The Lost Band of Brothers (38 page)

In the wake of Operation
Basalt
and the killing by SSRF of bound prisoners, Hitler had retaliated, not only by issuing his infamous
Kommandobefehl
, but by ordering the shackling of the 1,300 prisoners – mainly Canadian – captured at Dieppe. Canada responded by ordering the shackling of German prisoners in Canadian POW camps. This tit-for-tat squabble was only resolved by the intervention of the International Red Cross.

One of those who suffered no ill-effects from Operation
Basalt
was the raid commander, Geoffery Appleyard. In fact, quite the reverse. On 15 December he received an early Christmas present when the
London Gazette
announced that Lieutenant (temporary Captain, acting Major) John Geoffrey Appleyard, MC, had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The award recognised his outstanding personal contribution to the five SSRF raids carried out between August and October 1942 – Operations
Barricade
,
Dryad
,
Branford
,
Aquatint
and
Basalt –
and stated: ‘The success of these operations has been largely dependent on his courage, determination and great skill in navigation.’
18
Lord Louis Mountbatten added his personal congratulations:

Dear Appleyard,

I was so very pleased to see that you had been awarded the DSO and send you my heartiest congratulations. It was a very well deserved award and you have played a most important part in the execution of all the small raids which have been carried out by the Small Scale Raiding Force.

I hope that opportunity and good luck will give you every chance of achieving still further successes in carrying out this type of operation and I feel sure that the skill and initiative which you have shown in the past will continue to contribute towards the future successes of the Small Scale Raiding Force.

Again my heartiest congratulations.

Yours sincerely

Louis Mountbatten
19

In his reply to the Chief of Combined Operations, Appleyard did not waste the opportunity to hammer home the creed he and March-Phillipps had shared and evolved:

Thank you for your good wishes for the future of our small force. I speak for everyone in SSRF when I say that we are all determined to do everything possible to increase the effectiveness and the scope of these raids, and to make them an increasing source of worry and annoyance to the enemy.
20

Appleyard may have answered to Louis Mountbatten for operations, but he was still seconded to SOE and Brigadier Colin Gubbins. He too sent his congratulations, addressing him familiarly:

My Dear Apple

Many congratulations indeed on your very well-deserved DSO of which I have only very recently heard. I am delighted for your sake, and that of your unit.

My best wishes for your success in 1943

Yours sincerely

Colin Gubbins
21

When Appleyard attended the Palace for the investiture of his DSO it was his third appearance before his King in eleven months. ‘King George paused during the proceedings to have conversation with Geoffrey and opened by saying: ‘What, you here again? So soon?’
22

Appleyard, most certainly, had stepped into a pool of limelight enjoyed by a very few. That autumn he received two prestigious invitations. The first was from the King and Queen to attend a Thanksgiving party at the Palace along with fifty other young British and American officers. The second was to spend a weekend at Chequers with the Prime Minister, his family and two young recipients of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valour. Operational commitments meant that he missed both.

As 1942 drew to a close, however, not everything was champagne, medals and garden parties. Behind the scenes in Whitehall, a row was brewing – and it wasn’t a new one. The old argument about the conflicting merits of SSRF and the priority that should be accorded small scale raiding was gathering in intensity, sharpening in focus. Despite Mountbatten’s early protestations as espoused by his Chief of Plans back in November, there was
still
a significant, ongoing and intractable conflict of interest between SIS and Combined Operations/SOE that, despite Churchill’s romantic vision of that ‘hand of steel’ reaching out across the Channel, simply could not be permitted to continue.

As has been shown, the welcome expansion of SSRF in early October after Operation
Aquatint
had come with strings attached: plans had to be submitted to Hughes-Hallett and pre-raid clearance had now to be given by the naval commander-in-chief – Plymouth or Portsmouth – in whose sea area SSRF intended to operate. Thus, in December 1942, Operations
Weathervane
and
Promise
were both ‘cancelled by C-in-C Plymouth owing to interference with SIS’.
23
Weathervane
had been planned as a twelve-man recce, attack and prisoner snatch on a German OP at Pte de Minard, south of Paimpol in northern Brittany; Operation
Promise
was a similar mission on Pointe de Sahir, south of Trebeurden in the Baie de Lannion.
24
Both were vetoed. That monocled Admiral, Sir Charles Morton Forbes, GCB, DSO, commander-in-chief, Plymouth, was keeping German sentries alive in Brittany.

  
1
.  
No Colours or Crest
, 59.

  
2
.  Rooney papers: information from private papers loaned to the author by Chris Rooney, son of Major Oswald ‘Mickey’ Rooney.

  
3
.  
No Colours or Crest
, 62.

  
4
.  Rooney papers: information from private papers loaned to the author by Chris Rooney.

  
5
.  Ibid.

  
6
.  Personal anecdote recounted to the author by Chris Rooney.

  
7
.  DEFE 2/109.

  
8
.  
No Colours or Crest
, 64.

  
9
.  Ibid.

10
.  Ibid., 66.

11
.  Ibid.

12
.  Ibid.

13
.  Ibid.

14
.  Ibid.

15
.  In fact, on or about that same evening, Graham Hayes was laid up in Le Manoir, the home of resistant Suzanne Septavaux in Le Pin, outside Lisieux.

16
.  Although Appleyard ‘signed off’ the after-action report on Operation
Batman
on 19 November, it seems unlikely, given his leave commitments, that he was also navigator aboard MTB 344 on that particular mission.

17
.  ADM 116/5112.

18
.  Ibid.

19
.  ADM 116/5112.

20
.  Ibid.

21
.  Ibid.

22
.  
Geoffrey
, 138.

23
.  DEFE 2/694.

24
.  A third mission, Operation
Trelliswork
, had been planned at around this time as a canoe-mounted beach recce on Sept Isles, northern Brittany, by four SSRF. Pre-raid mechanical problems with the MGB carrier resulted in the mission’s cancellation.

November 1942 closed with yet another review of the arguments for and against the stepping up of small scale raiding with the new Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Edmund Rushbrooke, observing: ‘The value of naval intelligence obtained from raids has been negligible compared with that which is obtained by other methods … As far as operations of NID(C) [Slocum’s section] and NID(Q) [SOE’s naval section] are concerned, any increase in the enemy’s vigilance is, of course, also most undesirable.’ He concluded more constructively: ‘From every point of view it would seem desirable that each raid should be considered on its merits, in the early planning stages, by an impartial authority with knowledge of the above considerations.’
1
But those ‘above considerations’ had more to do with SIS’s view of their side of the hill than that of Combined Operations.

Admiral Rushbrooke’s points were robustly rebutted by Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier Godfrey Wildman-Lushington who pointed out on Christmas Eve 1942:

CCO [Mountbatten] has received clear and definite instructions from the Prime Minister and Chiefs of Staff to intensify small scale raids and his letters, to which C-in-C Plymouth refers, are in accordance with those instructions … the arguments in favour of the raids are clearly formulated. There is no doubt that the most valuable result is that they tend to make the Germans employ more men on work of a purely defensive nature … in so far as German Divisions in France are resting from the Eastern Front, the raids disturb their rest, and generally help to make the individual German long to go home … Recent information indicates that the enemy dislikes these raids intensely.
2

Such repeated purely tactical arguments, however, cut little ice. The Director of Naval Intelligence’s suggestion of pre-raid review by ‘an impartial authority’ on 29 November 1942 was more than just a random straw in the wind; it was a portent of what was to come.

Mountbatten recognised the clash of priorities for what they were – a direct threat to his raiding policy – and resolved to address the issue head-on, writing to the Chiefs of Staff on 22 December 1942:

At a meeting held on 13th October 1942, the Chiefs of Staff took note with approval that, in accordance with the Prime Minister’s instructions, the Chief of Combined Operations would intensify his small scale raiding operations.

Since then I have taken steps both to increase the small military force available for carrying out such raids, and the number of operations; but recent experience has brought to light two points with regard to the agreed small scale raiding policy which I feel should be brought to the notice of the Chiefs of Staff.
3

Mountbatten went on to point out that the northern coast of France – with the exception of the Brittany peninsula – was strongly guarded, making it unsuitable for small scale raids. The Dutch and Belgian coasts presented similar difficulties. Which meant that the only bit of the French coastline suitable for raiding was that which lay west of the Cherbourg Peninsula – precisely the same area favoured for the same reasons by SOE and ‘C’ – SIS. Mountbatten did not mince his words:

Intensified small scale raiding is likely to stir up these coasts, to increase enemy vigilance, and to make the task [of SOE and SIS] considerably harder, and there is no doubt that small scale raiding runs directly counter to their activities … west of the Cherbourg Peninsula strong representations have been made that such raiding activities should cease owing to ‘C’s increasing difficulties caused by the occupation of unoccupied France …

In view of the intensification of these raids I think that the Chiefs of Staff should be aware of their implication on the activities of [SOE and SIS] and should give their general agreement for the continuation of numerous small scale raids in the areas which I have mentioned …

No guidance has yet been given to the various Commanders-in-Chief regarding the importance which should be attached to the despatch of these small scale raids; nor has the policy, stated by the Prime Minister and approved by the Chiefs of Staff concerning these small operations, been communicated to them. It is suggested that the attached signal ‘A’ should be sent stating their agreed policy in order that the Commanders-in-Chief will have some guidance in assessing their importance.
4

Signal ‘A’ availed Mountbatten little. Early in the New Year the Chiefs of Staff met on 4 January to discuss small scale raiding. Mountbatten, however, arrived late. In his absence the Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir Henry Moore, stated that the Admiralty had already encountered difficulties adjudicating between the conflicting demands of SIS, SOE and Combined Operations. He then circulated his own note suggesting the way forward. With Mountbatten still not in the room, the representative of the CIGS,
5
Lt General Archibald Nye, and the RAF’s Air Vice Marshal Charles Medhurst, Vice Chief of the Air Staff, both stated that, as far as they were concerned ‘the information provided by ‘C’ [SIS] was of such importance that his activities should have priority over both SOE and small raids’.
6
At which point, with battle-lines already drawn and the outcome virtually decided, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations and the latest addition to the Chiefs of Staff Committee in his own right, entered the room.

Stating that in preparing to implement the Prime Minister’s decision to intensify small scale raiding, he had come into competition with ‘C’, who claimed that his plans would ‘interrupt and possibly destroy’ the channels through which SIS obtained vital information, Mountbatten said – perhaps a little mildly in view of what was at stake – that he could not ‘altogether’ accept that view. But everybody else, it appears, could. Brushing aside his remarks by stating simply that it was the responsibility of the Chiefs of Staff to ensure that meeting the PM’s raiding demands did not adversely affect the interests of SIS, General Nye then explained – presumably for the benefit of Mountbatten who had missed the crucial discussion – why the Chiefs of Staff had decided on the course of action they had. The crucial first two paragraphs of the new policy stated:

The Committee

(a)  Agreed … Where the proposed activities of SOE and SIS and minor raids clashed in any area … SIS would ordinarily be given priority;

(b)  Agreed that it was for the Admiralty to decide whether the Chief of Combined Operations’ sea-borne raiding operations and the activities of SOE did in fact prejudice the security of SIS operations.

Paragraph four stated that the planning of
all
clandestine seaborne operations, whether originated by Combined Operations, SOE or SIS, would be co-ordinated by the Admiralty or the Flag Officer delegated by them with the conduct of each operation – from planning through to operational deployment – directed by the commander-in-chief concerned. For SSRF, this meant C-in-Cs Plymouth and Portsmouth. An exception would be made only in those instances when the Chief of Combined Operations was authorised to be the operating authority. Lord Mountbatten asked if the new policy would come into immediate effect: he had prepared a comprehensive programme of raids which he was anxious to start during the present dark period. Yes, replied the naval Vice Chief promptly, the Admiralty was prepared to take up its new responsibilities immediately. And that, really, was that. The Admiralty – and thus SIS – was firmly back in control.