Sex, soldiers and a very SPECIAL relationship
BABY-FACED Farley Mowat arrived in Britain from across the Atlantic as a dewy- eyed second lieutenant, come to do his duty in the war against Hitler.
on his first night, he was taken on a pub crawl in Guildford and immediately pounced on by a hefty Land Girl from a local farm.
She invited him for a stroll by the river and, in some bushes, efficiently stripped the shy 21-year-old of his virginity.
‘There you are, luv,’ she said afterwards. ‘ Your captain said you needed doing.’
And there was nothing she wouldn’t do for one of the boys from over there.
Mowat was a Canadian, but the same welcome was offered to some American soldiers and airmen who descended on these shores in their hundreds of thousands after the U.S. joined the war in the winter of 1941.
These eager, gumchewing boys were warned they might find the people of this tiny island a little strange. But for Pete’s sake, they were urged, give them a break. Britain may look a little shop-worn and in need of a lick of paint, but that’s because the paint factories are making aircraft and guns instead.
So, don’t swank, don’t make wisecracks at their expense, don’t go on about how you’re paid more than they are. Play fair with the British serviceman. He can be a pal in need.
And pals were what the Limeys and the Yanks turned out to be. Yes, there were to be tiffs, back- stabbings and sonof-a-b**** name-calling on both sides, and some historians have repeatedly played up those tensions as if Britain and the U.S. were rivals, not allies. But this is nonsense, argues James Holland in the latest volume of his history of World War II.
This was the vital relationship that in the end would defeat Hitler. It contrasted with the deep fissures in the Axis ranks, where the Germans went out of their way to alienate everyone.
Mussolini railed against Hitler for overrunning Greece and Yugoslavia and then crippling them with huge reparations bills equivalent to half a billion dollars a month — that made even more bitter enemies out of them.
In a rare moment of insight, the fascist Duce declared: ‘If we lose the war, it will be because of the political stupidity of the Germans, whose lack of restraint has made Europe as hot and treacherous as a volcano.’ In those middle years of the war, an increasingly isolated Hitler sowed the seeds of his own destruction by ignoring reality. His country was desperately short of coal to power industry and of steel to make weapons. Lack of fuel grounded his fighter planes. Food shops were empty. The tide was turning against him, but no one around him dared say.
All the Fuhrer did was dream ever more impossible dreams.
In Eastern Europe, he urged his tanks on through Russia and the Caucasus until eventually, in his mind, they would meet up with Rommel’s army as it swept through North Africa, and together they would encircle the Mediterranean and turn it into a German sea.
But the fine detail — the difference between success and failure — eluded him. His forces might well capture the oil wells of the Middle East, but what good would it do them if there were no East-to-West pipelines to bring the booty home?
His own insane over-ambition would bring him down.
Meanwhile, Britain in the summer of 1942 was basking in plenty. A bumper harvest was filling bellies. A surprise surfeit of greengages had housewives making jam for the winter. ‘A bounty,’ as Holland puts it, ‘to make the Nazis weep.’
From the other side of the Atlantic, troops and war materials were pouring in, defying German submarine attacks on convoys. While in America, industry was re-gearing its assembly lines from domestic products to planes and tanks. An unsung hero emerged — one Henry Kaiser, a quick-acting son of German immigrants who loathed the Nazis.
He revolutionised shipbuilding to such an extent that his yards in California could build a Liberty ship to ferry supplies across the ocean in ten days, rather than six months.
Turning out these 10,000-ton tubs faster than the wolf packs of German U-boats could sink them proved crucial to the Allies winning the battle of the Atlantic and keeping those vital supplies coming in.
In Germany, Albert Speer, newly appointed as Minister of Armaments, was similarly trying to beef up industrial production, but his efforts were little more than windowdressing — or outright lies.
A new ‘ miracle’ machine gun could pump out 3,000 rounds per minute, the German public were told. But its actual performance was less than half that.
The falsehoods served only to convince Hitler that somehow victory was within his grasp. No
SURRENDER, he ordered the German 6th Army at snowedin Stalingrad. No retreat, he instructed Rommel in North Africa, though the war there had turned so hopelessly against him after the Battle of El Alamein that the Desert Fox wrote despondently to his wife: ‘The dead are lucky. It’s all over for them.’
This middle period of the war also left the Wehrmacht retreating in the Soviet Union, the German Navy back in port and its submarines largely sunk, and the Luftwaffe powerless to stop the Allied bombers ravaging German cities.
Most importantly for what lay ahead, the British and Americans were proper allies, working hand-in-glove with one goal — victory.