Blain’s Morning Porridge June 6^th 2024: D-Day – what does it mean for the West?

“And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.”

The best way to honour them is to ensure we never have to do it again.

Today’s Morning Porridge is something different and a wee bit special – it’s a story of D-Day, where the West stands today, and what the UK must do to defend itself to avoid future conflict. I’ve written it jointly with my great friend and fellow sailor David Murrin, a man who probably understands the flow of history and the realities of defence better than anyone else in this country. His Murrinations, available on his website: https://www.davidmurrin.co.uk, are always worth a read.

Today we will celebrate the few individual Normandy veterans who remain – splendid old gentlemen and ladies they are, most still haunted by lost comrades. We will recall the innumerable unique moments, experiences and the bravery that characterised D-Day.

Yet, there is a danger that we miss the lesson – of how the broader cycles of history have a habit of repeating themselves.

Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin the story….

There is old chap I know in our village. He was too young for the forces, but as a 14 year Hampshire lad in 1944, he had a vital job in the wartime economy. He played a part in the fight for freedom and the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny. Each day he skippered a small bowser, delivering fresh water to the hundreds of naval vessels moored on the River Hamble. From HMS Cricket near Swanwick, the shore establishment where Royal Marines were trained to use the landing craft filling the river, to the mouth of the river at Hamble Point he got to know the crews. He knew the Americans who’d built a quayside from the bombed-out rubble of Southampton, the Royal Navy matelots sailing the boats and Royal Marine bootnecks manning the guns. They gave him chocolates and gum, and occasionally a tot of rum.

80 years ago this morning he woke and looked out the window. Something had changed. There was a steady drone of aircraft overhead, but the river was empty. All the boats had gone. It wasn’t until later that morning, when a smoke-trailing Spitfire with flack splatters across the underside landed on Hamble Airfield, the nearest “prang-patch” repair unit to the Normandy Beaches. Word quickly spread and the village knew for sure the Invasion of Europe was underway.

Many villagers must have wondered. The night before they’d heard the sound of Bagpipes on the River. It was the music of the Commandos who’d been training on Scotland’s West Coast and English beaches for their return to France. Their commander, Shimi Frazer, better known as Lord Lovat of the Lovat Scouts, had ordered his personal piper, Bill Millan, to play them to war.

Millan recalled years later: “I had been playing to the troops waiting to board the landing craft as we went along the Hamble river, and then I put them back in the box. The Lord Lovat said, “You better get them out again because you can play us out of the Solent and into the Channel. You will be in the leading craft with me.”

That night, as he played from the prow of the landing craft, the Lovat Scouts joined thousands of other boats to the East of the Isle of Wight bound for Sword Beach. The 3^rd Infantry Division’s first-wave assault regiments, the South Lancs and the East Yorks, were supported by elements of Hobart’s Funnies, the 79^th Armoured division of swimming tanks, flail-tanks to clear mines, and crocodile flame throwers, the shock troops of the Commando Brigades and 177 Free French Marines. Millan played The Road To The Isles: ‘They heard the pipes, and they were throwing their hats in the air and cheering,’ he recalled.

So begins one legend of D-Day.

Lovat told him to disregard War Office orders not to wear kilts or bring bagpipes; “Aye, that’s the English War Office, but we’re Scots”. Suitably attired, Millan was playing Highland Laddie as he stepped on to Sword Beach. On hearing the roar of the Great Highland Pipes every Scot, Lancastrian and Yorkshireman rose as one, thundered up the sands, through the German lines and onwards. Lovat’s objective was to relieve the glider-borne Ox & Bucks who’d seized Pegasus Bridge – the first allied forces to assault France soon after midnight. As the Commandos arrived, the sounds of Blue Bonnets Over the Border could be heard for miles, right down the beaches.

Many believe the sound of the pipes was the moment the success of the invasion became inevitable. In the hell that was the battle for Sword Beach the Germans chivalrously declined multiple opportunities to shoot the kilted Millan, thinking he must be an escaped lunatic.

Today, Millan’s statue looks over Sword Beach. To the West are the others; Juno, Gold, Bloody Omaha and Utah. Each has their own tales of Canadian, British and American heroism. Close to each are the pristine and pretty cemeteries where the young men of the West lie at peace, having given their futures so Europe can have hers. No one can visit without their eyes welling up in pride and sorrow.

I was privileged to meet Bill Millan’s son a few years ago when we sponsored The 100 Pipers march through Hamble in commemoration of the bravery of the Allies that day. He told me his father was armed with nothing more than his Sgian-Dubh, the wee dagger we Scots tuck into our socks to frighten Englishmen with.

Who needs a rifle when you have the pipes?

Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion was the most complex and unsurpassed feat of military organisation. It was huge. It had mass. 5000 vessels, 133,000 troops landed on day one, and 10,300 casualties.  The Battles for Normandy, France, the Low Countries and crossing the Rhine into Germany required a million and a half troops to be trained, supplied and armed, thousands of aircraft to loaded and painted with invasion stripes (overnight), ships’ magazines to be filled and fuel bunkered, landing craft to be crammed with tanks and men, the concrete Mulberry Harbours to be floated and the Pluto oil-pipeline coiled to lay across the channel in days. It was a momentous and huge operation.

Britain’s contribution to D-Day was the product of a nation at war, fully committed to victory, confident of its place in the world, and dismissive of the cost – in the First and Second World Wars 55% of UK GDP was allocated to the objective of victory.

Where are we today?

Today the world is a very different place. In his writings on “Breaking the Code of History”, David Murrin has seen how new hegemonic struggles seem to erupt every 112 years of so. This one is bang on time.

• On one hand we have the alliance of Western Democracies.
• On the other we have the Axis of autocracy centred around China, with Russia and Iran becoming little more than client states

The East and West dance around each other. We can dance nice, solve our problems and remain prosperous on trade, or we can fight – and that will end badly.

Under Putin Russia has become a wartime economy dedicated to the leader’s dream of restoring his version of Russian historical lands. There is an illusion of wealth in Moscow as Russian oil pays for Chinese consumer goods and the materials to build the missiles, the tanks, and the guns employed against Ukrainian citizens. Some pundits mistake such flimsy trappings of wealth for inevitable Russian victory. That Russia remains fundamentally corrupt to the core escapes them. The Chinese are delighted – a ready market for their goods, cheap energy and the prospect an exhausted and broken Russia and its vast resources will tumble into its arms.

In Iran the Ayatollahs twisted version of Islam covets dominance across the Muslim world – fanning the flames of conflict and accusations of genocide across the Holy Lands. They have left the West distracted, divided and conflicted – watching as other once supportive nations like India and the Gulf states position themselves for coming geopolitical changeover.

Many of those who should know in the West – the diplomats, the analysts, the generals – are warning World War 3 is already underway, opened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They believe Putin is “all-in” and intends to go further. They know his invented rhetoric of Russia’s insecurity and the recovery of lost lands is bogus.

Yet many in the West are in denial, apparently unaware of historical precedent from the 1930s, and actively counsel engagement with Russia, admiring Putin as a strong man – much as the UK right and many members of the aristocracy did in 30’s London while lauding Hitler.

The lessons are simple.

• Appeasement does not work.
• To avoid war you need to be prepared to fight and win it.

At the end of the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall came down, the UK armed forces numbered 312,000 men. Defence spending was 4.09% of GDP – even after decades of defence cuts.

Today the UK’s defence capability is perilously thin. Much of our kit is being cannibalised to keep some stuff functional. Our airspace is defended by a few elderly Typhoon fighters. The navy’s anti-submarine capabilities are tied to the dock and limited to just a few on-call escorts. Often there is just a single attack sub to annoy the Russians. Our aircraft carriers – let’s not go there. The Army has been hollowed out to such an extent its single deployable brigade would struggle after just a few days at a high operation pitch. Armed forces recruitment is a shambolic mess.

Yet, the British Armed forces remain among the most professional in Nato sustained by our martial traditions and the ancestral muscle memory of our armed forces. I would cite the Thin Red Line of Highlanders who stopped the Russian calvary at Balaclava. The unsurpassed British Army of 1918 that ended trench stalemate and destroyed the German Army over the last 100 days of WW1. The RAF that won the Battle of Britain. The Royal Navy that won the Battle of the Atlantic, and kept the supply lines to Russia open. The Forgotten 15^th Army that fought the largest single battle against the Japanese of the War at Kohima and whipped them – a fact our Americans cousins are blithely unaware of. Or, the cobbled together task force and 5 battalions that took on the Argies’ might and swept them from the Falklands.

Sadly, past glories are not a guarantee of future victory performance – but British Armed forces have form.

Already critical lessons have been learnt from Ukraine. The first we already knew – that lateral-thinking, highly motivated soldiers with the ability to make swift and effective tactical decisions can smash the Soviet heirarchy, nullifying their command and control on the battlefield – but it has become a World War 1 stalemate costly in terms of leaders and troops. New simple tech, like drones, has changed battlefield economics. UK forces understand the asymmetric nature of modern war and cyber security – but again its costly.

What will the UK have to do to show it can be part of a winning team in a future war, and hence dissuade Putin and his successors?

David reckons there are a host of factors to be addressed.

• We need to sort out the political leadership of the west. The current hiatus in Europe’s unity as it drifts towards nationalist minded parties of The Right does not help.
• Good politicians and Generals know it’s not about how little or how much we spend on defence, but how well we spend the cash. That requires a massive and pragmatic procurement shake-out and rethink. There is precious little awareness of defence on the front benches today.
• Trump’s threat to pull the USA from Nato must be taken seriously – and Europe become its own defender. 600 million moderately prosperous Europeans vs 140 million poor Russians may seem defendable – but what have the Russians got to lose, and what does it matter to China how much they do? Russia breaking itself in Europe opens an arms-length door for China into resource-rich Siberia.
• The continued focus on initiative, lateral-thinking and how to innovate new kit and tactics at all-ranks levels must be encouraged.
• The marked improvement in Russian fighting capabilities in recent months is easy to explain – they are learning. They are getting better.
• The UK and Europe needs a missile shield – something comparable to Israel – the modern equivalent of Fighter Command in 1939. We need Patriot type systems, backed by Sky Sabre and investment into new lazer tech.
• Defence procurement remains a perennial problem. For instance the RAF is short AWACs radar control – having retired the old ones to save money before the new ones arrived!
• All three services need to upgrade the lethality of their platforms in terms of enhance air defences. The Royal Navy’s Daring Class destroyers have superb radars, but cost cuts meant they weren’t fitted with state-of-the-art missiles and offensive systems. This needs to be addressed immediately.
• The Navy’s carriers have proved a bad compromise – fitted without catapults to save money, but only capable of operation the less effective VSTOL F-35 Bs, and not the cheaper F-18s and the new effective drones coming on-line. It hasn’t helped Big Lizzy and POW are unreliable.

However, the main issue is Mass.

Europe and the UK need to make clear to Putin we are serious about our defence. To do so, we need to put boots on the ground, ships on the sea and planes and drones in the air – now.

• It’s time to bulk up the navy and refit last generation equipment ahead of new kit being designed and built – that means recommissioning older frigates, amphibious warfare ships and attack submarines.
• We need to strengthen the RAF – train more pilots swiftly and give them more and better Typhoons and give them F-35 Cs (even if Trump might decide to “switch them off”).
• Expand the army and field combat ready divisions with prepositioned kit across the Baltics.
• It’s time to put the UK’s defence industry on a wartime footing – as happened in the race to rearm from 1938 onwards. New equipment, supplies and ammunition is critical. The economy would receive a substantial boost if we build new ships using the latest robo-tech.
• The expansion of the armed forces needs people. Take back control of armed services recruitment from Circo (hopeless), and have experienced soldiers, airmen and sailors run the process.
• Focus on innovating new warfighting paradigm shifts in weapons and tactics to maximise the effectiveness of reconstituted mass. Innovate the techological brilliance of the West to move 3, 4 and 5 steps ahead of the axis.
• Build a capability for the UK to space launch its own satellites – don’t assume Elon Musk is on our side. Tech exists to air-launch satellite capable rockets out the back of C-17 cargo planes.
• Secure vital resources and build war stocks of strategic materials.

Finally, a renewed focus on defence needs to involve the whole nation. While Rishi Sunak’s half-cocked conscription plan was yet another embarrassment, the need for a National Resilience Plan to ensure the UK can cope with war and its consequences is a whole population exercise. That’s something every Brit should get used to – and an option for younger people.

Sir Keir Starmer – over to you then.. Deliver.

Out of time, and back to the day job – although I am going to take some time off today to join the events commemorating D-Day here in Hamble.

Bill Blain – with the assistance, insights and thoughts of David Murrin

Wind Shift Capital

www.windshift.capital