined to the dry pages of history.

Printed Sources:

The Guardian - Wednesday 29th February 2012
The Forgotten Fleet - John Winton, Douglas Boyd Books 1989

The First of The Many

'Red' Tobin, 'Shorty' Keough & Andrew Mamedoff (RAF)

In July 1940, France had fallen and the whole of Europe was under Nazi domination. Britain along with her Empire and Commonwealth stood alone. Across the Atlantic, it was not yet an American war and indeed, there were many within that country that intended things to remain that way. The American Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy, felt that Britain was finished and reported back to President Roosevelt that "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here." Kennedy's comments, along with his anti-semitic views and his increasing defeatism were viewed with dismay by Roosevelt and he was to be replaced as Ambassador in November 1940.

Kennedy's views were not representative of most Americans and although at this time most were wary of involvement in what was still seen as someone else's war, some did want to join the fray, whether for reasons of anti-Nazism, for the love of freedom or perhaps just for fun. Despite official disapproval and attempts by FBI agents to stop them crossing into Canada or joining trans Atlantic vessels, some Americans managed to avoid these attempts and joined the RAF in ones and twos. An amazing trio who were amongst the first to join up were Pilot Officers Eugene 'Red' Tobin, Vernon 'Shorty' Keough and Andrew Mamedoff. They had initially travelled to France with the intention of joining the French Air Force but having arrived there during the death throes of that country, managed to escape to England by the skin of their teeth on the final ship to depart from St Jean de Luz before it fell to the Nazis.

Once in London, the American Embassy, no doubt under the influence of Kennedy's defeatism tried without success to send the trio back to the States but they evaded 'capture' and managed eventually to enlist in the RAF. All three were already accomplished civilian flyers but Keough almost failed his entry medical, because at 4 feet 10 inches, the medical board were not convinced that he would be able to see out of the cockpit of a modern fighter plane. Keough was prepared for this eventuality and proved to the medics that with the aid of two cushions, he could see over the edge of the cockpit, albeit with only his eyes and helmet showing!

All three were accepted into the service and after training on Hurricanes and Spitfires were posted to 609 Squadron based at Warmwell, Somerset in time to participate in the Battle of Britain, with Tobin being credited with two shared 'kills'. By September 1940, there were so many American pilots who had joined the RAF, it was decided to form dedicated 'Eagle Squadrons' formed only from Americans and this trio had the honour of being the first three pilots of 71 Squadron based at Drem in Scotland. Within a year though, all three had been killed in action or in the case of Mamedoff, in a flying accident.

Billy Fiske (RAF)

However, the first American to serve with the RAF was Billy Fiske, who in other lives was also a film producer, stockbroker and a double Olympic bobsleigh champion. Fiske was an anglophile, who had attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he studied Economics and was also married to Rose Bingham, Countess of Warwick. Fiske turned down the opportunity to represent his country again at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany on account of his disapproval of Nazism and settled down to work for the New York bankers Dillon, Reed & Co., in their London offices, remaining until recalled to the States in mid 1939. However, in late August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war he returned to London and enrolled in 601 (County of London) Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, also known as the 'Millionaire's Squadron' on account of the many prominent and wealthy society members who formed it's membership.

In order to satisfy US neutrality laws, Fiske had to masquerade as a Canadian but having been admitted into the RAF in March 1940, he wrote in his diary "I believe I can lay claim to being the first US Citizen to join the RAF in England after the outbreak of hostilities."

On 16th August 1940, whilst based at RAF Tangmere, 601 Squadron was vectored to intercept Ju87 Stukas which were heading to attack this important RAF Sector Station. The Hurricanes took a heavy toll of the attacking Stukas, shooting down eight of the lumbering but deadly dive bombers. However, a German gunner firing back managed to put a bullet through the fuel tank of Fiske's Hurricane. Despite serious damage to his aircraft and extensive burns to his hands and ankles, Fiske chose not to bail out but instead nursed his Hurricane back to Tangmere and landed safely. He was extracted from his damaged fighter just before it's fuel tank exploded and taken to the Royal West Sussex Hospital in Chichester but died 48 hours later from surgical shock. Billy Fiske was 29 years old and had the sad honour of being the first American citizen to die during the Second World War.

By July 1941, there were three Eagle Squadrons; 71, 121 and 133 and with the Battle of Britain having ended in November 1940, these squadrons became engaged in Fighter Command's offensive fighter sweeps over German occupied Europe. Following the official entry of the United States into the war in December 1941, the Eagle Squadrons continued within the RAF for the time being but it was clear that many of the American pilots wanted to join the fight against the Japanese.

However, this was not to be and it was not until September 1942 that the Eagle Squadrons were formally transferred to the USAAF and became part of the fledgling Eighth Air Force of the USAAF, becoming the 334th, 335th and 336th Squadrons of the 4th Fighter Group, retaining their Spitfires until they were eventually replaced by American Thunderbolts in 1943. It is a telling statistic of the attrition rate of air warfare at the time to observe that out of the 34 original Eagle Squadron pilots in September 1940, only 4 were still present to witness the transfer to the USAAF. The remainder were either dead or prisoners of war.

Eagle Squadron memoral (author's photo)

The 334th, 335th and 336th live on today, still as part of the 4th Fighter Wing as it is now called, based at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The wartime Eagle Squadrons are commemorated in London with a memorial located in Grosvenor Square, close to the American Embassy.

Apart from British pilots, 'The Few' was a force comprising many nationalities. As we have seen above, there were Americans present but there were also pilots from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South African, Rhodesia, Jamaica, Ireland, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Belgium, France and Palestine. We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.

Published Sources:

Dowding of Fighter Command - Vincent Orange: Grub Street 2008
The Most Dangerous Enemy - Stephen Bungay: Aurum Books 2000
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster: Tri Service Press 1990

George Cross Heroes

The George Cross

The George Cross is the highest civilian award for gallantry and is indeed, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. The George Cross can also be awarded to members of the armed forces for similar acts of bravery when not in the face of the enemy, such as bomb disposal operations. Quite simply, both of these awards are for extraordinary acts of bravery and as such, the award of either of these medals is a rare event worthy of note.

The origins of the George Cross lay at the height of the London Blitz in September 1940. It was felt by many, not least of whom was King George VI, that the many acts of civilian bravery that were occurring could not be rewarded by any of the existing military or civilian awards. So it was then that on 24th September 1940 that the King instituted the new award with the following statement:

"I have decided to create, at once, a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life. I propose to give my name to this new distinction, which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and the George Medal for wider distribution."

The Warrant for the medal was published in the London Gazette and described the conditions for it’s award thus:

"The George Cross, which may be awarded posthumously, is granted in recognition of acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger."

The Warrant goes on to state:

"The Cross is intended primarily for civilians and award in Our military services is to be confined to actions for which purely military Honours are not normally granted."

So it can be seen that the George Cross is not awarded lightly and as in the case of the VC it is fair to state that the award is given to ordinary people who have proved themselves capable of extraordinary actions

In the paragraphs that follow, we shall take a look at four such awards to people from different backgrounds and serving in vastly differing roles but united by their extraordinary courage.

The very first George Cross was awarded for an act of bravery that occurred before the Blitz proper started and went to Thomas Alderson, a 37 year old ex Merchant Navy engineer, turned council worker and part time ARP Warden in Bridlington. In August 1940, this coastal town attracted the attention of the Luftwaffe, presenting an easy to find target at a time when London was still strictly out of bounds on Hitler’s direct instructions. On three separate occasions, Alderson led rescue teams into badly damaged buildings and at great personal risk, managed to extract the injured civilians. Alderson’s award was to set the tone for many others to follow.

Sub Lieutenant Francis Brooke-Smith was a Royal Naval Reserve officer who volunteered for Mine Disposal work at the beginning of the war, having been called up from his peacetime Merchant Navy occupation. The Germans had adapted naval mines for use as air burst bombs and due to their maritime provenance, the Royal Navy was called upon to deal with them. By December 1940, Brooke-Smith had already successfully dealt with sixteen mines when he was called to defuse one which had lodged itself on a fireboat, the Firefly, in the Manchester Ship Canal. The mine was lodged firmly alongside a deckhouse and with great difficulty he was able to move it slightly with a rope so as to access the fuse. Then, lying at an awkward angle on the deck, he was able to extract the fuse, staying on the job even when the mechanism started ticking again and completing the task before the mine exploded. For this act of bravery, he was awarded his George Cross and perhaps fearing he had used his allocation of luck, was posted to North Atlantic convoy duty in the ex-American ‘four stack’ destroyer HMS Broadwater. He was still serving in this vessel when she was torpedoed whilst escorting convoy SC48 on 18th October 1941. Brooke-Smith was commended for ensuring the destruction of the destroyer’s confidential books and for helping with the evacuation of the survivors. If ever there was a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, then this was it. After the war, Brooke-Smith went back to the Merchant Navy and served on trans-Atlantic liners before tragically being killed in a road traffic accident in December 1952, aged 34.

Anthony Smith GC (RB of Kensington & Chelsea)

Another Royal Navy mine disposal officer was Lieutenant Ernest Oliver Gidden, known to all as Mick. He had already been awarded a George Medal for his work in defusing a mine which had fallen between two houses in Harlesden, north London in September 1940. On the night of 16th/17th April 1941, London was hit by the heaviest raid so far of the Blitz – an early birthday present for Hitler. A parachute mine had fallen on to Hungerford Bridge, the main railway line crossing the River Thames into Charing Cross Station. The mine had fused itself onto the live rail but by using a hammer and chisel Gidden managed to turn the weapon over and eventually, after six hour’s work, he removed the fuse and made the mine safe. For this extraordinary act, Mick Gidden was awarded the George Cross; one of only eight people awarded both the George Cross and the George Medal.

Tony Smith GC's commemorative plaque at Dovehouse Green (author's photo)

The Rescue Squads were a curious breed; some of them were no angels and instances of looting often cast a finger of suspicion at these men. They were also had something of a reputation for a rough sense of humour, perhaps understandable given the sometimes grim nature of their work. These men sometimes armed with no more than picks and shovels tunnelled and burrowed their way into ruined buildings in a bid to rescue trapped survivors. Many of these men were ex miners, tunnellers or those otherwise used to working in confined spaces. One such man was Anthony Smith (pictured), a member of the Chatham Heavy Rescue Squad. Tony had served in the Royal Marines during the Great War and had lost three fingers on one hand on the Somme in 1917. A chimney sweep by trade, his injury had precluded him from re-enlisting on the outbreak of war in 1939, so he had joined the Rescue Service in order to ‘do his bit.’ Although the main Blitz on London had ended in May 1941, the ‘Little Blitz’ of late 1943/early 1944 was the Luftwaffe’s last throw of the dice before the introduction of the Terror Weapons. These raids were insignificant in comparison with the Blitz of 1940 but they presented another blow to the war weary city and her inhabitants. On the night of February 23rd 1944, a High Explosive bomb, probably aimed at the Lots Road Power Station on the River Thames, fell instead on a Guinness Trust tenement block in Edith Grove, Chelsea which collapsed with many people trapped inside the buildings. To make matters worse, the basement of the wrecked building began to flood from a burst main, endangering those who had survived the bomb with drowning instead. Tony Smith and his rescue squad arrived and set to work. Smith heard the cries for help from one Sam Mitchell, a baker trapped in the basement and without a thought for his own safety, Smith entered the basement through a hole in the rubble. This hole collapsed behind him, trapping Smith also but he pushed on, found and freed Mitchell and dragged him to safety through the rear of the building where he kicked through a wall to safety. Without pausing, Smith re-entered the ruins and rescued a woman in the now rapidly flooding basement. Smith and his fellow rescue squad workers toiled all night under arc lights to free survivors and recover bodies. Some 76 people died at Edith Grove that night but many survived thanks to the efforts of Anthony Smith and his colleagues. He was deservedly awarded the George Cross on May 30th 1944 and subsequently made a Freeman of the Borough of Chelsea.

In previous articles in this blog, we have looked in more detail at other recipients of the George Cross and in this entry we have scratched the surface of the stories of some more of these brave men. No doubt, we will look at others again in the future, for their stories never fail to inspire, even some seventy years on.


Published Sources:

The Blitz – Constantine Fitzgibbon, Macdonald 1957
Fulham in the Second World War – Leslie Hasker, Fulham & Hammersmith Historical Society 1984
Ordinary Heroes – David Walker, The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea
The People’s War – Angus Calder, Jonathan Cape 1969

Flight Lieutenant Richard Carew Reynell RAF

Dick Reynell (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

An early part of the process of researching a Blitz Walk is to go through the relevant local authority Civil Defence, or ARP Incident Log. Only by doing this, can we get an idea of what happened in any given locality, to see if there are any incidents, major or minor, that are likely to yield any personal accounts or photographs, or both, that are so vital in providing a series of 'stands' along the route of our chosen walk that make for what we hope will be an entertaining and informative experience for our walkers.

Sadly, in what today seems a remarkable act of cultural vandalism, some local authorities destroyed their Civil Defence records in the 1960s and 70s, perhaps at a time when Second World War history was of limited interest and when there were still plenty of veterans who could relate their experiences. Fortunately, these boroughs in London were in the minority and today when history is firmly back on the agenda, many of the London Boroughs have excellent archives and heritage centres where one can examine all manner of local history, not least amongst them being records from The Blitz.

One such source of information is the excellent Greenwich Heritage Centre located at the old Woolwich Arsenal site and it was whilst researching the Incident Log and Photo Library for what was to become my first Blitz Walk in my own locality of Blackheath and Greenwich that I first chanced upon the story of Flight Lieutenant Richard Carew Reynell and how he met his end, almost on my doorstep, on Saturday 7th September 1940 - the first day of The Blitz.

There in the archives, I discovered a photograph of Richard - 'Dickie' to his friends and squadron colleagues - and wondered why the archives of a south east London borough contained a photograph of a rather dashing looking RAF Officer. I found the answer to my question almost immediately afterwards with the discovery of a couple of newspaper cuttings which began to give up the first shreds of the story. A few days later, when transcribing the Incident Log, I came upon one of the many entries made on 'Black Saturday', that fine late summer's afternoon that saw Goring's Luftwaffe hitting London hard for the first time. That entry simply reads "7th Sept 1940 - Incident 6A - 3- Kidbrooke Gardens - RAF Parachutist badly injured."

And that was it, no further detail, just a photograph, two newspaper cuttings and a terse entry in an Incident Log written hastily in the heat of battle some 70 years ago. The newspaper cuttings did tell us that Dickie Reynell had been alive when he fell to earth but had sadly died before he could be taken to hospital. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, as always provided invaluable information regarding Dickie's squadron, service number and his burial place. Further help came from the superb work of the Aircrew Remembrance Society who were able to furnish the details of the aircraft he was flying and some important background information. They also provided a link to Dickie's original obituary from 'Flight' magazine of October 1940, which told that Dickie was an Australian - apart from Britons, many of 'The Few' were from the Empire and Commonwealth as well as Allied countries conquered by the Nazis. All of a sudden, Dickie Reynell was not just a photograph of any one of the brave men of 'The Few' - he was a real person, undoubtedly brave, with an interesting past, who died doing the job he loved and who perished helping to defend my City and furthermore, defending my local neighbourhood.

Then last week, I was approached by that redoubtable local blogger, The Greenwich Phantom, who in turn had been approached by Andrew Rennie, an author in Dickie's native Australia, who is preparing a biography of the man and who is trying to piece together the final hours of his life. So, without in any way wishing to steal Andrew's thunder - in any case this blog can only scratch at the surface of a story like this - it now seems a fitting time to share with you the story of this brave man, one of some 510 RAF aircrew, British, Commonwealth and Allied, who gave their lives during the Battle of Britain.

Richard Carew Reynell was born in 1912, in Reynella, South Australia, where his family owned a large winery estate. Dickie's father was Lieutenant Colonel Carew Reynell, who had been killed at Gallipoli in 1915 whilst serving with the 9th Australian Light Horse. In 1929, Dick came to this country to study at Oxford but soon joined the Oxford University Squadron and having discovered his love of flying, abandoned his studies and joined the RAF in 1931, with whom he served in 43 Squadron at RAF Tangmere. He was a natural flyer and in 1937, joined the Hawker Aircraft Company as a test pilot and thus was involved from an early stage with the Hurricane, one of the new generation of monoplane, eight gun fighters which, along with the Spitfire was to prove the saviour of this country during the Battle of Britain. His obituary in "Flight" Magazine describes how he demonstrated the Hurricane at the Brussels Air Show before the war to a distinguished audience, including General Erhardt Milch, at that time Secretary of the Reich Aviation Ministry, where his display was an amazing demonstration of the Hurricane's capabilities. Dickie was not a 'show off' pilot but was a consummate professional, who believed in doing everything well. He also possessed a great technical knowledge of his aircraft; in short he was the perfect test pilot.

Reynell continued to serve at Hawker's but in August 1940, had returned to 43 Squadron in order to evaluate the Hurricane's performance in combat conditions and to recommend modifications that could be made in the light of wartime experience. His touch had not left him however and by 7th September he had already been credited with shooting down one enemy aircraft as well as a number of 'probables' to his name. On the 7th September, he was scheduled to return to Hawker's to resume his duties owing to the death of another of the Company's test pilots but in the event, he opted to stay with 43 Squadron until the end of that day's flying.

Saturday 7th September 1940 dawned as a beautiful late summer's day. Some people were working in their wartime jobs, whilst others, seeking a measure of normality attended more traditional pursuits such as football matches in the limited wartime leagues that had recently resumed. A few bombs had fallen on the suburbs of London and on 24th August, some had even fallen on the City and north London as a result of a navigational error by a small number of bombers but until this day, the capital had escaped the worst attentions of the Luftwaffe.

However, this was not to last; as a result of the bombs falling on 24th August, Churchill had ordered a retaliatory raid on Berlin and although the damage caused had been miniscule, the loss of face had caused Hitler to fly into a rage and to pledge that British cities would be wiped from the map. So it was then, at 4.45 p.m. on Saturday 7th September that the air raid sirens sounded their mournful wail over London and the fighter squadrons of the RAF, hitherto used to defending their own airfields and shipping in the Channel, were vectored to intercept the raiders as they crossed the coast and headed towards the sprawling capital.

For this first, daylight phase of the attack, Goring had deployed some 348 bombers escorted by 617 fighters from Luftflottes II and III commanded by Albert Kesselring and Hugo Sperrle respectively. As the sirens sounded, Fighter Command had all of the 21 squadrons within 70 miles of London either in the air or at readiness. The first two RAF squadrons to intercept the raiders were 602 Squadron and Dickie Reynell's 43 Squadron, both from Tangmere. As they broke through the haze at 16,000 feet, somewhere over Beachy Head, the sight that encountered them was something that the RAF pilots had never seen before. A seemingly endless array of bombers and fighters, against which stood some 20 Spitfires and Hurricanes.

After harrying the enemy through to the south-eastern suburbs of London, Dickie got into a tangle with a Bf109 and at about 6 p.m., over Blackheath, his Hurricane, serial number V7257 was blown into several pieces; the engine fell through the roof of St Ursula's Convent, starting a fire. The main bulk of the aircraft fell on the area of Blackheath known as Crown Point, whilst Dickie himself was blown out of the aircraft and fell, without deploying his parachute at Kidbrooke Grove on the other side of the heath, where he was pronounced dead at the scene. The Incident Log, written in the heat of the moment described the scene of his death wrongly as Kidbrooke Gardens.

Thus passed Richard Reynell, like so many casualties of war a victim of circumstances; if he had decided to return to Hawker's that morning he could well have survived the war and gone on to an even more illustrious career as a test pilot. Dickie left behind a widow, Enid Marjorie as well as a baby son and his death was part of what proved to be a day of heavy losses for Fighter Command; 18 Hurricanes and 10 Spitfires were lost and more importantly than the machines which could be replaced were the men who could not. Apart from Dickie, another of those killed was his close friend and 43 Squadron Commander, Sq/Ldr Caesar Hull of South Africa, who died when his Hurricane was brought down in the grounds of Purley High School.

The daylight raiders wreaked a terrible price on the ground; large swathes of the East End, the Surrey Docks and the Woolwich Arsenal were ablaze with the fires lit acting as a beacon for a further 247 German bombers from Luftlotte III returning in a second wave to stoke the inferno. By dawn, some 400 British civilians were dead. The raids were not without cost to the Luftwaffe - they had lost some 37 aircraft together with their crews killed or captured but considering the size of the attacking force, this was the Luftwaffe's day (and night). Retribution was to follow but for now, the RAF and Londoners had to lick their wounds.

Richard Reynell is buried at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, far away from his native Australia but as mentioned earlier, Andrew Rennie is planning a book which will commemorate his life and achievements. If anyone reading this blog has any information on Richard Reynell, either through family recollections or perhaps as an eye witness of his final moments, albeit perhaps as a small child watching on Blackheath, then please get in touch as Andrew is anxious to tie up as many loose ends as possible in tracing the last hours of this brave man.

Watch this blog for an announcement in due course as to when Andrew's book is to be published; this writer, for one will be certain to purchase a copy.

Printed Sources:

Backs To The Wall - Leonard Mosley, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1971
Flight Magazine - October 31st 1940
The Most Dangerous Enemy - Stephen Bungay, Aurum Press 2000
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster, Tri Service Press 1990

Internet Sources:

www.thegreenwichphantom.co.uk
www.cwgc.org
www.aircrewrembrancesociety.com
Unpublished Sources:

Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Civil Defence Incident Log - Greenwich Heritage Centre
Greenwich Heritage Centre Photo Library
Andrew Rennie's (so far) unpublished work

Winston Churchill, the Iron Curtain and St Mary Aldermanbury

St Mary Aldermanbury re-erected at Westminster College (author's collection)

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."

So spoke Winston Churchill at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri on March 5th 1946. The wartime Prime Minister, by now out of office, was making his first visit to the United States since losing the Premiership at the General Election of July 1945. Since acceding to the Presidency in March 1945, following Franklin D Roosevelt's death, Truman had become a firm friend and admirer of Churchill. Following his defeat in the 1945 General Election, Churchill was invited by Truman to visit his home state of Missouri and with its British connections, Westminster College seemed the ideal venue for Britain's wartime leader, the consummate parliamentarian, to give his first major post war speech, entitled "Sinews of Peace" in which he would speak of his hopes for the future and to warn the World of the impending Cold War.

Westminster College was founded in 1849 by Presbyterians as Fulton College and given it's present name in 1851. At the time of Churchill's visit, it was not a particularly well known establishment, even within the United States. Churchill's speech expressed his fears that the Soviet Union had designs on Europe that had shattered the ideal of a free, liberated continent. Indeed, a large part of eastern Europe had merely swapped one kind of tyranny for another. Churchill feared another war, and in his speech expressed his hopes for a "fraternal association of the English speaking peoples" to work together in preventing such a war. At the time, the speech was received coolly by some but others, Truman included, embraced Churchill's proposals and within a few short years they were to become accepted American and British policy in the form of the NATO alliance which as well as the English speaking peoples, also embraced all of the non-Communist countries of Europe.

President Truman had predicted that Churchill's speech would place Fulton, Missouri and Westminster College firmly on the map and as the years went by following the speech, senior figures at Westminster College began to think of ways to commemorate both the "Sinews of Peace" speech and also the life of the man who had delivered it. In 1961, the then President of the College, Dr Robert Davidson read an article in Life Magazine about the London Blitz and how large areas of the City of London, including many historic Wren churches, were still derelict and about to be demolished for redevelopment; what Londoners used to call "bomb sites". Soon a plan began to formulate in Davidson's mind to salvage one of these churches and import it to Fulton, stone-by-stone and rebuild it as a suitable memorial to Churchill, who epitomised the spirit of the Blitz and also to the process of renewal, of rising from the ashes of destruction.

The church of St Mary the Virgin, in Aldermanbury in the City of London had been located on this site since 1148. It had been rebuilt in the fifteenth century, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt once again, this time by Sir Christopher Wren in 1677. It was one of the great architect's smaller creations; a parish church, one of whose parishioners had been the notorious 'Hanging Judge' Jeffreys, who had achieved infamy during the "Bloody Assizes" of 1685 following Monmouth's rebellion, where he handed out some three hundred death sentences and transported around eight hundred to the West Indies. Captured following the fall of King James II in 1688, he died in custody at the Tower of London and although originally interred there, his body had been moved to St Mary Aldermanbury in 1692 and buried there, as was his right as a parishioner of that church.

The churchyard also contained a memorial to John Heminges and Henry Condell, also parishioners, who were members of the 'King's Men', the company of actors to which William Shakespeare had belonged and who were both editors of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. The church itself contained an ancient chest and also an altar piece displaying a picture of the Last Supper by Franck, which had been presented to the church in 1777.

On December 29th 1940, this church, along with thirteen other Wren churches, was destroyed in the Luftwaffe's great fire raid on the City of London, which was later dubbed "The Second Great Fire of London." In this raid, the Guildhall was destroyed, as was St Brides Fleet Street, St Lawrence Jewry, St Alban Wood Street, St Stephen Coleman Street, St Vedast alias Foster and many others as the Luftwaffe dropped 10,000 incendiary bombs onto the City and came within an ace of destroying the financial centre of the British Empire. Only bad weather back in France prevented the bombers returning for what would surely have been a devastating second wave.

On this night, the church of St Mary the Virgin was reduced to a shell. The bones of Judge Jeffreys were reduced to ashes; the ancient chest, the font and the altar piece were all destroyed. Practically the only thing to survive unscathed was the memorial to Heminges and Condell in the churchyard which is still extant to this day.

Some of these grievously damaged Wren churches like St Bride's Fleet Street were to be painstakingly rebuilt after the war, whilst others such as St Alban Wood Street and St Augustine Watling Street would survive in truncated form with just the towers surviving. Others like St Stephen Coleman Street would be lost forever, their memory surviving only in pre war photographs.

It looked as if the Church of St Mary the Virgin would join the ranks of those lost, for it lay derelict for some twenty years after the Blitz; four walls and the spire standing seemingly unloved and by the early 1960s slated for demolition, doubtless to be replaced by another faceless office development. It was at this point that Dr Davidson's plan began to come together. The scheme had Churchill's backing and before he died in 1965, he had written to Davidson stating that the plan to remove and re-dedicate the church at Fulton "symbolized the ideals of the Anglo-American association, on which rest now as before, so many of our hopes for peace and for the future of mankind."

It took four years to raise the necessary three million dollars for the project and to make the plans for the removal of the building. The actor Richard Burton was a major promoter and donor and appeared on the NBC "Tonight" show to make a direct appeal for funding. In 1965, the removal process began; some 7,000 stones were carefully numbered, denoting their exact position in the church and were transported across the Atlantic by sea and onto Fulton, Missouri by rail. Once there, they were carefully rebuilt in what was described as the biggest jigsaw puzzle in architecture. Former President Truman had turned the first shovel in the construction works in 1964, in October 1966, some 300 years after the first Great Fire of London, the foundation stone was laid and by March 1967, construction work of the exterior was complete. The interior fit out took a further two years and working from surviving pre-war photographs, a faithful reconstruction of the interior was achieved. The organ was reconstructed by Noel Mander, the noted organ builder who had served as an Auxiliary Fireman during the Blitz and who had watched the church burn on the night of the 29th December. His familiarity with the pre-war church helped ensure complete authenticity in the rebuild. The church was re-dedicated as a place of worship on May 7th 1969, the same day that the Churchill Memorial, located beneath the church was also dedicated.

Sir Winston Churchill himself did not live to see the church rebuilt and transported to its new location but he would surely have been pleased with the result. The Churchill Memorial and Museum, now augmented by "Breakthrough" a statue incorporating eight sections of the former Berlin wall, that tangible symbol of the Iron Curtain, so memorably described by Churchill at Fulton in 1946. Since Churchill's speech, many other World leaders have followed in his footsteps and spoken at Westminster College; Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and perhaps most notably Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992, when he declared the end of the Cold War, thus adding a neat symmetry to history.

This then, is the odyssey of the Church of St Mary the Virgin. When Harry S Truman predicted to Winston Churchill that his speech would place Fulton, Missouri and Westminster College on the map, it came true in a way that perhaps neither of them could have realised. Likewise, Sir Christopher Wren could never have imagined that one of his churches would be destroyed by fire raining down from the sky delivered by man made machines. Perhaps even more fantastic to him would have been the thought, that once destroyed, his church would rise again having been rebuilt piece by piece in the far off New World.

Today, the footstep of the Church of St Mary the Virgin is a Grade II Listed Building and remains as a delightfully quiet garden in the midst of the City of London, whilst the main fabric of the church fulfils its original purpose in its new location in America.

Published Sources:

Churchill - Roy Jenkins, Macmillan 2001
The Lost Treasures of London - William Kent, Phoenix House 1947
The City Ablaze - David Johnson, William Kimber 1980

Internet Link:

www.churchillmemorial.org

1942; The end of the beginning

The aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour

Seventy years ago, the dawning of 1942 saw British fortunes during the Second World War at their lowest ebb but it was also a year when the tide began to turn, at first almost imperceptibly but by the year’s end, a tide which was flowing inexorably in the Allies’ favour.

Sunday 7th December 1941 had seen the Japanese attack on the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbour, which was quickly followed by attacks on British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong had surrendered on Christmas Day 1941 and the Japanese were moving steadily through Malaya towards Singapore, which was to surrender ignominiously on 15th February 1942.

The attack on Pearl Harbour (pictured) did however, ensure the ultimate entry of the United States into the war, thus ending Britain’s lone stance against the Nazis. President Roosevelt initially held back from declaring war on Germany as well as Japan but Hitler and Mussolini pre-empted him by declaring war on the USA on 11th December, which was reciprocated immediately; so Britain was no longer alone but in almost every theatre of war, the British had their backs to the wall.

At sea, the Battle of the Atlantic was raging fiercely. The German U-Boats were enjoying their second ‘Happy Time’ attacking Allied shipping in the Caribbean and off America’s east coast, as well as taking a heavy toll of the convoys bringing much needed supplies to Great Britain. In the Far East, as we have seen above, the Japanese had begun their attacks on Allied possessions and in addition to Pearl Harbour had also sunk the British capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse which had been sailing without air cover to intercept a Japanese invasion force but which themselves had become the hunted when they were destroyed by Japanese aircraft. In the Mediterranean, Malta was besieged and could only be re-supplied at heavy cost by battling through naval convoys. The Royal Navy had lost the modern carrier HMS Ark Royal and the battleship HMS Barham to torpedo attacks and had all of its heavy units in that theatre put out of action by the end of the year. For a moment, it looked as if the Royal Navy might lose their superiority in one of their traditional strongholds for the first time in the proud history of the Senior Service. It was not to happen but it was a close run thing.

On land, the Nazis were masters of Europe, whilst in the Mediterranean and North African campaign, Crete had fallen earlier in 1941 and although Rommel had been temporarily repulsed in the Western Desert, worse was to follow in 1942. The British Eighth Army was to be depleted by the need to send urgent reinforcements to fight the Japanese in the Far East and despite the warnings of the Commanding Officer, General Claude Auchinleck that his command was dangerously weakened, these warnings were not heeded and in May 1942, Rommel was to attack again, which was to ultimately lead to another British military disaster; the fall of Tobruk with the capture of 33,000 British and South African troops. A headlong retreat was to follow, with the British falling back to El Alamein, a then little known railway halt only 66 miles west of Alexandria, by July 1942.

In the air, the Royal Air Force, shared with it’s sister services the problem of having too few resources to share around too many theatres of war. Fighter Command, following the successes of the Battle of Britain had followed a disastrous policy of ‘leaning towards the enemy’ during 1941 and had seemingly learned nothing from the experiences of the Germans in 1940. The tried and tested defensive team of Sir Hugh Dowding and Keith Park had been replaced after the Battle of Britain; victims as much as anything of in-service petty jealousies and in-fighting, they had been replaced as Head of Fighter Command and in command of the all-important No. 11 Group by Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas and Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory respectively. The fighter sweeps favoured by these two had frittered away much of Fighter Command’s strength and although it was still a formidable defensive unit, many good men and fine aircraft had been lost needlessly. Within Bomber Command, the first steps had been taken to form a winning team; Air Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris was appointed in February 1942. At first, his command too was constrained by having too few aircraft and those that there were being outdated. He immediately set about re-evaluating Bomber Command’s tactics and energetically ensured the procurement of suitable modern aircraft, most notably the four engine Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers as well as the superbly versatile Mosquito light bomber. Armed with these new weapons, Harris began to put his theories into practice; on 28th March 1942, the historic city of Lubeck was laid waste by a fire-storm started by the massed incendiary bombs dropped by Bomber Command and by 30th May 1942, the city of Cologne was overwhelmed, becoming the victim of the first thousand-bomber raid in history.

At home in Britain, the civilian population had seen no serious bombing since the bombing of Hull and Southampton in July 1941; London and Liverpool, though gravely damaged, had not been ‘Blitzed’ since May 1941 and although there had been ‘tip and run’ raids by lone raiders since this time, the feeling was that perhaps the worst really was over, although the news filtering back from overseas of what was seemingly one British setback after another could only give cause for concern.

However, the bombing of Lubeck was to ensure a resumption of the Blitz; although not on the same scale as what had gone before, this phase was to bring death and destruction to British towns and cities not hitherto affected by the German bombing. Lubeck, although it had some submarine building yards located reasonably close to it, was not a target of real industrial significance. It had been chosen as part of Harris’s new policy of affected the morale of the civil population and as he said himself – “it seemed better to me to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city.”

Lubeck was a historic Hanseatic city and in retaliation for it’s destruction, Hitler ordered the resumption of large-scale bombing against Great Britain. Because of Lubeck’s historic significance, the British targets were reputedly selected using the Baedecker’s Tourist Guide. Baron Gustav Braun von Stumm, an official at Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry was heard to remark “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedecker Guide."

Thus the Baedecker Raids came to pass; Exeter (pictured), Bath, Norwich and York were all bombed by Luftflotte 3 between the 23rd and 28th April 1942 and following the thousand bomber raid on Cologne, the City of Canterbury was bombed three times on 31st May, 2nd and 6th June. Deal, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich were also bombed in this period but on a much smaller scale to the Cathedral cities mentioned previously. Some 1,637 civilians were killed, with a similar number injured; some 50,000 houses were destroyed as were some historic buildings, notably the Guildhall in York and the Assembly Rooms in Bath, but the Cathedrals in all of these cities remained unharmed. The Baedecker Raids were smaller in scale than the First Blitz; the Luftwaffe’s squadrons had been dissipated by their needs on the Russian and North African theatres of war, thus proving that it was not only the British who were suffering from thinly spread resources. The Baedecker Raids petered out after the final raid on Canterbury and the Luftwaffe returned to the tip and run tactics of smaller raids by individual or small groups of aircraft. They were not to return to British shores in significant numbers until the ill-fated Operation Steinbock or as it was known to the British public, Little Blitz or Baby Blitz in late 1943.

For the remainder of 1942, the tide was turning; the British, together with their American allies, set about building a team to win the war. The first American troops arrived in Britain in early 1942, the vanguard of what was to become a vast army based on what was to become the ‘Springboard for invasion’ as these islands were to become known. The first elements of what was to become known as the U.S. Eighth Air Force – “The Mighty Eighth” – which along with RAF Bomber Command would ensure that Germany would be bombed around the clock arrived in England. In the Far East, the Americans began to fight back; first the Doolittle Raid, where a small force of B-25 Bombers were launched from the carrier Hornet to bomb Tokyo, a target thought by the Japanese to be hitherto unreachable by the Americans. Then at Midway, when the Japanese carriers that had bombed Pearl Harbour were themselves destroyed. In the Atlantic, the U-Boats were relentlessly hunted down by the Royal, Royal Canadian and US Navies and although they were to remain a threat for the remainder of the war, never again threatened to cut the supply lines.

The biggest victory of 1942 was one that has remained in the British annals of victory ever since. As related earlier, the British Eighth Army had fallen back onto an unknown railway halt in the Western Desert called El Alamein. In August 1942, Winston Churchill, on a visit to the North African theatre had dismissed the Eighth Army commander, Auchinleck and had replaced him with a figure little known outside the British Army, one Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. In three short months, ‘Monty’ as he was to become known, transformed the morale of the Eighth Army to such a point where they believed themselves invincible and won an ultimately crushing victory against an Afrika Korps, which had been weakened by lack of supplies and over extended supply lines. The battle had started on 23rd October 1942 and by 11th November, victory was certain; the Germans were in full retreat and by May 1943, the Eighth Army advancing westwards had linked up with an Anglo-American force advancing eastwards from the ‘Torch’ Landings under an equally then little known American general, a certain Dwight D Eisenhower and had swept the Axis out of North Africa for good.

At home, Churchill ordered that the church bells be rung; until then they had been reserved as an alarm call for an impending German invasion but now they were rung in celebration of a great victory. Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Churchill was to say “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

With American help in the form of manpower and their vast industrial strength and vitally with the Russians now sweeping in from the east to squeeze the life out of the Axis, he knew that victory, although not to be gained without more pain, was ultimately assured.


Published Sources:

Alamein - Stephen Bungay, Aurum Press 2002
Alamein: War without hate - John Bierman & Colin Smith, Viking 2002
Bomber Harris: His Life and Times - Henry Probert, Greenhill Books 2003
The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Collins 1977
The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts, Allen Lane 2009
War Diaries 1939-1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke - eds. Alex Danchev & Daniel Todman, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson 2001