Historian Richard Callaghan on Southwick House
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00:00 I'm Richard Callaghan and I'm the curator of the Royal Military Police Museum, which is located here at Southwark Park, which is just north of Portsmouth.
00:12 Southwark Park is also home to the D-Day war map. This was a pivotal part of the preparations for the landings in Normandy on June 6th, 1944,
00:25 and the house plays a pivotal role in the decisions taken as to when we actually went.
00:32 We are actually sat in the Ramsey Room, which is a memorial to Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey.
00:39 He was the man who was given the plan to evacuate the troops from Dunkirk in 1940.
00:47 Ramsey was what we would today call a micromanager. He was obsessed with tiny details.
00:54 The original plan for Dynamo estimated we could rescue about 40,000 men from the beaches.
01:00 Everybody rightly talks about the little ships of Dunkirk, but if it wasn't for Ramsey's capital ships,
01:06 we wouldn't have been able to rescue the 338,000 that we managed to pull from the beaches.
01:12 And Southwark House, for a few weeks in the summer of 1944, was what he referred to as his battle headquarters.
01:21 He was the naval commander-in-chief in charge of Operation Neptune, the naval aspect of the Overlord campaign.
01:30 At the beginning of the war, Southwark House was owned, as it had been for a number of generations, by the Thistlethwaite family.
01:39 Colonel Evelyn Thistlethwaite, a Boer War veteran, was the then squire.
01:46 Every weekend he would host shooting parties, and one of his fellow guns was Admiral William James.
01:54 He was in charge of HMS Dryad, the Navy's navigation school, a shore station down in Portsmouth.
02:01 He would complain to the colonel that his chaps couldn't get any work done because they were under heavy blitz from the German Air Force.
02:11 So the colonel suggested that he brings the troops up to the house, as he had plenty of room.
02:18 They could get a good night's sleep and then go back the seven miles down into Portsmouth.
02:24 Little did he realise that eventually Dryad would be blitzed and the whole of the navigation school would move up.
02:33 So the colonel and his sister moved into the village.
02:37 The Royal Navy has never left. The estate was compulsorily purchased in 1949 and we remain here to this day, although certain aspects have changed.
02:51 With the navigation school firmly in place here, this house was chosen to be the forward operating base for the naval command for the invasion or the liberation of Europe.
03:04 Admiral Ramsey arrived here in April 1944 and stayed here until September.
03:13 The unique feature in the house is the very large wall map.
03:19 This was designed to enable visitors to the house, senior naval commanders, senior politicians,
03:29 anybody who really had anything to do with the landings in Normandy. It would give them an overview of how we get 130,000 troops across the sea on D-Day itself in a single day.
03:43 For a good talk, you need a good visual aid and you can't get much bigger and much better than the map.
03:51 It wasn't commissioned from the Admiralty. It wasn't commissioned from the Board of Ordnance.
03:57 We actually went to a toy maker's to produce the map.
04:01 For many years, that toy maker was misidentified as Chad Valley.
04:07 In the bottom right hand corner are three letters I M A and the address London SW 19.
04:16 And on the day before the 75th anniversary, five years ago, a local historian in Wimbledon actually sent us a cutting from a toy maker's history.
04:29 This mentioned the fact that their sawmill in Wimbledon SW 19 made a wooden map of the invasion beaches.
04:39 That toy maker was Triang and the sub company was the International Model Aircraft Company.
04:46 So we now know who the IMA were and we can actually positively identify when the map was made.
04:55 One key room in Southwark House is now the bar of the officers mess.
05:01 But in 1944, it was the library. This is where the decision to postpone D-Day was taken.
05:10 It's also where the decision to go on D-Day was taken.
05:16 The key person involved in the decision of when we actually go into Normandy was actually a civilian.
05:25 He was a Scotsman named James Stagg. He was the chief British meteorological officer.
05:32 He had a little hut just at the back of the house and every day he and his team would pull through weather messages that were coming in from as far away as Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
05:45 From the Royal Navy, from the Merchant Navy, from the Royal Air Force and we're even getting messages from De Valera's Republican Island.
05:56 Every day this information would be crunched and Stagg would provide a forecast.
06:03 A couple of days later, his forecast would be checked against the weather as it actually happened.
06:09 And pretty much every day in June, Stagg's forecasts were spot on.
06:15 Mainly because May 1944 was a mini heatwave. There wasn't much in the way of bad weather.
06:23 He's now got to give the forecasts for the biggest day in Britain's war.
06:30 The following day, on the 3rd of June, the Supreme Commander, General Dwight David Eisenhower arrives here at Southwark House.
06:39 D-Day is set for two days. Virtually the first person he meets is Stagg.
06:45 Stagg is obviously incredibly persuasive because the first thing he sees is that there are no clouds in the sky, bright sunshine.
06:55 But he says to Eisenhower, "You're going to have to postpone."
06:59 Eisenhower isn't an expert in British weather, so he listens to the experts.
07:06 "When's this storm arriving?" Stagg confirms, "It'll be here sometime this afternoon."
07:13 Stagg is then told, "Okay, we'll postpone. We'll postpone for 24 hours."
07:21 Later that day, the clouds close in, the drizzle starts, and the rain gets heavier and heavier and heavier.
07:31 The same weather is also hitting the coast of Normandy.
07:37 The German commanders have been convinced by various deception plans that the Allies are bound to attack in the Pas de Calais.
07:45 If there's a landing in Normandy, it'll be a diversionary attack, a secondary attack. It won't be the real thing.
07:52 They look at the same rain that we have, and their weathermen say there is no way that the Allies will try a landing in weather like this.
08:00 This is in for at least a week.
08:04 That evening, Stagg comes back into the house.
08:10 He has a five-minute conversation with the high command. He's got some better news.
08:15 There's what he referred to as an interlude in the weather.
08:20 It'll hit the middle of the channel on the 6th of June. It won't be great, but it'll be better than it is at the moment.
08:27 It is possible that we can make a landing on the 6th of June.
08:33 Eisenhower turns to his command team. "For the ground forces," General Burns Montgomery.
08:40 "Monty, what do you think?" and Monty replies, "I think on the whole we should go."
08:45 "Ramsay, for the naval forces, what do you think?"
08:49 Now remember, Ramsay's planning is minute, timetabled, down to the last minute.
08:55 He said, "I think we should wait for the second window.
08:58 If I have to turn my ships around halfway across the channel, it'll be weeks before everybody's back in the right place.
09:04 We've got about a fortnight."
09:07 For the air force, Air Marshal Trafford Lee Mallory just takes one look out of the window at the rain and says,
09:13 "There's no way we can fly in this. We can't precision bomb. We can't drop the airborne troops.
09:19 We can't undertake reconnaissance. Wait for the second window."
09:24 Eisenhower could have made a decision one way or the other. He doesn't.
09:29 He agrees to sleep on it. He goes back to his caravan, located in a wood a couple of miles away from the house.
09:38 Everybody else goes back to their billet. Montgomery is at Broomfield House a couple of miles away.
09:45 The following morning, the 5th of June, just after four o'clock, everybody comes back to the house.
09:53 It is still pouring down.
09:56 Again, Stagg is invited into the room. He gives a two-minute forecast.
10:02 He is much more confident about this blip in the weather.
10:07 "It won't be wonderful, but it should be doable."
10:11 He's asked to leave the room. Again, Eisenhower asks Montgomery.
10:15 Montgomery still thinks we should go. He said, "We can't let the troops lose their cutting edge."
10:22 Ramsey has changed his mind. He said, "If you do give the decision to go, then give it in the next 30 minutes.
10:29 That's when my ships will have to set off from the west, picking up reinforcements all along the channel ports
10:36 to get to Piccadilly Circus in time, to get the Americans onto the beaches at 6.30, and everybody else 55 minutes later."
10:45 It's now up to Lee Mallory and the air component.
10:50 But he has a huge weight on his shoulders.
10:53 His airborne landings, about 28,000 men strong.
10:58 He's been told to expect anything up to 80% casualties.
11:02 He has that weight on his shoulders.
11:07 Stagg is obviously incredibly persuasive.
11:11 Lee Mallory very, very reluctantly agrees that we should go.
11:17 At 19 minutes past four in this room, in this house, 80 years ago, Eisenhower says three words.
11:26 "OK, let's go."
11:29 He's the most powerful man in the West.
11:32 As soon as he says the word "go", an 18-year-old from Portsmouth in a landing craft with a rifle
11:38 has more power to change what happens on the beaches than the Supreme Commander.
11:43 He's done the difficult thing. He's made the decision.
11:47 The command staff in the room breathe a sigh of relief.
11:51 Stagg is invited back in.
11:54 Eisenhower puts his hand on his shoulders, said, "If this goes right, then there's a whiskey in it for you."
12:02 One of Stagg's Met Office colleagues sidles up and whispers, "If we've got this wrong, they're going to string us up from a lamppost."
12:10 But as Stagg leaves the house at about six o'clock on the morning of the 5th of June,
12:15 the rain has turned to drizzle, the clouds have parted, and the sun has come out.
12:21 He allows himself the second smile of a long weekend. He's been listened to, and he's got it right.
12:27 [ Silence ]
12:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]