Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves, says Allan Mallinson
AS day broke on June 5, 1944, Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander for Operation Overlord, the invasion of occupied Europe, was driving to Southwick House near Portsmouth from what he called his ‘sharpener camp’ the other side of the park—the tents and caravans from which he would command in Normandy. The landings should have begun that morning, but he’d postponed them because of foul weather. The evening before, his chief meteorologist, Group Capt James Stagg, had forecast a change and ‘Ike’ said he would take the final decision at his morning meeting. Yet now, with lashing rain and ‘a wind of almost hurricane proportions shaking and shuddering’, he wondered why he was bothering.
There was a fire burning in the grate, coffee on a sideboard and his subordinate commanders gathered ready: Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Gen Sir Bernard Montgomery and Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Then, as Ramsay put it afterwards, ‘the prophets came in smiling’: Stagg said that the predicted high pressure was holding and even building. Eisenhower asked his subordinates for their opinion. All said ‘go’. He paced up and down for what seemed an age, drawing heavily on his cigarette: ‘OK, I don’t like it, but we’ll go on June 6.’ The ‘Crusade in Europe’, as Eisenhower dubbed it, was at last underway, launched from the hall of a modest-sized Georgian house requisitioned by the Royal Navy. It had all begun in 1937. With war looking increasingly likely, the Office (from 1940 the Ministry) of Works was tasked in secret with setting up a register of accommodation for both military and non-military use. The Rating and Valuation Act of 1925 meant that every building and portion of land in the country had been assessed and the valuers had done their survey thoroughly, down to the last sink in the butler’s pantry. The register was soon ready.
When war broke out in 1939, Southwick was but one of many hundreds of country houses of all sizes progressively requisitioned by the three services. They had the facilities for the proliferation of the new headquarters, specialist units and training establishments: large rooms, electricity, telephone lines, accommodation, kitchens, running water and sanitation. Their grounds offered seclusion and better security, space for additional hutting to house the overflow of staff officers, signallers, clerks and fighting men, as well as space for vehicles and training. The inside of Southwick House was a good fit for D-Day’s HQ, but it was its park that made it practicable.
