Picture credits: https://pixabay.com/photos/auschwitz-poland-war-camp-memorial-971907/ (left); https://pixabay.com/photos/churchill-winston-churchill-2808167/ (right)
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
(“Little Gidding”, TS Eliot)
“In war, truth must have an escort of lies.” (Winston Churchill)
“From a military point of view, you are right, but from a political point of view you must carry on. You have your orders. Good morning.”
(1944 – Churchill curtly dismisses South African Brigadier Jimmy Durrant’s urgent warning that the loss of men and aircraft supplying the defenders of Warsaw would be huge, with no chance of military success.)
Vaucluse, with its still-wild hilly terrain, has many South African connections. That part of Provence and the vineyard-strewn hills of the Western Cape are very alike.
In the valleys of both, the sun blazes down predictably in summer, winters are cool and rainy, and the vineyards and fruit trees groan with produce, season after season. It’s little wonder that homesick South African expats, putting up with northern Europe’s weather, are drawn to Vaucluse like a magnet. André Brink chose it as the luminous setting of one of his earliest books, The wall of the plague, and visitors from the Cape not infrequently pitch up in search of an original branch of their families, with names like Joubert and De Villiers.
For it was from this region that 17th century Huguenots fled for their lives to Geneva and Berlin, following a clampdown on religious freedom. Many found new homes in the Protestant-friendly wine-growing areas of the Cape, hence the establishment of Franschhoek and all these French-sounding labels on South African wines we see today.
But Vaucluse also has remnants of other interesting connections to South Africa that have nothing to do with wine, but with the Second World War. Here you can find a direct link to one of the most tragic and heroic campaigns – in fact, the most heroic one – by South African pilots and aircrew in the whole of the Second World War – their own version of the Light Brigade’s charge into the valley of death.
If you visit the museum at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, dedicated to the exploits of the French resistance in the war, you will find a detailed relief of the high country that runs behind the Luberon hills in a great sweep towards the towering snow-capped Mount Ventoux – once famously climbed by Petrarch, perhaps to calm the unrequited passion he felt for the icily unobtainable Laura; it’s certainly an exacting climb, guaranteed to quell any over-excited spirits.
This high country is covered with maquis, the dense shrub from which the French maquis resistance took their name, and in whose impenetrable thickets they hid from the occupying Germans. Today, the entire area, covering 100 square kilometres, is signposted with helpful indicators pointing out the drop zones where supplies were parachuted by the Allies to the French resistance.
It’s a great place to explore, and South African visitors might wish to visit the site of a remote memorial to a crashed bomber, located in a hidden valley behind the typical village perché of Simiane-la-Rotonde. Walking boots are recommended: exploring the site of the crash is a mission in itself, involving deft navigation with local maps. There are virtually no signposts, and the trail runs precipitously downhill in parts, and along flat lavender fields in others. In the distance, the majestic rise of Mount Ventoux offers a rough reference point. You have to leave your car at some point and continue for several kilometres on foot. Here and there, a weathered wooden arrow sign can be deciphered as reading “Avion” (plane). But eventually, just when you are ready to give up and are convinced that the wrong turning has been taken (yet again), you arrive at the actual site at the bottom of a valley, marked by a moving stone memorial to the dead airmen.
A separate sculpture consists of bits of the aircraft which have been collected and placed in a metal holder. The grotesquely twisted shapes speak volumes about the force of the accident. There are notice boards with a picture of the Wellington bomber and a detailed description of what happened. A draped French flag is testimony to the care the local commune takes to ensure that the sacrifice the airmen made is never forgotten. “Democracy and freedom are fragile and hard won and have to be paid for in blood,” runs the legend on the memorial.
The crashed bomber originally set off from Foggia, the key airbase in southern Italy for the Allies during the war.
Foggia was the almost mythical location for South African pilots: the principal base for the South African Air Force (SAAF) bomber squadrons in 1944. From Foggia they were able to attack distant targets throughout central Europe. The only other comparable base for heavy bombers in the war was Lincolnshire in England.
The Foggia runways radiated outwards on a huge estate then owned by Count Carlo Sforza – a long-time, famous anti-Fascist who had reluctantly watched from exile while the Nazis built the original Foggia airbase, which allowed the Luftwaffe to gain control of the air over all southern European countries, and thus threaten the anticipated Allied landings in Italy and France.
In order to drive the Germans out, the American air force carpet-bombed Foggia. It was not a campaign for the fainthearted. In our new age of savage warfare in Ukraine, where we are suitably horrified when the Russians target whole towns, it is noteworthy that over 20 000 Italian civilians perished in Foggia in a handful of Allied air raids in 1943.
The SAAF’s 2 SAAF wing, comprising the 31 and 34 Squadrons, were then transferred from North Africa to liberated Foggia, to be incorporated into the 205 Heavy Bomber Group, which was under the command of an SAAF commander, Brigadier JT Durrant. He, in turn, reported to the commander of the entire Royal Air Force in London, who took his instructions from Winston Churchill, wartime prime minister of Great Britain.
The 205 Bomber Group consisted of five “wings” of two squadrons each, and Durrant was able to put up 100 bombers a night to reach strategic targets throughout Italy, the Balkans, Romania, Germany and France. Some of these bombers were Wellingtons and Halifaxes, but they were gradually being replaced by the huge, new, American-built Liberators. The South African wing was entirely supplied with Liberators, which carried a crew of eight and could fly 2 000 miles with a bomb load of five tons. The South Africans were a multiracial presence in Foggia – whites, blacks and coloureds, as was usual with the South African Defence Force.
The remains of the wrecked plane in Vaucluse were from a plane belonging to just this 205 bomber group. It was one of six Wellingtons that left Foggia on 9 May 1944 to attack a munitions factory at Valence, south of Lyons.
Apparently, the squadron had lost five crews in three nights, and this was the latest in a run of bad luck.
The Valence attack meant the Wellingtons were operating at extreme range and were obliged to refuel at Ajaccio in Corsica. The attack plan called for the breaching of a wall around the factory to enable the French resistance to seize key military industrial components. The operation called for pinpoint bombing, but thick cloud obscured the target and the flight was forced to return with bombs intact. (I learned that a month later, the SAAF were deployed to finish the Valence job.)
The stricken Wellington was running out of fuel, a result of the plane having been damaged by flack. Cloud cover persisted on the south-easterly course back to the refuelling post on Corsica and, possibly with low fuel in mind, the pilot brought the Wellington down low beneath the clouds to see whether he could safely land somewhere.
In a tragic coincidence, at exactly that moment, French maquis on the Albion plateau, behind Simiane village, lit small fires on a designated flat field parachute drop zone. It was all a pre-arranged signal for a British drop of arms for use by the maquis. Whether they lit the fires because they heard the Wellington, or whether they were operating on an arranged drop time, will never be definitely known, but the assumption is that they lit them when they heard the Wellington, thinking it was the pre-arranged supply flight.
In any event, the pilot saw the fires and, assuming it was friendly locals trying to help with a landing spot, brought the plane down on full throttle, flaps down. Unfortunately, he misjudged the crescent of the plateau, which rises steeply at this point, and smacked into the hillside of the valley below. It was 2:00 am on the morning of 10 May 1944.
The maquis rushed down the valley to try and rescue the crew of the doomed Wellington, but the flames were too intense; exploding ammunition and ordnance made rescue impossible. When the conflagration finally burned itself out, the bodies were retrieved and buried close by, as were the larger pieces of the plane – wings and so forth – to conceal them from German patrols and preserve the location of the parachute drop zone.
When searching for an easier route to the crash site, I’d spotted an ancient fellow of about 90 summers, tending his olive tree. I ambled across, map in hand. Can you help? I asked.
Not only could he help, but, incredibly, he had actually been taken to the scene of the accident by the maquis the day following the crash, together with local village school friends. They were instructed to scour the wild valley for bits of aircraft to hide. He was eight years old at the time. The old man tapped the side of his nose, evidently deciding I wasn’t going to turn him in to the authorities, and led me to his barn. Reaching into a pile of bits of farm machinery, he brought out a large fuel cap from the wing of the bomber. The maquis had allowed him to keep it as a “souvenir” on condition that he told no one.
Coincidences rarely happen as powerfully.
The crew were disinterred for reburial in Marseille’s military cemetery after the war, but somehow their spirits still hang around in that lost valley, where wolves have made a return and the great eagle owl can still be found.
Churchill’s Foggia dilemma and Stalin’s trap
Foggia is not recalled fondly by South African pilots. The city remains to this day a baleful reminder of one of the most controversial policy moves by Winston Churchill during his conduct of the war – a fateful decision that knowingly sent dozens of South African airmen to a certain death in the skies over Warsaw, attempting to help the West’s Polish friends with supplies.
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Foggia is not recalled fondly by South African pilots. The city remains to this day a baleful reminder of one of the most controversial policy moves by Winston Churchill during his conduct of the war – a fateful decision that knowingly sent dozens of South African airmen to a certain death in the skies over Warsaw, attempting to help the West’s Polish friends with supplies.
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As Colonel Dirk Nel, OC 31 Squadron at age 27, recalled after the war: “It was mission impossible, a return flight of 3 200 kilometres, spending 11 hours in the air, no reserve landing grounds, 10 percent reserve fuel ... over the next few days alone we lost eight aircraft ....”
And the losses continued mounting for six weeks, ripping the heart out of the South African aircrews – all volunteers in this war against Hitler for a free Poland.
Was this a South African version of Gallipoli? I asked myself when I began looking into the saga.
In 1915, when Churchill was First Sea Lord, the assault on the beaches of the Turkish Gallipoli peninsula with 480 000 soldiers from the British Empire, including thousands of volunteers from Australia and New Zealand (the Anzacs), got bogged down. It was time to evacuate.
Apparently disregarding the British commander-in-chief’s warning that without further reinforcements, the planned withdrawal would cost a 50 percent casualty rate, Churchill signed off on the retreat.
The Anzacs suffered disproportionate casualties as a result. Former Australian premier Paul Keating once cast the events as a “betrayal” by Churchill.
Australian films like Breaker Morant and Gallipoli also play to this sense of grievance. To Churchill’s credit, he accepted full responsibility for the debacle at Gallipoli, resigned his office and joined a regiment on the front line in France, where he fought bravely.
Background to the South African disaster over Warsaw
But now, in 1944, there was a new war, and once again Winston Churchill was in the driving seat, this time as prime minister.
On 1 September 1939, following the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia, German forces marched across the border into Poland. Britain and France declared war on Hitler, but were unable to prevent him from crushing all organised resistance in Poland in only 18 days.
On 14 August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter together with 26 other democratic nations, guaranteeing that no territorial changes would take place in those countries without the expressed wish of the people themselves.
However, four months later, Stalin told Churchill that he wanted Eastern Poland. Churchill, needing the Russians on his side, reluctantly gave way and also agreed not to involve the Polish government themselves in determining the new frontier. This was a complete breach of the original reasons Britain had gone to war to defend Poland; in addition, it would be a violation of the Atlantic Charter. Churchill now wrote to Roosevelt that the Polish-Soviet border should follow the frontier line that Germany and Russia had established by their attack on Poland in 1939 during Stalin’s brief flirtation with Hitler. Roosevelt subsequently confirmed the deal with Stalin in writing, but requested complete secrecy.
This was a tremendous conflictual hinge moment for Churchill, because as his own compendious history of the Second World War makes clear, he was also very keen that the 200 000 Polish government soldiers-in-exile in the UK should be deployed on the front line, fighting the Germans. His letters and wishes to the British army commander-in-chief shows this to be so beyond doubt. Churchill emphasised that such a deployment would be good for the “soul” of Poland and would show solidarity with the pro-West Polish government.
Not knowing of Churchill’s secret deal with Stalin, and with hardly any warning, the Polish government, on 1 August 1944, now ordered the underground Polish Home Army to rise against the occupying Germans in Warsaw. Initially, the surprise was total, and the Polish underground captured 70 percent of Warsaw within five days. But the well-armed Germans stemmed the tide when it became apparent to them that the Russian army, biding their time some little distance away from Warsaw, was going to do nothing to help the Polish underground. Stalin could only benefit from the attrition of both Germans and democratic Poles in the fighting for Warsaw. His intention was now clear: Russia wanted all of Poland, not merely the east, and he wanted the Polish government-in-exile dead.
There is an entire chapter in volume six of Churchill’s history of the war devoted to these events. It confirms very clearly, in exchanges of correspondence between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, that Churchill begged Stalin to permit Allied supply aircraft to be allowed to continue after their parachute supply drops over Warsaw, to safe refuelling sites in Soviet-occupied Poland. But Stalin refused to allow this.
In Britain, meanwhile, the Polish government-in-exile was impatiently demanding that Churchill supply their underground army in Warsaw with supplies. This was a very powerful lobby, having the British people on their side, as well as over a million Poles living in the United States, whose votes were crucial to Roosevelt – the reason the American president had wanted the frontier deal with Stalin kept secret originally.
Bowing to political pressure at home and in parliament, Churchill was obliged to make a political gesture: he consented to the Polish appeal for assistance. But it was a consent made, if not in moral bad faith, then at the very least technically so. Churchill was unable to provide the armed support at large, which the Poles expected – the tanks and troops and bombers to attack the Germans in Warsaw. Roosevelt, too, was not keen to commit American aircraft in such large numbers unless Stalin agreed to landing rights.
Nonetheless, Churchill realised that something had to be done within the means of the Allies to help the Warsaw uprising, if only for political reasons. The burden was about to fall on the shoulders of 205 Heavy Bomber Group in Foggia, and especially on 31 and 34 SAAF Squadrons, since 205 Group was already very stretched in assisting with the Allied advance up through Italy.
In Foggia, then, on a hot Sunday afternoon, 13 August 1944, when the aircrews of the South African squadrons were briefed in their runway tents on the importance of their mission to fly supplies to the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, it was explained that Winston Churchill had personally given the order for the operation.
But the officer commanding 205 bomber group, Brigadier Durrant, was not happy. He immediately perceived that this was, in fact, going to be a calamitous suicide mission. At considerable personal risk for his career, therefore, he flew to see Sir John Slessor, commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force, then based in operations command in Naples, to air his misgivings.
On arrival, and to his surprise, Durrant was then introduced to Churchill, who was in the next office. Churchill invited Durrant to state his case; Durrant argued that the dangerous Warsaw flights were clearly not going to offer any military advantage whatsoever, and were not worth the inevitable huge loss of aircraft and men.
According to Durrant’s later recall, Churchill removed a cigar from his lips, and growled: “From a military point of view you are right, but from a political point of view you must carry on. You have your orders. Good morning.”
What Durrant couldn’t have known was that Churchill’s decision was already a fait accompli. The prime minister had written to Marshal Stalin a week before, on 4 August, as follows: “At the urgent request of the Polish underground army, we are dropping, subject to weather, about sixty tons of equipment and ammunition into the south-west quarter, where it is said a Polish revolt against the Germans is in a fierce struggle.”
Stalin had written back to say that the reports of the uprising were exaggerated. He downplayed it. He made the point that the Germans had four tank divisions in Warsaw, including the Hermann Göring Division.
In other words, the Germans would crush the puny uprising. Churchill’s sixty tons of supplies wouldn’t make a dent.
Brigadier Durrant was not a man to disobey orders. He returned to Foggia and dispatched his aircraft as directed. But all his fears were borne out. Casualties were appalling. The dozens of South African airmen killed in this quixotic venture were the victims of international politics. The Warsaw uprising was already doomed before the first Liberators took off to drop their supplies for the Polish underground at treetop level, at near-stalling speed, over Warsaw. The Germans manned anti-aircraft guns at all points, and the lumbering planes, silhouetted against the burning Warsaw, were an easy target.
The 205 bomber group flew their supply sorties for six weeks. Of 80 aircraft that participated, 31 were shot down, 17 during the weekend of 13 August 1944 alone. Brigadier Durrant described it as the worst six weeks in his experience.
In his book, Churchill plays down the foray. He sounds almost disappointed that so few aircraft arrived over Warsaw. The Poles complained that they were receiving very little by way of air drops. Churchill tried for a last push and wrote to Stalin and Roosevelt: “We are thinking of world opinion if the anti-Nazis in Warsaw are in effect abandoned.”
The replies he received were negative. The Americans didn’t want to upset Stalin, and Stalin simply told Churchill that sooner or later, the truth about the criminals who have embarked on the Warsaw adventure would become known.
In Warsaw, the insurgency lasted for 63 days, the longest and bloodiest of its kind in Europe. The entire city was ablaze, and the Poles fought the enemy in the basements and sewers and from floor to floor in the buildings still standing, but were eventually overwhelmed by German flamethrowers and tanks. Tens of thousands of civilians and underground soldiers were killed.
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What can one conclude from all this? Both at Gallipoli and Warsaw, gladiators on the ground and in the air were fed to the lions. Politics trumped military reality. However, having read Churchill’s own account of the Warsaw airlift, I don’t think it was another Gallipoli. The parallel isn’t apt. As far as Churchill was concerned, the South Africans were simply embedded in yet another bomber wing – he refers to them rather offhandedly as the “Dominion air crew”.
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What can one conclude from all this? Both at Gallipoli and Warsaw, gladiators on the ground and in the air were fed to the lions. Politics trumped military reality. However, having read Churchill’s own account of the Warsaw airlift, I don’t think it was another Gallipoli. The parallel isn’t apt. As far as Churchill was concerned, the South Africans were simply embedded in yet another bomber wing – he refers to them rather offhandedly as the “Dominion air crew”. What seems more likely, looking at the timeline of events, is that Churchill was too preoccupied with the Allied advance up through Italy and the plans for Overlord – the invasion of Normandy – to pay much attention to the Warsaw uprising, which, one might argue, simply ambushed him. He had very little warning that it was going to take place. Indeed, despite his being in almost daily correspondence with General Smuts, nowhere is the Warsaw relief mission anywhere mentioned. Ironically, in one of his last letters to Churchill, following the invasion of Germany, Smuts actually offers to send more newly trained pilots from the Union of South Africa to Europe to make up numbers.
General Smuts obviously knew of the desperate mission on which South African squadrons 31 and 34 were being sent. He was briefed on all South African military matters by his top brass as a matter of course. He would have known of Colonel Durrant's qualms. Why did he not take it up with Churchill on behalf of the South African flight crews? I can find no evidence that the “Oubaas” did.
There has since been a great deal written about Warsaw and the SAAF supply drops in the face of terrible odds in 1944. But we shouldn’t forget that operations out of Foggia also encompassed much of Germany, Italy, France and other destinations. The SAAF pilots and crews flew with distinction together with the bombers and the Americans to “soften up” the opposition in occupied France, prior to the Allies landing in Marseilles. In a very short time after the ending of the doomed Warsaw uprising, American jeeps and tanks were already in the streets of Apt, the principal market town of the Luberon, not many miles away from the hidden valley where I found my Wellington. Warsaw itself, or what was left of it, had been occupied by the Russians. A satisfying bookend for Stalin.
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The most accurate and detailed account of the Warsaw supply drops from a South African perspective is The men who went to Warsaw by Lawrence Isemonger, who also took part in the relief operations.
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The most accurate and detailed account of the Warsaw supply drops from a South African perspective is The men who went to Warsaw by Lawrence Isemonger, who also took part in the relief operations. All the South African casualties from flying to Warsaw and other European targets are listed. What is especially striking is the large number of Afrikaans surnames of the volunteering pilots and crews. Individual contributions by those who survived the Warsaw drops make for gripping reading in Isemonger’s book.
The SAAF has had a long and distinguished history, ranging across war theatres in Africa, Europe and Korea. But nothing comes close to the extraordinary courage and selflessness shown by the SAAF Liberator crews in their determination to help the Poles of the Warsaw uprising. It was like flying into a cauldron of molten flame, often below the height of buildings, in order to deliver their precious cargos with pinpoint precision. The losses of aircraft and men were terrible. Some aircraft were forced to land in Russian-occupied Poland, having been shot up, their crews to be roughly treated by the Russian soldiers. Others fell into German hands.
The Polish government commemorates the sacrifice of the SAAF airmen in their attempt to relieve Warsaw, to this day. Next year is the eightieth anniversary of the doomed Warsaw mission, and it will be interesting to see how the occasion is marked by the present South African government.
Brigadier Durrant returned to South Africa after the war, remaining in the SAAF, but was shown the door by the incoming Nationalist government in 1948 – “bowler hatted”.
Churchill was lauded after the war as a great leader. His triumphs outweighed his political mistakes, including the unfortunate episode of the Warsaw relief effort. One of his sayings was: “In war, truth must have an escort of lies.”
The cover shows Liberator EW232 “D” – for Dronkie – flying a “gardening mission” down the river Danube to lay mines. “Dronkie” was the favourite aircraft of Captain “Pop” Gunn and survived the war.
- The men who went to Warsaw, Lawrence Isemonger. Freeworld Publications. 2003.
- The Second World War. Six volumes, by Winston Churchill. Cassel. 1954.
- Quotes in this article, attributed to various personalities, can be found in these two books.
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