The Lost Band of Brothers (16 page)

But no sign of a U-boat. Tom Winter, one of those aboard
Maid Honor
, recorded : ‘Gus’s nightly prayers surely included one for a U-boat to surface and ask the
Maid Honor
for some fish. If one did, he was prepared to sink her with the hidden depth-charges or to blow a hole in her with the spigot mortar …’
29
A small ship offers no place to hide. Faults and strengths are exposed to all. Aboard
Maid Honor
, Appleyard continued to be impressed by his childhood friend, Graham Hayes:

Graham is in great form and invaluable. He has an enormous capacity for work and is about the finest chap you could have with you. Gus, too, flourishes and is as full of drive as ever, which is one of the reasons for my saying we are not likely to be here much longer as, with the prospect of things slackening, Gus is already pushing for a move to ‘fresh pastures’.

In all,
Maid Honor
completed three clandestine reconnaissance missions to the African shore: the first ‘submarine patrol’ on 10–14 October, the second to the Liberian coast on 23–30 October and the third to the Pongo River on 7–10 November.
30
Those missions were not entirely fruitless: two full 50-gallon oil drums in good condition were found – allegedly washed ashore – and there were persistent rumours of an earlier visit by two Germans who arrived at Baffu by boat from Monrovia. There was no sign of them during the
Maid Honor
patrols and March-Phillipps felt it safe to assume the Germans were making a reconnaissance with a view to establishing their own refuelling points.
31
But such patrols – and their slender gleanings of intelligence – cut little ice back in Freetown. Had their presence in West Africa been welcomed by officialdom, there might well have been more patrols. But it was not and, consequently, there were not.

In Poole it had been Commander Slocum who had frustrated March-Phillipps’ intentions. Here it was the Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic, Vice Admiral Algernon Willis. Returning on 11 November 1941 from their latest patrol in search of those elusive U-boat bases, March-Phillipps learned that there would be no more reconnaissance missions along the coast. Their forays into neutral territory made them too risky, too dangerous.
Maid Honor
and her crew spent the next three weeks at Lumley Beach waiting for news from London. There was nothing else to do.

Even while they had been at sea,
Maid Honor’s
long-term future had hung in the balance – for a while there was the very real possibility that, unwanted and with no further specific role in West Africa, she might simply return to England. In London, SOE was reviewing its own briefings to March-Phillipps in the event of the ‘fiasco’ that might surround the decision to order
Maid Honor
back to home waters:

March-Phillipps could not have had any illusions regarding the employment of his ship and crew on the coast. He had been informed that there was a possibility that the crew might be used for land operations and to satisfy a request from Franck for additional sabotage experts. March-Phillipps had expressed his complete agreement with these instructions. Major Hanau [‘Caesar’] did not think that March-Phillipps, even if the despatch of the Maid Honor proved a fiasco operationally, would regret the trip.
32

Now, a month on, London was still stalling. With the Fernando Po attack on the horizon there was now a ‘definite prospect’
33
of work for
Maid Honor
and her crew. They should sit tight and await further instructions.

SOE Headquarters, meanwhile, were working hard to break the deadlock. Louis Franck, back in London on timely leave, had taken the opportunity to refine the plan of attack for the ships at Fernando Po and had enlisted Gubbins’ help to press his case with both the Foreign Office – code initials ZP – and the Admiralty, which gave Admiral Willis his orders. Now, instead of simply blowing up the passenger liner in a raid that would rely on crude ‘bangs’ which could not fail to antagonise the Spanish authorities, the intention would be to break the liner out of her anchors and tow her quietly out of harbour at dead of night: it was a classic interpretation of what today has become the motto of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service, based at Hamworthy, 2 miles across Poole Harbour from
Maid Honor’s
secret summer anchorage at Russel Quay:
By Strength and Guile
. If the mission were successful, the
Duchessa d’Aosta
, her cargo and the
Likomba
would become valuable prizes, not just rusting hulks littering the shallow bottom of a neutral harbour. And – better yet – if they played it right, then both vessels would be gone, leaving no trace of those who had stolen them. There would be
suspicion
, most certainly. But, without
proof
, Britain’s hands would be clean. It was a persuasive argument. At the eleventh hour, it appears, Louis Franck and Brigadier Colin Gubbins had carried the day. Both the Foreign Office and the Admiralty had been persuaded to authorise the raid on Fernando Po. Signal from SOE London to ‘W’ Station Lagos, 14 November 1941:

ZP AND ADMIRALTY HAVE AUTHORISED SHIP PROJECTS AT FERNANDO PO AND LOBITO. TAKE NO ACTION PENDING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
34

The mission was about to become reality. As such, it now warranted a code name. One was duly allocated: Operation
Postmaster.

  
1
.  
Anders Lassen
, 60.

  
2
.  HS 8/ 217.

  
3
.  
Anders Lassen
, 61.

  
4
.  BBC Henrietta.

  
5
.  
Anders Lassen
, 62.

  
6
.  
Geoffrey
, 80.

  
7
.  Ibid., 83.

  
8
.  
Maid Honor
Log Book held in the Perkins Papers, 14319, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

  
9
.  Letter held in the Perkins Papers, 14319, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

10
.  Entry in
Maid Honor
Log Book held in the Perkins Papers, 14319, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

11
.  
Ian Fleming and SOE’s Operation Postmaster
, Brian Lett, 53.

12
.  HS 3/74.

13
.  
Ian Fleming and SOE’s Operation Postmaster
, 52.

14
.  HS 3/86.

15
.  HS 7/219.

16
.  HS 3/86.

17
.  Memo from Rear Admiral Holbrook to the Director of Naval Intelligence, July 31 1941.

18
.  HS 7/221.

19
.  HS 3/86.

20
.  
Geoffrey
, 84.

21
.  HS 3/86.

22
.  HS 3/86.

23
.  Signal from Caesar to W, 6 October 1941. HS 3/86.

24
.  
Geoffrey
, 86.

25
.  
Anders Lassen
, 91.

26
.  Ibid., 78.

27
.  HS 7/223.

28
.  
Anders Lassen
, 81.

29
.  Ibid., 87.

30
.  
Maid Honor
Log.

31
.  HS 3/722.

32
.  HS 7/221, 21–2.

33
.  HS 7/222 (19–20 November 1941).

34
.  HS 3/86.

The men of Maid Honor Force broke camp and set sail for Lagos, 1,300 miles down the African coast, on 30 November 1941. The provisional date for Operation
Postmaster
was 22 December. With March-Phillipps were eleven of his thirteen men – two were held back by malaria – all of whom were sent on their way with the good wishes of the fellow gunners of the Royal Artillery unit whose mess they had shared. They presented the ship with a special gift to mark their happy association on the warm sands of Lumley Beach: ‘Seen off by Gunners,' wrote March-Phillipps in the ship's log soon after
Maid Honor
got under way. ‘Presented with silver mug. Jolly good send off.'

The voyage to Lagos should have taken seven days. In the event, recurring engine breakdowns and light winds turned the journey into a slow and wearying fortnight, their dawdling progress enlivened only by the harpooning by André Desgrange of a 9-foot shark that was hauled alongside and then shot through the head by Graham Hayes with his .45 automatic. It was, wrote Appleyard, ‘a filthy brute and as ugly as sin and stank like a sewer.'
1
They cut off its fin and nailed that to the bowsprit to replenish their store of good luck.
Maid Honor
made her way into Lagos harbour on 14 December.

The
Maid Honor
SOE support team waiting in Lagos had much to plan and discuss before Operation
Postmaster
could be passed up the line to London for approval. Time, meanwhile, was slipping by and, in the prolonged absence of both March-Phillipps, Maid Honor Force Commanding Officer and Appleyard, his second-in-command, the three men who would do so much behind the scenes to make Operation
Postmaster
a success began to refine their own thoughts as to how the raid's objective – the seizure of both the
Duchessa d'Aosta
and the
Likomba
– might best be accomplished. The three were Colin Michie, the British Vice Consul at Santa Isabel, Major Victor Laversuch (W4), of SOE's ‘W' Section, and Lt Leonard Guise (W10), formerly of the Nigerian government service who had been seconded to SOE in March 1941. It says much for the intelligence, foresight and painstaking tactical appreciations conducted by these three undercover civilians that, when March-Phillipps and Appleyard finally arrived in Lagos on 14 December to run their professional and operational slide rule over their proposals, they adopted them virtually piecemeal. Sergeant Tom Winter, one of the original
Maid Honor
party who took part in Operation
Postmaster
, recorded: ‘Great credit must also be given to those nameless few who “prepared the ground”. Without their efforts the operation could never have succeeded, and at considerable hazard they were responsible for enabling plans to be made that reduced risk to a minimum.'
2

The final operational plan for
Postmaster
would ultimately have to be submitted via London to both General Giffard, the local army commander, and Admiral Willis, his naval counterpart. Before that could be done, however – and following the swift postponement of that 22 December H Hour after
Maid Honor
's late arrival made it hopelessly impracticable – the men in Lagos determined to secure London's formal agreement to a list of operational principles they drew up together. These were submitted and agreed by London on 20 December.
3
The ‘given' between London and Lagos was that both target vessels would be seized simultaneously by
coup de main
and towed into international waters, not simply blown up or disabled in Santa Isabel harbour; that the assault on both ships must take place at night; and that each target ship must be allocated its own towing tug whose professional master and crew must also take part in the operation.

Sitting there, making their plans, all were aware of the mission's potential for failing in spectacular fashion. Covert reconnaissance over many weeks by the shore party had established the size of the local Spanish garrison and the number of heavy weapons, including 6-inch guns and machine-guns that could be brought to engage the raiders if they were detected during the approach – the
Duchessa d'Aosta
was moored less than 60 yards from the end of the quay. And, even if the raiders reached the deck of both ships undetected in the darkness, their problems were by no means over. Unless taken by complete surprise, the crews of both vessels – there might be as many as thirty Italians aboard the merchant vessel, some of whom could be armed – could offer the potential of a prolonged and costly below-decks gun battle that could bring death, injury, exposure, mission failure, disgrace and political humiliation to the men of Maid Honor Force, the British consulate and the Foreign Office in distant London. If they
were
to succeed, ran SOE's reasoning in that signal to London, then more fighting men were needed, men who could be recruited locally. Force might well have to be used and there would be explosions as charges of plastic explosive went off to sever both target vessels from anchors and moorings. All involved conceded that Spanish
suspicion
of British involvement was unavoidable. What was absolutely vital, however, was to ensure that suspicion was not bolstered by the smallest shred of evidence. A new date was set for the raid during the next moonless period: Operation
Postmaster
would now be mounted on the night of 14–15 January 1942.

Matters now began to gather an exciting momentum: Governor Sir Bernard Bourdillon and the Nigerian government readily offered the loan of two tugs based in Lagos: the large government vessel
Vulcan
, which would be used to tow out the
Duchessa
d'Aosta
, and the smaller tug
Nuneaton
– together with their officers and crews. The seventeen extra men needed for the actual attack, it was anticipated, would be provided locally by the regular army commander, General Giffard.

†††

In Lagos, the men of Maid Honor Force found themselves surrounded by friends – and by enemies. Yet both were on the same side.

SOE agents, friends and members of the consulate staff had already helped plan the raid. Some had gone considerably further: Vice Consul Colin Michie persuaded a local aeroplane pilot to take him up joy-riding, with the result that he was able to present London and March-Phillipps with invaluable aerial photographs of the harbour showing the precise location of each vessel and its proximity to the shore; it is believed Michie was also responsible for arranging photographs of a rather different kind.
4
These were of the pro-Nazi Spanish governor, F.L. Soraluce, bathing naked with his African mistress. After these were brought to the Spanish governor's attention, his enthusiasm for ordering continuing close surveillance of British activities on Fernando Po decreased markedly.