Executions for cowardice
Sir: The letter from G.J. Norman in your issue of 7 June severely criticises — rightly Its marijuana. — Bruce Anderson for his denigration of the British Army's fighting quality in Italy and Normandy in 1944-1945.
I fear Mr Anderson may have been seri- ously misled by much of the revisionist his- tory of the second world war, perhaps exemplified by Max Hastings in his book Overlord in which he greatly underrates the performance of the British fighting soldier in Normandy; he has since been followed by other writers in the same vein.
It is difficult to summarise a complex subject in a brief letter. But, in essence, the truth in my experience was that there were, measured in terms of fighting quality, good, average and poor units and divisions in much the same proportion in the British, American and German armies in north- west Europe (the area with which I was familiar).
The Allies were greatly helped, although very seldom at the point of battle, by over- whelming air superiority. This was counter- balanced by conspicuous German superior- ity in tanks, anti-tank guns, light machine guns, personal anti-tank weapons and mor- tars. It was only in artillery that the British were predominant.
In their general organisation for war the Germans also had a significant advantage, employing a far higher proportion of their men as fighting soldiers rather than in a long administrative tail.
I suggest that Bruce Anderson reads, if he has not already done so, Esprit de Corps, the war memoir of W.A. Elliott, a platoon commander in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards from 1943 to 1945 and now a retired Scottish judge, Lord Elliott QC, MC. His Scots Guards infantry battalion lost in killed and wounded 113 officers and 1,246 other ranks in the course of the sec- ond world war — higher casualties than the same battalion suffered in the first world war: a not unusual statistic but one which may surprise some, even among those who have written of the campaigns in Europe in the last war.
The implication in Mr Anderson's article that British soldiers would have fought more resolutely if the death penalty for cowardice had been in place, and that when they did perform well it was due in part to their fear of their NCOs, is ridiculous and offensive.
Charles Farrell
Cuttmill House, Watlington, Oxfordshire
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