Enoch Powell - War Years

War Years

During October 1939, almost a month after returning home, Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as an Australian. In a poem he wrote of men joining the army like "bridegrooms going to meet their brides", but his biographer points out that it is unlikely that other men shared his joy.

In later years, he recorded his appointment from private to lance-corporal in his Who's Who entry, on other occasions describing it as a greater promotion than entering the Cabinet. Early in 1940, he was trained for a commission after, whilst working in a kitchen, answering the question of an inspecting brigadier with a Greek proverb; on several occasions, he told colleagues that he expected to be at least a major-general by the end of the war. He passed out top from his officer training.

He was commissioned on the General List in 1940 but almost immediately transferred to the Intelligence Corps. He was almost immediately promoted to captain and posted as GSO3 (Intelligence) to the 1st (later 9th) Armoured Division. During this time he taught himself the Portuguese language to read the poet Camões in the original; as insufficient Russian-speaking officers were available at the War Office, his knowledge of the Russian language and textual analysis skills were used to translate a Russian parachute training manual - a task he completed after 11pm on top of his normal duties, deducing the meaning of many technical terms from the context; he was convinced that the Soviet Union must eventually enter the war on the Allied side. On one occasion, he was arrested as a suspected German spy for singing Horst-Wessel-Lied. He was sent to the Staff College at Camberley.

In October 1941, Powell was posted to Cairo and transferred back to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. As Secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Middle East, he was soon doing work that would normally have been done by a more senior officer and was (May 1942, backdated to December 1941) promoted to major. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in August 1942, telling his parents that he was doing the work of three people and expected to be a brigadier within a year or two, and in that role helped plan the Second Battle of El Alamein, having previously helped plan the attack on Rommel's supply lines. Powell and his team began work at 0400 each day to digest radio intercepts and other intelligence data (such as estimating how many tanks Rommel currently had and what his likely plans were) ready to present to the Chiefs of Staff at 0900. The following year, he was honoured as a member of the Order of the British Empire for his military service.

It was in Algiers that the beginning of Powell's dislike of the United States was planted. After talking with some senior American officials, he became convinced that one of America's main war aims was to destroy the British Empire. Writing home on 16 February 1943, Powell stated: "I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were... our terrible enemy, America...." Powell's conviction of the anti-British attitude of the Americans continued during the war. Powell cut out and retained all his life an article from the New Statesman newspaper of 13 November 1943, in which the American Clare Boothe Luce said in a speech that Indian independence would mean that the "USA will really have won the greatest war in the world for democracy".

Powell desperately wanted to go to the Far East to help the fight against Japan because "the war in Europe is won now, and I want to see the Union Flag back in Singapore" before, Powell thought, the Americans beat Britain to it. He attempted to join the Chindits, and jumped into a taxicab in Cairo to bring the matter up with Orde Wingate, but his duties and rank precluded the assignment. He was eventually posted to Delhi in India as Lieutenant-Colonel in Military Intelligence in August 1943, having declined at least two jobs carrying the rank of full colonel in the now-moribund North African theatre and having offered to drop in rank to major in order to get a posting to the Far East.

Powell soon became Secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee for India and Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command, involved in planning an amphibious offensive against Akyab, an island off the coast of Burma. Orde Wingate, also involved in planning that operation, had taken such a dislike to Powell that he asked a colleague to restrain him if he was tempted to "beat his brains in".

On one occasion, Powell's yellow skin (he was recovering from jaundice), overly formal dress and strange manner caused him to be mistaken for a Japanese spy. During this period he declined to meet a Cambridge academic colleague, Glyn Daniel, for a drink or dinner as he was devoting his limited leisure time to studying the poet John Donne. Powell had continued to learn Urdu, consistent with his ambition of becoming Viceroy of India, and when Mountbatten transferred his staff to Kandy, Ceylon, Powell chose to remain in Delhi. He was promoted to full colonel at the end of March 1944, as Assistant Director of Military Intelligence in India, giving intelligence support to the Burma campaign of William Slim.

Having begun the war as the youngest professor in the Commonwealth, Powell ended it as a brigadier. He was given the promotion to serve on a committee of generals and brigadiers to plan the postwar defence of India: the resulting 470-page report was almost entirely written by Powell. For a few weeks he was the youngest brigadier in the British Army, and he was one of only two men in the entire war to rise from private to brigadier (the other being Fitzroy Maclean). He was offered a regular commission as a brigadier in the Indian Army, and the post of Assistant Commandant of an Indian Officers' Training Academy, which he declined. He told a colleague that he expected to be Head of all Military Intelligence in "the next war".

Powell never experienced combat and felt guilty for having survived, writing that soldiers who did so carried "a sort of shame with them to the grave" and referring to the Second Battle of El Alamein as a "separating flame" between the living and the dead. When once asked how he would like to be remembered, he at first answered, "Others will remember me as they will remember me", but when pressed he replied, "I should like to have been killed in the war".