The 2020 Mid-terms in the Republic of the British Isles

The Battle of Britain sites in the federated region of Southern England

Canterbury

The town of Canterbury was fought over through September and October 1942 in a series of three battles between British and German forces. It was left destroyed by these fights. The first battle occurred at the high-water mark of Operation Sea Eagle where German paratroopers, their Fallschirmjager from Goering’s Luftwaffe, seized it from British reservists and irregulars tasked to – in effect – hold and die but only managed the latter. British regulars with the 3rd Infantry Division (who’d fought in previous months through Portugal) struck several weeks later, following the German disaster at sea, yet failed in their mission to retake the town from those dug-in Fallschirmjager. The final fight occurred much later, as the Germans were being rolled-up through eastern Kent and falling back. Infantry units of German Army regulars who’d made the crossing before the sea-route was shut had taken over from the paratroopers and sought to hold onto the ruin of Canterbury after weeks upon weeks of hostile shelling and also explosions to aid fortifications. A much larger British Army force surrounded them and beat them into the centre of the pocket formed. These occupiers surrendered rather than fight to the end. The order from Hitler for not a step back and no capitulation was ignored.

For many long years post-war (the Second Great War and the British Civil War), Canterbury was left the ruin that it was. Its population was barely a few thousand and they lived on the edges. There was no effort to clean up the mess and tackle the dangers with rested inside from unexploded munitions and structural damage of the last remaining buildings. It was only during the late-Fifties where new life was breathed into Canterbury. The Government of the day made it a national priority to address the issue of Canterbury and other Kent locations which had been destroyed during the Nazi invasion. Canterbury would never be what it was but it would be something else. The site of such a great battle back during ‘42 was wholly rebuilt. The ‘new town’ meant starting again and that was the case. A planned community was built with spacious housing, light industry and transport links. It was a huge undertaking and went far over-budget as well as being completed many years too late. Finished it would be though, no matter what. The politics demanded that there be a new Canterbury and one was built. A problem came though with finding people to live here once finished. The past residents had long moved far away and no longer had any connections to Canterbury. East Kent remained an economic dead-zone in many ways. Incentives were offered and some progress was made. What really gave life to what could fast have become a ghost town where everything was shiny and new but empty was the Paris Agreement of 1960 with the French State where Anglo-French relations were restored fully. Almost a quarter of a century of those being in the toilet were suddenly blossoming. Trade opened up fast between France and the Republic of the British Isles. Canterbury, just back from the coast, was quickly transformed by that event.

In the modern era, Canterbury is booming. It has outgrown the planned ‘new town’. The Thames Estuary Airport is nearby. Tourists come to Canterbury. The university is one of the fast-growing in the country. The motorway which runs nearby brings goods lorries up past Canterbury while the town provides a strong service industry for that trade but also many other aspects of the national economy too. In the middle of Canterbury, where the rebuilt cathedral is, there is one of the country’s largest war memorials too. This is one constructed in 1994 and is far different from others seen elsewhere through the Battle of Britain sites. It has little triumphalism and focuses on the dead instead: all of them (Germans) rather than just the British casualties. This stands in stark contrast to the others which can be seen elsewhere in the Southern England region.


Sandwich

There is triumphalism in the other scattered war memorials throughout East Kent from Whitstable to Margate to Broadstairs to Ramsgate to Deal to Dover to Folkestone. These coastal towns were all fought over through September 1942 when the Germans were on the march after landing and aiming to gobble up Kent before heading for London. Eventual victory won at each of them in memorialised where all the focus is on their liberation when victory was won. The dead come as an afterthought. Local movements among activists have repeatedly petitioned the regional assembly in Reading, and the National Assembly in London, to address these issues but these have come to nought.

Then there is Sandwich. This small town isn’t on the shoreline of the English Channel though the beaches not that far away did see German infantry in assault boats, reinforced by Gebirgsjager (mountain infantry troops in an airmobile role) who flew into the captured RAF Manston, within it during the invasion’s first day. Sandwich was held by the Germans at the end of Sea Eagle where the Germans eventually surrendered on November 3rd. Their operational headquarters was here when the British Army delegation arrived to see that surrender occur. There were tanks with the Guards Armoured Division – a wartime command which covered itself in glory – only a few miles away at that point after they had defeated German motorised infantry and the only tank regiment of the German’s 7th Panzer Division which had made it across the Channel. The offensive from Ashford to reach the coast had been mainly formed of infantry units from the Territorial Army after so many of Britain’s regulars were shattered elsewhere (or overseas) but the Guards Armoured Division had been the British tank component. They had driven this far and handed a general named Rommel his behind. At Sandwich, the Germans had given in. Here their defeat is celebrated with an immense monument.

It was at Sandwich, where it was elsewhere, that the British Armed Force then under Crown control fought the invaders. The Guards Armoured Division was made up of many Foot Guards units, those of Household Troops. Regular troops were attached to the Territorial Army units with the 42nd, 48th and 51st Infantry Divisions also. They were thus present in the drive on the coast which came out of Ashford as well. Among them were units which had strong royal connections. The names of these sub-units – for example the King’s Regiment, the Royal Berkshire Regiment and the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders – are omitted from these memorials. In Civil War memorials elsewhere in the country, where there were equally celebrated battles, there is mention of (for example) the ’11th Regiment’ & the ’26th Regiment’. In Sandwich, with Second Great War monuments, there is no such thing. Post-war Britain, before it became the nation which it now is, rid itself of all mention of royalty and anything associated with that. This went further of course away from memorials and British Army units – the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy had many changes – too.

Before the surrender at Sandwich, the town was also the site of a massacre committed by invading German forces. Sea Eagle had been designed by German planners to push over many forces quickly before the Royal Navy showed up with the belief that those ships would be overcome though a ‘disruption’ would occur first: the Germans hadn’t foreseen an utter disaster which the Battle of the Channel had become where their forces were cut off to be subsequently lost. Into Kent came those two parachute divisions, that mountain division, an infantry division which took part in the beach assault, another infantry division with motorised transport and part of that panzer division. There were also smaller units aplenty of combat troops including Brandenburg commandos (they took Dover Castle but failed to capture the Port of Folkestone before it was blown by demolitions) and the Panzer-Grenadier Regiment Großdeutschland. The latter were part of the German Army and certainly not SS troops though they behaved like such when fighting around Sandwich before the surrender. This regiment had been fighting towards Faversham after advancing along the northern coastline of Kent before being suddenly pulled back after the naval engagements in the Channel and held the line southeast of Canterbury while the Guards Armoured Division pushed across the North Downs from Ashford. They were withdrawn again towards the end, leading to Canterbury being surrounded, and dispatched to defend the Sandwich headquarters when British tanks closed in there. In reaching there, the troops of the Großdeutschland fought against British irregulars and specially-raised light raiding parties sent forwards. The German troops took casualties from these actions. In response, they killed prisoners taken and shot civilian hostages long held. Close to five hundred deaths occurred by these firing squads. A monument in Sandwich commemorates ‘heroes’ slaughtered here and mentions the ‘justice’ given to the Großdeutschland regiment as well.


Shoreham by sea

Kent wasn’t the only battlefield during Sea Eagle. The Germans put troops into the Irish Free State – Brandenburg commandos alongside Irish republican terrorists who had a bad time there and led to the eventual fate of an independent Ireland being subsumed back into Britain – as well as more raiders sent up the coast of East Anglia as well. These were both distraction efforts. The landing on the Sussex coast of the English Channel was no such thing. From Worthing, through to Brighton and then to Newhaven, a second front was opened alongside the Kent landings. German Army infantry in assault craft, more Gebirgsjager to be airlifted in post assault and glider infantry for an airborne landing took part. Only the three divisions in the first wave made it into Sussex. What the RAF managed to achieve in impeding the assault and then the Royal Navy’s approach saw German attention turn to throwing everything they had at Kent. The supposedly war-winning strategy with a two-pronged assault was abandoned.

Shoreham is between Worthing and Brighton. In 1942, there was RAF Ford here. This was a fighter base not far from the beaches. Glider-borne troops with the 22nd Air-landing Division achieved success in arriving here and taking the facility (in Kent the 2nd Parachute Division had taken RAF Manston but the 1st Parachute Division had failed to secure either RAF Hawkinge nor RAF Lympne) with haste. Landing craft coming onto Sussex beaches had been attacked from the air though leaving the already-scattered glider troops in trouble. They received that reinforcement from the mountain troops (many of those being Austrians) by airlift yet the amphibious landings either side of them failed to hold onto either Worthing or Brighton when the British 7th Infantry Division launched simultaneous counterattacks to secure each. Stuck in the middle, the Germans had Shoreham and an airhead but nothing else. Pinned down, the Germans held on. Into October, they fought among the ruins which became Shoreham. The RAF used heavy bombs to pound them while fewer and fewer Luftwaffe airdrops of supplies got through. Eventually, when they refused to give in and the British Army had enough of the losses they were taken, Shoreham was gassed. Still, it held out. Only when the Germans were finally dug-out with extra reinforcements – a Territorial Army division – arriving and a wave of naval shelling from warships lined-up offshore, did the position finally collapse and prisoners were taken.

There wasn’t much left of Shoreham afterwards. The nearby area was badly damaged yet Shoreham was much like Canterbury in being nothing but ruins after a sustained period of static fighting. For many years, Shoreham was left untouched. It was marked out as a military site and closed to civilians. Nothing was done. Nothing has been done since. Shoreham has been given over to nature. Right here beside the English Channel in an area where space is often at a premium for development, Shoreham sits empty. There is emptiness where there could be so much more. To many, Shoreham is a scandal of incompetence. Different governments have done nothing about it. There was always something else of more importance than clearing up and then rebuilding here. Neither Reading nor London consider it a priority. Military patrols sometimes catch vandals or other criminals aiming to sneak past the fences: they face punishment for entering a forbidden zone. Local rumours speak of chemical contamination from Shoreham and the problems that supposedly causes the wider area but that is the height of silliness. Chlorine and mustard gas, plus plenty of napalm supported by tens of thousands of high-explosive shells, were all that was used. All that there is at Shoreham is a national embarrassment when it comes to the inactivity of the Republic of the British Isles in addressing the issue of the empty patch of coastline.



German forces for the Kent landings:
1st & 2nd Parachute Divisions – parachute drops
3rd Mountain Division – airlift
6th Infantry Division – beach assault
7th Panzer Division – one regiment gets ashore
10th Infantry Division – motorised, part ashore
German forces Sussex landings:
1st Mountain Division – airlift
22nd Air-Landing Division – glider assault
9th Infantry Division – beach assault

UK Army in the south in September 1942:
Guards Armoured Division
1st Infantry Division
3rd Infantry Division
4th Infantry Division
7th Infantry Division
42nd TA Infantry Division
44th TA Infantry Division
48th TA Infantry Division
51st TA Infantry Division
Ireland mission:
6th Infantry Division
53rd TA Infantry Division
Nationwide defence mission:
5th Infantry Division - East Anglia
43rd TA Infantry Division - Southwest
49th TA Infantry Division - East
50th TA Infantry Division - Northeast
52nd TA Infantry Division - Scotland
Deployed overseas:
1st Cavalry Division – Egypt
2nd Infantry Division – Spanish Morocco
8th Infantry Division – Spanish Morocco
Royal Marines Division – Azores and Canaries