The Lost Band of Brothers (7 page)

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  No 8 Commando was also supposed to take its volunteers from Eastern Command but in fact recruited from London District and the Household Division.

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  Nos 9 and 11 Commandos would come directly from Scottish Command.

•
  No 10 Commando was intended to be raised from Northern Command, although – perhaps curiously given the mood of bellicose enthusiasm elsewhere in the country for ‘special service of a hazardous nature’ – this unit did not attract enough initial volunteers to take its place in the new Order of Battle. It would be summer 1942 before it did so.

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  No 12 Commando was also formed in Northern Ireland in early 1941 but, with only 250 men, it was roughly half the strength of the other commandos. Selected men from this commando, however, were to make a significant contribution to the units at the centre of this history.
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Capt. Gus March-Phillipps, meanwhile, was languishing, under-used and bored, within Eastern Command. Here the very inertia he wished to escape nearly thwarted his own attempts to respond to that appeal for ‘hazardous service’ volunteers that appeared on his unit notice board. Fearful that he might have left his application too late, he enlisted the help of a well-placed contact within Southern Command. This was Tim Alleyn, with whom he had once shared that cottage in the Thames Valley when he returned from India:

Dear Mate –

I’ve been recommended for the post of a commando leader, but owing to a fatuous Major in A [Administration] Branch I was unable to get the forms directly to Eastern Command. It has to go round the Corps tip and they take a week. So HO won’t get it until too late unless you can tell them what has happened. The thing arrived here late in the first place, and they sat on it in the office. My God, they are awful. Anyway, I’ve been recommended a second time, and could you tell them that? If I come up for an interview, we’ll have a terrific dinner. I’m feeling much too well, terribly fit and nothing to do …
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Whilst others dragged their heels, officers elsewhere worked in haste to carry out Churchill’s orders to strike back, to mount that all-important first raid across the Channel. To this end, a further special Independent Company, No 11, was formed on 14 June and began training around Hamble and Southampton Water. Less than three weeks after Colonel Dudley Clarke had his ‘commando’ idea whilst walking home from the War Office, Churchill’s order became reality. Operation
Collar
was mounted on the night of 23/24 June 1940. It achieved little, claimed just two German lives and became dangerously close to making the concept of cross-channel raiding a risible joke. Its only British casualty was Colonel Dudley Clarke himself.

The objective of Operation
Collar
was to cross over at night to the Hardelot, Stella Plage and Berck areas of Boulogne by fast motor boat and make several landings to obtain information on German defences, destroy enemy outposts and kill or capture enemy soldiers. The raiders, under Major Ronnie Tod with Colonel Clarke along as Observer, would land at midnight, spend no more than eighty minutes ashore and then return by sea. Initially 180 men of No 11 Independent Company were detailed to take part in the raid but a shortage of weapons – there were just forty tommy guns in the whole of Britain at the end of June 1940 – and suitable raiding craft reduced that number to 120 after the failure of two of the engines of half-a-dozen air–sea rescue craft borrowed for the night from the Air Ministry. The sea was calm, the sky cloudy with a light north-easterly breeze. Mid-Channel a rum ration was issued to the black-faced raiders. Soon after that the naval commander became unsure of his position until a sudden German searchlight obligingly revealed that he was about to motor straight into Boulogne harbour. They swung away into the safety of the darkness and landed a little further down the coast among sand dunes.

Tod and his men disappeared purposefully into the darkness. Nothing was heard for a while. Then Tod returned, armed with a tommy gun with which he was less than familiar. As Clarke disembarked to warn him that a darkened vessel had been seen nearby, a German bicycle patrol was reported moving along the beach towards them. As they prepared to open fire, Tod managed to knock the magazine off his unfamiliar weapon. It fell to the ground with a clatter. The Germans heard the noise and opened fire. Colonel Clarke was knocked back into the boat by the impact of a bullet that caught him behind the ear. He was not seriously wounded.

Major Tod’s men returned without loss, and waded out into a rising tide to clamber back into their boat. They then headed back out to sea. Elsewhere, two boats had landed among the sand dunes. One had bumped into a German patrol and been fired on without loss and had not returned fire. The second had seen nothing; a third boat of armed raiders had not actually landed but attempted to stalk a seaplane which had then suddenly taken off over their heads like a startled goose. A fourth had landed at Merlimont Plage, 4 miles south of Le Touquet. Here they stumbled upon a large hotel surrounded by barbed wire which, they thought, might have been some sort of local headquarters. An enemy patrol of two soldiers was encountered. Both were killed with sten-gun fire from a range of 15 yards. Despite post-war claims that a German corpse was carried back to the beach
3
and then towed towards England behind a crowded boat only to be lost mid-Channel, the two bodies were left where they lay and nothing was removed.
4
A fifth landing party achieved nothing at all. Dawn found Colonel Clarke’s crowded rescue boat approaching Dover: ‘Grimy, dishevelled and triumphant and accompanied, appropriately enough, by a bandaged officer with bloodstains, they were cheered by every ship in harbour.’
5

Men returning elsewhere suffered mixed fortunes. Outside Folkestone – unexpected, unannounced and evidently bearing the smoke-grim of distant battle – one boat of raiders was refused permission to enter harbour and ordered to lie off under the muzzles of Folkestone’s defences whilst checks were made. All of which took time. Again, the rum ration was opened and two stone jars of SRD – Service Rum Dilute – were passed round the boat-load of weary heroes. Eventually permitted to proceed, upon arrival on
terra
by now not so very
ferma
they were arrested by the military police who believed them to be deserters.

The raid was reported in the newspapers the next day with only the vaguest of details. It proved a timely tonic for the battered British public – and caused near apoplexy amongst members of the British Cabinet who had no idea Operation
Collar
had been authorised to take place. It hadn’t. Fearful of security leaks from high places, Director of Combined Operations General Bourne had told no one. He was only saved from court-martial by the timely intervention of the Minister of War, Anthony Eden.

German troops occupied the Channel Islands on 30 June 1940. Two days later General Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s Chief Military Assistant and critical point of liaison between the Prime Minister and his Chiefs of Staff, received a memorandum from the Prime Minister. This stated: ‘If it be true that a few hundred German troops have landed on Jersey or Guernsey by troop-carriers, plans should be studied to land secretly by night on the Islands and kill or capture the invaders. This is exactly one of the exploits for which the Commandos would be suited.’
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Thus began Operation
Ambassador
, Britain’s formal second raid upon a shore occupied by the enemy. It took place twelve days later on the night of 14–15 July 1940. The target this time was Guernsey. Its objective? To inflict casualties on the German garrison, capture prisoners and destroy any German aircraft and equipment found on the island. To carry out this operation No 11 Independent Company was joined by members of the newly formed No 3 Commando commanded by Major John Durnford-Slater. He and 140 of his men were to land at three separate points on the southern side of the island: the Major at Moulin Huet Bay supported by the destroyer HMS
Scimitar
, No 11 Independent Company at both Le Jaonnet Bay and Pointe de la Moye. The landing parties were to be transported by the destroyer, then transferred to an RAF launch whilst still some distance off to make their own silent and unobserved approach to the enemy shore.

Durnford Slater and his men moved to Dartmouth, using the gymnasium at the Royal Naval College above the town as a makeshift gun room where naval cadets helped them load magazines for the precious Brens and tommy guns that had been sent down on loan from London. The attacking force left Dartmouth at 1845 on 14 July and arrived off the coast of Guernsey a few hours later in poor visibility, mist, drizzle and with a slight swell running. So far so good. But that, really, was as good as it got.

The two parties from No 11 Independent Company never made landfall. The coast was too rocky and the compasses of both boats, apparently, had been knocked out of true during degaussing. One vessel headed off smartly, in error, towards Sark. The other developed engine trouble and barely managed to struggle back to the mother ship, HMS
Scimitar
. An earlier postponement of forty-eight hours now meant that the anticipated half-tide landing onto smooth sand was now a high tide landing onto rocks and boulders from wooden, V-hulled boats that were anything but flat-bottomed: ‘I jumped in, armpit-deep. A wave hit me on the back of the neck and caused me to trip over a rock. All around me officers and men were scrambling for balance, falling, coming up and coughing salt water. I doubt there was a dry weapon amongst us,’ recorded Major Durnford-Slater. He led the way towards the enemy, battle-dress heavy with seawater:

I set off running up the long flight of concrete steps which led to the cliff top, 250 feet up. In my eagerness I went too fast. By the time I got to the top I was absolutely done … and my sodden battledress seemed to weight a ton. My legs were leaden, my lungs bursting, I could hear the squeak and squelch of wet boots as the rest of the troop followed us up from the beach.
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Once on the clifftop high above the beach they sent out patrols, established road blocks and searched for enemy to kill. Not a German was found. Although Second Lt Hubert Nicolle, an officer whose pre-war home had been on Guernsey, had landed a few nights before the raid to carry out a stealthy reconnaissance, the Germans appeared to have altered their dispositions in his absence. Reluctantly, and with time for the RV with HMS
Scimitar
running out, Durnford-Slater ordered his men back to the boats. Down the steep steps they hurried:

I was last down from the cliff top with Peter Young clattering just ahead of me. Near the bottom I accelerated and suddenly realised that my feet had lost the rhythm of the steps. I tripped and tumbled the rest of the way, head over heels. I had been carrying my cocked revolver at the ready. During the fall it went off, seemingly tremendously loud and echoing against the cliffs. This, at last, brought the Germans to life. Almost at once there was a line of tracer machine-gun fire from the top of the cliff on the other side of our cove.
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They reached the beach. Heavy swell and a change of tide meant the men had to swim out to their rescue boats waiting 100 yards out in deep water beyond the growl of surf and pounding waves. Which was when three of his party admitted that, unfortunately, they were non-swimmers. They were left behind to give themselves up. Some of the men stripped off naked for the swim out to the boats. One man – Gunner John McGoldrick of the Royal Artillery – was later reported missing, believed drowned. Durnford-Slater left his battledress blouse on the beach for the Germans. It had his name sewn into the collar.

†††

And so, eventually, they came home.

Operation
Ambassador
, evidently, provided a learning curve for these new raiders that was almost vertical. Although much was learned – about boat suitability, personnel selection, the need for good small boat navigation and, above all, proper beach reconnaissance – nothing could disguise the fact that
Ambassador
was another disappointment, another fiasco. Churchill himself recognised it as such: ‘Let there be no more silly fiascos like those perpetrated at Boulogne and Guernsey,’ he said. ‘The idea of working all these coasts up against us by pinprick raids is one strictly to be avoided.’
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Churchill had a point. Lord Lovat, one of the war’s outstanding commando leaders, wrote:

The sailors got a reprimand and Churchill ordered an immediate reorganisation. There would be no more slackly planned, uncoordinated efforts mounted by a collection of amateurs – naval or army – against targets of insignificant importance. With a hostile War Office, limited resources, our poor track record and the disapproval of every Army Command, it required courage to reinforce the concept of a corps
elite
.
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So far, despite all his frustration and impatience, March-Phillipps appeared to have missed very little. Yet already, thanks to the fiascos of Operations
Collar
and
Ambassador
, the very commando concept was already under fire and in question. It was Churchill, once again, who waded to the rescue. On 25 August he wrote to Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War:

I hear that the whole position of our commandos is being questioned. They have been told ‘no more recruiting’ and that their future is in the melting pot. I thought therefore I might write to let you know how strongly I feel that the Germans have been right, both in the last war and in this, in the use they have made of storm troops … The defeat of France was accomplished by an incredibly small number of highly equipped
elite
, while the dull mass of the German army came on behind … There will certainly be many opportunities for minor operations, all of which will depend on surprise landings of lightly equipped, nimble forces accustomed to work like packs of hounds instead of being moved about in the ponderous manner which is appropriate to the regular formations … For every reason therefore we must develop the storm troop or commando idea. I have asked for five thousand parachutists, and we must also have at least ten thousand of these small ‘bands of brothers’ who will be capable of lightning action.
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