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

and the army. It looked good to him, so long as it could all work smoothly
together. He wondered whether Hitler had some wonder weapon up his
sleeve. ‘Every day that he puts it off is immensely valuable,’ he noted, ‘and
I should say that in another three weeks the coastline will be nearly
impregnable to ordinary attack.’
There was something in what he said, although the calamity of leaving
the vast majority of Britain’s guns and army equipment stranded in France
had in no way been resolved. There were now 1.3 million troops in Britain,
including the LDV, 22,000 Canadians, and 16,000 Australians and New
Zealanders. Monthly intake was around 50,000 from conscription and a
further 27,000 volunteers. There was no shortage of manpower, just a
shortage of equipment. Out of twenty-seven infantry divisions now in
Britain, only four had their full establishment of rifles and mortars, and one
of those was the 1st Canadian, which was also the only division to have the
prescribed amount of field and anti-tank guns. The gun shortage was
horrendous. By June, for example, just thirty-five twenty-five-pounder field
guns were being produced a month, yet one infantry division required
seventy such pieces, and many of the twenty-seven divisions had none
whatsoever. In other words, not only were there dire shortages, but there
was no immediate means of resolving the problem either. It was not just the
aircraft industry that had needed a massive kick up the backside, but the
British arms industry as a whole. How the old generals must have
despaired. Just over twenty years before, the British army had been the best
in the world – and the best-equipped too. Now it could not even arm its men
with rifles.
One of those discovering how bad the British army’s supplies were was
Sid Nuttall. After his return from Dunkirk, Sid had eventually rejoined the
Border Regiment at Crook in County Durham, and then was given a brief
forty-eight-hour stint of leave back home to Halifax. Having made the most
of this brief break by getting engaged to his girlfriend, he returned to Crook.
‘We had no weapons, no transport,’ he says. ‘Nothing.’ After a while, some
Canadian rifles arrived, all Great War relics which fired clips of five .300
rounds rather than two clips of five .303 like the Lee Enfields. Some
civilian vehicles were requisitioned, vans and trucks with names like ‘John
Smith Butchers’ painted on the sides. It was a bit humiliating. New
uniforms arrived as well as they worked themselves back up to full strength.
A number of men and officers were still missing, presumed to be POWs in