I recently put up a post about John Cruickshank, the son of a one-time neighbour of mine in Edinburgh, who flew with Coastal Command in WW2 and was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1944 when he sank a U-Boat, bringing his Catalina home safely despite being seriously wounded in the attack.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Mr Cruickshank is still alive, and I think he lives in Aberdeen; tomorrow (20th May) will be his 100th birhday and, though I never met the man, I have left myself a diary reminder to drink a toast to him tomorrow. I'd be pleased and honoured if anyone would care to join me (figuratively speaking, of course).
Photo borrowed from The Scotsman
Every possible good wish, John - wherever you are - congratulations, and thanks for your gallant efforts all those years ago!
I found the following movie on Youtube - I'm sorry about the running numbers in the centre of the picture, but I thought it was pretty good - a dramatised documentary from 1943 about Coastal Command, with a musical score by Vaughan Williams, no less. Much use is made of real Coastal Command personnel, so the acting is fairly lumpy, but it's OK - some good shots of a Sunderland in action, and there are Catalinas and other planes later on. Some of the action shots were filmed on actual missions.
Yesterday I made the trip up to the part of Scotland which is known as Perth & Kinross - a title which is not exactly concise, and which probably isn't very traditional either, but at least it's unambiguous. The occasion was a visit to Schloss Goya, the home of the famed Count. I had a splendid trip on the bus, and arrived in time for coffee and a quick viewing of the regiment of Bavarian Chevauxlegers which the Count is very kindly painting for me. Great stuff - I am confident these chaps will be ready to show here very soon. The advantages of getting Goya to help me with painting work are twofold: (1) I don't have to paint them myself, and (2) the quality of the painting is definitely superior!
German force advance out of the low sun of morning - my two Panthers are on the left flank, advancing as slow as necessary to allow the accompanying infantry company to keep up
He was kind enough to lay on a very fine lunch, and in the afternoon we had a bash at a WW2 game he had set up - a small encounter action between German and Russian forces, racing to seize a crossroads. It was the very first WW2 miniatures game I have ever taken part in, and the rules we used were Rapid Fire for Rookies, the two-page babies' version of RF, as befits my experience level. I was the German commander; I'll not attempt to give a coherent narrative, since I had very little idea what was going on most of the time, and I must apologise for the very poor photos, taken with my iPhone. I took a great many more pictures, but most were blurred and horrible. I must also emphasise that the game did look rather better than this sketchy post might suggest! I wasted a lot of time in admiring the 20mm figures - this is all new to me.
Overall view of my "left hook" with the Panthers - heavy weapons group heading into the woods in the middle
I regret to say that this is the only photo of the Russians which was clear enough to make out - this taken from a spotter plane early on. I suspect that it was fear which caused the camera-shake. As you see, the old Russkis are very keen on straight lines
I was pleased to get my tanks into this position so quickly...
...but instantly one of them was knocked out...
...and immediately afterwards my only gun was also kaput - my full repertoire of German swear words proved inadequate (obviously something I'll have to work on)
So my surviving Panther went off on a tour of the battlefield which eventually put paid to all the opposition's armour, and also eliminated a lot of his infantry
My infantry trying to keep up with the advance
Mostly because I wondered what would happen, I sent a single soldier with a Panzerfaust to take on a Russian self-propelled gun which was causing problems. He missed, and you only get one shot with a Panzerfaust. That's what happened...
The unstoppable Panther continued on its tour, mopping up resistance...
Though I suffered almost as many infantry casualties as the enemy, I won on points, as they say in boxing, and I was definitely in control of the crossroads. Very interesting little game - I enjoyed it, but I sincerely hope I don't get promoted on the strength of it
I had a lot to think about on the bus back to Edinburgh. Another grand day out!
Modern photo looking east from the crash site - Bass Rock and the houses at Rhodes Holdings in the right distance - Tesco is behind you and to your left!
At present, my wife and I are watching the
1970s Thames TV series The World at War
on DVD - most evenings we fire up the log stove and convene at 8:30 or so to
watch the next episode. I last watched it a few years ago, but she has
previously only seen odd instalments on the History Channel and similar. It is
a remarkable achievement of TV; it's also almost perfectly timed - it's modern enough
to give a pretty impartial view of the history of WW2, without the tub-thumping
patriotism which often distorts such things, yet it was soon enough after the
event to feature interviews with an astounding array of prominent individuals.
It is also, of course, very heavy going at
times - both from an emotional point of view and through trying to grasp the
sheer immensity of the tragedy. Last night was the Italian
campaign, but we've also recently survived the Siege of Leningrad, so it's all
excellently informative (as popular history, of course) but there are very few
laughs along the way.
This is the Heugh crash - the view in the background is almost identical to the photo at the top of this post
In one of the earlier instalments, there
was some newsreel footage of what was described as the first German plane shot
down on British soil, and for us this is local stuff, so we sat up straight and paid special attention. Now I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the film
perpetuates a mistake which is commonly made on this subject. The first such
"kill" was a bomber shot down near Humbie, south of Edinburgh, on the
slopes of Soutra Hill, in (I think) October 1939. Later, about 3
miles from where I'm sitting, in February 1940, a Heinkel 111 crash-landed
at The Heugh farm, outside North Berwick, on the southern shore of the Firth of
Forth. I'm not sure why or how, but at some point the pictures for these two events
became transposed, so that it is very common to read of the Humbie incident,
with attached pictures of the North Berwick one, in which the downed plane
ended in a very marked nose-down situation, right on the skyline.
I must emphasise that I'm not certain without
re-running the movie, but I think the mention of the first plane shot down
(which was the Humbie one) in the World at War episode was accompanied by
footage of the North Berwick one (that's "our" local German plane),
which is a common error. Not to worry - my general ignorance of this entire
subject is extensive, as may well be displayed by what follows.
And here we are looking west from the crash site, across the farm fields towards North Berwick Law - our very own local extinct volcano...
From late 1939 onwards, German bombers were
making sporadic attacks on this part of Eastern Scotland - these were mostly
solitary planes having a go at Rosyth Dockyard or shipping in the Forth, but
there were also bombing raids made on some surprisingly small villages - East
Linton, for example - simply because they had bridges on the main London
railway line. As I understand it, these planes came from Stavanger, in Norway, and since
there were active fighter bases at Drem and East Fortune (and further south at
Drone Hill, though that may have mostly been a radar station later in the war),
any isolated raider could expect a hot reception.
There are many tales of WW2 bombs in odd
locations from the "phoney war" period - the Luftwaffe managed to hit
the boiler house of the walled garden here on our own farm, for example - right in the middle of nowhere. Many such bombs
fell in open countryside, presumably ditched by planes aborting missions or
being pursued; my first wife's father had been an air-raid warden in the
village of Greenlaw during the war, and one night a single bomb fell on a house
where there were soldiers billeted - the old boy was convinced for the rest of his
days that this must have been deliberately targeted. Basically, in the early
war years, things up here were fairly quiet, though there was a lot of understandable
concern about the possibility of an invasion on the beaches in these parts. An
invasion from Norway would almost certainly have been beyond the capabilities
of the German forces at the time, but you can still occasionally see the
remains of the anti-glider posts on our beach at low tide, and there are surviving observation posts
and pill boxes on a neighbouring farm. I guess they didn't really know what to
expect, though it is also evident that the farm where I live scored a personal
triumph by managing to get an excellent system of concrete roads built by HM
Govt to support the observation posts - they are still in good shape today - the
horses slip on them in the wet, but they are still serviceable - one runs
outside my front gate.
The defences caused a lot more trouble than
the enemy at this time. The town council of North Berwick complained because
British mines were getting washed up on the beach - I'm not sure what they
wanted to be done about them, apart from prompt disposal. There is a splendid
reply on file from the military authorities, who pointed out that their primary
concern was prevention of invasion or enemy action in coastal waters, and
offered the reassurance that mines which came adrift from their anchors were usually automatically disarmed as a consequence. Well,
there was a war on.
Back to the story of our Heinkel. On 9th
February 1940 a Heinkel 111 H-1 of 5/KG 26 (from Stavanger?) was attempting a
sneak attack on Rosyth when it was intercepted over Fife by the Spitfire of
Flt.Lt Douglas Farquhar of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, based at Drem. With
the port engine badly damaged and his gunner seriously wounded, the pilot of
the Heinkel lowered his undercarriage as a sign of surrender and crash landed
on rising ground on a farm south-east of North Berwick - the farm of The Heugh
[pronunciation guide will follow].
Local legend has it that the farmer, Mr
Wright, apprehended the crew! After the authorities had things safely under
control, there was a stream of sightseers. Sadly, the gunner died of his wounds
in the hospital at Drem.
Wings removed, the Henkel is towed along Dirleton Avenue in North Berwick, on its way to Turnhouse
King George VI visited Drem airfield 3 weeks later, for a ceremony in which Farquhar was awarded the DFC - I think the figure on the far left is Dowding
Since it was in very good condition, the
plane was recovered - the outer wings were removed and it was towed by road
through North Berwick to Edinburgh, where it was put back into an airworthy
state in the workshops at Turnhouse, and it was added to a flight of captured
aircraft which the RAF maintained to study German technology. I believe this is a
photo of the restored aircraft repainted in British colours.
Subsequently it was destroyed in an
accident, so the machine never had a lot of good fortune associated with
it.
Here are a couple of clips - firstly of the
plane being towed through Musselburgh, on its way to Turnhouse, and then one of
a little of the history of Drem airfield, though I suspect the combat footage
is mostly library stuff.
The crash took place on a hillside, between the village cemetery and the new houses at Rhodes Holdings, just uphill (south) of the present-day Tesco supermarket. From what I can make out from current workings, it looks as though there is a new housing estate marked out for development in the near future, so the site will probably disappear - not that there's anything to see now!
Most of the pictures and links here are from the most excellent Coastrider blog, which is well worth a visit by cycling enthusiasts. If you share any of this stuff, please do mention where it came from.
[Pronunciation - for non-Scots, the word Heugh is not so easy - phonetically, it sounds like HYOOCH, just a single syllable, where the OO is quite short and the CH is like the ending of the Scottish word loch - the softest, aspirate, dry sound like the end of the German mich, but if you're getting even close to sch then it's not dry enough! - come on - further back on the roof of your mouth - here, have another beer...]
I am currently reading Toshikazu Kase’s Journey to the Missouri, which I bought
in Kindle version for next to nothing. I’m not going to offer any kind of
formal review (I’d be too embarrassed, for one thing), but I have found the
book absorbing and educational, and I would recommend it as a beginner’s
overview of Japan before and during WW2. I am certainly a complete beginner in this
subject.
Kase is in the top hat, right of centre, listening to McArthur's speech
Mr Kase is most celebrated as a member of
the deputation which signed the Japanese surrender in 1945, on board the USS Missouri, but he was also a
prominent member of the Japanese Foreign Ministry during the 1930s and 1940s,
was Japan’s observer at the United Nations after WW2 until such time as they
were awarded full membership, and was a delegate thereafter. He was also posted
in the London embassy at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack, much to his
personal discomfort, since the embassy staff had no prior warning of the
attack.
So he was a very high-profile diplomat,
and was unusual in a number of respects, since he was educated in the USA
(Amherst College and Harvard) and was well accustomed to Western culture and
protocols. His (American) editor makes the point that it is a remarkable
achievement that Mr Kase wrote his book in English, without a
translator – the editor pauses to wonder how many Western diplomats could write
such a work in a language which was not their own (which begs the further
question of how many could write so well even in their own language…).
I have the Kindle version, but the book was reprinted many times
Kase describes the desperate instability of the
political situation in Japan in the 1930s, and the progressive domination of
the country by the military, who – under the pretext of obedience to the
Emperor – exerted complete control over education, indoctrination of the
population, government, religion and foreign policy. This is an astonishing
story, and it includes the headlong rush into war and the continuing obsession
with fighting on – to the last man if necessary – in a war effort which
was clearly doomed from late 1943 onwards.
To an extent, Mr Kase can be expected to
attempt to save his nation’s face a little, and to cover himself and the
liberal majority who took over after 1945 – there are a good number of points
where I found myself thinking, well he
would say that, wouldn’t he? He is supremely supportive – to the point of
adulation – of post-war Britain and the USA, and generally hostile to Russia
and China throughout. His description of Japan’s shameful annexation and
exploitation of Manchuria does not accord well with my understanding of what
went on there, but provides an interesting alternative view.
He insists that there was a strong anti-war
lobby in Japan for a long time before the atomic bomb, though such a stance was
likely to lead to disappearance or assassination of the individual. His English is perfect, though a
bit rich on occasion – he expresses himself well, but often in emotive terms,
and his use of identifiably Eastern imagery takes a little getting used to; he
likens the youthful kamikaze pilots to the petals of cherry blossom, and so
on.
Mr Kase died in 2002, at the age 101, I
understand – apart from the deck of the Missouri,
his other most famous appearance was probably as one of the interviewees in Thames TV’s
magnificent The World at War (1974) –
I have a box set of the DVDs, and I still cannot believe that anything so good
was ever produced – it has its critics, and it is probably overexposed (and
underwatched?) on the History Channel and elsewhere, but in my opinion those
films will never be equalled as coverage of WW2 – it was sufficiently long
after the event for a bit of balance to start to appear, yet it was soon enough
for a hefty number of the participants to appear to describe and explain their
experiences.
I digress – Mr Kase’s book is recommended –
I am getting a lot out of it. I hesitate to mention this, but next up on my
Kindle list is Mein Kampf – I’ve had
it hanging around for a while, so had better have a go at it – I do not expect
that it will influence my personal attitudes, but it’s an obvious gap in my
reading list!
