Churchill's Folly

by Rogers, Anthony; Jellicoe, Lord;

  Elsewhere that day, Thorpe’s party was asked to identify themselves in a message delivered by a Greek woman from ‘Private Walters of the SAS Regiment’. Carr replied, stating they were three English soldiers, but nothing further was heard. That morning, two boys came upon Flight Sergeant R.S. Taylor. The youngsters departed and returned later in the day with a SNCO and two soldiers of the Royal Artillery and nine members of the RAF Regiment.28 Subsequently, the party was joined by RAF Sergeant Philpotts, who led Taylor to the hiding place of two RAF officers: Flight Lieutenant Allan and Flying Officer C.T. Hyland. Hyland had established contact with a ‘commando’ and was hopeful that a boat might be arranged to evacuate them from the island within the next two nights. This was not to be. On the 4 or 5 October, one of the SBS patrol, Private R. Watler – undoubtedly the same Private ‘Walters’ referred to by Carr and, possibly, also Hyland’s contact – was taken prisoner and incarcerated in Kos Castle.29

  Milner Barry’s account continues:

  On the 6th we contacted through the Greeks some more RAF and on the 7th some D.L.I., but movement was restricted because we’d only 3 pairs of boots between 12 men and some of my men were suffering from exhaustion as a result of the long swim and lack of food.

  On the night of the 7th 8th we moved West to another beach where I met Stefan Casuli [Greek Lieutenant Casulli] with another party and into which I signalled L.S.2. She took off 23 about Midnight and the remaining 19 about 3.30 A.M. on the 8th. We were landed at a deserted point on the Turkish mainland.

  On the 8th I arranged with Lt Mcleod of L.S.3 that he would return for the D.L.I. party, would leave me and a couple of chaps L/C WATSON and Gunner GEDDES who’d volunteered to come back and would collect us again on the night of the 12th 13th. I thought there was a fair chance that other parties might still be hiding in the hills or might make their way down to the shore. By cannibalizing we collected the necessary minimum equipment and were duly dropped again on the night of the 8th 9th when a party of 1 Officer and 16 ORs was picked up.

  The Greek security was so good that it took me 2 days to discover that there was another largish party of British in the hills and where they were but eventually we did contact them and a party of 44 was taken off on the night of the 12th 13th.30

  Among those rescued were Lieutenant Colonel Orme, Royal Artillery; Squadron Leader J.C.F. Hayter, commanding 74 Squadron; Squadron Leader Morgan (33 Sector Operations Room); Major H.M. Vaux and Lieutenant Colonel W.J. McDowall.

  Meanwhile, on 10 October, Thorpe’s party had agreed to split up. The officer’s wound had become gangrenous and Proudlock was suffering from suspected sand-fly fever. Carr left them in the care of some Greeks and then struck out alone towards Cardamena. Two days later, he was taken to a house where he met Taylor and his party. Carr was quick to ingratiate himself, as Taylor recalled:

  A D.L.I. Sergeant Major came up to the house with some peasants and joined us, he had a tin of tea and shared it out, the first hot drink we had so far.31

  Carr seemed less than impressed by the conduct of the two RAF officers who, having taken up residence in a nearby cave, gave the impression that they wanted little to do with anybody else. On 14 October, Hyland paid the men a visit. He was told that a shepherd was to lead them to a boat that night. He left to fetch Flight Lieutenant Allan. But by the time Hyland had returned with his fellow officer, everybody else had gone. According to Taylor:

  We waited for the Sergeant A.A. and D.L.I. C.S.M., who had gone off earlier to see a peasant about food. The Sgt. and C.S.M. returned, but the officers had still not arrived and as the shepherd was in a hurry and it being a five mile walk across the mountains we left.32

  When the expected boat failed to materialise, the men were taken to a cave in the hills. Taylor maintains that on the 17th he dispatched a shepherd with instructions for the officers to follow him to their location. The message does not appear to have reached its destination. Hyland merely states that on the 19th, they encountered a Greek and an Italian soldier who told them that a party of British soldiers were in hiding on the coast. The officers were led to ‘the party that left us on the 14th’ and were informed that the men had done so when the departure time was unexpectedly brought forward. It must have seemed to everybody that they were destined to remain on Kos, until a Greek offered to take a makeshift raft to Turkey and fetch help. It was a journey fraught with danger and took eighteen hours to complete. Presumably as a result of this brave effort, shortly before 2.00 a.m. on 22 October, a caique arrived and embarked a total of seventeen army and RAF personnel, eight Italians and two Greeks. The vessel reached Turkish waters without incident a few hours later.

  Private Watler soon escaped from Kos Castle only to be recaptured a few hours later. Undeterred, Walter escaped a second time, swimming along the coast, before making contact with Greek civilians who provided him with food and shelter until he could be evacuated to safety.

  5

  Kalymnos, Symi and Levitha

  October 1943

  On 4 October a composite patrol (X1) of the LRDG under New Zealander Captain R.A. Tinker was evacuated by caique after several days on Pserimos. All but one man, who was presumed captured,1 reached nearby Kalymnos in time for a general withdrawal that night. Some 350 Italians were left to their inevitable fate. Trooper W.R. (Ron) Hill wrote of his time on Kalymnos:

  I was brought face to face what our war meant to these poor islanders. We did not see many of the local population as we spent most of our time on the mountains keeping watch that the enemy did not infiltrate on the many isolated coves and bays but on one occasion, at one of the lonely cottages on the hillside I was accosted by a Greek woman carrying a very tiny baby in her arms. She was as thin as a rake, had eyes deep sunk into their sockets and was obviously pleading for help: I thought she was starving but the baby … it was like a newly skinned rabbit – blue, absolutely blue. I was very much upset, realising how inadequate I was at that moment: I gave her all my rations and what little money I had on me – but though she spoke not a word, she wanted more than that, she wanted help for her tiny little mite. I hurried off as I was on a job but later in the day spoke to the patrol doctor about them – “Alas”, he said, “they will both die”. A little later on as we were making our way down to the harbour – an evacuation to go to the aid of the garrison on Leros – we were attacked by dive bombers from Athens and quite a lot of damage was done to the houses near the moorings. Again I was accosted by a Greek woman who came screaming out of her (undamaged) house and cried “Why did you come? We were allright under the Italians and now you are going away and leaving us unprotected – and the Germans bomb our houses and will come and take our men-folk away. Why could you not leave us in peace?” Why not indeed. What could I say but “Despair not, we will be back”. For a time I was much depressed – this was the first time I had been in battle where civilians were concerned and the little blue baby and the distraught old lady stayed in my memory for a very long time.2

  On 7 October, the Italian garrison surrendered without a fight, enabling III./Gren.Rgt.440 and Küstenjägerkompanie “Brandenburg” to occupy Kalymnos.

  The next phase of Müller’s plan, Operation Leopard, saw the enemy’s main efforts concentrated on Leros. According to Italian sources, there were thirty-two raids involving 410 sorties by the Luftwaffe in the week following the fall of Kos.3 On Tuesday morning, 5 October, Lakki was attacked by twenty-nine Ju 88s, thirty-four Ju 87s and four He 111s which dropped a total of 67 tons of high explosives. An unidentified member of the LRDG newly arrived from Kalymnos chronicled the event:

  Next day we heard that COS had fallen and any hopes in our being able to assist were rudely shaken, and our orders were to evacuate to LEROS using any local form of transport. All that evening [4th] we were loading Caiques with stores in preparation for our move at night. By dark all was ready, and our curious fleet of motley craft crept silently into the darkness. The night was calm and one by one the various small craft drew alongsi
de the Quay in the main harbour at LEROS. The men were tired out, but it was decided to get the stores unloaded so that the ships could be dispersed at dawn. By dawn all was unloaded on to the Quay but the shambles of kit and equipment was awful … We did not know why we had come to LEROS again, and the CO had no news. He had left us soon to try and get some orders, and shortly afterwards we heard the drone of bombers and the deep crack of heavy AA Guns. Our next sensation was one of terrific machine gun fire, whipped up in a fury and increased by rifle fire, until it reached a shattering crescendo, culminating in the high pitched whine, when seconds are counted before the ear splitting crash of bursting bombs. We fell on our faces and counted these seconds and suffered the din in our strange surprise to find ourselves alive, and then there was silence, a silence accentuated by the smell of cordite and the raising smell of dust which billowed up and accentuated the eerie gloom. The bombs had fallen close, and at first we had only thoughts for the others. Casualties were slight but the grim reality of death was vile, one could be only sickened and enraged and feel a little helpless. This raid was only a taste of worse to come, but we had enough time to disperse the men and get a few light automatic weapons on the hill – and then it came again, first the noise of diving aircraft, then the piercing whistle which preceeded their unnatural thunder. This time a ship was hit and our stores were knocked into indescribable chaos. Clouds of black oily smoke swirled into the sky as the other AA Guns speeded the parting raiders. We really knew not how long this went on, but we were diving for cover quite often and then emerging from a hole to see if the others were alright. Our machine gunners stood their ground magnificently and fired unceasingly at Stukas which seemed to dive right down the barrels of the guns …4

  During a lull in the bombing, the men gathered their kit and moved inland, away from the docks:

  The fine streets were a mass of rubble and drooping telephone wires lying across charred and blackened craters. The piles of rations and ammunition were a mass of broken tins and exploded cartridges. Much was still burning and so were many hearts as we saw the quick destruction of so much fine equipment.5

  Meanwhile, some twenty-six men of the Special Boat Squadron under Captain ‘Jock’ Lapraik had turned Symi into a base from which to infiltrate enemy-held islands. A patrol led by Danish Lieutenant Anders Lassen had also briefly occupied Halki.

  The SBS on Symi were joined by a six-man LRDG patrol led by Captain Alan Redfern, and unexpectedly reinforced on 3 October by forty ground crew of 74 Squadron who arrived while en route to join their unit on Kos, unaware that the island had already fallen. The original Italian garrison of approximately 140 men completed the mixed force. Early on Thursday morning, 7 October, a large caique was allowed to enter Pedi Bay. By the time the mistake was realised, German troops and a small number of Italian Fascists had already disembarked. The ninety or so strong force reached the outskirts of Symi town (Yalos/Chorio) before the advance faltered in the face of determined resistance. Fighting continued until mid-afternoon, when the order was given for the Axis force to withdraw. Three Ju 87 Stukas carried out a diversionary raid as the troops, including an estimated thirty wounded, re-embarked. Six prisoners and sixteen confirmed dead remained. According to an unsubstantiated account, others perished at the hands of local Greeks. In turn, the SBS suffered one fatality (Private William Morrison) and an officer and at least one non-commisioned officer were wounded, as were several pro-Badoglio Italians. A number of civilians were killed during the bombing.

  The next day, three Ju 87s arrived to bomb Symi. After one was reportedly shot down off the coast (unconfirmed by Luftwaffe records), two harassed the island defenders throughout the day, returning to nearby Rhodes to rearm and refuel. During one raid, there was a direct hit on British Headquarters and Leading Aircraftman Norman W. Gay (RAF) and Lance Corporal Robert A. McKendrick (SBS attached) were killed outright. Two members of the SBS, Corporal Sydney Greaves and Guardsman Langslow T. Bishop, were trapped in the debris, the former with a great weight pressing on his stomach, and the latter held by his foot. Any attempt to shift Greaves meant transferring debris on to Bishop. Efforts to free the men continued all day and into the night. Eventually, Bishop agreed to the amputation of his foot. Prevented by a wrist injury from personally carrying out the procedure, the medical officer of 74 Squadron, Flight Lieutenant R.J.L. Ferris, supervised as Private Porter ‘Joe’ Jarrell performed the task. Jarrell, an American volunteer medic attached to the SBS, risked further air raids as he worked on his back and in a confined space. He was reliant on candlelight and only the most rudimentary equipment. Bishop, who had joined the Grenadier Guards before volunteering for the Long Range Desert Group and then transferring to the Special Boat Squadron, was extricated. Unsurprisingly he did not survive the ordeal. After 29 hours, Greaves was also lifted clear – and immediately succumbed to his injuries. In recognition of his role in the rescue effort, Jarrell was awarded the George Medal.

  On the 11th, the little town of Symi was severely bombed and all but destroyed, prompting the evacuation of British forces from the island. Captain Redfern had already left by caique when news of the withdrawal reached him:

  Petrol and Naptha dumps were destroyed but all other stores loaded into Caiques. Some drunken Italians were not helping matters by firing at the working parties and throwing grenades at them under the impression they were Germans. So ended the occupation of SIMI [SYMI]. We left behind us some 4,500 unfortunate people, terrified, homeless and foodless. Their town gutted and on fire, and smelling from dead bodies in the wreckage. We also evacuated all Caiques, to prevent enemy getting hold of them, so there is little they can do about it.6

  By 24 September, within days of occupying Astipalaea with its garrison of several hundred Italians, three LRDG patrols had returned to Leros, leaving M2 Patrol under Captain Ken Lazarus to report on enemy aircraft and shipping movements. For the most part this small party, numbering no more than sixteen men, operated alone, but for a brief period when they were joined by a platoon of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. On 12 October, the patrol commander was asked if he wished to be relieved. Captain John R. Olivey, with the LRDG on Leros, recalled:

  [Lazarus] wisely replied that he would rather be bored on his island than bored on ours. But his boredom did not last too long as Jerry captured the island and Ken went ‘off the air’ about a month later.7

  On Thursday, 14 October, the trawler Hedgehog of the Levant Schooner Flotilla sailed from Leros under the command of Sub Lieutenant David N. Harding, RNVR, to supply M2 Patrol on Astipalaea. Harding was expected to return with casualties and up to ten uninjured survivors from the German Olympos convoy (see Chapter 6). In all, more than fifty Germans were embarked.

  Soon after 6.00 a.m. on 16 October His Majesty’s submarine Surf reported sighting a ‘caique’. The submarine fired two warning shots a little over twenty minutes later. A light flashed in reply, signalling ‘English’ and then ‘Hedgehog’. This only served to confuse observers on board the submarine. Another shot was fired, following which Surf approached and at last identified Hedgehog. When it was discovered that her engine had ceased, Hedgehog was taken in tow for Levitha. At 7.25 a.m., a low-flying enemy aircraft was sighted. Surf slipped the tow and dived. The submarine surfaced seventeen minutes later, by which time Hedgehog was again operating under her own steam and she was left to proceed unaided.

  What happened next is unclear. At some point a message was transmitted to Leros that Hedgehog was putting in at Levitha with engine trouble. According to a contemporary German newspaper, the arrival of an Arado somehow provided a ‘Leutnant F.’ with an opportunity to take charge of the situation.8 By Sunday, 17 October, German Intelligence had established contact with one of the captives, probably the same Leutnant. That same evening, Oberleutnant Oschatz commanding 15./4.Rgt “Brandenburg” was ordered to prepare part of his Kompanie for an operation with the primary task of seizing Levitha and of freeing and evacuating their fellow countrymen. Early the next morning, the
assault force was airlifted from Athens-Phaleron in two Ju 52 seaplanes and a Dornier flyingboat, with three Arados as escort and three more providing forward reconnaissance. According to plan the transport aircraft alighted just off Levitha, and the troops prepared rubber dinghies for the short trip ashore. But as it was being released from the Dornier one of the inflatables capsized and an occupant, Obergefreiter Bruhn, was dragged under water by the weight of ammunition boxes and equipment. After resurfacing two or three times, the unfortunate Bruhn disappeared altogether. He was to be the only German fatality of the operation.

  The landing and subsequent sweep through the island was unopposed. One of two Italian wireless stations was taken after being shot up and bombed by Arados. Two Italians there were fatally wounded; the remainder fled. Contact was established with the prisoners and by 1.30 p.m., just four and a half hours after their arrival, the paratroopers had secured the island. Sub Lieutenant Harding and the eight men under his command were captured together with eleven Italians who had manned the wireless stations. That afternoon, the British prisoners were evacuated and most of the assault unit departed after being relieved by troops of 11. Kompanie of III./Luftwaffen-Jägerregiment 21 (11./Lw.-Jg.Rgt.21) under Leutnant Dietzsch. The remaining Brandenburger left by Ju 52 the next day. The trawler Hedgehog was abandoned, having been destroyed by fire either just before or during the assault.