The Lost Band of Brothers (34 page)

14
.  Statement by James Edgar to author.

15
.  
The War in the Channel Islands
, 154.

16
.  
Anders Lassen
, 121.

17
.  Redborn,
The War in the Channel Islands
, 154.

18
.  DEFE 2/109.

19
.  
The War in the Channel Islands
, 154

20
.  
No Ordinary Life
, 70–72.

21
.  James Edgar interview with author.

22
.  
The War in the Channel Islands
, 154.

23
.  
Anders Lassen
, 123.

24
.  In their book ‘
If I Must Die …
’ French authors Fournier and Heintz claim an SOE agent, Roman Zawadski, was also recovered from Sark during Operation
Basalt
. However, there is no record of this in the files and there is no record of an SOE agent by that name in the SOE Files at The National Archives, Kew.

25
.  
Anders Lassen
, 122.

26
.  Jodl was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. His request to die before a firing squad was refused. He was hanged on 16 October 1946.

27
.  
The War in the Channel Islands
, 156.

28
.  Letter from Lord Louis Mountbatten at the Broadlands Archive, Hartland Library, University of Southampton, Ref MB1/b58.

29
.  
Anders Lassen
, 129.

30
.  Details recorded by Oundle School, Patrick Dudgeon’s alma mater. He and Trooper Bernard Brunt are buried side by side in Florence War Cemetery, graves IX H.8 and IX H.9.

Anderson Manor remained, for them all that late summer, their place of quintessential refuge. It was their haven of calm and recovery after the fear and maelstrom of dark-night Channel crossings and incessant raiding. By early autumn 1942 – and in less than two months – they had planned or carried out eleven raids,
1
killed at least seven of the enemy, wounded half a dozen more and brought home eight most useful and communicative prisoners. They had returned from the enemy shore with code books and ciphers, pass books and maps, signal codes, weapons and equipment and, perhaps most important of all, they had planted fear and glance-over-the-shoulder unease in the heart of the enemy they had left behind. None of this had been accomplished, however, without cost: eleven of their own men, including their inspirational leader, were now posted as either killed, captured or missing. Appleyard was amongst those who found Anderson Manor balm for the pain of loss, sorrow and conflict, writing to Major Cholmondeley, the man whose home they had requisitioned:

I have been wanting to tell you how much we appreciate the Manor – it has proved an ideal house in every way and to this unit a real home of which we have grown very fond. There is such a quiet and peaceful atmosphere about the house and gardens and often, after a night raid, coming back in the first light next morning, tired and often rather strung-up and on edge, it has been a real relief and relaxation to get back to such a lovely place. I know that Gus felt this very strongly – he often remarked on it to me – and I think the atmosphere of this house has, in an appreciable way, contributed to the making of what has been regarded in the high places, up to date, as a very successful little show. We have a grand crowd of men here and they have universally respected the privilege of living in this house. I don’t think you would be disappointed if you could see the house now – it is kept beautifully clean and, although sparsely furnished, is very comfortable.
2

Those ‘high places’ mentioned by Appleyard in that letter were, indeed, the highest in the land. Whatever the long-term implications and even embarrassments of Operation
Basalt
might yet turn out to be – word of the hand-tying had yet to be made public by the Germans – in local and tactical terms, the raid had been an outstanding success. The very next day after returning from Sark, Appleyard found himself ordered to London to meet both the Prime Minister and the Chiefs of Staff in Churchill’s private rooms at the House of Commons:

Yesterday was a very thrilling day … partly spent at the House – in the Prime Minister’s private room. He unexpectedly congratulated me. The CIGS [Chief of the Imperial General Staff] shook hands and said ‘It was a very good show!’ That was General Sir Alan Brooke, of course. General Sir Ronald Adam [Churchill’s Adjutant General and close confidant of Sir Alan Brooke] was also present (as were Pound [Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord],
3
Anthony Eden [Foreign Secretary], and quite a few other well-known people) and he said almost exactly the same thing. The Chief of Staff has directed the Chief of Combined Operations to make Small Scale Raiding a major part of his policy and has said that we are going to be given every assistance and facility! Wouldn’t Gus have been thrilled! That is the type of recognition for which he was always working.
4

The unit conceived by March-Phillipps was giving the Prime Minister exactly what he wanted. Undeterred by stories of trussed prisoners – some reports suggest he was actually delighted – Churchill’s growl rang out from Edinburgh a week later on the day he was made a Freeman of that city:

The British Commando raids at different points along this enormous coast, although so far only the forerunner of what is to come, inspire the author of so many crimes and miseries with a lively anxiety. His soldiers dwell among populations who would kill them with their hands if they got the chance, and will kill them one at a time when they
do
get the chance. In addition, there comes out from the sea from time to time a hand of steel which plucks the German sentries from their posts with growing efficiency, amid the joy of the whole countryside.
5

The Chief of Staff minutes of the following day, 13 October, reflected Churchill’s mood for Action This Day and declared, under ‘Future Operations’:

Raiding Operations

THE PRIME MINISTER stated that he wished the Chief of Combined Operations to intensify his small scale raids, as he was certain that the Germans were being worried by them.
6

That intensification took immediate effect. By the middle of October 1942 Mountbatten had announced that, with SOE agreement, the Small Scale Raiding Force would be increased dramatically in size. Anderson Manor would remain the headquarters of No 62 Commando, SSRF’s cover name, but there would now be an additional four troops based in four more requisitioned manor houses scattered along the south coast. These would be at Scorries House in Redruth, Cornwall; Lupton House in Dartmouth, Devon; Wraxhall Manor in Dorchester, Dorset; and Inchmery in Exbury, Hampshire. The new troops would be staffed by a core of experienced SSRF soldiers augmented by trained commandos joining SSRF on temporary attachment, bringing the unit strength now to 18 officers and about 100 other ranks. Evidently, the newly expanded force would now need a more substantial chain of command and Major Bill Stirling – brother of David, founder of the SAS – was posted in as lieutenant colonel with Major Appleyard in charge of operations. More boats would be allocated to the unit, too.

On 18 October Hitler issued his Top Secret commando order. From now on, any subordinate commander who failed to execute
immediately
or pass to the Gestapo (which amounted to the same thing) any commandos, special forces or saboteurs who fell into their hands would be liable to face charges of negligence and punishment under military law.

Two days earlier Combined Operations Headquarters had indefinitely postponed a raid by SSRF which, had it taken place, would almost certainly have provided Hitler’s
Kommandobefehl
with its first scapegoats. Operation
Facsimile
was finally abandoned because of prevailing weather conditions and the ending of summer. The onset of autumn gales and moonlit conditions notwithstanding, it is difficult to see, from this remove, why Operation
Facsimile
was permitted to progress from being one of a hundred hair-brained schemes destined for the waste-paper basket to a project that merited its own code-name and which, but for the weather, would definitely have been mounted.

Major Gwynne, the SSRF planner at Anderson Manor known as ‘Killer’ Gwynne because of his eagerness to take part in the raids from which his administrative role precluded him, was now to have his chance.

The plan – on paper – was simple: a party of two officers and two other ranks from SSRF was to be carried across to the Brittany shore by MGB 312. There they were to paddle ashore by Goatley on the north coast of Brittany near Beg-an-Fry, land on rocks to avoid leaving footprints and move overland towards the German airfield at Gaël, north-east of Mauron. Gaël was approximately 30 miles inland. The team was then to spend up to a week lying up in enemy territory. During this time they would first recce and then attack Gaël aerodrome, destroying whatever aircraft they found there with special 2lb bombs of plastic explosive armed with six-hour fuses. Ludicrous steps were taken during planning to enable Gywnne and his men to carry out their reconnaissance deep inside enemy territory without detection. According to Peter Kemp – who erroneously places this raid
after
rather than before Operation
Fahrenheit
– Gwynne spent much of his time before the raid away from Anderson Manor:

visiting various SOE experimental stations, in particular one concerned with camouflage. He reappeared at the end of his tour with two unusual pieces of equipment. One of them was a lifelike cow’s head in papier mâché with holes pierced through the eyes; the other was a curious arrangement of fine-meshed camouflage netting … The mask was for road-watching … he would lie up in a field beside a main road and push his head, enveloped in the mask, through the hedge; thus disguised, he would be able to keep a watch on the road and observe the number and nature of enemy troops using it.

The purpose of the netting was even simpler: ‘It enables a man to disguise himself at will as a rubbish heap or a pile of sticks,’ explained Gywnne.
7
Today’s SBS would recognise the use of the netting, if not the cow’s head of papier mâché whose composition presumably, would become interesting after heavy rain.

With recce and airfield attack successfully completed, Major Gywnne and his merry band were then to escape overland down the length of France into neutral Spain almost 400 miles away to the south. Not all of France was occupied by the Germans at that time (it would be, however, in less than a month’s time), but the Zone Non-Occupée was still the best part of 100 miles away.

Lord Mountbatten designated Major Appleyard the overall force commander with Major J.M.W. Gwynne officer commanding the landing party. By that stage, one may presume, Appleyard had proved himself too valuable to risk on a mission which, from the outset, must have had little chance of success and from which the odds on a safe return were slender indeed. Briefing notes
8
disclose that the men would take sleeping bags, tommy cookers and four forty-eight-hour ration packs apiece. They were blithely expected to supplement these bulky rations with ‘fruit, vegetables and nuts from the country’. A country, moreover, that was occupied by elements of 17 Infantry Division and 6 Panzer, while at Gaël itself ‘the usual aerodrome garrison of 640 men may be expected, although it is considered possible that the garrison will be much under strength here owing to the relative inactivity of the aerodrome in the past’.
9

By summer 1942, raids on enemy airfields in the vast empty spaces of the western desert, conceived by David Stirling, were becoming the stuff of legend. But Brittany was more than just western desert without sand and the thickly populated, heavily occupied hinterland of Brittany offered a more complex tactical challenge than Egypt’s Qattara Depression. It is possible, of course, that there were other, more intelligent, secret orders that tied
Facsimile
in with SOE agents and saboteurs with strong local knowledge who were already on the Breton ground. If such orders exist, they remain untraced by this author; it is also possible that a direct para-drop of saboteurs into the area was also considered to obviate the dangers of a lengthy approach march by four heavily armed men weighed down with rucksacks containing rations, explosives, cookers and sleeping bags. Again, no trace of such a possibility has been discovered. It still remains difficult to understand, however, why Gaël aerodrome was not simply bombed to SOE markers; why SOE agents in place were not involved or, most particularly, why extraction home by sea was rejected in favour of that lengthy and extremely risky evasion south to Spain whilst living off nuts and fruit plucked from the sparse autumn hedgerows of wartime France.

There were several attempts to land
Facsimile
on the Brittany coast on the nights of 10–16 October. On 10, 11 and 12 October, MGB 314 was turned back because of weather and sea conditions. On 13 October the operation was cancelled by C-in-C Plymouth (Admiral Forbes) owing to what were termed ‘other activities’ in the Channel. On 14 and 15 October the weather was unsuitable. The briefing officer safely back in Combined Operations Headquarters suggested ‘a slight or moderate wind is desirable for landing’. On 16 October – the last sailing opportunity of the autumn offering the right moonless conditions – they got rather more than that. After meeting wind Force 5–6 increasing on the outward leg with a heavy westerly swell, the frail, wooden-hulled gunboat that was MGB 314 wisely turned for home. After slamming through rough seas for three and a half hours Appleyard – who, as usual, had sailed as navigator – reported: ‘Owing to the weather which may be expected in the next four months and the fact that from now on, owing to the falling of the leaf, cover ashore will be considerably reduced, it is no longer considered possible to carry out this operation before spring.’
10
Brigadier Godfrey Wildman-Lushington,
11
Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff, concurred. On 20 October Operation
Fascimile
was postponed indefinitely. It was a wise decision. It was also, quite possibly, a merciful deliverance.