All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [205]
The Soviet Union suffered 65 per cent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 per cent, Yugoslavia 3 per cent, the USA and Britain 2 per cent each, France and Poland 1 per cent each. About 8 per cent of all Germans died, compared with 2 per cent of Chinese, 3.44 per cent of Dutch people, 6.67 per cent of Yugoslavs, 4 per cent of Greeks, 1.35 per cent of French, 3.78 per cent of Japanese, 0.94 per cent of British and 0.32 per cent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 per cent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died, 17.35 per cent of the Luftwaffe (including paratroopers and ground personnel), 34.9 per cent of the Waffen SS. Some 24.2 per cent of Japanese soldiers were killed, and 19.7 per cent of naval personnel. Japanese formations committed against the Americans and British in 1944–45 lost far more heavily – the overall statistics are distorted by the fact that throughout the war a million of Hirohito’s soldiers remained in China, where they suffered relatively modest losses. One Russian soldier in four died, against one in twenty British Commonwealth combatants and one in thirty-four American servicemen. Some 3.66 per cent of US Marines died, compared with 2.5 per cent of the US Army and 1.5 per cent of the US Navy.
A modest number of those fighting contrived to enjoy the war, usually when their own side was winning – Germans and Japanese in the early years, Americans and British thereafter. Young people who relished adventure found this readily available. Lt. Robert Hichens of the Royal Navy wrote in July 1940: ‘I suppose our position is about as dangerous as is possible in view of the threatened invasion, but I couldn’t help being full of joy … Being on the bridge of one of HM ships, being talked to by the captain as an equal, and knowing that she was to be in my sole care for the next few hours. Who would not rather die like that than live as so many poor people have to, in crowded cities at some sweating indoor job?’ Hichens was killed in 1942, but he was a happy warrior.
Special forces – the ‘private armies’ regarded with mixed feelings by more conventional warriors – attracted bold spirits careless about risking their lives in piratical enterprises by land and sea. Between 1940 and 1944, partly because Churchill’s soldiers were unable to confront the Wehrmacht in Europe, British raiding units conducted many small operations of a kind the US chiefs of staff mistrusted, though American Airborne and Rangers later played conspicuous roles in the north-west Europe campaign. The prime minister promoted raids on German outposts to show aggression, test tactics and equipment, and sustain a façade of momentum in the British war effort. Probably the most useful of these took place on the night of 27 February 1942, when a small contingent of the newly formed Parachute Regiment assaulted a German radar station on a clifftop at Bruneval, near Le Havre on the French coast.
The objective was reconnoitred by local French Resistance workers before 120 paratroopers led by Major John Frost dropped into thick snow, secured the position against slight resistance from the surprised Luftwaffe radar crew, and held it while an RAF technician, Flight-Sergeant Charles Cox, coolly dismantled key components of its Wurzburg scanner. The force then fought its way down to the beach for evacuation by landing craft, having lost only two men killed and six taken prisoner. The captured technology proved invaluable to British scientific intelligence. Churchill and the chiefs of staff were impressed by this first test of their paratroops, and endorsed a big expansion of such units. The Bruneval raid, trumpeted by Allied propaganda, was indeed a fine example of daring and initiative, aided by luck and an unusually feeble German response.
Such operations worked best