by Hamish Ross
Syria – Litani river Operation 1941
The Middle East, however, was still to be their destination, and two days later Glengyle, Glenearn and Glenroy left the Firth of Clyde with Nos 7, 8 and 11 Commando on board. Their route was via the Cape, calling at Freetown and Cape Town – where Pedder put No. 11 Commando through a four-hour march in full kit. Throughout the voyage, No. 11 Commando trained indefatigably until they sailed into the Suez Canal and finally landed at Geneifa on 7 March.
However, the military situation in the Middle East was very different from the European theatre, where raiding parties could attack parts of the vast coastal perimeter of Axis-occupied Europe. Commando raids had already taken place in Norway, the Channel Islands and on the coast of France. In the Middle East a land war was already being prosecuted against the Italians successfully by Britain and Commonwealth forces. But Hitler’s decision to support his faltering Italian ally resulted in the charismatic Gen Erwin Rommel being summoned to the Führer’s presence on 6 February 1941. Rommel’s reputation was already high after his part in the blitzkrieg throughout Europe the previous year; it would rise even higher in the Middle East. Within weeks a new German troop title, Deutsches Afrika Korps, was born.24 Thereafter, the tables were turned; earlier Allied gains were reversed: the British were pushed out of Cyrenaica and the Afrika Korps threatened Egypt and the Suez Canal. How would Commandos be used in this context; would their original purpose remain inviolate; would there be at least some imaginative use of the additional value that their selection and training guaranteed?
The three Commandos along with two locally raised units were combined into Layforce under Lt Col Bob Laycock, who hitherto had commanded No. 8 Commando. For security reasons the term Commando was not to be used: Nos 7, 8 and 11 Commando became respectively A, B and C Battalion. Security was indeed an important consideration, for they were now based in Egypt where, at that time, intrigue and espionage were endemic. Pedder, for example, put out a special order incorporating a summary of an address on the topic of security by their divisional commander and underneath it, with the customary thoroughness and attention to detail that he was known for, issued his own precise instructions.
THE SCOTTISH ‘C’ BATTALION
LAYFORCE
SPECIAL ORDER
With the approach of specialised training for our specific operation, a certain amount of speculation, criticism and discussion by all ranks is inevitable. In fact constructive criticism and reasonable discussion are to be encouraged – BUT ONLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE AND ON THE RIGHT OCCASION.
The maintenance of strict secrecy is the responsibility of each individual.
A few careless words by one man will jeopardise our enterprise and hazard unnecessarily our lives.
Learn the following simple orders, obey them to the letter, AND SEE THAT OTHERS DO LIKEWISE.
SECRECY ORDERS
1. Don’t discuss matters of naval or military importance with ANYONE IN ANY OTHER UNIT – whether in the canteen or elsewhere in camp.
2. Don’t discuss important matters with anyone in public places of amusement, such as cafes, restaurants, bars or brothels.
3. When talking in the Officers’, or Sergeants’ Messes, or in your tents, see that the servants ARE NOT LISTENING. They have long ears and understand English better than they can speak it. Send them all (including the barman) outside. DON’T TRUST ANY ONE OF THEM.
4. Don’t boast to women. We can boast when our operation has reached a successful conclusion.
REMEMBER THAT
1. Egypt is a neutral country, and the Japanese Embassy is still in residence.
2. From Geneifa to Cairo by road is a short distance. From Cairo to Rome or Berlin by radio wireless is shorter still. This is a plain fact – not an alarming threat.
Geneifa Camp
29–3–41
(signed) R.R.N. Pedder
Commanding the Scottish ‘C’ Battalion, Layforce.25
Raids were planned, and some were executed. For example, No. 7 Commando carried out a raid on Bardia. But there were other priorities for Middle East Headquarters, and Layforce fragmented. On 24 April, Laycock informed Pedder that his Commando was to be temporarily detached from Layforce in readiness for action in Syria;26 but for the present it was to be used for garrison duty in Cyprus. It was ordered to move to Cyprus on 26 April and on that same day resumed its original title, No. 11 (Scottish) Commando.27 It arrived in Cyprus on 29 April. Meanwhile, Greece fell to the Germans and their paratroopers invaded Crete. No. 7 Commando was sent to help in the defence, and Laycock went with them.
Underlying frustration – not only with the failure or inability of Headquarters to make imaginative use of Commando forces, but with the problems of accurately delivering a raiding force to the right beach and extricating it – had already prompted some junior officers to consider alternatives to seaborne raiding. For example, Lt Jock Lewes of No. 8 Commando had received permission from Laycock to experiment with some parachutes, which had somehow come their way. In this enterprise he was joined by Lt David Stirling, who was also in No. 8 Commando.
For No. 11 Commando, the assignment to garrison duty seemed the last straw; and in Cyprus frustration was coupled with boredom. Both had an effect on Mayne:
Paddy Mayne began to get a little excitable: he had not been an enormously heavy drinker before, but a mixture perhaps of boredom and the Cyprus wine – at a shilling a bottle or something – certainly tempted him. And when he was in his cups he really was extremely difficult to deal with: he was so prodigiously strong, and headstrong as well. He would just get an idea into his head, however eccentric, and go ahead and do it. And Eoin McGonigal used to be in the forefront of trying to restrain him but to very little avail. I remember one particular incident, in a nightclub in Nicosia (I wasn’t present but I was involved in the upshot), where he and Eoin were the last to leave and he reckoned, probably correctly, that he had been heavily gypped in his bill. So he summoned the manager and the manager proceeded, unwisely, to be rather rude to him. So he forcibly stood the manager in the middle of the wooden dance floor and emptied his revolver in the floor round his feet. As a result of it, he was arrested and I was his supervising officer. He was strictly sober at that time. Blair and I got on extremely well, mainly because of an overpowering interest in rugby football between us.28
Mayne had forty-eight hours open arrest under Macpherson’s supervision for that escapade. The men in the Commando knew that Mayne and McGonigal, in off-duty hours, were always in each other’s company. Reg Harmar was in McGonigal’s No. 4 Troop and he recalled, ‘Paddy Mayne and McGonigal were great mates’.29 Jimmy Storie, who was in No. 6 Troop, used much the same terms: ‘They were best mates’.30 By this time Mayne commanded No. 7 Troop and McGonigal No. 4 Troop.
But from the Commandos’ perspective, their specialised training was not being utilised, and discontent may have been symbolically expressed. According to the novelist Evelyn Waugh, who served as Laycock’s intelligence officer, a ‘substantial majority’ of No. 11 Commando’s officers had tendered their resignation before leaving for Cyprus, but had been refused.31 But on the other hand Macpherson refutes this, pointing out that morale was then high. Nonetheless, there was discontent; and when it became clear that it was simply a question of time before Layforce disbanded, officers and men started thinking of transferring to alternative interesting soldiering. Mayne was not only of their number: he put in for a transfer to a military mission to the East. On 2 June 1941 he wrote to his father, and bearing in mind censorship he simply put it that he had applied to join another unit for the East and felt confident that he would get it.32
However, on the wider front, the military situation in the Middle East was worsening, and a new complicating element materialised. After the armistice between Germany and France, Vichy became the de jure power over France’s overseas territories, inheriting the French mandate for Syria. And it began to allow the Luftwaffe use of airfields in Syria to carry out bo
mbing in support of an Axis-inspired revolt in Iraq, which was part of the British Mandate. The situation would greatly increase the threat to the British position in the Middle East, unless, of course, there was pre-emptive action taken against the Vichy forces in Syria. On 10 June 1941, when Winston Churchill rose in the House of Commons to review the war situation, he elaborated on the decision to attack:
It did not take much intelligence to see that the infiltration into Syria by the Germans, and their intrigues in Iraq, constituted very great dangers to the whole Eastern flank of our defence in the Nile Valley and the Suez Canal. The only choice before us in that theatre for some time has been whether to encourage the Free French to attempt a counter-penetration by themselves or, at heavy risk in delay, to prepare, as we have done, a considerable force of our own. It was also necessary to restore the position in Iraq before any serious advance in Syria could be made. Our relations with the Vichy Government and the possibilities of an open breach with it evidently raised the military and strategic significance of these movements to the very highest point. Finally, and above all, the formidable menace of the invasion of Egypt by the German Army in Cyrenaica, supported by large Italian forces with German stiffening, remains our chief preoccupation in the Middle East.33
The plan for the attack envisaged the use of Commando troops. Pedder was summoned. He left Maj Napier in charge of the Commando; and on 1 June 1941 he and two of his officers flew from Cyprus to Palestine. Maj Napier issued his orders regarding equipment and kit and summoned the various troops that were on detachment in parts of the island. But late on the night of 3 June a telegram arrived from Pedder, containing final instructions on kit and scale of ammunition, ordering Napier to remain behind with No. 5 Troop as the rear party, and bestowing the command on Maj Keyes. And at 0030 hr on 4 June, No. 11 Commando embarked on the destroyers Hotspur and Ilex at Famagusta and sailed for Port Said.
Pedder had to report not to Laycock (who had returned from Crete), but to Gen Wilson in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the plan for the deployment of the force was entirely consonant with the purpose of Commando troops. The Litani river flows southward through deep gorges before turning west to meet the sea, north of Tyre; it forms a natural barrier to an army advancing north. The plan was for No. 11 Commando to land from assault craft on both north and south banks of the Litani, where it flows into the Mediterranean; to seize and hold the Qasmiye bridge over the river, allowing the Australian 21st Infantry Brigade to advance into Syria. The Commando embarked on Glengyle on the night of 7 June and sailed to the north of Tyre, arriving four miles west of the mouth of the Litani river at 0038 hr, illuminated by moonlight. A heavy swell was running, but eleven landing craft were lowered into the water. However, part of the difficulty with Combined Operations raids was the sharing of responsibility; and at this stage of the war there was not a unitary command structure. For Mayne, it was a situation that would be repeated two years later when he led a Combined Operations assault in daylight – against the advice of the Royal Navy. But at the time of the Litani operation, responsibility for the decision to land lay with the naval officer. While the landing craft were in the water on the lee side of the ship, an accompanying Royal Navy patrol boat came alongside Glengyle and Lt Potter advised Capt Petrie that heavy surf along the beaches would make landing impossible.34 Pedder, however, still wanted to go ahead, having been told that the loss of landing craft was acceptable, the flotilla was visible and the enemy aware of their presence. Capt Petrie did not. ‘I was of the opinion,’ he wrote later, ‘that the boats would be capsized before reaching the beach.’35 The landing craft were taken inboard and Glengyle turned and sailed back to Port Said. The defenders on shore had been treated to a son et lumière and what they doubtless believed was the prologue to a later show. And as far as the Commando was concerned, it was the naval equivalent of the Grand Old Duke of York, for within an hour of reaching Port Said at 3pm on 8 June, Capt Petrie was ordered to put to sea immediately and carry out the landing that night. Meanwhile, the Australian advance into Syria had begun.
The military and political situation for Vichy was also delicate and complex. Its forces in Syria, under Gen Denz, amounted to some 30,000 men, a number of aircraft, two naval destroyers and a submarine. Gen Denz called on Marshal Pétain, Head of State for Vichy, to request the aid of the Luftwaffe units based on its soil, and in particular Stuka dive-bombers (which had been so effective in the invasion of Poland and during the blitzkrieg). But Pétain decreed that the situation in Syria amounted to a baroud d’honneur (a gallant last stand) – nothing more, nothing less. It would be better not to resist than to call on the Germans to come to their rescue. 36 And since honour was at stake, it would be no token resistance. Its forces blew up the Qasmiye bridge.
On board Glengyle Pedder briefed his officers in the light of the changed situation. According to intelligence, they would be confronted by two French colonial battalions holding strong positions on the north side of the Litani river. His intention was to seize the enemy’s position and hold it long enough to allow the Australian brigade to cross the river and pass through.37 Accordingly he divided his force into three fighting parties: X Party, comprising Nos 2, 3 and 9 Troops, under Keyes had the principal task of landing north of the Litani river, seizing the redoubt which overlooked the river and thus allowing the Australians to cross in force; Y Party under Pedder, composed of Nos 1, 7 and 8 Troops, would attack the barracks further north and act as reserve to the main attack; Z Party, with Nos 4 and 10 Troops, under More were to land furthest north and seize the Kafr Badda bridge, which the enemy had not destroyed. The Kafr Badda bridge on the main Beirut to Tyre road spanned a long narrow valley, which numerous small valleys intersected herringbone fashion, at the foot of which a road ran east to west to meet the coastal road. The terrain north of the Litani was very hilly: one troop could move along the floor of a small valley unaware of the presence of another troop nearby. Good communications would be crucial, both within the Commando and with the Australian forces. There were two types of radio: a type 18, for internal communication among the three fighting parties, and a type 11 for contacting the Australians. The password for the operation was ‘Arran’ and the visual signal, if the Commando found itself fired on by Allied forces, a white flag.
At 0420 hr on 9 June, in the stillness before it was quite light, the first landing craft debouched its troops. Z Party were in three landing craft. The first of these beached successfully, but the second and third both encountered underwater rocks, forcing the troops to wade about eighty yards to the shore. This had the effect of rendering useless both Type 18 and Type 11 radios.38 Nevertheless, the party rapidly cleared the beach, meeting little opposition at first, and made its way some distance before encountering resistance from machine-gun posts.
Of Y Party, Pedder with his HQ and No. 1 Troop moved forward through a gully towards the barracks. Mayne was in command of No. 7 Troop. They landed and came under fire from heavy machine-gun emplacements and had one man killed when they were on the beach. They engaged these emplacements, then moved north along the beach for about four or five hundred yards.39 During this movement, they were supported by B Section of No. 8 Troop under Bill Fraser. But both sections of No. 8 Troop lost contact with one another; A Section under Glennie linked up with the northern Z Party and continued to act with it for the rest of the operation, and Fraser’s Section operated pretty much independently. Quite early on in the raid Mayne’s officer, Lt R.C. McCunn, was wounded in the shoulder and unable to carry on; he was sent with Pte Paxton in the direction of the Australian forces, and Mayne then kept both Sections of the Troop together.
The southernmost fighting party, under Keyes, got away from Glengyle in four landing craft. Lt Collar RN was the leader of the naval division taking the party ashore. His orders were to land it north of the Litani river; his landmark, according to army maps, was a large white house; but there were no aerial maps showing the mouth of the river; and from seaward the river mouth was o
bscured by a sandbank. However, whatever reservations he had about the accuracy of his bearings, Collar managed to keep a detached observer’s eye as they came close to the beach. He noted in his report:
Apart from some momentary qualms when a cypress grove was mistaken for a platoon of the enemy, no signs of opposition were seen during the landing and the troops cleared the boats in quick time, one officer, perhaps the keenest of all, going in up to the tin hat; the remainder were almost all dry from their knees up.40
All three groups landed without suffering major casualties on the beach. But to appreciate the outcome of the raid and the subsequent series of operational reports, each group’s progress needs to be looked at, beginning with X Fighting Party.
As light began to grow, Keyes saw the masts of feluccas to the north and realised that they had been landed on the wrong side of the Litani river: they were on its south side, along with the Australian infantry whose crossing of it they were meant to facilitate. Keyes decided that there was nothing for it but to attempt what the infantry had been unable to do – a daylight crossing of the river. The Australians loaned the party some boats, and the slow, painful process commenced of working their way to the south bank of the river in full view of a well-positioned enemy.
The impasse lasted for hours; but Keyes persevered, in the face of automatic fire, with the daunting task of crossing the river in broad daylight. Then, in a lull in the firing, Lt Garland managed to get six men across the river. Next, however, came the task of cutting through the coils of barbed wire on the northern bank. It was a painfully slow and costly process. It was not until around 1800 hr that Keyes was able to hand over the position to the Australians. However, the Australian advance was initially repulsed and it would be about midnight before it successfully pushed forward. The consequences of this delay would fall on the two fighting parties north of the river for the whole of that long June day.