Warsaw Concerto, page 39
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
Of course, the response of General Alain de Boissieu was something of an imponderable. Unless he could be persuaded to whole-heartedly buy into Operation Mangle, and as importantly, carry his own, Free French forces – which at any one time represented in excess of approximately eighty-five percent of the active war-fighting manpower of the allies ‘in theatre’ – with him, there was little hope of resolving anything. And that, was simply not acceptable either to the Government or, the Prime Minister accepted, to the people of the British Isles.
If the Nixon Administration had given Margaret Thatcher a meaningful indication – that would have been enough, a guarantee would have been hoping for too much – that sooner or later US troops would be committed to the European theatre of operations, it would have been different. Unfortunately, no such undertaking had been as yet mooted, let alone received and her Government could not wait any longer.
Something had to be done about the French imbroglio now, before the British armed forces were completely exhausted and the only realistic option became one of selective retrenchment from its current ‘global over-stretch’. This was not being defeatist, just a realistic appreciation that whatever the political, diplomatic and economic ramifications of such a policy, in effect a repeat of the horribly painful, partially managed retreat from Empire confronting both Labour and Conservative administrations in the years following the Second War, it was a necessary evil if the recovery of the home islands was to be continued.
Margaret Thatcher never forgot that she had been elected to keep Britons safe, and to do whatever could be done to ensure that her Government worked to build a better future for future generations.
Her only real regret about things having reached this critical pass was that, perhaps, she had delayed too long picking up the nettle and decisively addressing the problem of France.
“Mon General!” Frank Waters exclaimed, his face creased with brotherly concern as he approached Alain de Boissieu.
The two men shook hands and there was a brief interlude in which backs were slapped before with a stiff nod of his head the leader of the Free French and the Supreme Commander of All Allied Forces in France – SCAAFF, an acronym the Prime Minister had never liked – acknowledged the presence of the woman who, much to his poorly-veiled indignation, pulled all the strings of the ongoing campaign in his country.
There were times when the humiliation of being so utterly beholden to the English, the old enemy, for a second time in his life – his time in London in the 1940s had been trying, painful but ultimately a sacrifice worth paying – was very nearly unbearable. The ‘Old General’, de Gaulle, would never have put up with being treated this way!
He suspected the woman was only here today because she was fulfilling a long-scheduled series of engagements visiting the ports of the eastern Channel. Given the state of the weather he was a little surprised that the Lady had not cried off at the last minute.
De Boissieu had no idea how his good friend Colonel Francis St John Waters put up with the woman he privately – and not so privately, alone with his Staff – referred to as the ‘Iron Maiden’. That said, Frank did hold the Victoria Cross, a thing the British only ever awarded to their most suicidally courageous warriors.
This was not to concede that, in a certain light and when she was in a setting more suited to her fairer sex, that the British Prime Minister was not an attractive and self-evidently intelligent, although regrettably, very opinionated woman; presumably, his friend predominantly saw the gentler face of the Gorgon. If Frank had not been such a splendid fellow in all other respects, de Boissieu might have pitied him, and almost certainly questioned his sanity.
“Are you quite well, General?” The woman inquired, her steely blue eyes communicating seemingly sincere concern.
“Yes, thank you, Prime Minister. I confess to having been somewhat indisposed during the crossing from Calais but in the last hour my equilibrium has returned.”
“Well,” the Lady declared, “let’s find you somewhere to sit down. You look all in!”
Actually, the Frenchmen, loathe as he was to admit it, still felt like death half warmed-up. He welcomed Frank Water’s supporting arm – none of his own staffers would dare lay a hand on him in any circumstance, not even if he was dying – offered in guffawing bonhomie as the party decamped to a side annexe on the same level as the refurbished Operations Room.
The first few times Alain de Boissieu had ‘hopped’ across the Channel on a helicopter or in a frigate or destroyer to confer with his Allies at Dover Castle, his hosts had remorselessly regaled him with the history of the place until he was thoroughly sick and tired of it.
He had been authoritatively assured – time and again, ad nauseum – that it had been from these very tunnels that Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey had directed the evacuation of nearly a quarter-of-a-million troops of the British Expeditionary Force and over a hundred thousand French soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940.
Operation Dynamo.
The miracle of Dunkirk...
Ha! The great betrayal!
When the English had left France to her fate…
His hosts would have been very surprised to know that in point of fact he tried very hard not to think like that, and his senior officers back in France knew not to voice such opinions in front of their men; his esteemed father-in-law had always held that while the past taught valuable lessons it was no kind of template for the present or the future. The old General had held enough grudges for a whole nation but that had not blinded him to reality, no matter what people said now. Necessity was indeed the mother of invention and as de Boissieu could vouch from personal experience earned the hard way in 1940, pride and esprit de corps were of little practical utility to a cavalryman riding into battle like a Napoleonic Chasseur against twentieth century tanks!
So, he had politely listened to his English hosts when they told him – time and again - about their history and the story of this place. All his frustrations were with the British high leadership; not with the officers and men he dealt with day by day and beside whom, his men and women had fought and sadly, died in their droves since the campaign to liberate his country had commenced in earnest eighteen months ago.
The Dover fortress had five tunnel-levels: A ‘Annexe’, B ‘Bastion’, C ‘Casemate’, D ‘DUMPY’ and E ‘Esplanade’.
DUMPY had been converted to be a Regional Seat of Government in the event of a nuclear war before geologists were consulted, and it was discovered that the chalk around it was too unstable to provide protection from even a medium-sized near miss ground burst, and meant it was impractical to keep radioactive contamination out of the bunker.
The tunnels had been dug out at different times, some parts of the complex were twentieth century, most of it much older. Back in 1941 switchboards, communications cables, generators and batteries had been installed; and in the middle years of the Second World War the Royal Navy had used it as a command and control centre for air sea rescue operations in the Channel. The newest – ‘Annexe’ – level had been extended during this period to serve as an emergency field dressing station and hospital with two operating rooms, dormitories, kitchens and mess areas, and had been re-activated since the October War to accommodate the over-spill from Dover’s enlarged military and naval garrisons.
The man who commanded ‘the Castle’, latterly renamed HMS Davey – in honour of the hero of the Battle of the Shatt Al-Arab - was thirty-eight-year-old Captain William Doveton Minet Staveley, whom the First Sea Lord had personally installed to oversee the impossibly complicated co-ordination of war, supply and normal naval operations in the English Channel in April 1966. Staveley had duly set about – by and large successfully - ‘banishing chaos’ and ‘streamlining’ a massively chaotic operation which had previously many times stalled, and several times, broken down completely.
That Staveley – a mere Post Captain, albeit one with the First Sea Lord’s personal authority at his back – had managed to get the ‘French’ military cross-Channel re-supply and civilian humanitarian relief operations running on ‘arrow straight tracks’ by the second half of the previous summer spoke volumes for the efficacy of his methods, his powers of persuasion, diplomacy and his capacity to never accept ‘no’ for an answer. In explicit recognition of his key part in sustaining ongoing Anglo-French cross-Channel endeavours, he was automatically invited to sit in on all high level – including face-to-face clear the air meetings like the one scheduled for today – which took place at his headquarters. If only for no other reason than it was universally acknowledged that the one man who had to be in the loop in Channel Command was William Doveton Minet Staveley, RN.
Margaret Thatcher had been deeply impressed with Staveley from the outset; and typically, she had insisted on knowing everything there was to be known about the man.
She had not been surprised to learn that he was a Navy man through and through, born with salt spray in his veins; he was a grandson of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Doveton Sturdy – the victor of the Battle of the Falklands in 1914 - who had joined the Navy in 1942. He had been Flag Lieutenant to the C-in-C Home Fleet in 1952, an instructor at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in 1954, and served on the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1957. In command of the minesweeper HMS Houghton in the Far East on the day of the October War, Julian Christopher had advanced him to command the fleet destroyer Cavendish ahead of the commencement of Operation Manna in March 1963. Thereafter, he had always been earmarked for great things in the Navy.
Staveley hesitated before taking a seat around the conference table; until yesterday he had been preparing for a Prime Ministerial visit, not a possibly acrimonious ‘command pow-wow’. Like the hugely competent officer he was, he had determined to play things by ear.
“Please stay, Captain Staveley,” the Prime Minister commanded as her husband, members of her entourage and the head of her protection detail, Major Sir Steuart Pringle left the room leaving her alone with the Chief of the Defence Staff, her faithful Parliamentary Private Secretary, Ian Gow, MP, dressed as always for these military visits in his immaculate Lancers’ uniform, Ian Gilmore, MP, Minister of State at the Department of Defence - in Viscount De L’Isle’s absence visiting defence establishments in Lancashire, representing his chief - Alain de Boissieu and the Free French Minister in England, Maurice Schumann.
Schumann had travelled separately to Dover to intercept de Boissieu but from his florid, unhappy silence thus far the Prime Minister deduced that he had been unable to bring his leader around to his way of thinking in the short time before ‘the English’ had arrived.
No whisper of the sound and fury of the elements assailing the nearby White Cliffs filtered into the bunker.
“There is nothing,” Margaret Thatcher went on, “which happens in France or the near continent which does not intimately effect the operations of this headquarters,” she told the Castle’s commanding officer.
The meeting settled.
HMS Davey’s best china tea service was laid out before the participants, and the scent of freshly brewed real coffee took the edge off the musty-disinfectant atmosphere of the underground complex.
“I’ll be mother,” the Prime Minister decided, leaving her French guests to busy themselves with the small silver coffee pot while she poured the tea.
There was real, fresh milk…
Oh, the Navy were wonderful!
If only the Army and the Air Force could be a bit more like the Navy…
Cups and sauces, spoons clinked.
“The floor is yours, Alain,” the Lady announced, smiling a beguiling housewifely smile at the man who had become the bane of her life.
Latterly, she tended to leave dealings with ‘Mon General’ to either Michael Carver, Tom Harding-Grayson or Peter Carington: The CDS’s impeccable, icy detachment, her Foreign Secretary’s wiliness and Peter’s indefatigable courtesy usually deflated or deflected whatever was afflicting Alain de Boissieu on any given day.
“In its present form the ongoing British offensive in the Poitou is unacceptable!” Supreme Commander of All Allied Forces in France hissed, very nearly exploding with outrage.
The Prime Minister glanced to the Chief of the Defence Staff, who steepled his long fingers before he explained, coolly: “Elements of the 2nd Tanks Battle Group have advanced to the northern bank of the Gironde Estuary below Royan cutting off a number of coastal enclaves from enemy and insurgent forces in the interior…”
“That imbecile Bramall has created a one hundred and fifty-kilometres open flank between Angers and Angoulême! Does he not realise that Limoges and Poitiers are still in the hands of Red Dawn!”
Michael Carver took a sip of tea.
“Yes,” he agreed, putting down his cup. “I concede that presently there is, nominally, an open flank. However, Brigadier Bramall is not an imbecile, General de Boissieu.” He pursed his lips. “In fact, he is probably one of the ablest officers in France…”
“He had no authority to conduct private negotiations with Communists and terrorists.” De Boissieu was getting angrier; next to him Maurice Schumann shifted uneasily in his chair. “Hardly surprising! The man is married to a damned Communist!”
Sir Michael Carver pursed his lips, looked to his Prime Minister.
“No, he is not!” Margaret Thatcher snapped irritably. “Brigadier Bramall’s wife, Miriam, is a democratic socialist, a paid-up member of the Labour Party. I will thank you not to denigrate members of My Government, General!”
“It was agreed that Allied forces would advance on a broad front,” the Frenchman spat back, not giving an inch.
Michael Carver coughed.
“It was also agreed that commanders in the field should be given the freedom to exploit tactical opportunities. General Hunt, the C-in-C of the BEF judged the coastal front ripe for exploitation, and thus far, that is hoe operations have developed to the right of the Loire Line. You and I both know, Alain,” he went on, his tone conciliatory, ‘that the best commanders create such opportunities, and make their own luck.”
Alain de Boissieu took a deep breath.
“As we have discussed many times before, we cannot afford to exploit any nominal tactical advantages in the West until the Eastern, Rhine frontier is secure, Michael,” the Frenchman retorted, his ire bleeding away. “Particularly, in the light of this damnable Tempelhof demonstration. We know that the Russians are on the Rhine in strength!”
Michael Carver raised an eyebrow, sighed.
“Yes, and they have been for some months. Steps have been taken to counter Soviet mischief-making. Operation Watch on the Rhine has, it seems to me, largely obviated many of our worst fears about the eastern threat. At least, in the short-term.”
Most of de Boissieu’s best troops and well over two-thirds of his available transport and armour was deployed in, or held in reserve well to the east of Paris, effectively starving the centre of the line of the disciplined, ‘regular’ troops and the supplies required to mount sustained offensive operations south towards the Massif Central, the heartland of the Red Dawn Movement lying across southern France like an impenetrable evil miasma.
The ‘Eastern Front’ was the Rhine in Holland, the Meuse in Belgium and a very porous string of tripwire defences north to south erratically linking Metz, Nancy and Besancon. Verdun, as in all of France’s wars in the last century was the fulcrum about which de Boissieu and his lieutenants had constructed their fragmentary modern-day Maginot Line…
“What if the Soviets or their proxies go onto the offensive in Germany or worse still, cross the Rhine in force?” De Boissieu inquired tartly.
“They won’t, Alain,” Michael Carver objected gently.
“What is to stop them, my friend?”
The Chief of the Defence Staff met the Frenchman’s eye and then looked again, to Margaret Thatcher.
“Because,” he said phlegmatically, “the last time they made a mistake like that we dropped nuclear bombs over Central Iraq to blind their communications net, and their last two tank armies – well, what was left of them by that stage – blundered blindly into a killing ground. Simultaneously, we employed nuclear weapons in the Second Battle of the Persian Gulf…”
“The Soviets must have a much larger atomic arsenal than you?” Alain de Boissieu argued, perfectly rationally, or so he thought.
“That doesn’t matter,” Carver re-joined phlegmatically. “They know we don’t care. They also know that if they push us too far, we won’t just muck about around the periphery, we’ll go straight for the jugular. As indeed, we did when we bombed those command bunkers outside Chelyabinsk in June 1964 and in effect, de-capitated the Soviet leadership at a critical moment in the Iraq-Iran campaign. The Russians have a long memory. I think they will remember these things. That is why I think that while they will push us as close to the brink as they dare, they will stop short of the abyss.”
“And if you are wrong, Michael?”
The CDS shrugged.
“I believe it was John Maynard Keynes who observed, quite pithily, I think, that ‘in the long run we are all dead anyway’!”
The Prime Minister leaned forward, resting her arms on the conference table.
“Alain,” she groaned. “For better or worse we are all in this together. Brigadier Bramall’s recent operations were sanctioned by his commanding officer, General Hunt, and cleared by Sir Michael’s staff. I have full confidence in all those officers.”
Intuitively, she held up a hand to forestall a protest.
“I too, suspect that the Soviets are playing games. I share Sir Michael’s assessment that they are far too weak in Germany, and have virtually insurmountable logistical issues supporting those forces they have deployed on or near the Rhine to seriously threaten us on French or Belgian soil at present. It seems to me - well, to be honest, I am echoing Tom Harding-Grayson’s wise council on this, and other recent Soviet provocations – that our enemies’ object must inevitably be to compel us to further dilute our forces, and to broadly speaking, enable our enemy to keep his options open. This, is a counsel of despair for the Soviet High Command, not for us. Further, now that we have had the opportunity to fully debrief General Akhromeyev and his senior lieutenants of the White Brigade, and we have sight of the latest reports from Brigadier Bramall on the tactical situation in the Poitou and along the Biscay coast north of Bordeaux, it seems to me that we may have a window of opportunity in which to strike a telling blow, or rather, a series of telling blows, against our foes in France.”
