Victoria's Cross (25 page)

Other submariners could do equally astonishing things, yet go almost unnoticed, or at least grudgingly rewarded. Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Henty Henty-Creer, an Australian of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), was the commanding officer of a group of six X-class midget submarines that were involved in ‘Operation Source', in which the German battleships
Tirpitz
,
Scharnhorst
and
Lützow
were to be attacked in a Norwegian fjord on 22 September 1943. The midget subs were towed by conventional submarines close to the area;
X-9
was lost with all hands when her tow snapped, while
X-8
had to be scuttled when leaks in the explosives meant they had to be jettisoned. The remaining four midget subs travelled fifty miles up the fjord, through minefields and past patrol boats, to reach the German vessels;
X-10
then abandoned the mission when it found that
Scharnhorst
was missing. Three –
X-5
, Henty-Creer's boat,
X-6
and
X-7
– were to place explosive charges underneath the
Tirpitz
, then lying at anchor in the heavily defended fjord.
X-6
was commanded by Lieutenant Donald Cameron, RNVR, and
X-7
by Lieutenant Godfrey Place, Royal Navy. Both successfully deposited their explosives, but they were spotted, attacked, and Cameron and Place captured.
X-5
disappeared and was never seen again, possibly sunk by a shell from one of
Tirpitz
's four-inch guns. At slightly after 8 a.m. the midget subs' charges exploded;
Tirpitz
was lifted out of the water and smashed back onto it, coming to rest with a slight list to port. Electronic and fire-control systems were seriously damaged, and all auxiliary machinery either thrown off its housings or damaged internally.
Tirpitz
was out of service for seven
months, before being finally destroyed by a Lancaster bomber raid on 12 November 1944.

For this action Place and Cameron received Victoria Crosses, while three others gained the DSO and another the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal; even the commander of the
X-8
, which had to abort its mission, was appointed a Member of the British Empire. For Henty-Creer, who was never seen again, there was merely a Mention in Despatches. There is no conclusive evidence that Henty-Creer's
X-5
laid its explosive charge and deliberately attacked
Tirpitz
; equally, in the confusion it is possible that one of the explosions resulted from the charge carried by
X-5
. According to the harsh standards usually implemented during the Second World War, VCs were only for demonstrable winners; merely to have shown courage by participating in, even leading, such a difficult mission to attack something of such vital importance as a German battleship was not enough. ‘True' leadership was successful leadership; disappearing without trace was not leadership.

This necessity of setting an example was laid out in a memo distributed by a senior commander of the Canadian army. In April 1943 Guy Simonds was promoted to major general and appointed GOC (General Officer Commanding), 2nd Canadian Infantry Division. Although Simonds had never been under fire and would not be so until July 1943, he had enjoyed a meteoric rise from major to major general in three-and-a-half years. In the spring of 1943 Simonds, chief of staff of the First Canadian Army, clashed with Lieutenant General Andrew McNaughton, the army's GOC, over the army's organization, and was shunted off on attachment with the 8th Army in Tunisia, under the wing of the already upwardly mobile General Bernard Montgomery. Aggressive, prickly and determined – like his new mentor – at forty, Simonds was precisely the kind of young officer Montgomery prized. In 1944 Montgomery confided to his diary that the ‘only really good general in the Canadian forces is Simmonds [sic]',
a verdict he conveyed in a letter to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke on 14 July 1944:

the Canadian senior commanders are not good. They have some good officers; but their top commanders are bad judges of men – and Harry Crerar is no exception, and does not know what a good soldier should be. The great exception is Simmonds [sic]; he is far and away the best general they have; he is the equal of any British Corps Commander.
²³

In October 1943 Simonds issued to the 1st Canadian Division, then fighting its way up the Italian peninsula, a directive that defined what was expected of soldiers if they were to be considered for honours and awards. This directive, which would have had Monty's approval, would ‘provide the basis upon which I will scrutinise all recommendations when passing for consideration by higher authority'. In this document, apparently written without reference to the VC statutes, Simonds said that a ‘proper' allocation of military decorations should:

(a) give recognition to exceptional acts, or duties performed with outstanding ability, or recognition of exacting duties performed unfailingly during a difficult or long period;

(b) encourage aggressiveness and skill and the offensive spirit;

(c) discourage foolishness or the unnecessary and useless risk of lives and equipment. I look to every Commander and Commanding Officer to strictly discourage any forms of ‘medal hunting';

To ram the point home, Simonds stated that

except in the most extraordinary circumstances, acts of gallantry NOT directly contributing to damage to the enemy (such as rescuing of our own personnel, salvage of equipment, extricating a unit or sub-unit from a difficult position) will
NOT
be considered for these awards
even if performed in the presence of the enemy and under fire . . . In the case of the V.C. the act must be so outstanding as to provide an example to the Army for all time and its effect in damage to the enemy and furtherance of operations must be marked beyond question and of the first importance.
²⁴

This went far beyond anything stipulated in the VC warrant or indeed in regulations regarding lesser decorations. Noticeably, it made no mention of the elective peer principle. There was to be no tolerance of the kind of easy-come, easy-go attitudes of the past. Officers and men were clearly not to be trusted to exercise the ‘right' kind of judgement; the idea that they might select representatives from their own number for a VC recommendation was ignored. Simonds, and above him, Monty, was the new Cerberus standing at the entrance; only the truly deserving would get past to secure a VC.

That the army, Royal Navy and RAF operated with different criteria in the recognition of supreme, VC-meriting gallantry during the Second World War is evident. Partly it was a matter of opportunity, partly a matter of assumptions about what the VC was for, and part a matter of perceived usefulness. If the definition of a VC-winning act was to be not only supererogatory courage but doing lasting damage to the enemy – and all that in front of your comrades in arms in order that they might be inspired by your example – then the navy and air force generally lacked the opportunity to perform such deeds, or to offer up candidates for the VC.

But puzzles remain. It is remarkable to recall that, for all the public fuss made at the time and since about the Battle of Britain, only one RAF fighter pilot gained a VC throughout the whole war. Of the twenty-two VCs that went to aircrew, nineteen went to Bomber Command, with two to members of Coastal Command. The single VC to a fighter pilot went to James Nicholson, a twenty-three-year-old
flight lieutenant with 249 Squadron. On 16 August 1940 Nicholson's Hurricane was bounced by a Messerschmitt 110 over Southampton. Nicholson was injured in a foot and one eye, and his Hurricane's fuel tank was set alight. He struggled to bail out of his blazing aircraft, but he spotted another Messerschmitt, fired on it and shot it down, and then bailed out of his plane and landed safely. For all the many valiant RAF fighter pilots who in summer and autumn of 1940 flew innumerable missions to fend off the planned invasion of Britain, Nicholson remained the sole and, it must be said, rather odd VC. It was not that he did not deserve a VC, but the type of action he gained it for would become relatively commonplace as the war went on. That more fighter pilots were not awarded VCs reflects the balance of power at the highest level of the RAF, and the way the VC came to be massaged to fit the offensive spirit. By early 1942 Bomber Command was in the RAF driving seat, thanks in part to the dominating personality of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber' Harris, who took over as commander-in-chief of Bomber Command on 22 February 1942. Of the nineteen Bomber Command VCs, twelve date from after Harris took over. Fighter pilots – even publicly acknowledged and acclaimed aces such as James ‘Johnny' Johnson, who survived the war and ended with thirty-four confirmed kills – often displayed enormous courage over (in Johnson's case) years of combat, yet did not apparently merit a VC; Johnson gained a DSO and a DFC. ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,' intoned Churchill in Parliament on 20 August 1940; and never was the VC so sparsely awarded as in the case of RAF Fighter Command between 1939 and 1945.

What was required in the RAF to qualify for VC consideration was an offensive coup of which great propaganda could be made – and to which the VC could be pinned – such as the ‘Dambuster' raid of 16–17 May 1943, for which the undoubtedly brave and highly skilled Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who by that date had completed 170 sorties,
received his VC. This raid was, however, enormously costly, and its strategic usefulness debatable; fifty-three of the 133 aircrew were killed, and by the end of June electricity generation in the region of Germany attacked by the RAF was back to full strength. Of the eighty survivors, thirty-four were decorated,
²⁵
with five DSOs, ten DFCs and four bars, two CGMs and eleven DFMs and one bar. Ruthlessness, leadership and determination became the stepping stones towards a VC; the opportunity of a demonstrable propaganda success was not always necessary, but it could tip the balance in favour of the highest decoration.

John Nettleton's VC, awarded for a low-level daylight raid on the MAN diesel-engine factory at Augsburg, Bavaria, on 17 April 1942, illustrates the point. This raid was a formidable task, requiring the aircraft and their eighty-five-strong aircrew to fly 700 miles across France and Germany (and back) in broad daylight. It was predestined to be an expensive raid in terms of lives and aircraft. First into the attack was the squadron led by South African-born Acting Squadron Leader John Nettleton, of 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron. He led a formation of twelve Lancaster bombers, newly in service, in the attack; four were shot down on the way, but he continued and, amid fierce anti-aircraft fire (which brought down three more Lancasters), bombed the factory. Five aircraft, including Nettleton's, returned safely to Britain.
²⁶
Churchill called the Augsburg raid ‘an outstanding achievement of the RAF', even though Lord Selborne, Minister of Economic Warfare, complained that his ministry had not been consulted by Bomber Command and thought the attack would delay submarine production by three months at most. In a broadcast BBC interview on 19 April 1942, Nettleton provided just the kind of rallying tone required:

We Lancaster crews believe that in the Lancaster we have got the answer for heavy bombing. We have tremendous confidence in
everything about the Lancasters and in the workers who are turning them out in such numbers. We know that we are only sent to attack the most worthwhile targets. We believe that the way to win the war is to have our own spring offensive before Hitler has his and in places not of his choice but of ours.
²⁷

The general public had been made aware of the Lancaster, depicted as a war-winning weapon, for the first time. Nettleton's action – and that of the rest of the Lancaster crews that day – was courageous, certainly; it was also useful propaganda, showing a will to take the fight to the enemy. Squadron Leader J. S. Sherwood DFC, who led 97 Squadron, which followed up 44 Squadron, was recommended for the VC but got nothing, even though he was killed in the action. The
Sunday Pictorial
of 19 April was in no doubt what should happen. ‘Give Them All the VC', it declared in a subhead below the banner headline ‘Most Daring Raid Of War':

No greater story of personal daring and gallantry has ever been printed than that told on this page today . . . Heroism of this kind must be rewarded without delay. In the name of the people who today read with astonishment the story of their great deed, the
Sunday Pictorial
asks that these twelve pilots should be awarded the Victoria Cross. Just as no one will feel that justice has been done until every member of their crews has received the Distinguished Flying Medal.

Nine days after the raid Nettleton's VC was gazetted, along with lesser decorations for all the Augsburg survivors.
²⁸
The dead may have been just as brave; but they received nothing.

The VC continued to serve two purposes: most obviously, the recognition of supreme courage; most pertinently (if less obviously), the rewarding of those who could be held up as examples to the nation and an inspiration to their fellow countrymen, such as Group Captain
Leonard Cheshire. No one could deny that his VC was deserved, for countless acts of determined bravery against considerable odds. As his citation said,
²⁹
Cheshire gained it not for any particular action but for completing 100 missions over four years, for his ‘cold and calculated acceptance of risks', for ‘placing himself invariably in the forefront of the battle'. But much the same could have been said of the fighter pilot Squadron Leader ‘Johnny' Johnson and his own hundreds of operational sorties. The difference between Cheshire and Johnson was not their level of courage, but of how useful they were as propaganda tools and how well their function served strategic aims: bombing Germany to dust had a higher priority, and a much higher public profile, than shooting down enemy aircraft.