Waiting for Adolf
Sir: May I be allowed to comment on some of the points raised in your review (29 March) of my book The Last Ditch.
In February 1966 I wrote to the reviewer, Colonel Peter Fleming, asking for an interview. He did not see me, but he was kind enough to direct me to two former officers who he thought would be able to assist me. One of them (named in my book) told me about the colonel's riding boots, and I heard about them again from two other Auxiliary Units officers who visited Kent in 1940. These men could have remem- bered incorrectly and they might even have compared notes while I was in transit from one to another of them.
The officer to whom the colonel sent me was the one who first told me about the colonel's ability to kill'a deer with a bow and arrow at a hundred yards; later I was again told about this by a much more senior officer (named in my book). Admittedly, neither of these officers saw Colonel Fleming perform this feat, but each was quite certain that he had been told about it, and this seemed to me sufficient cross-check.
The officer to whom Colonel Fleming sent me told me about the 'marble and mousehole' hide- out; the description in my book is taken from a tape-recorded interview. He also showed me Colonel Fleming's guerrilla warfare training ground in sight of the main Maidstone-Canter- bury road, told me that all Resistance men in Kent in the summer and autumn of 1940 knew one another, and showed me where the main hideout in King's Wood was linked to a look- out post by above-ground telephone wires—all things which to me seem rather more 'obviously idiotic,' even if less schoolboyish.
Because so much had already been written about it, I dealt with Operation Sea Lion in my book perhaps too briefly. One authority, The Defence of the United Kingdom, by Basil Collier, a volume of the Stationery Office History of the Second World War, states that Admiral Raeder said that the invasion task force could be screened by the German Navy as long as the landings were confined to the narrow front specified in the final invasion plan. Indeed, this book and others suggest that it was the Luftwaffe rather than the German Navy that doubted the Navy's ability to cover the task force.
Ronald Wheatley's Operation Sea Lion (ouP), the last word on the subject, states that although the RAF destroyed about 9 per cent of the Germans' massed invasion barges, more barges had been brought together than the plan had called for, and so after the bombing the Germans still had as many barges as they bad required in the first place. In any event, these raids do not appear to have been the main reason Hitler called off the invasion.
Colonel Fleming says that my estimate of the capability of the British Resistance is 'carrying hyperbole into the realm of nonsense.' I stand by what I wrote, and not just because conventional forces are seldom very efficient. Britain's was the only Resistance (ia or out of inverted commas) prepared on any scale in anti- cipation of occupation. Its members, all care- fully hand picked, had been thoroughly trained
by Colonel Fleming and others on the ground on which they would have fought. Among other things these men successfully invaded hundreds of well-guarded Army and Air Force instal- lations, including the headquarters of at least three generals (Montgomery's divisional head- quarters in Kent were booby-trapped by a group sent out by Peter Fleming). I. could go on, but that would mean asking you to reprint much of my book.
Lastly, Colonel Fleming says that Churchill did not tell Lord Boothby, 'you can always take one with you' (I did not dispute that Churchill subsequently repeated this in a broadcast). Here I can step out of the ring and leave Colonel Fleming to another challenger. For as I write, I have in front of me a letter from Lord Boothby in which he says . . .
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