The Lost Band of Brothers (23 page)

  
5
.  PREM 3/405/3.

  
6
.  These were promulgated in the
London Gazette
on 28 July 1942.

  
7
.  
Anders Lassen
, 89.

  
8
.  HS 7/235.

  
9
.  HS 3/89.

10
.  It would be found by autumn that ‘One prisoner is worth about ten dead Germans.’ (COHQ Most Secret Memo to OC No 62 Commando, 26 November 1942).

11
.  Commodore J. Hughes-Hallett, RN. Excerpt from Mountbatten Broadlands papers.

12
.  
The Commandos 1940–1946
, 152.

13
.  Ibid., 153.

14
.  Family tape loaned to this author.

15
.  
Undercover
, Patrick Howarth, 20.

16
.  Undated recording of interview conducted by Henrietta March-Phillipps with her mother, Marjorie Stewart. Recording passed to the author by her family.

17
.  Family audio tape loaned to the author.

18
.  
Geoffrey
, 111.

Anderson Manor nestles in rich, rolling Dorset farmland in a fold of land slightly north of the main road between Bere Regis to the south-west and Sturminster Marshall to the east. It is approximately 10 miles north-west of Poole Harbour and within rumbling lorry journey of Portland, Poole and Gosport, the likely ports of embarkation for the raids March-Phillipps and Appleyard hoped would soon follow. Privately owned, Anderson Manor is an imposing, Grade 1 Listed building dating back to 1622. It is a quadrangular, brick-built house with stone dressings and quoins, seven large rooms and a huge, walk-in arched fireplace in what was once the original kitchen. The main house of three stories has a symmetrical front with projecting gable wings at each end, and the roof is topped by two groups of four tall, octagonal-shaped brick chimneys, one for each of the master rooms below. Several floors boast mullioned and transomed windows with lead lights. Served by a wide staircase and gleaming wooden panelling up to the echoing, oak-floored bedrooms above, the property also supports a range of out-buildings, kitchen gardens and ancient walled flower beds. There is even a moat that dries out in summer, fed by the Winterborne River running across the front of the property. The main entrance has a heavy oak, iron-studded door with ancient inset spy-hole. There are formal gardens and even a private place of worship, the twelfth-century St Michael’s Chapel and family graveyard on the edge of the Manor’s grounds.

Tucked away from prying eyes at the end of an arrow-straight, tree-flanked driveway, March-Phillipps and Appleyard saw immediately that Anderson Manor would make an ideal headquarters for SOE’s No 62 Commando. Possessing neither running water nor electricity, the Manor reeked of history and the precious jewel that was the England March-Phillipps and his men felt they were fighting for. Better yet, Gus realised he had a slight acquaintance with the owner, Major Cholmondeley. Negotiations followed, reassurances were given about troops’ respect for private property and, after protective boarding was tacked over the ancient oak panelling, a generator was installed to provide lighting, a pump was set up to provide water from the well and Anderson Manor was as ready as it would ever be for this latest invasion of heavily armed troops. Appleyard remembered their first visit:

During the Friday’s house hunting we located an eminently suitable and magnificent house about seven miles from Wareham and ten from Poole. It is a large and very beautiful Elizabethan house and is in every way ideal for our purpose … The house is very much in the country, in a training area and with beautiful gardens. The head gardener is staying on and in our waiting times of which, I suppose, there are bound to be a great deal, we shall, when not training, give a hand in the grounds and gardens. The house, after the owners go, will be almost fully furnished … Dorsetshire was looking lovely – a really spring-like day. In the woods we found primroses and lovely scented purple violets, and the gardens were full of crocuses.
1

That same day – 21 March – March-Phillipps sent a secret signal to Brigadier Gubbins urging him to give him the authority and financial sanction to press ahead, and reviewing progress to date.
2
All was moving ahead most satisfactorily: the Chiefs of Staff had by then authorised the creation of a special raiding force under joint SOE and Combined Operations control.

SOE’s role would be to provide the men for the raiding parties themselves, some 40 per cent of whom would be foreign nationals whose secondment would also provide a ready pool for Combined Operations to draw on for other missions without breaching security by having to approach governments-in-exile directly for their loan. SOE would be responsible for providing the operational and training base (Anderson Manor), its administrative staff and transport and whatever specialised low-profile approach craft the unit might need. SOE was also to be responsible for providing arms, ammunition, explosives and what were euphemistically referred to as ‘special stores’:

Combined Operations were to provide two Motor Launches, their crews, maintenance and the equipment that would carry the raiding force off-shore to their target area. Actual operations and target selection would be controlled not by SOE, but by Combined Operations. It was a plan, evidently, that had Gus March-Phillipps’ approval. He urged Brigadier Gubbins: ‘This whole project undertaken by us in conjunction with Combined Operations is of major importance and it is incumbent upon us to put everything we know into it. Undoubtedly the Chief of Combined Operations [Lord Mountbatten] will take the greatest personal interest in it and also the Chiefs of Staff. We must, therefore, make every effort to get our part of the bargain carried out by the agreed date.’
3

Anderson Manor was ready for occupancy in late April. The old team reassembled as the men of Maid Honor Force, scattered to the four winds for security reasons on the heels of Operation
Postmaster
, gradually filtered back to Dorset, where they were reunited with friends whose trust had been earned on live operations. Initially there would be about thirty men under training living at Anderson Manor: ‘nearly all officers,’ observed Appleyard. The high proportion of officers was deliberate policy by March-Phillipps, who wanted to have to hand the nucleus for rapid expansion: he planned to double his force from 50 to 100 within three months. Among these early arrivals were Anders Lassen and André Desgrange, both of whom had found themselves seconded briefly after
Postmaster
to the SOE mission’s training school in Lagos.
4
March-Phillipps himself lost no time in settling in, writing back to his soon-to-be wife in London:

This is the first letter I have written to you, so it’s rather a great event. I wonder if it’s a record. Apple thinks it is. I wish you were here. It’s really a marvellous place, and the weather is perfect. Every morning I ride out through woods full of primroses and bluebells and violets with the dew still on them, and the sun shining through the early morning mist. I think that when the war is over we must settle down here, perhaps in this house if we’re very great people then, and spend a lot of time in the garden. It’s one of the most perfect gardens I’ve ever seen. Take great, great care of yourself for me, and I will do the same for you. And one day we will have peace and really get to know each other.
5

In the meantime, however, there was the business of war and the training for war.

Lt Sparks, RNVR, was appointed senior Motor Launch Commander and began taking over the two designated motor launches, 347 and 297, that were lying at Portland and converting them for silent, clandestine use. Major J. Wynne, the newly appointed Planning and Intelligence Officer attached to SSRF, made contact with the Intelligence Departments of both Combined Operations and Home Forces and submitted a first list of potential targets at the end of that same month.

Anderson Manor very quickly earned a local reputation as somewhere top secret: ‘I was the telephonist at Bere Regis during the war’ Ethel Brown remembered. ‘I did the night shift from 10pm to 6am. I remember the Anderson Manor lines were the top row on the board and all calls were scrambled so that we couldn’t hear the conversation. Anderson Manor was something to do with the Home Office and was closely guarded.’
6
Closely guarded, most certainly. And nothing whatever to do with the Home Office.

Amongst those who joined the new unit at Anderson Manor was Peter Kemp, former fighter in the Spanish Civil War and ex-member of the abortive Operation
Knife
team that never made it to Norway. He had completed SOE’s rigorous training in Scotland, after which nothing particular seemed to excite his attention. Cruising the SOE Baker Street offices in February and looking for interesting work, Colonel Munn, one of his instructors at Inverailort in 1940, advised him: ‘You had better join my old friend Gus March-Phillipps. He is recruiting officers for a scheme of his which should be just up your street.’
7
It was. The introduction to both March-Phillipps and Appleyard was to change his life:

However overworked and misapplied the words ‘personality’ and ‘genius’ may be, it is difficult to avoid their use in a description of these two remarkable characters … [B]y religion a deeply sincere Roman Catholic, by tradition an English country gentleman, [Gus] combined the idealism of a Crusader with the severity of a professional soldier. He was slightly built of medium height; his eyes, puckered from straining against tropical glare, gave him an enquiring, piercing and even formidable expression, only slightly mitigated by his tendency to stammer. Despite an unusually hasty temper he had a great sense of fairness towards his subordinates. In battle he was invariably calm. He was intelligent, without any great academic ability. Above all, he had the inspiration to conceive great enterprises, combined with the skill and daring to execute them; he was also most fortunate in his second-in-command. Of calmer temperament but similarly romantic nature, less impetuous but more obstinate, Appleyard combined a flair for organisation and planning with superb skill in action and a unique ability to instil confidence in time of danger.
8

March-Phillipps outlined his plans to create a raiding force that would take the fight to the enemy shore: ‘As I listened to the details of this plan and realised its enormous possibilities, the clouds of frustration that had hung over me during the last few months vanished.’
9
Before he left the office in Knightsbridge, Peter Kemp and his friend John Burton were both on the strength of the Small Scale Raiding Force. It would be some weeks, however, before Anderson Manor was ready for occupancy. What would they like to do in the meantime, asked Gus, democratically? The answer, they decided, was to get really fit for the raiding work that lay ahead and brush up their knowledge of fieldcraft and demolitions. So back they went to the Western Highlands for more commando training, this time at Inverailort. It was the usual stuff, refined and honed to a new intensity through the sweat, hardship and experience of countless courses:

Carrying tommy-guns and fifty-pound rucksacks, we tramped across the hills in mist and darkness, trying to find our way by compass, stumbling over invisible obstacles, sinking into bogs and falling into gullies and ravines … within three weeks we were thoroughly fit, competent at demolitions and accurate with pistol and tommy-gun.
10

Peter Kemp went back to London in time for March-Phillipps’ wedding on 18 April 1942 where he met both Graham Hayes – ‘a quiet, serious-minded young man with great personal charm, courage and strength.’ – and Anders Lassen – ‘a cheerful, lithe Dane with a thirst for killing Germans and a wild bravery’.
11

The operational personnel started moving in to Anderson Manor on 24 April. Arrangements were made for experts in explosives, small arms and knife fighting, security and escape and evasion to visit Anderson Manor once training had begun. First operations, it was hoped, would take place in the middle of May but would depend upon the time it took to arm and fit out the two MLs. At this stage, the strength of SSRF stood at eighteen officers and five other ranks.
12
The new unit plunged immediately into a period of intensive training. It was commando Scotland all over again, but without the midges.

Another new volunteer was Capt. Francis Howard, Baron Howard of Penrith, known to all as ‘Long John’ because of his height:

Appleyard was doing the interviewing and decided to take me on, despite my age being rather above the average [he was 38] … There were rather more officers than men and our training was probably fairly standard … We trained with plastic explosives, gelignite and so on. We did grenade throwing, pistol shooting. There were ranges all round the manor. We did some exercises with live detonators stuck in potatoes which we threw at each other; one had to duck out of the way or risk being hurt … It was a very pleasant unit in which everyone got on extremely well, and there didn’t seem to be much difference between the ranks. It was an extraordinary happy experience, in a way. There was a cherub in the garden and there was a slightly dangerous practice of letting off all our guns at his navel!
13

Within the grounds of Anderson Manor they built a covered ‘double-tap’ pistol range and an assault course with ditches full of barbed wire. They turned the old butler’s pantry into their armoury. Explosives were kept in an air raid shelter outside; the ancient moat, filled with barbed wire, had to be jumped; a Nissen hut was erected for close quarter gutter fighting
a la
Sykes and Fairbairn – the two Shanghai policemen turned SOE killing instructors whose double-edged, needle-pointed, custom-designed daggers each man now carried. Ropes were slung high in the ancient limes lining the driveway and these had to be climbed up and then crossed in full equipment. There were also night compass exercises across country. Sergeant Tom Winter recalled: