The Lost Band of Brothers (31 page)

22
.  Lt Freddie Bourne interview. IWM 11721.

23
.  Ibid.

24
.  
Anders Lassen
, 111–12.

25
.  ‘
If I Must Die …
’, 231.

26
.  Tom Winter statement post Operation
Aquatint
. In DEFE 2/365.

27
.  
Anders Lassen
, 110.

28
.  BBC Henrietta.

29
.  DEFE 2/365.

30
.  James Edgar interview with the author, 2012.

31
.  
No Colours or Crest
, 58.

32
.  
Geoffrey
, 133.

When Appleyard reported back to COHQ in London on the disaster that was Operation
Aquatint
, there was an extensive debrief. That same day Combined Operations’ Intelligence Officer GSO2 Major Ian Collins issued a memorandum entitled: ‘Lessons Learnt and Notes for Future Consideration Ref: S.S.R.F.’
1

Top of the list of twelve points was a statement of the painfully obvious that ‘The risk of carrying out a frontal assault even on a supposedly lightly defended objective is considerable.’ Having stated that the plan had to be changed once it was found impossible to identify the small beach and narrow gully that had been their primary landing objective, Collins went on to note the need for choosing a landing place where ‘a safe and quick get away can be effected’. With hindsight, it should perhaps have been noted at the early planning stage that, on the exposed Normandy coast, there were likely to be precious few of those once the German defences had been alerted and started putting flares or starshell up over the flat and open sea. Yet alerting the German defences was the implicit and desired consequence of all such raids. In any event, noted Collins, the raiding force should in future be backed up by two Goatleys, not just one.

There should also be an agreed recovery plan in case raiding parties got left behind. Lt Bourne and Capt. Appleyard received a mild rap over the knuckles for hazarding their boat: ‘MTB incurred too great a risk in lying so close off-shore and was lucky not to be sunk’, but there was praise for their navigation throughout which he described as ‘excellent’. At that early stage the morning after the raid, however, the true extent of the navigational error that put the Goatley so far west of their objective had yet to be realised.

News of the disaster that had befallen the men of Operation
Aquatint
– that the entire raiding party of six officers and five other ranks were now to be posted missing – was distributed four days later by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of Combined Operations. Stating that ‘it is particularly requested, for operational reasons, that further circulation of this report may be severely restricted’,
2
Mountbatten sent it to the C-in-Cs Portsmouth, Plymouth, Portland and Dover, to Gubbins at SOE, to their friend and mentor Brigadier Robert ‘Lucky’ Laycock at the newly formed SS Brigade and to the Air Officer Commanding Nos 11 and 12 Group, Royal Air Force. It was also circulated to a host of smaller commands and organisations.

Two days later Mountbatten made time to write another, more private letter in his own hand. It was to Marjorie, the newly widowed wife of Gus March-Phillipps. By then his death, at least, had been confirmed. Mountbatten wrote to her at the home she and Gus had just made in Alford Street:

I write to you to express my deep sympathy in the loss of your husband.

There is little I can say except to tell you of our impressions of him during the short time he operated under my command and it is because these impressions were so strong that I wish to write to you.

He was convinced that the spirit that had led so many Englishmen into many dangerous ventures was still alive and his determination to attack the enemy and carry out the kind of raids he had in mind was so strong that he overcame every obstacle; and having done so carried out three brilliant and successful raids.

This success was very largely due to his own skill and leadership and to the fine spirit he had infused into the special force he commanded. We can ill afford to lose someone of his character and ability.

Both myself and my staff had grown personally very fond of him during the short time we came to know him. We shall miss him very much, and I would like to express our sympathy to yourself in your greater loss.

Yours sincerely

Louis Mountbatten
3

There was also the standard war casualty letter of elegant condolence from King George VI:

The Queen and I offer you our heartfelt sympathy in your great sorrow.

We pray that your country’s gratitude for a life so nobly given in its service may bring you some measure of consolation.

George RI

Gustavus March-Phillipps had been a firebrand patriot seemingly from an earlier, Elizabethan age who had marched to the beat of Drake’s drum. Once he had nursed plans to raid Harfleur on St Crispin’s Day, the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt. Now, the inspirational, short-tempered visionary who Peter Kemp said combined ‘the idealism of a Crusader with the severity of a professional soldier’, the former novelist who had knelt by his bed in prayer each night, was gone.

Peter Kemp wrote to Marjorie:

[A]lthough I only knew him for so short a time, he made an impression on me that will last all my life. His sincerity, personality and power of leadership, his magnificent ideals and his personal charm and kindness made him one of the finest men I have ever had the privilege of knowing and I am proud to have served under him.
4

According to one account, Lassen sensed his leader’s death. He had been granted weekend leave and had spent the night at the home of a Mrs Knight in Bournemouth. Earlier that evening he had taken to pacing the room restlessly and gazing out at the weather. In the middle of the night he had woken up ‘with a loud yell’ convinced, in that moment, that Gus had been killed.
5

Desmond Longue remembered March-Phillipps from the
Postmaster
days: ‘He was a tremendous patriot. Almost to … to the point that one looked at him and wondered whether he was really true.’ Henrietta, the daughter he would now never see, agreed: ‘Yes – sometimes I wondered if Gus and Apple were really true too – they were so very idealistic – above all, so very patriotic. Looking back from now it would be easy to laugh.’
6
The nervous ex-Indian Army officer who kept himself dosed with Sanatogen and whose papers included a 1938 certificate from the Pelman Institute for ‘The Scientific Development of Mind and Memory’, the Elizabethan buccaneer born into the wrong age, left a legacy that perhaps echoes some of that ambivalence expressed to Brigadier Gubbins by Julius Hanau in London before Operation
Postmaster.
What was it that made Gus March-Phillipps impressive, enabled him to elicit such fierce loyalty from some men and yet repel others in equal measure?

‘I’ve spent … I suppose I’ve spent thirty years it is now, jolly nearly, trying to work out the answer to that question and one knows that one invents all sorts of false reasons,’ reflected Jan Nasmyth in 1972:

One thinks of him as being a great commander and a great leader of men and that sort of thing … But in many ways he wasn’t. In many ways he was an extremely bad one. I’ve met people who said they couldn’t get on with him at all, and some people thought he was a snob, obviously, and other people said he’s so nervy that he had a terrible effect on people, and he certainly did that to me. I mean, in the end I quit the outfit because I was more or less nervously demoralised by Gus. He had this terrible temper, besides being very nervous. But – and I think, you see, it’s very hard to describe – that Gus seemed to be able to live almost an inspired life at times. These were times when he had reached some sort of level of balance inside himself.
7

Tony Hall, the man left on the beach in Normandy after being struck on the head by a German stick grenade as he tried to grab a prisoner during
Aquatint
had no such ambivalence, no such doubts, not even thirty years later:

He [Gus] somehow wrapped up for one all that one loved in this country and all that one loved when going to the aid of other people. He represented to me exactly what I wanted for one and a half years … I wanted a hero to lead me. And he was a hero.
8

In Africa, Gus March-Phillipps had sometimes whiled away the hours of boredom writing poems. Perhaps one of these might stand as his epitaph:

If I must die in this great war

When so much seems in vain

And man in huge unthinking hordes

Is slain as sheep are slain

But with less thought: then do I seek

One last good grace to gain

Let me die, Oh Lord, as I learned to live

When the world seemed young and gay

And ‘Honour Bright’ was a phrase they used

That they do not use today

And faith was something alive and warm

When we gathered round to pray

Let me be simple and sure once more

Oh Lord, if I must die

Let the mad unreason of reasoned doubt

Unreasoning, pass me by,

And the mass mind, and the mercenary,

And the everlasting ‘why’.

Let me be brave and gay again

Oh Lord, when my time is near

Let the good in me rise up and break

The stranglehold of fear;

Say that I die for Thee and The King

And what I hold most dear.

Major Gustavus March-Phillipps, DSO, MBE, 1908–1942

†††

It was low water. At dawn on the same day that they had been killed, Tom Winter and André Desgrange were ordered to carry the bodies of their three comrades above the high water mark on the beach where they had been washed ashore. They were filmed doing so by a German propaganda unit. On 15 September, all three commandos were buried in the French village cemetery of Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer when, once again, the ceremony was filmed. Three carts, each carrying a coffin bedecked with flowers, were driven to the cemetery preceded by a section of 3rd Reserve Company stationed at Saint Laurent. German officers brought up the rear. Local civilians were forbidden to attend but two men, Jules Scelles and First World War veteran Henri Leroutier,
9
watched secretly from behind a wall. After the service a guard of honour fired a three-gun salute over the graves.

Major Gustavus March-Phillipps, Private Richard Lehniger and Serjeant Alan Williams had been laid to rest side by side. They lie there still.

†††

The Intelligence Officer at Combined Operations Headquarters made further recommendations in the light of
Aquatint
’s failure:

  9.  It is strongly recommended that as soon as possible another raid is carried out for the sake of morale; next suggested raid (island of Sark) is to be carried out approximately Sept 20. The fact must be faced that we are certain to have some mishaps.

10.  Every encouragement should be given to SSRF to bring their numbers back to normal. Capt. Appleyard is seeing Brigadier Gubbins. A detachment from No 12 Commando could probably be made available immediately.

11.  Captain Appleyard MC to be appointed SSRC [Small Scale Raiding Commander].

12.  Question of awards to SSRF.
10

Capt. Geoffrey Appleyard was now promoted Major, Commanding Officer, SSRF. He had a meeting with Gubbins on 21 September and it appears likely from the cryptic single word diary entry ‘Anderson’ that Gubbins visited Anderson Manor – possibly to quite literally rally the troops – on 26–27 September.
11

The attack on Sark would, indeed, be the next raid by the men of the Small Scale Raiding Force. Operation
Basalt
would earn its place in history, however, not for yet more displays of courage in the pursuit of some shining Elizabethan ideal but for precisely the opposite: for the raiders’ deliberate killing of prisoners who were both trussed and unarmed. According to testimony given by Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s Chief of Staff, at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, the SSRF raid on Sark and the tying of prisoners was seen as one of
the
signal events of provocation that led to the issue of Hitler’s infamous
Kommandobefehl
(commando order) later that same month. Signed by Jodl, this led to the execution of scores of captured commandos and members of the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS). It would also lead directly to the execution of one of March-Phillipps’ men cast ashore on Operation
Aquatint
, who was even now making his way doggedly towards the illusion of safety and freedom.

  
1
.  ADM 179/227.

  
2
.  Ibid.

  
3
.  Amongst March-Phillipps’ personal papers at The Imperial War Museum in file 06/103.

  
4
.  Letter from Peter Kemp to Marjorie March-Phillipps dated September 30 1942 in Gus March-Phillipps’ papers, 06/103, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

  
5
.  
Supreme Courage
, Peter de la Billière.

  
6
.  BBC Radio documentary,
If Any Question Why We Died
, Henrietta March-Phillipps, August 1970.

  
7
.  BBC Henrietta.

  
8
.  Ibid.

  
9
.  ‘
If I Must Die …
’, 123.

10
.  ADM 179/227.

11
.  Colin Gubbins’ diary entry in the Gubbins Papers, 12618, Documents and Sound Section, Imperial War Museum.

In the immediate aftermath of Operation
Aquatint
, two other raids were considered and then abandoned before
Basalt
became a reality. The first of these was Operation
Woodland
, a raid on Cap Levy near Cherbourg by twelve SSRF to capture enemy personnel and destroy a searchlight and machine-gun position. This had advanced some way down the planning pipeline before it was cancelled: the losses endured on Operation
Aquatint
had stripped SSRF of the experienced men it needed to mount the raid. Replacements would arrive shortly, certainly, but they would need to be trained and assimilated into the ways of night raiding. Until then a raid that involved up to twelve SSRF was simply too ambitious. Operation
Woodland
was scrubbed.
Blarneystone
was cancelled for different reasons: a straightforward recce along almost identical lines to that on Burhou, to see if the tiny Îles St Marcouf some way off shore almost opposite what would become D-Day’s
Utah
beach in Normandy, was cancelled because of bad weather and lack of suitable raiding craft. The date of that proposed raid is not known but it is possible that it too had been planned before disaster overtook Operation
Aquatint.
And that the lack of MTB/ML availability for the two men of SSRF who might have carried out the recce – possibly by kayak – was linked to the bullet-damage to the engine that put MTB 344 out of action and back into the Camper Nicholson workshops for overhaul and repair.