Vignette: Traitor pigeons of World War II, and the story of Charlie Peanuts

Posted on April 1, 2013 by secondbysecond

Treason is no stranger, in time of war. England had her Lord Haw-Haw—William Joyce. The Norwegians had their Quisling. Yet treachery is not restricted to human form.

Pigeon of the Rock Dove variety [Public domain]

Pigeon of the Rock Dove variety [Public domain]

A plethora of Dickin Medals—Victoria Crosses of the military animal world—were awarded to the humble beasts that did our bidding throughout both world wars, the Second, in particular. The decorations were well deserved.

And so it pains me to admit that there could have been treachery in Britain’s Pigeon Corps.

Most dastardly on record was 44.BA.59876, the pigeon known to his UK handlers as Charlie Peanuts, a Rock Dove who winged his way to SS headquarters in Bordeaux. London’s message to the Resistance fighters of Nantes was thus delivered to the pigeon coops of the Nazi conquerors. Many a loyal Frenchman had cause to curse the name of Peanuts. Or so they thought.

Once back in England, Peanuts spent a sojourn in the Tower. I imagine he might have shared a sandwich or two with Rudolf Hess. The bird disappeared soon after, and was never seen again.

But espigeonage thrives upon duplicity. Double, even triple agents, have risen up to ruffle feathers. A mystery surrounds the solitary pigeon who flew messages to and from the Fuehrerbunker in the final days. He sometimes strayed across the Allied lines. After a fatal wounding by a hawk, the brave pigeon was buried in Berlin with all due ceremony and the honorary rank of Stabsgefreiter (corporal).

Foul traitor or winged hero? I would like to believe that Charlie Peanuts was the latter.

Think well of him, and think well about this date, today.

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Vignette: Nazis and the Occult

Posted on March 29, 2013 by secondbysecond

Medee: La Toison D'Or ----- by Ersel and Renot (Casterman, 2009). In this esoteric bande dessine, the mythical sorceress Medee surfaces in 1930s Europe. The Vatican and Nazi SS chiefs Himmler and Heydrich are added to the mix. [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Medee: La Toison D’Or —– by Ersel and Renot (Casterman, 2009). In this esoteric bande dessinee, the mythical sorceress Medee surfaces in 1930s Europe. The Vatican and Nazi SS chiefs Himmler and Heydrich are added to the mix. [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Médée: La Toison D’Or—Medea: The Golden Fleece by Ersel and Renot is an illustrated story that would delight anyone interested in Nazis and the occult, World War II, or the bandes dessinée genre, in general.

Medea (Médée in French) of Greek mythology was daughter of the Sun God and wife of the hero, Jason. She is often depicted as an enchantress or a priestess. The story in Ersel and Renot’s book adheres loosely to this theme, and includes many flashbacks to ancient times.

The story in a nutshell: Begin in 1934 at a secret meeting of occultists, not far from Brussels. Their leader is killed by the mysterious Medea (who is able to move back and forth in time). A bishop at the Vatican sends a priest (named Jason!) to investigate a certain Berlin antiquary while Medea is making investigations of her own.

SS-Brigadefuehrer Reinhard Heydrich 1940/41 [Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1969-054-1, wikimedia commons]

SS-Brigadefuehrer Reinhard Heydrich 1940/41 [Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1969-054-1, wikimedia commons]

Some flashbacks show Judas Iscariot (of Biblical fame) being healed in the wilderness by Medea. One sees the symbols: the lion and the eagle. They reoccur throughout the book. Then back to the Nazis and Reinhard Heydrich himself (by page 18). Berlin 1938: the night before Kristallnacht—‘Night of Broken Glass’ when Nazi stormtroopers smashed Jewish shops and attacked their owners. A Jewish-owned antiquarian bookshop is burned down, but Medea rescues the codex—the ancient manuscript containing secrets of the ritual of the Golden Fleece. Further murders, and a drive-by appearance by Benito Mussolini, lead to Gestapo headquarters, number 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse.

The last act occurs at Wewelsburg Castle, where the modern Medea strips down to enact the ritual with the modern Jason. Reichsfuehrer Himmler arrives, anxious to avail himself of the power of the Golden Fleece. The subsequent fire and brimstone is reminiscent of the final scene between Indiana Jones and the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Arc.

Nazis and the Occult: The dark forces unleashed by the Third Reich ----- by Paul Roland (Arcturus, 2012) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Nazis and the Occult: The dark forces unleashed by the Third Reich —– by Paul Roland (Arcturus, 2012) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Since the end of the Second World War, Nazi obsession with the occult has become a reoccurring theme in fiction and nonfiction, alike. For a recent example, see the book by Paul Roland, Nazis and the Occult: The dark forces unleashed by the Third Reich (Arcturus, 2012).

Roland (from page 323 on) discusses Wewelsburg Castle, describing how Himmler furnished it as a Germanic Camelot, complete with a round table and twelve seats for his Obergruppenfuehrer ‘knights’. A sign of the zodiac was carved onto the back of each chair, while the crypt below was renovated to house the tombs of the valiant, those SS leaders who would fall in defence of Hitler’s 1,000-year Reich.

 

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This week in the War, 24–30 March 1941: The Fall of Keren—The Unknown Victory

Posted on March 28, 2013 by secondbysecond

India troops in action during the battle for Keren, Eritrea, 1941 [Public domain, wikimedia]

India troops in action during the battle for Keren, Eritrea, 1941 [Public domain, wikimedia]

This week in the war, 27 March 1941, the city of Keren in Eritrea, Italian East Africa, fell to a combined force of British Army, Indian Army and Free French forces, under the command of British general William Platt.

Keren and the Eritrea campaign in Italian East Africa, 1941 [Stephen Kirrage, GNU Free Documentation License, wikimedia commons]

Keren and the Eritrea campaign in Italian East Africa, 1941 [Stephen Kirrage, GNU Free Documentation License, wikimedia commons]

Following the loss of British Somaliland to the invading Italians in autumn 1940, General Archibald Wavell ordered Lieutenant-General William Platt to mount a full-scale campaign aimed at driving the Italian army from Eritrea and the whole of East Africa.

The various Battles of Keren (three in total) had their beginning when Colonel Frank Messervy halted his vehicles before the Keren massif in early February 1941.

Keren sat atop a 4,000-feet-high plateau, surrounded by gorges and ravines, turning the city into a natural and near-impregnable fortress. The defences were held by the cream of the Italian army.

Spearhead General: The epic story of General Sir Frank Messervy and his men in Eritrea, North Africa & Burma ----- by Henry Maule (Odhams Press, 1961) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Spearhead General: The epic story of General Sir Frank Messervy and his men in Eritrea, North Africa & Burma —– by Henry Maule (Odhams Press, 1961) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

How Messervy’s Gazelle Force pursued the retreating enemy to Keren and how the troops of Platt’s command laid seige and finally took the city on 27 March 1941 is recounted in the book by Henry Maule, Spearhead General: The epic story of General Sir Frank Messervy and his men in Eritrea, North Africa & Burma (Odhams, 1961).

The book describes repeated attacks over steep, mountaineous terrain, all in the face of enemy artillery and machine gun fire, and the ‘little red grenades’ that the Italians had available in huge quantities. Italian troops, among them, the Savoia Grenadiers, fought with great tenacity. A bagpipe tune called With Wellesley’s Rifles at Keren was composed in honour of the bravery of the Indians and Scots who fought side by side in the early phases of the battle. Because of the lack of scope for mobile troops, Gazelle Force was disbanded and Messervy took command of an infantry brigade.

Sir Frank Messervy [Public domain, wikimedia]

Sir Frank Messervy [Public domain, wikimedia]

Platt’s two divisions faced an enemy of twice their strength, plus increasing casualties from battle and disease, and the sizzling temperatures that could make rocks too hot to touch. Time was running out. The British had to take Keren and the rest of Eritrea before the balance in Africa turned against them. Rommel had taken command in North Africa and was planning to strike Egypt from the west.

Henry Maule’s superbly exciting book describes the final push against Keren, and how on 26 March the Italians, supported by tanks and artillery, made a last desperate attempt to reverse the battle by charging the Punjabi lines.  The Punjabis held fast. Keren fell the next day. Many of its defenders had fought to the death.

The victory at Keren was one of the most remarkable and significant of World War II. Within two weeks of Keren falling, the British conquered the whole of Eritrea. Yet all of this came at a time when Britain was still threatened by invasion and when the Blitz against British cities was at its height. Rommel was poised to conquer the North Africa. Greece and the Mediterranean seemed about to be lost.

As a consequence, the victory at Keren, and the story of those who fought and died so bravely on either side, has remained, to this day, largely unknown.

Keren battlefield --- military cemetery [Author: Marco Fera, Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 Unported]

Keren battlefield — military cemetery [Author: Marco Fera, Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 Unported]

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This week in the War, 17–23 March 1941: Aussie PM honoured in Pommie Land

Posted on March 17, 2013 by secondbysecond

Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies (waving his cap) and newly appointed United States Ambassador to Britain John Winant receive honorary degrees from Bristol University, where Winston Churchill is Chancellor, Bristol, 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies (waving his cap) and newly appointed United States Ambassador to Britain John Winant receive honorary degrees from Bristol University, where Winston Churchill is Chancellor, Bristol, 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

This week in the war, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies was touring the British Isles. He was in Plymouth on 21 March 1941, and witnessed a heavy air raid, with the Luftwaffe dropping 20,000 incendiary bombs across the city.

Twelve large raids were launched against Britain during March. Most were against ports, as well as London.

Bristol had been badly hit when Churchill and his staff arrived the morning after the raid. Included in the group were Robert Menzies and the newly appointed United States ambassador, John Winant. Both received honorary doctorates from the University of Bristol, where Churchill held the post of chancellor.

Churchill had been fortunate with Roosevelt’s most recent emissaries. Republican Wendell Willkie, who had lost against FDR in the race for the presidency, had toured bomb-ravaged Britain in January and reported back on the bravery and steadfastness of the British people. He swayed more than a few of his country’s politicians to vote in favour of Lend-Lease. Then Ambassador Winant had arrived at the beginning of March and immediately won the British over—being a marked contrast to his predecessor, Joe Kennedy, who had been convinced that Britain could not hold out and that it would be futile for the USA to send further supplies of arms. [More details, including accounts of the bombings, are given by Juliet Gardiner in her book The Blitz: The British Under Attack (Harper Press, 2010)].

As for the Australian Prime Minister: Mr. Menzies continued his tour of the UK. Afterwards, he went on a tour of inspection of Australian troops that were stationed in the Middle East.

Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies meets with his country's troops during his 1941 tour of the Middle East [Public domain, Australian National Monument]

Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies meets with his country’s troops during his 1941 tour of the Middle East [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

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This week in the War, 10–16 March 1941: Lend-Lease

Posted on March 15, 2013 by secondbysecond

This week in the war, 11 March 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law a statute that was diplomatically titled ‘An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States’; it was the famous Lend-Lease bill. Ideas and intentions that flowed from the ‘garden hose’ of FDR’s press conference of 17 December 1940 were about about to materialize and to flow to beleaguered Britain in the form of guns, planes and explosives.

Winston Churchill and US Ambassador, John G. Winant sign the Lend-Lease Agreement, London, 11 March 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Winston Churchill and US Ambassador, John G. Winant sign the Lend-Lease Agreement, London, 11 March 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

The agreement was signed on the same day in London by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the US ambassador to Great Britain.

British Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) women unload armfuls of Winchester rifles newly arrived from the USA under the Lend-Lease Agreement, 1941 [Public domain, wikimedia]

British Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) women unload armfuls of Winchester rifles newly arrived from the USA under the Lend-Lease Agreement, 1941 [Public domain, wikimedia]

Nine months before Pearl Harbour, Roosevelt steered his country further away from neutrality and closer to its role as the arsenal of democracy—a phase he coined in one of his ‘fireside chats’.

Britain could no longer pay for its war with Germany, and the USA charged nothing for Lend-Lease supplies. The American public saw supporting Britain as a way to stay out of the fighting themselves.

Lend-Lease was extended to China one month later, and to the Soviet Union six months after that. The United Nations would never have won the war without Lend-Lease—a fact that even Joseph Stalin eventually acknowledged. By the time the USA itself became a belligerent, its war-production factories were up and running.

For the UK domestic front, see Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Review, 2005) by Juliet Gardiner. She mentions Lend-Lease as supplying US-made food, such as tinned meat—including the now world-famous spam—and also Virginia tobacco.

Cases of TNT shipped from the USA under Lend-Lease are stacked in an underground ammunition dump, somewhere in England [Public domain, wikimedia]

Cases of TNT shipped from the USA under Lend-Lease are stacked in an underground ammunition dump, somewhere in England [Public domain, wikimedia]

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In the news/Vignette: Let slip the dogs of war

Posted on March 13, 2013 by secondbysecond

Faria Valley, New Guinea, during WWII---Aussie soldiers making a fuss of Sandy, a military scout dog trained by the United States Dog Detachment for the Australian Army [public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Faria Valley, New Guinea, during WWII—Aussie soldiers making a fuss of Sandy, a military scout dog trained by the United States Dog Detachment for the Australian Army [public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war—as Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony so famously said.

Seventy-one years ago today, the United States Army did exactly that. On 13 March 1942, they began to train dogs for the War Dog Program, the ‘K-9 Corps.’ It has been suggested that 13 March become National War Dog Veterans Day. (The idea has already been accepted in New Jersey, where it received the blessing of the state legislature).

The use of war dogs goes back to ancient times. In the United States, the idea was abandoned after World War I, but reintroduced during World War II in the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.

The pictures of Sandy—who was perhaps named after Little Orphan Annie’s dog—were taken in New Guinea. Sandy was trained by the US Dog Detachment for service in the Australian Army.

Australian Private J.G. Worchester removes a message that Sandy has brought in his collar.

Australian Private J.G. Worchester removes a message that Sandy has brought in his collar.

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This week in the War, 3–9 March 1941: Gunther Prien perishes aboard the U-47

Posted on March 3, 2013 by secondbysecond

Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien 1940 [Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2006-1130-500/ Schulze, Annelise (Mauritius)/ CC-BY-SA, wikimedia]

Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien 1940 [Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2006-1130-500/ Schulze, Annelise (Mauritius)/ CC-BY-SA, wikimedia]

U-boat ace Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien perished with his entire crew this week in the war, 8 March 1941, when the U-47 was sunk by the destroyer, HMS Wolverine.

Formidable, indomitable, redoubtable were the adjectives that Churchill used to describe Prien, the U-boat commander who became famous for his daring raid against the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

Following the orders of Commodore Karl Doenitz, Germany’s U-boat chief, Prien guided the U-47 through the British boom defences and entered Scapa flow on the night of 13 October 1939. He fired four torpedoes at point blank range into the battleship HMS Royal Oak.

Battleship HMS Royal Oak [Public domain, wikimedia]

Battleship HMS Royal Oak [Public domain, wikimedia]

Three torpedoes failed to hit the battleship, and the fourth struck home, but with little effect. Amazingly, Prien had time to reload and fire a second salvo from his bow tubes. The result for the aging WWI battleship was catastrophic. The ship’s magazine exploded and the vessel capsized with a loss of almost 900 of her crew.

The U-47 made good its escape, and Prien and his crew returned to Germany in triumph.

Destroyer HMS Wolverine 1939 [Public domain, wikimedia]

Destroyer HMS Wolverine 1939 [Public domain, wikimedia]

Prien became one of Germany’s most successful U-boat commanders. Eventually, on 8 March 1941, he was sighted on the surface whilst attacking a convoy south-east of Iceland. He dived, but was pursued and depth charged by the convoy’s escort. A final depth charge attack by HMS Wolverine is believed to have blown the U-boat apart.

The war at sea, including the exploits of Gunther Prien, are described by Marc Milner in his book Battle of the Atlantic (Tempus Publishing/Vanwell Publishing, 2003).

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This week in the War, 24 Feb–2 March 1941: Diary of a Witness

Posted on February 28, 2013 by secondbysecond

Diary of a Witness, 1940--1943 --- by Raymond-Raoul Lambert [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Diary of a Witness, 1940–1943 — by Raymond-Raoul Lambert [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Raymond-Raoul Lambert was one of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community in France during the 1930s and the early years of the war.

From 1941 to 1943, he headed the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF), which was established in the ‘free zone’ by the Vichy government. Between 12 July 1940 and 5 November 1943 he kept a diary, which has been translated into English and published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Diary of a Witness 1940–1943 (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2007).

This week in the war, Lambert made two entries in his diary.

The first was on Monday 24 February 1941. He wrote about the infamous Statut des Juifs, that the Vichy government had enacted in October. He mentioned how a Vichy spokesman had told an American journalist: “The Statut was neither demanded nor imposed on us by the occupying authorities [i.e. the Germans]. The [Vichy] government takes full responsibility for it.”

No surprise. Vichy and particularly the (fired) vice-president, Pierre Laval, had been proactive in their persecution of the Jews.

Lambert lists some causes, including the influence of German propaganda, and the activities of the decades-old and anti-Jewish Action française.

The next day, Tuesday 25 February 1941, Lambert’s attention turns to food shortages.

Gendarmes handle identity check and registration of Jews, France 1941 [Attr: Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B10921, wikimedia commons]

Gendarmes handle identity check and registration of Jews, France 1941 [Attr: Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B10921, wikimedia commons]

He says that the Boche had requisitioned most of France’s food, and comments on the British naval blockade. (There would be no more cheap coal from the south of Wales!).

His wife, Simone, must queue up at the butcher’s by 7.00am. A turkey cost him 200 francs.

A miscellany of prices can be found in Robert Gildea’s marvellous Marianne in Chains—Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (Metropolitan Books, 2002): 80 francs for a chicken, and about the same for a litre of wine—although the cost could be much more in Paris. To this in perspective, the minimum wage in Nantes, for example, was 1,000 francs per month.

Back to Raymond-Raoul Lambert:

On 21 August 1943, he was arrested and sent to the French concentration camp at Drancy. A few months later, he and his wife, Simone, and their four children were shipped to Auschwitz. All perished.

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In the news: Have a look at my new facebook page

Posted on February 24, 2013 by secondbysecond

Facebook [Publicdomain, wikimedia]

Facebook [Publicdomain, wikimedia]

I have recently  created a new facebook page that contains all the blogposts of Second by Second World War. Please have a look at the page and ‘like’ if you like it.

Here is the link for the fb page

http://www.facebook.com/SecondBySecondWorldWar.

 

Jeff Williams at the sea front in Saint-Malo, France

Jeff Williams at the sea front in Saint-Malo, France

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This week in the War, 17–23 February 1941: British monitor HMS Terror is fatally damaged off the coast of Libya

Posted on February 20, 2013 by secondbysecond

Royal Navy monitor, HMS Terror [Public domain, wikimedia]

Royal Navy monitor, HMS Terror [Public domain, wikimedia]

Monitors were the Royal Navy’s ugly ducklings. Slow, ungainly, and strange to behold. The calibre of their armament matched that of a battleship—i.e. 15 inch guns—but they possessed only two such guns, mounted in a single turret. A casual observer might imagine that someone had forgotten to build the rest of the ship.

The monitor HMS Terror was built by Harland & Wolff, and launched in 1916. Her role was to lie off an unfriendly coast and to bombard hostile forces entrenched on shore. During World War I, she took part in the Fourth Battle of Ypres.

In World War II, she was stationed in the Mediterranean and bombarded enemy-held fortifications as part of the O’Connor-Wavell campaign against Italian forces in Libya.

Junkers 88 (Ju 88) [Public domain, wikimedia]

Junkers 88 (Ju 88) [Public domain, wikimedia]

This week in the war, on 22 February 1941, HMS Terror was sailing east from Benghazi when she was attacked by German Junkers 88s based in Sicily. She was badly damaged and, despite an attempt to tow her to safety, she sank a day or so later off Derna, between Benghazi and Tobruk.

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