Seize and Ravage

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Seize and Ravage

  Richard Towsend Bickers

  Copyright © Richard Townsend-Bickers 1985

  The right of Richard Townsend-Bickers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale Limited in 1985

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  Extract from Torpedo Attack by Richard Townsend Bickers

  ONE

  Taggart, ordering two pints of bitter at the counter in the saloon bar of The Mackenzie Arms, heard, from the other side of the partition that divided it from the public bar, a voice he recognised.

  ‘Yon Brigadier's a hard bastard.’ The emphasis was on the last word. Commandos expected all their officers and other comrades to be hard men; but the profanity implied an outrage.

  Private Macintosh had more sentiments to express about the Brigadier, all of which made it difficult for Taggart to suppress a smile. He broadly concurred with them.

  Taggart's view of life in general and Brigadier Weatherhead in particular had been soured. Detached from his own Commando, because of his experience of patrols in front of the Maginot Line, of desperate fighting in the retreat to Dunkirk, and on the first Commando raid — on the French coast — on the night of 23rd June 1940, seven months ago, with a Military Cross to show for it all, he had been sent by Weatherhead to this remote corner of Scotland to pass three winter months instructing fellow Commandos and selected fighters from other arms, at the Raiding School.

  He missed his old friends, of all ranks; abhorred the cold; and felt his modesty affronted by having tacitly to endorse the role of hero: merely be being there. He knew that his fighting record was revealed to the pupils by the N.C.O. instructors — it was, after all, his professional credential — and thus, in his view, he was somewhat showing off. All these irritants, and on top of them, not an available girl in sight.

  It was now late January and he had to endure them until mid-March, when he would return to the rugged West Country training area where his unit was based.

  Taggart and Gosland carried their glasses to a corner table.

  ‘You heard our friend MacIntosh?’ Gosland wore a look of amusement. He was a stocky, rubicund subaltern, lately of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and a peacetime wool miller, who laughed readily. Why not, thought Taggart, when you could afford to run a Railton, which not only went like the clappers but also guzzled petrol. Gosland's father had given it to him as a coming of age present a few months before war broke out.

  ‘I can't argue with him.’

  ‘Aye, but the Brig's a fair bastard. MacIntosh deserved what he got.’

  MacIntosh had panted thirstily into the pub after a 15-mile speed march carrying a 60 lb load. He had incurred the punishment for taking umbrage at a corporal, formerly of Royal Engineers, who had upbraided him for some clumsiness when laying a practice demolition charge. The corporal had suggested that he should have stayed in the Gordons instead of volunteering for the Commandos; and added that, anyway, it was sheer swank for a native of Dundee to pose as a Highlander. MacIntosh had tripped him into an ice-encrusted static water tank in the dark. There had been no witnesses, but his guilt was manifest. He had not been charged; simply ordered to make the march. Although the correction had been awarded by Taggart, it was the Brigadier who had decreed how such offences must be dealt with; and it was at his door that MacIntosh laid his grievance.

  ‘He's never slapped me down, but he's a glutton for detail and poking his nose where he really shouldn't. He delegates and then tells people how to do their jobs. When he commanded a battalion in France, I heard he even interfered with his platoon commanders, let alone the company commanders. I wouldn't want to serve directly under Wolf Weatherhead,’ Taggart said.

  The nickname had been bestowed in the Brigadier's Sandhurst days during the two years immediately preceding the Great War. It was prompted by his wolfish ferocity in every undertaking, from the playing field to his profession; and by the wolf which figured in his coat of arms, of which he was inordinately proud and made perhaps excessive display. There was irony, reluctant admiration (ten out of ten for effort) and acknowledgement of his essential guts in it.

  Gosland, before rising to fetch two more pints, laughed. ‘I doubt he'd be quite so wolfish if he were six foot instead of five-seven, and had been christened Tom, Dick or Harry instead of Aubrey Cyril Arbuthnot.’

  ‘Maybe you're right. But he looks so damnably like a wolf sometimes, it's enough to curdle a man's blood.’ Taggart said it wryly and inwardly congratulated himself that, although Brigadier Weatherhead's influence extended throughout the Commando organisation, he would soon be far from him, among his own kith, in the West of England.

  Immediately after breakfast next morning, Taggart was summoned to the Commandant's office. He found Brigadier Weatherhead there and for a wild moment wondered whether the saloon bar of The Mackenzie Arms were bugged and he was about to be given his deserts for criticising his superior.

  The Commandant was sitting beside his own desk, which the Brigadier had taken over. Weatherhead had the conventional exterior attributes of his profession: a ferocious moustache, stiff back, commanding nose (whose bridge had been flattened) and big strong teeth.

  ‘Sit down, Taggart. Got a job for you. Your Colonel has been notified.’

  Taggart felt dizzy. Notifying the officer commanding his unit suggested several unpleasant possibilities; paramount in which was the implication that he would not be returning to it on the due date.

  He sat silent.

  The Brigadier's eyes — inevitably they were a fishy grey, approximately the colour of the scales on a cod — were immovably on his.

  Taggart did not blink.

  ‘You know what's been happening in Egypt and Libya.’ Then, characteristically, Weatherhead proceeded to inform him all over again. This was what he called ‘giving a fella my slant on the picture’. There was a suggestion of distortion in the phrase which had not escaped Tarrant each of the many times he had heard it.

  Taggart had barely said ‘Yes, sir,’ before the Brig was off and into his stride.

  He whipped a rolled map from his briefcase and, with a dexterous flick, laid it open on the desk, facing Taggart.

  ‘When Italy came into the war, last June, there were three hundred thousand Italian and Italian Colonial troops in Libya: which the Italians had grabbed from the Turks in Nineteen-Eleven. General Wave11, next door, in Egypt, faced them with only thirty-six thousand British, New Zealand and Indian troops under his command.

  ‘Our most forward position in the Western Desert was here.’ A bony forefinger jabbed at the map. It was as a lightweight that Gentleman Cadet Weatherhead had boxed for the Royal Military College, and he was spare and bony all over. Also, there were wiry dark brown hairs on the backs of his hands and fingers, that reminded Taggart, who had never before had a close view of them, of a spider.

  ‘Mersa Matruh: two hundred miles west of the Nile Delta and a hundred and twenty inside the Gyppo-Libyan frontier. As soon as Mussolini declared war, our Seventh Armoured Division began harassing raids across the frontier. Tickled up the ice cream vendors and waiters in uniform, no end.’ The Brigadier chuckled. ‘On the fourteenth of June last year, four days after Italy had joined Germany — and you and I and the rest of the British Expeditionary Force had just beetled back from Dunkirk — Brigadier
Gaunter — old friend of mine — captured Fort Capuzzo, right here on the frontier, with a mobile column. Didn't consolidate, however, because our strategy called for mobility: keep the Wop on the hop, d'you see?’

  ‘Three months later, six Italian Divisions began a cautious advance into Egypt and got fifty miles across the frontier, to Sid Barrani.’ Again the stabbing finger. ‘They set up a chain of fortified camps. We could have waltzed through them, because the R.A.F's reconnaissance showed that they were badly sighted, too far apart to support each other. Damn bad Staff College the Wops must have. But General Wavell couldn't make a move until reinforcements arrived from home. When they did, we made a flanking movement to take the enemy from the rear. General O'Connor — we served in the same Div in the last show — who was in command, had only thirty thousand troops, against eighty thousand; but he did have two hundred and seventy-five tanks, compared with the enemy's hundred and twenty.

  ‘Eight or nine weeks ago, in early December, Dick O'Connor's force went through a gap in the Italian defences and took Nibeiwa, here, and four thousand prisoners with it. Our Matilda tanks also took a fortified camp here, Tummar West, and Seventh Armoured cut the coast road. Fourth Indian Div overran Sidi Barrani and a cluster of fortified camps around it. Next, we took this odd-sounding spot, Buq-Buq, bringing our total bag to forty thousand prisoners and four hundred guns.

  ‘The Italians retreated in disorder to Bardia, about thirty miles on their side of the frontier. Seventh Armoured chased them, but we hadn't enough infantry to follow up. Three weeks later, sixth Australian Div arrived from Palestine; and on the third of this month, we assaulted Bardia. We took another forty-five thousand prisoners, four hundred and sixty-two guns and a hundred and twenty-nine tanks. The whole garrison had surrendered in just three days. No stomach for battle, the Wops.

  ‘Well, now, inevitably, we reach the point where politics rears its ugly head.’ The Brigadier often spoke in trite phrases; which, despite his Wykhamist education, he regarded as rather literary. He also tended to confuse his use of singular and plural. ‘Churchill has been burning to divert Fourth Indian to the Sudan, to take on the Italians there. But, when Italy invaded Greece last October, he became enchanted by the idea of a campaign in the Balkans; shelved the idea of Sudan, and tried to persuade Metaxas, the Greek Prime Minister, to let him send a large British force to Greece.

  ‘The situation is that we could by now have driven right across Libya and captured the capital, Tripoli. But, thanks to the bloody politicians, we're held up. Winston ordered Fourth Indian Div back to the Nile Delta, which also weakened our advanced force. As it happens, Metaxas died suddenly yesterday. The new P.M. isn't as tough, and it's a guinea to a pinch of snuff that Winston will get his own way; and a large part of our land and air forces in North Africa will be diverted to Greece.

  ‘At the moment, we have a first-rate opportunity to wipe out the entire Italian forces in Libya. It's within our grasp. I've just made a quick air trip to the Western Desert and Cairo. I served with Wavell on the North-West Frontier in the twenties and thirties. He knows me well.

  ‘I've convinced him that we ought to panic the enemy, put a spoke in any plans to send too large a force to Greece, and get Fourth Indian back into the desert. We're going to do it by laying on a raid near Tripoli, at a spot which, as the crow flies, is four hundred miles west of Benghazi, where the Italian front is. Actually, the distance by land is about five hundred and fifty, because, as you can see, the advance will have to follow the coast, around this huge bay, the Gulf of Sidra.

  ‘A Commando raid so far behind enemy lines will panic Mussolini and his generals in Libya, as well as demoralising his troops. He'll send his North African army rushing back to defend Tripoli: and then our forces on the east can just stroll through, lay siege to Tripoli, and be confident of its almost immediate surrender. The North African campaign will have been won. Then we could help Greece on a big scale.’

  The Brigadier gave Taggart a smile, a grin or a snarl; it was difficult to tell which it was meant to be. Taggart supposed that the grimace was intended to be encouraging. Actually, the effect was to contort Weatherhead's face into a wolfish expression: and Taggart, who was not short of cynicism and stood in awe of no one, wondered if perhaps Wolf Weatherhead had perfected it in front of a mirror.

  He had been feeling increasingly uncomfortable throughout this briefing. Obviously, he was to be involved in some way. The prospect pleased him, but he had no experience of desert warfare; if time was short, he would not be able to acquire any; so what was his part to be? With dismay he saw himself as an A.D.C. or general dogsbody to the Brigadier. He would rather stay in the snowy windswept Highland bleakness than that.

  The Brigadier said ‘We're forming a special Commando troop for the task, to be called X Troop. It will be sixty strong. You will be in Command, Taggart. The code name for the raid is Operation Wolf. I have just one directive to give you: you are to seize your objective and ravage it. I don't use the word 'destroy', because it doesn't convey strongly enough what is wanted. What you will do is seize — 'take' is too mild a word — the objective and annihilate every defender, wipe out every defensive construction, commit total mayhem, lay waste to the bloody place. Leave it a graveyard of rubble and dust. Terrify the enemy out of their wits. Soften them up for immediate surrender as soon as our main force invests the capital. Seize and ravage. Understood?’

  Brigadier Wolf Weatherhead's eyes shone with delight at the prospect.

  Taggart was so astonished by the suddenness of his appointment, so delighted to exchange the biting cold of northern mountains for Mediterranean warmth, so eager to strike at the enemy (even though his grudge was against the Germans for the Allied defeat in France, the Italians would be a satisfactory temporary substitute), that he was momentarily almost too numb to reply.

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  The Brigadier sat back and uttered a barking laugh of pure glee.

  ‘I'm coming to Egypt with you, to chuck a bit of weight about, use my old pals' net connections with Wavell, O'Connor and sundry other general officers, and make sure you get all the co-operation, equipment and facilities, all the priority, that you're going to need.’

  Exultation turned to dismay. This time, Taggart could not find words. He waited to hear the details of his unexpected new command and its mission.

  TWO

  Taggart spread the typed sheets of orders on the table in his room in the castle which had been requisitioned as an officers' mess.

  He was irritated that he had been given no say in the composition of his troop. Obviously, the Brigadier, advised by the Commandant of the Raiding School and the Colonels commanding the various 500-man commandos, had taken all the decisions.

  At that time, the normal strength of a Commando troop was fifty: three officers, and the rest other ranks. The ten extra men in X Troop would make an enormous difference to its striking power, if they were of the right quality. Taggart felt strongly that he ought to have a say in not only their selection but also of everyone else. Given the chance, he would have elected for his own entire troop, now several hundred miles away; plus ten specialists.

  He considered his two section commanders, Gosland and Stuart. In the six weeks that he had known them, he had found Ted Gosland a pleasant companion with a sense of humour, who gave the impression of reliability and calm enthusiasm. Stuart's company he had tended to avoid.

  Gosland had fought in France with his Territorial battalion and been lightly wounded. He had the self-confidence that only steadiness in battle can provide.

  Angus Stuart was five or six years older than Taggart and Gosland and had been a teacher of English Literature and Language in a boys' school in Upper Egypt. To give him his due, he was on home leave when war was declared, so resigned his job and volunteered for the Army. Despite his name, he had never before set foot in Scotland; but managed to obtain a commission in a smart Highland regiment.

  There was a bogus element abo
ut him which Taggart shrewdly perceived. It was an instance of protesting too much. Stuart made much mention of his old school, of the fact that his father had been a captain in the Royal Navy, that he himself was a keen rugger player and cricketer, and exponent of Scottish dancing. Taggart didn't give a damn where anybody had been to school, what his father did for a living, or what games he played. As for reels and prancing about between crossed claymores, he could take them or leave them; with a bias towards the latter.

  Stuart was tall and thin, with a large Adam's apple. He was round-shouldered, despite his 17 months in the Army. He had not been in action. It was difficult to obtain selection to the Commandos; and, even once in, no officer or man was secure: there was constant weeding out. Taggart therefore supposed that either Stuart was highly plausible, or possessed excellent qualities which other, wiser and more experienced officers had perceived, even if he had not.

  Presumably his fluency in Arabic and his knowledge of Egypt and Libya, acquired during school vacations, had earned him his place.

  Troop Sergeant Major Vowden compensated amply for the defects which Taggart saw in Stuart. Vowden was a well-educated Regular who had gone from grammar school at the age of 18 into a rifle regiment. Even before the war, he would certainly have been ultimately selected for a commission. He was only 24 now, but had all the attributes of a hardened senior N.C.O. Taggart suspected that it was Vowden's very excellence which was delaying his commissioning. Junior officers were ten a penny and were sustained by the calibre of their sergeants and warrant officers. A good one of these was too valuable to promote until he could be suitably replaced.

  Vowden had taken part in the French campaign from September 1939 to June 1940 and won the Military Medal.

  Headquarters comprised the troop commander, troop sergeant major, a corporal and two runners.