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Recognition of what Britain faced overhead was expressed last week in one more shake-up of her defense command. Brave but inflexible General Sir Edmund Ironside, 60, was eased upstairs with the rank of Field Marshal, to make way for Lieut. General Sir Alan Francis ("Wizard") Brooke, 57, as Commander in Chief of the Home Forces. General the Viscount Gort, Commander in Chief of the B. E. F., unassigned to a new high post since his return from France, was made only Inspecting General of Forces for Training, while to replace Sir Alan as field commander in the south of England, Lieut. General Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, 56, was named. The latter was the hard-bitten infantryman who helped wrestle Narvik from Germany's Lieut. General Eduard ("Bull") Dietl only to see it yielded due to pressure in the Lowlands.
In World War I, General Brooke invented a barrage map for directing artillery fire which came into wide use. He is called Britain's best-informed tank and anti-tank man, "Wizard" because his knowledge of gunnery is so well-rounded he is also an anti-aircraft ace. Spectacled, dark, pinched, with a close-clipped mustache, he looks more like a "City" broker than the soldier-sportsman that he is (in the Army since 1902). His fox-hunting Irish father was Master of the Pau pack (supposed descendants of hounds with which Wellington's officers hunted in Spain). Sir Alan, who was born and raised in France, is one of the Empire's finest wing shots and anglers, and he once rode down and speared a wolf from horseback.
While Sir Alan prepared to spear German sky wolves, the R. A. F. last week continued its lambasting of their lairs across the Channel. British pilots stalked Germans home to spot their fields for future visits by British bombers. Wherever they saw barges—at Rotterdam, Boulogne, in the River Lys at Armentieres—they poured down bombs. They blasted out a section of the important Dortmund-Ems Canal, to which much traffic has been diverted since the railroad was wrecked.
They smashed at Copenhagen's docks and shipyards. They played havoc at a favorite old spot, the many-railed freight yards and junction of Hamm. At Bremen they smacked the big Focke-Wulf aircraft plant where a new twin-tailed fighter with "swallowed" engine is being turned out, said to fly 400 m.p.h. Each side was "softening up" the other and a report from far-off Turkey carried by travelers from Germany indicated the kind of damage both sides were already suffering. According to the accounts the Rhineland populace was thoroughly terrorized by R. A. F.'s incessant raiding, especially at Essen, home of the vast Krupp plants.