The Missing Winter

There are no letters from Dick between 7th October 1941 and 20th April 1942, when records show he was transferred from the Dorsets to 1^st Air Landing in the Reconnaissance Corps. The obvious reason would be that he was stationed near Chotie and seeing her regularly so there was no need to write. He had dental treatment in Bournemouth in December 1941 and twice in February 1942.

Presuming he continued in some part of Intelligence (he refers to a potential transfer in his letter of 7^th October), there are a number of interesting activities in the Poole area where he may have been involved, including the planning of the raid on St Nazaire and the Bruneval raid by Louis Mountbatten’s Combined Operations Command.

Mountbatten became Advisor on Combined Operations on 27th October 1941 .  Churchill summed up his job in one sentence “I want you to turn the south coast of England from a bastion of defence into a springboard of attack”.  His duties included planning commando raids across the English Channel and inventing new technical aids to assist with opposed landing.

 The Bruneval Raid was intimately connected to the secret radar work of the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Dorset and carried out by a company of paratroopers from 1^st Airborne Division who trained with the Royal Navy on the Dorset coast in February 1942.

Poole was also the base of the ‘Maid Honour Force’ of marine commandos, which Combined Operations and Special Operations Executive developed into the 'Small-scale Raiding Force', establishing an HQ at Anderson Manor in the Poole hinterland during this period (see posts for 1st April 1941 and 2nd February 1942).

All of these operations were conducted with the utmost secrecy and may possibly have involved the services of Trooper R.K Williams, Intelligence Section.

In addition, the activities of a squadron of the elite signals and reconnaissance unit known as ‘Phantom’ were centred on the area behind Poole Harbour. Commanded by the actor David Niven, ‘A’ squadron of the General Headquarters Liaison Regiment was attached to General Montgomery’s Fifth Corps and responsible for the rapid relay of information on coastal defences or invasion to Army HQ.  Since Dick later had to learn morse and wireless it seems unlikely that he worked directly for ‘Phantom’ at this time.

However, in joining 1st Air Landing (the glider-borne troops of 1^st Airborne Division), Dick would have come under the command of Brigadier G.F. Hopkinson, the founder of ‘Phantom’.  Dick had his first experience of flying in the 1^st Airborne so, if he did go to France during the ‘Missing Winter’ (as my mother seemed to remember), it was not by plane.

 

(From ‘Poole and World War II’ written by Derek Beamish, Harold Bennett and John Hillier and published by Poole Historical Trust in 1980, ‘Dorset’s War Diary - Battle of Britain to D Day’ by Rodney Legg, Dorset Publishing Company 2004,  ‘Phantom at War – the British Army’s Secret Intelligence & Communication Regiment of WW2’ by Andy &Sue Parlour, Cerberus 2003 and Combined Operations.)