The BBC tried to maintain two men on the spot to cover the Western Desert campaigns and Middle East affairs generally. One was normally in Cairo at General Headquarters, and the other forward with the Army, and every few weeks they exchanged duties. Richard Dimbleby was one man of this pair for over two years, and for part of that time he had to tackle the total job singlehanded.
Of all warfare, desert fighting is the most bewildering. Few writers have ever described it adequately. With no natural boundaries to define the field of battle and to limit its movement, the action is liable to swing one way or another, and all too often it is impossible for any observer to say which side is on top. To this basic anxiety for the Western Desert correspondent was added the dilemma confronting the war reporter everywhere. Should he make his way to a forward position so that he could describe an engagement which he had seen with his own eyes, or should he base himself further back at some headquarters – Division, Corps or Army – at which he could be given frequent briefings on the changing position over an extensive part of the battlefront? If he went forward, he might well find himself watching a local episode totally unrepresentative of the larger action. He certainly stood a good chance of missing the most important story of the day, since nobody could tell in advance where the really significant things would happen. On the other hand, if he covered the day’s events from some headquarters, he was wholly dependent on second-hand information. He had no means of checking the accuracy of what he was told. There were times when some of the information filtering back to these headquarters was sadly over-optimistic if not misleading. In either case the risk remained that a favourable picture one day might be completely and unpredictably reversed the next in the fluid circumstances of desert fighting.
In this situation the BBC man was uniquely vulnerable. Correspondents writing for newspapers were safeguarded by the fact that it was six weeks before their despatches were seen by the men whose exploits and experiences they chronicled. It took that long for a London newspaper to travel out to Libya, or Tripolitania, and in such a lapse of time news became history. A press report, overtaken and perhaps made to look foolish by subsequent events, caused no more than a wry smile when it finally got back to the Army. Many things would have happened in the meantime to put it into perspective.
Not so, however, with the broadcaster. It usually required twenty-four hours for his despatch, recorded on the spot, to be sent back hundreds of miles to Cairo, to pass through the censors, to be transmitted by beam radio to London, and finally to be broadcast by the BBC’s shortwave services and heard throughout the Desert Army. When it was written, the story might well have sounded a well-justified note of optimism. But if in those intervening twenty-four hours things had gone badly, with fortunes perhaps reversed, there was little understanding on the spot for the unhappy BBC reporter. With some in the Army he became discredited, and sometimes confused and dispirited fighting men tended to find an outlet for their own understandable dejection in voicing harsh judgments against him. They are not too much to be blamed because they had no idea of the problems of radio reporting. The circumstances were inescapable, and the BBC war correspondent had to do his best in spite of them.
From Alamein onwards the situation was eased, because although there was severe fighting there were no more major British retreats. But Richard Dimbleby’s years were the pre-Alamein years, when success and defeat alternated alarmingly, depressingly and often inexplicably. We were ‘up in Benghazi for Christmas and back at Tobruk for New Year’ as it used to be said. So Richard became the innocent victim of factors for which he was not responsible and which he could do little to improve. His reporting throughout was totally conscientious and honest. He never spared himself in his efforts to give as faithful a picture as his own very shrewd and experienced observation, and his sources of information, would permit. Those sources were responsible, even if they let him down at times, because he enjoyed the confidence of the top command. Yet in the end, by the summer of 1942, it had to be recognised that in his own interests the time had come to withdraw him from the Western Desert and bring him back to London.
Recording messages to India from the Middle East
It was cruel luck, because the tide was so near the turn, and it fell to others, myself among them, to report the unbroken success story of the Eighth Army in the Montgomery era. But Richard took the blow philosophically, and, bitter as it must have been, he never showed his feelings openly in any way.
I was in the correspondents’ room on the day when he returned to Broadcasting House for normal duties. It was a routine day, with not a single assignment of interest in the diary. The best job that could be offered to him was a visit to Salisbury Plain to report on a demonstration of Army cookery. The BBC’s most experienced war correspondent, a man with a hard-earned and well-deserved national name and reputation, was asked to cover a story which would hardly excite a junior reporter. Yet he went off cheerfully, without question or comment.
This was the spirit in which he faced the two years of waiting, until D-Day brought him back, now as an Air Correspondent, into the forefront of active war reporting again. The prospect in June 1942 must have seemed bleak to him. Yet the period which followed was one of immense value. In it, Richard undertook occasional assignments of major importance such as his bomber flight over Berlin. During his spare time he stumped the country as a speaker in immense demand at armament factories and savings bond rallies up and down Britain. Most of all, he was helping to plan the BBC coverage of the great culminating phase of the war in Europe and to train the colleagues who would then be working with him.
From then on Dimbleby had all the activity, and the danger, that he sought. He was constantly risking his life flying deep into enemy country. He flew in the first 1,000 bomber raid. He took part in the first air raid on Berlin. A German flakburst, only six feet away, almost turned the Lancaster over. The pilot did something violent to the stick and the bomber recovered itself. Dimbleby, who was prone to airsickness, was overcome. He pushed off his flying mask and vomited on the floor. The bomber eventually got back safely to its base somewhere in England, and Dimbleby pushed his way into the night express for London and the studio to broadcast his eyewitness account.
One seat was left. Swinging his bag onto the rack he dropped into it. As the train gathered speed two soldiers looked in, and finding the compartment full, stood in the corridor outside. Dimbleby was the only civilian other than an elderly woman opposite. She looked at the soldiers standing in the corridor, back at Dimbleby, and said, ‘I should have thought a lucky young man like you would have given up his seat’. Richard was too tired to reply.
That incident and many others in his exciting and dangerous life as a war correspondent are to be found in his book ‘The Waiting Year’ in which he rather curiously called himself ‘John Mitchell’.
The following despatches give something of the flavour of his wartime broadcasts after D-Day.
NORMANDY BEACHHEAD
11 June 1944. I saw the shining, blue sea. Not an empty sea, but a sea crowded, infested with craft of every kind: little ships, fast and impatient, scurrying like water-beetles to and fro, and leaving a glistening wake behind them; bigger ships in stately, slow procession with the sweepers in front and the escort vessels on the flank – it was a brave, oh, an inspiring sight. We are supplying the beaches all right – no doubt of that. We flew on south-west, and I could see France and Britain, and I realised how very near to you all at home in England is this great battle in Normandy. It’s a stone’s throw across the gleaming water.
I saw it all as a mighty panorama, clear and etched in its detail. There were the supply ships, the destroyers, the torpedo boats, the assault craft, leaving England. Half way over was another flotilla, and near it a huge, rounded, ugly, capital ship, broadside on to France. There in the distance was the Cherbourg peninsula, Cherbourg itself revealed in the sun. And there, right ahead now, as we reset course, were the beaches. Dozens, scores, hundreds of craft lying close inshore, pontoons and jetties being lined up to make a new harbour where, six days ago, there was an empty stretch of shore.
BOMBING OF DUISBURG
14 October 1944. I think that not only in the smoke and rubble of Duisburg, but deeper in the heart of Germany, there must be men charged with the defence of the Reich whose hearts tonight are filled with dread and despair. For the unbelievable thing has come to pass – the RAF has delivered its greatest single attack against a German industrial target since the start of the war – more than a thousand heavy bombers, more than 4,500 tons of bombs – and it did it, this morning, in broad daylight.
At a quarter to nine this morning I was over the Rhine and Duisburg in a Lancaster, one of the thousand and more four-engined machines that filled the sunny sky to the north and south-east. A year ago it would have been near suicide to appear over the Ruhr in daylight – a trip by night was something to remember uncomfortably for a long time. Today, as the great broad stream of Lancasters and Halifaxes crossed the frontier of Germany, there was not an aircraft of the Luftwaffe to be seen in the sky, only the twisting and criss-crossing vapour trails of our own Spitfires and Mustangs protecting us far above and on the flanks.
The briefing officer had described Duisburg as the largest inland port in the world and an arsenal of the Reich, when he addressed the air crews. I saw Duisburg the arsenal, just for a moment, in a hole in the patchy white clouds that lay over the Rhine and the Ruhr. I saw the grey patch-work of houses and factories, roads, railways, and the dirty dark waters of the great river curving its way through the inland port. Then target indicators and bombs, H.E. and incendiary, nearly 5,000 tons of them, went shooting down; and the German flak, and a good deal of it, came shooting up. Duisburg the arsenal disappeared under a filthy billowing brown bulge of smoke. I saw no fires from our Lancaster – there was too much cloud for that – and I had one nervous eye on the chessboard of black bursting shells that had been superimposed on our fine clear piece of sky. But I did see heavy bombs, cookies, going down into the brown smoke, and more clouds of it pushing their sullen way up from the ground. Duisburg lay underneath the shroud; and shroud, I think, is the right word.
In case it sounds rather easy, this smashing of German targets by day, let me say at once that the pilots who are going to do it from now on are taking very great risks each time they set out on such an operation. The best they can hope for is a thick curtain of bursting shells through which to fly, and the sight – the sight that we had this morning – of one or two of their companions twisting down to the ground in flames and smoke. But such hazards do not affect the plans of Bomber Command, that astonishingly versatile organisation that began the war with so little, and by courage and perseverance has built up today’s striking force. As we flew home this morning, and saw a tight orderly patch of Flying Fortresses engaged on their Cologne operation passing us above the clouds, I could not help but realise that, together, Britain and America can now put into the morning or afternoon sky a mighty force of bombers that spells destruction and ruin for our enemies.
PATHFINDERS OVER COLOGNE
1 November 1944. Last night I flew for the first time with the Pathfinders, the force whose job it is to ensure the accuracy and concentration of the attack by marking the exact aiming point with coloured indicators – red, green, and yellow flares. The main force of bombers aims at the centre of the cluster of flares and thus gets its whole load of bombs into the exact ground area chosen as the target. This job of pathfinding, which is done by picked crews, demands a particular skill in navigation and, perhaps, a very high degree of determination, for the Pathfinder cannot let himself be deflected from his precise course as he approaches the target.
Last night our job was to replenish the flares already dropped by the Pathfinders ahead. The first cluster went down as we were approaching, red and green lights hanging from their parachutes, just on top of the great white cloudbank that hid Cologne. This was ‘sky-marking’: the bombs of the main force, now streaming in above and below us, jet black in the brilliant light of the full moon, had to pass down by the flares. They vanished into the cloud, and soon the underside of it was lit by a suffused white glow, the light of incendiaries burning on the ground and the baffled searchlights. The flares seemed to be motionless, but round them and just under as we drove steadily over in a dead level straight line, the German flak was winking and flashing. Once a great gush of flame and smoke showed the bursting of a ‘scarecrow’, the oddity designed by the Germans to simulate a heavy bomber being shot down, and so to put any of our less experienced pilots off their stroke. There were fighters around too. A minute or two before we had seen the yellow glow of one of the new jet-propelled variety climbing at a great speed above us and to starboard.
We circled round the flares, watching the light under the cloud going pink with the reflection of fire and, silhouetted against it, the Lancasters and Halifaxes making off in the all-revealing light of the moon. Then we, too, turned for home.
Dimbleby was proud that his account of the crossing of the Rhine was subsequently chosen for inclusion in ‘The Oxford Book of English Talk’.
OVER THE RHINE
25 March 1945. The Rhine lies left and right across our path below us, shining in the sunlight – wide and with sweeping curves; and the whole of this mighty airborne army is now crossing and filling the whole sky. We haven’t come as far as this without some loss; on our right-hand side a Dakota has just gone down in flames. We watched it go to the ground, and I’ve just seen the parachutes of it blossoming and floating down towards the river. Above us and below us, collecting close round us now, are the tugs as they take their gliders in. Down there is the smoke of battle. There is the smoke-screen laid by the army lying right across the far bank of the river; dense clouds of brown and grey smoke coming up.
And now our skipper’s talking to the glider pilot and warning him that we’re nearly there, preparing to cast him off. Ahead of us, another pillar of black smoke marks the spot where an aircraft has gone down, and – yet another one; it’s a Stirling – a British Stirling; it’s going down with flames coming out from under its belly – four parachutes are coming out – one, two, three, four – four parachutes have come out of the Stirling; it goes on its way to the ground. We haven’t got time to watch it further because we’re coming up now to the exact chosen landing-ground where our airborne forces have to be put down; and no matter what the opposition may be, we have got to keep straight on, dead on the exact position. There’s only a minute or two to go; we cross the Rhine – we’re on the east bank of the river. We’re passing now over the army smoke-cloud.
Stand by and I’ll tell you when to jump off.
The pilot is calling up the – warning us – in just one moment we shall have let go. All over the sky ahead of us – here comes the voice – Now! – The glider has gone: we’ve cast off our glider.
We’ve let her go. There she goes down behind us. We’ve turned hard away, hard away in a tight circle to port to get out of this area. I’m sorry if I’m shouting – this is a very tremendous sight!
With engineer Bob Wade recording his ‘Over the Rhine’ despatch
THE GERMAN PEOPLE
8 April 1945. We had come into the German kitchen not to fraternise, that strictly forbidden practice, but because we had seen a large radio set there and wanted to hear the BBC news at nine o’clock. It took us some time to find London on the dial and the announcer had already begun the bulletin when we brought his voice, loud and clear, into the room.
The hotel family was already there when we came in. The old, white-haired man who watched us fearfully – I think the Germans had told him terrible stories of what we would do – his two not unattractive daughters, by no means frightened, and his grey-haired wife who sat knitting at the table. A woman friend was visiting them – one of the smarter women of the little town, with her hair caught up in a bright turban and wearing what looked to me like fully-fashioned silk stockings. They – at least, the women – were ready and anxious to talk, but we made it pretty clear that we had come in only to hear the wireless.
As we sat listening to the news about this battle area, I watched the reaction of this German family which had been engulfed in the fighting a very short time before, and could hear it going on now if we’d turned off the set. They were listening quite intently, understanding no English but catching the German place-names as Freddie Grisewood mentioned them. ‘Hanover,’ said the smart guest, ‘they’re near Hanover.’ ‘Isn’t that what he said?’ she asked me. I said it was. And then the Weser was mentioned and that being the local river, everyone heard it. Even the old man stirred himself from his gloomy apprehension. And then it was announced that the Americans were at or near Wurzburg. ‘Wurzburg? Where’s Wurzburg?’ asked one of the daughters. The other got up and fetched a gazetteer from a shelf. She opened it at the map of Central and Southern Germany and the whole family pored over it, marked the places as they were mentioned.
And as I watched them, a thought struck me. This was a recital from London of our success, of the growing and spreading defeat of their country, and yet there was not one sound or sign of regret on their faces, no shock, no despair, no alarm. They just picked up what was said, checked it on the map and noted it just as if they were a bunch of neutrals hearing all about somebody else. And indeed, I believe that that’s what many of these front-line German people are: neutrals in their own country. They seem to have lost the power of passion or sorrow. They show no sympathy for their army, for their government, or for their country. To them the war is something too huge and too catastrophic to understand. Their world is bounded by the difficulties of managing a country hotel – and there’s no room in it for things outside.
