The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

10
Emergency Measures
FROM ALMOST THE moment the German offensive began, Britain had
become gripped by enemy paratroop and Fifth Column fever. ‘Preparing a
hot reception for any parachutists’ was the headline in a page of the British
weekly magazine, The War Illustrated. Underneath was a series of pictures
of the army preparing roadblocks, soldiers ushering a bus around a pile of
sandbags, and a Tommy checking the papers of a motorist. ‘Britain took
immediate and vigorous steps to meet the possibility of invasion from the
air,’ ran the article. ‘Though this method had been foreseen, some surprise
was occasioned by the large scale on which it was carried out in Holland
and Belgium by the Nazis and the measure of success which attended it.’
It was the German airborne drops on the Low Countries, above all, that
shocked the British. It made them realize how very vulnerable they were.
For millennia, Britain’s island status had protected her: no invader had
managed to successfully cross the Channel since William of Normandy in
1066, yet now it seemed that stretch of sea was no longer the barrier it had
once been. Aircraft could now bring new levels of destruction; Baldwin’s
line about the bomber always getting through still haunted the thoughts of
many. And aeroplanes could now deliver a new terror as well: hordes of
parachutists.
On 10 May, the Air Ministry had circulated a memo about this new type
of airborne soldier. ‘German parachute troops, when descending, hold their
arms above their heads as if surrendering,’ it warned. ‘The parachutist,
however, holds a grenade in each hand. These are thrown at anyone
attempting to obstruct the landing.’
How a paratrooper was supposed to hold the cords of his parachute and
clutch, let alone throw, grenades at the same time was not made clear, but
certainly it appeared a very real threat. After all, for so long Nazi
propaganda had been declaring that Britain was the primary enemy, and it
stood to reason that if German paratroopers could be dropped over Holland
and Belgium with such apparent ease and with so dramatic an effect, there
was little to stop them crossing the Channel and delivering them over