by Joshua Levine
On May 27, General Sir Edmund Ironside had been placed in charge of Britain's defences. His chief strategy was to delay the invaders on the beaches, giving the badly-equipped and poorly-trained defenders the chance to counter-attack. A front line of infantry was to be deployed along the beaches which were to be defended by barbed wire, minefields, pillboxes, trenches and anti-tank obstacles. A system of over fifty defended 'stop lines', making use of topographical and man-made features, was set up further inland to halt the invaders advance. A final defence line, known as the GHQ Line, running from Somerset to Essex and then north to Yorkshire, was intended to protect London and the heart of England.
Ironside was succeeded by General Alan Brooke on July 20. Brooke considered that the existing defences were too static and promoted a siege mentality. He began placing greater emphasis on the mobility of his forces.
Private David Elliott
Royal Army Medical Corps
We'd left all our weapons of any size behind in France. The country was virtually unarmed.
Major William Watson
6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry
Our equipment was extremely short. The gunners had old French 75s with wheels, the signallers were training on a few very feeble wireless sets and some of the men were wearing the uniforms they'd been wearing when they escaped from Dunkirk.
Bombardier Douglas Goddard
Royal Artillery
It was really rather comical. We had rifles with five rounds of ammunition, we had one 1914 Lewis gun and we had three London taxis. We patrolled the coast between Camber Sands and Dimchurch - where the invasion was due to land - in taxis.
Captain Kenneth Johnstone
11th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry
I remember one officer being put on a charge by the brigadier because he didn't have a revolver, until it was explained to the brigadier that it wasn't his turn to wear the revolver, because we only had one between six of us.
Joan Varley
Civilian in London
Roosevelt was sending us munitions which had been used by the Americans for training purposes. They were pretty out of date - never mind! They were weapons.
Chief Petty Officer Ronald Apps
Engine room artificer aboard HMS Tyne
In July 1940, I joined a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker - the War African - that was anchored off Sheerness for an idea that I have always assumed was thought up by Churchill. These tankers were filled up with fuel oil and there were mines and detonators down in the holds. The idea was that we would run them over to Boulogne and about five or six miles out of the harbour, we would set the controls and lash them - with the boilers going full bore - and run them into Boulogne harbour and let them blow up, to destroy the potential German invasion fleet. It was called Operation Lucid and we spent four weeks preparing. We practised setting the controls and evacuating the ship with two speedboats alongside us which had been commandeered from Southend. These speedboats were remarkable things. They could go at 35 or 40 knots and the idea was that at the blowing of a whistle, we had to rush down, get in the boats and we were away. Those four weeks were a bit hairy because the tanker was full up with fuel oil when it came to us and it was primed and ready to explode and there were air raids at night. When you're in this tanker, sitting on all this explosive material and the Germans are coming over and dropping bombs, it's not a very... shall I say 'sleep inspiring' experience. It's one of those things you either get used to or you don't sleep. I got round to the idea that I had to sleep or I wouldn't be able to walk around the next day. In the end, it was decided that the operation was too risky and we would be blown up as well and the whole thing was cancelled.
Harry Hopthrow
Assistant Director of Works at GHQ Home Forces
I was dealing with the defence of Britain. When General Ironside was commander-in-chief, his strategy was to defend the beaches. He provided beach defences of many varieties, including tubes of scaffolding that were put round the beaches to prevent landings and the cutting of pleasure piers. There was also some very experimental stuff - ideas about how to set the beaches on fire - which never worked. One commander had the idea of getting hold of American bullfrogs. He said that if they all sounded at the right time, it would make the people coming ashore violently sick. I remember him telling Ironside, 'We've got to get some bullfrogs!' but whether they ever turned up, I don't know.
Eventually, Ironside was retired and made a field marshal. He was a very pleasant man to be with but he'd really passed his best by this time and he was too lighthearted to be commander-in-chief. He didn't quite fit in a big organisation and he was replaced by Brooke, who was superb. He was an excellent tactician, rather brusque but one was very confident working with him because if you wanted an answer, you got it and you were pretty certain that he was right.
After he took over, there was a very distinct tactical change from building defensive works to the idea that if there was any landing, it should be dealt with by mobile troops on offensive action rather than simply trying to stop them on the beaches. There was still defence on the beaches but Brooke's main forces could be moved about the country and concentrated wherever the enemy was concentrating.
Second Lieutenant Peter Vaux
4th Royal Tank Regiment
We were sent down to Tweseldown where each tank squadron was equipped with a train. These trains all smelt of new paint - they must have been made almost overnight. Each train consisted of 17 flats, the end one of which had a removable bogey and jacks and a lot of railway sleepers stacked on it. And what happened was, if we were called upon, a locomotive would come to the siding where this train was waiting; the ramp would be lowered by removing the bogey and jacks and our tanks would climb up on to it. It would be jacked up again, the bogeys would be put back, the sleepers which had been put between the rails so that the tanks could swing themselves on the rails would be put back again on the flat, the crews would all get on the railway carriage at the end, and our tanks would steam off by train to meet the Germans wherever they might be landing.
We took the threat of invasion more seriously than most because we'd seen it actually happen in France. We'd seen the speed with which those Panzer divisions could hurtle across the countryside. Nobody at that time knew anything about the difficulty of seaborne landings. We always credited the Germans with being very clever in these things. We were sure that they could do it overnight. We expected that the Germans would land, the thinly spread out infantry on the beaches would withdraw and the Germans would establish a beachhead. We had to get there with our tanks before they broke out.
Private David Elliott
Royal Army Medical Corps
In Bognor Regis, I saw these rolls and rolls of barbed wire all along the front. There were stakes in the ground to stop tanks and they'd started erecting posts like giant pit props in the fields to stop the invasion gliders from landing.
Lieutenant Arthur Curtis
7th Field Company, Royal Engineers
I went around with a regimental commander, siting pillboxes. Then I would make a rendezvous with a building contractor, hand over the land, knock in a post to indicate the location required and the axis of the main loophole, and the contractor would sign the form and then he would get on with it. There were no formalities - it was very quick. But the pillboxes were very frail. They were only brick with some concrete in between the bricks, and they wouldn't have stopped anything more than a bullet. But still, they were useful because they created a firing position, and they showed up on the air photographs and we know that when the Germans were planning Operation Sealion, they grossly overestimated the strength of the defences because they assumed that these were much stronger fortifications than they actually were.
