In the Balance
Throughout the first few months of 1947 the Battle for Britain hung in the balance. For, despite ferocious fighting, the balance of forces in Britain stood on a knife edge.
With no convoys being able to supply the Northern Zone, almost a third of the French army risked being trapped in an enormous pocket. The cold winter, one of the harshest in decades, had drained their supplies and both food, fuel and ammunition were being strictly rationed. It was obvious to the French high command that, without resupply soon, the British noose would slowly tighten around the Northern Zone until the French forces were forced to surrender - a surrender that would surely seal the fate of the French invasion forces throughout Britain.
Still unable to resupply the Northern Zone with ships due to the winter storms, Mer and Dentz were ordered to throw all the supplies they had into an offensive to the south, out of Lincolnshire and towards Peterborough and Derby to put pressure on the British defences to the north of Oxford.
However French intelligence reports also showed that there were still upwards of ninety divisions defending the British Isles - even if Oxford were to fall the French invasion force would still be outnumbered three to two.
And proof that this threat was a real one came when the French soldiers dug into northern Yorkshire found themselves under attack by a British offensive out of Cumberland. While the attack was eventually beaten back, it left the French divisions severely weakened both through the exhaustion of the soldiers and of their fuel supplies.
Some good news came for the French at the end of January as more merchant vessels left dry dock and came into use to ferry supplies to the invasion force in Britain. However, it remained the case that none of the convoys was yet capable of reaching the Northern Zone.
Nevertheless, the battle for Oxford raged on with French overrunning the village of Abingdon just south of Oxford and forcing the British back to defensive lines on the southern edge of the city as morale and fighting spirit amongst the defenders plummeted in the face of limited rations and the never-ceasing French attacks. Coupled with French forces from the north reaching Northampton, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the British would have to fold.
But within the Northern Zone itself things took a turn for the worse as French forces around Manchester came under attack from the south and being forced to retreat several miles before the British offensive was halted. Almost out of supplies, the northern French forces were in mortal peril.
When a further British offensive began, it was clear that Manchester could not be held and French commanders braced themselves for the worst - only to be saved at the last moment by the arrival of a hastily scraped together relief force in Liverpool docks, a relief force that was sufficient to plug the gaps in the French line and which brought with them much needed supplies.
This marked the turning point in Britain. With the Northern Zone temporarily reprieved, a final offensive was launched against the British, overrunning Northampton from the north and Oxford from the south with the victorious French meeting at the small town of Bletchley - a town later to be subsumed by the post-war development of Milton Keynes.
With the fall of these towns it was now possible for supplies from Oxford to be transferred by rail to Bletchley and then by canal to Northampton from whence they could once again be conveyed by rail to Lincoln and Manchester. While convoluted, this meant that supply lines to the Northern Zone were now open even as the Northern Zone itself became subsumed into general French-occupied Britain while the Union of Britain itself was now divided into three.
