At the beginning of March 1944 Dick and 61st Reconnaissance Division , now attached to the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, were at Whittlesford, near Cambridge. Training for Operation Overlord kept them very busy – Eric Postles recalls they were given new vehicles and drove over central England running them in. On one excursion Dick visited Bawdsey Manor, home of the top secret pre-war research on radar that became the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Dorset.
His letter of 5th March also includes plans to meet up with Chotie during his next leave, although she hadn’t written for some time…... When they met Chotie confessed to an infidelity, which Dick, though hurt badly, blamed on life in the services. “It is in this state, of being so completely fed-up that you don’t give a damn what happens, that these things happen.” Back in Whittlesford on 18th March he wrote: “You don’t need to ask me to forgive you, Chotie. I shall always be prepared to forgive you anything – except leaving me entirely.”
By Tuesday 21st March Dick was up in Scotland on one of the hastily arranged training courses to prepare for amphibious landings in France:
Letter written on Friday 24th March 1944
Ayrshire, Scotland
Friday
Chotie Darling,
Have just received your letter of the 19th inst. which has been forwarded up from the unit.
I was very pleased to see that Eric had replied to your letter and that I now have Eric’s address once again. No excuse now, eh?
Having a very pleasant time here doing absolutely nothing, as there seems no organisation of any sort here, and nobody worries about you. I’m in a very cushy mess of practically every Regiment in the Army, though I’ve only met one bloke I knew before.
I took the afternoon off and walked to Irvine* some three miles along golden sands** in glorious sunshine. (I omitted to say that I had some three hours sleep in the afternoon on the beach.) I then had a beer or two in Irvine and bussed back.
Went skating on Tuesday and a dance in Ayr last night so I thought I’d have things a little quieter this evening, as I spent this morning up to my neck in the sea.***
I’ll enclose some coupons in this letter. If I remember that is. What are they worth to you?
All the pubs up here close at 8.30 pm except one in Ayr. Unfortunately the barmaid there became much too friendly for my liking so I stay clear now. She was a very charming little thing but obviously didn’t know her own mind. So now I have to drink in the mess – very unsatisfactory.
How are you behaving these days? Being a good girl I hope. Write and tell me all about him won’t you? If he’s under forty I’ll be jealous, and if he’s over forty I’ll spank you.
Must close here, Baby
All my love
Dicker
*Irvine is a town in North Ayrshire on the west coast of Scotland. A couple of Combined Operations WW2 camps were situated to the south of Irvine – HMS Dundonald trained all three services in signalling procedures to and from landing craft and the use of navigational aids to assist small landing craft find their way to designated landing places on hostile beaches. HMS Dinosaur focused on tank landing craft training. (From the Combined Operations website.)
*** “For the landings to be successful and for breakout from the bridgehead on the French coast to be achieved the men of all three services not only had to be equipped they also had to be trained. It was to be training like no other, rigorous, realistic and relentless and much of it took place in Scotland.” (Originally from the website www.scotsatwar.org.uk but this link no longer works. Can anyone help me credit the source?)
© Chotie Darling
Meanwhile Chotie’s job was to help defend Bristol and the Severn Estuary ports from German air attacks. The city received its first bombing raid since 1942 on 27th March 1944 with 139 Luftwaffe planes targeting the harbour. 13 of those planes were lost and the ‘Baby Blitz’ was unsuccessful due to Bristols’ excellent defences (my mother was always prepared to take full responsibility for this) and poor target marking by the Germans.
German planes on bombing mission
The Allies’ strategic bombing of Germany was now achieving important results, not just through the impact on targets (although cities had been devastated and much infrastructure disabled) but particularly through the loss of Luftwaffe planes and experienced pilots. This success, due to the deadly long-range fighter planes that now escorted the bombers, was to prove critical to the eventual outcome of Overlord and the Battle of Normandy.
The United States Army Air Force attacked Berlin with a huge force of bombers and fighters on 4th and 6th March and the RAF followed up with a thousand plane raid on the 24th. Stuttgart and Nuremberg also suffered heavy air attacks by the RAF and Bomber command began strategic attacks on northern France in preparation for the Allied invasion.
The National Council for the French Resistance published its plans for the future of a free France after the war on 15th March. On 26th March in Haute Savoie 10,000 German troops and French militia attacked the 465 Maquisards gathered on the Plateau de Glières , now maintained as an important monument to the Resistance.
In the Ardeatine Caves near Rome the Germans executed 336 Italians in revenge for partisans killing 35 German police. The Allies were struggling in their attempt to reach Rome - a third attack on Monte Cassino failed on 23rd March and the forces landed at Anzio were still held in the beachhead. However, airfields in southern Italy were now used to support Tito’s communist resistance in Yugoslavia.
On 19th March the Hungarian leader, Miklos Horthy, who had been secretly negotiating with the Allies, was arrested and German troops marched in to occupy Hungary. The SS immediately began deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
The Russians were now very near (see Atlas of the World Battle Fronts). On 15th March in Poland they reached the Bug River, the boundary agreed between Russia and Germany when they invaded in 1939, and on 28th March Soviet troops crossed into Romanian territory near the Black Sea.
Burma (Myanmar) was another critical zone in March 1944. On 7th March 100,000 Japanese advanced from north-west Burma into India in Operation U-Go. Behind Japanese lines the airborne British Chindit expedition, Operation Thursday, had landed near Indaw in central northern Burma on 5th March and the American ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ were fighting for control of Myitkina in the far north near China. Allied forces in the far western Arakan, near the port of Muangdaw, continued to advance the southern frontier against the Japanese. However, the Chindits lost their unconventional leader, Orde Wingate, in a plane crash on 24th March.
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