The Southland Times SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1944. Armies by Air

Southland Times, Issue 25482, 30 September 1944, Page 4

The Southland Times SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1944. Armies by Air

THE eyes of man beheld a new sight, significant in the chronicles of war, when in May 1941 the skies over the island of Crete became filled with aircraft and varicoloured parachutes, and the first airborne invasion began. The Nazi operations against Crete succeeded. There were reasons for that success other than the surprise of the attack and its efficient organization, for it was launched against relatively small forces, without air support and insufficiently equipped to meet it. But Crete showed clearly with what impact the new technique of airborne assault could be employed on a large scale. Before that parachute troops had been used in France, in Holland and elsewhere to seize • special objectives, such as airfields, or to destroy specified targets, such as bridges or fuel dumps. After Crete the use of the airborne army awaited only the opportunity and the power with the strength in aircraft and trained personnel. The Allies, when building up their great land invasion forces, and at the same time maintaining an air offensive throughout Europe and in the Pacific theatre, still found the resources to create the Ist Allied Airborne Army. It was first used, tentatively, in the invasion of Europe across the English Channel. Parachute troops were carried to Normandy and had landed to begin their tasks six hours before the hour on D day when the invasion forces struck along the coast. They silenced guns, captured forts, demolished bridges and created road blocks; while preparing a way for the airborne divisions which were carried into the heart of the invasion territory in transport planes and gliders in the first light of D day. Some of the airborne troops were able later in the day, and in the days following, to join up with the invasion land forces. There were others, and apparently their number was considerable, who did not succeed in making contact with the armies that had followed them to France. But their missions had been carried out. They had added to the confusion and difficulties of the Germans in organizing their defences at a critical stage of the invasion, and their contribution to the brilliant victories which released France from the Nazi rule was great.

The Record of Arnhem

These airborne soldiers who were cut off by the enemy in whose midst they had arrived were, in the unsentimental terminology of war, expendable. If they became casualties themselves —and not all the airborne landings could be expected by the most sanguine commander to be carried through safely—their work of destruction might preserve the lives of many thousands of following troops, while at the same time speeding their advance. It was not to be expected, by 'those who had given years of study to the technique of airborne operations, that when the big moment came for setting down an entire air army in Holland the operations would be without loss. Militarily, as has been stated here, there is nothing reckless and irresponsible in the landing of troops by air. The operations, when fully supported by fighter aircraft, as they have been at every stage in Holland, can be carried out without serious initial loss. Percentages in the casualty rate in the landings of the Ist Allied Airborne Army have not been given, but they were certainly low. And these landings were successful. The more excitable sections of the Press overseas switched from ebullience, when it appeared that what the Americans call 100 per cent, success had been won, to gloomy mutterings, when the fate of the Ist British Airborne Division at Arnhem became known. This sort of hysteria is unhelpful and misleading. In cold fact, the airborne army opened a way across Holland, from the Belgian frontier to the Rhine, for General Dempsey’s 2nd Army. It made possible the building of a corridor that has opened the possibility of establishing a stable front along the western length of the West Wall, has trapped thousands of Germans in the unfriendly Netherlands, and can yet finally defeat the Nazi command’s hopes of anchoring their right flank against the Dutch coast, in the network of canals and flooded areas of northern Holland. Against the calculable gains of these airborne operations are the losses and the present incalculables. The northernmost objectives, beyond the Rhine, remain in Nazi control meanwhile. The gallant division in the Arnhem area has suffered on a scale that must sometimes be the portion of the expendable materials of war, The hardships endured by these men are beyond imagining, and their record transcends praise. But although the first army scale airborne operations in the West have fallen short of total success, their achievement has been immense, in actual military gains in Holland and in showing the way to the future.