Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII

by Damien Lewis

  *

  Lassen’s actions on Symi earned him his third Military Cross, with the following citation: ‘The heavy repulse of the Germans from Symi on 7 Oct 43 was due in no small measure to his inspiration and leadership on the one hand, and the highest personal example on the other. He himself, crippled with a badly burned leg and internal trouble, stalked and killed at least 3 Germans at close range. At that time the Italians were wavering and I attribute their recovery as due to the personal example and initiative of this Officer.’

  It was October, shortly after the withdrawal from Symi, when Sutherland – Jellicoe’s second-in-command – learned of the award. Feeling it would be good for morale to give Lassen the decoration pretty much immediately, Sutherland cobbled together a replica of the ribbon that denotes a second bar to the MC, using paper and dye, plus rosettes fashioned from the lid of a Players cigarette tin.

  Once the short ceremony to present the honour was complete, the raiders drank everything in sight long into the night. Jellicoe’s raiders had recently been boosted by the welcome arrival of the ‘Iros Lochos’ – the Greek Sacred Squadron – to fight alongside them in the Dodecanese.

  Under the renowned leadership of Colonel Kristodoulus Tzigantes, the Sacred Squadron sported a distinctive badge – a sword surrounded by a laurel wreath, inscribed with the motto ‘Return Victorious Or Dead’. In the case of the Sacred Squadron’s fighters, those were to prove far from boastful words. Lassen had already bonded with Colonel Tzigantes during operations in and around Symi.

  Halfway through a raid by Stukas on Leros, Lassen had amused himself by trimming Pipo’s coat, transforming him into the ‘Lion of Leros’. Poor Pipo looked more like a poodle at the end, but he did indeed seem to possess the bravery of a lion. He’d bark furiously in the direction of any approaching Stukas, his acute hearing warning the raiders long before any warplanes might be audible to the human ear. As for Colonel Tzigantes, he seemed to greatly enjoy the Lion of Leros episode, and he and Lassen had become fast friends.

  As Christmas 1943 came around, the men of the SBS – together with those of the Sacred Squadron – prepared for their deployment … to Turkey. Neither the Allies nor the Axis powers particularly wanted to provoke neutral Turkey into joining the war, but Jellicoe’s raiders needed a base from which to strike deep into the Dodecanese, and Turkish waters were the obvious location from which to do so.

  Training for the coming campaign was interrupted by the all-important Christmas feast. The raiders had just sat down to a fulsome dinner, rustled up by their miracle-worker of a chef, when a brigadier emerged onto a makeshift stage to make an announcement. Apparently, the celebrated performer with the BBC Variety Orchestra, Miss Judy Shirley, was there to sing a few numbers, to ‘reward’ the raiders for their efforts in the Dodecanese.

  Miss Shirley had come at the behest of the Entertainment National Service Association (ENSA), a branch of the services with the job of entertaining the troops while overseas. She was blonde, pretty and no doubt blessed with a fine voice, but few of the assembled throng gave much of a damn. As she stepped onto the stage and fine dinners began to go cold on their plates, someone was heard to yell above her singing: ‘Get that cow out of here!’

  The brigadier turned puce with embarrassed fury, but at least he had the sense to withdraw with Miss Shirley, and leave the soldiers to eat in peace.

  *

  Six hundred miles to the north-west of Athlit, General von Kleemann was doubtless sitting down to his own Christmas feast in his fine castle overlooking Rhodes Harbour. Untroubled by Miss Judy Shirley’s dulcet tones, von Kleemann’s mind was turning to the defence of his command – the Dodecanese. The British raiders may have been driven out of his islands, but he felt certain they would return. Consequently, he had reinforcements pouring into the region.

  A fresh brigade of elite mountain troops had been put at his disposal, in addition to the 999th Infantry Division. A flight of Junkers transport aircraft, some equipped with floats, were ferrying in both men and war materiel, and a newly arrived fleet of barges was shuttling back and forth between the islands. Von Kleemann was an astute commander: he positioned his troops wisely for what he feared was coming.

  He retained one division on Rhodes. To the three islands lying south and west he sent 800 men. To those key islands lying to the north – Leros, Cos and Symi – he sent over 6,000 troops. But with the smaller islands that remained he was uncertain what was the best approach. Rather than man each one with a token force, which would be highly vulnerable to British raiders, he decided to rotate a larger force, garrisoning each only for short periods at a time.

  From Raider Force Headquarters, in Cairo, von Kleemann’s actions were being closely monitored. The German commander now had no fewer than six divisions of fighting men spread across his domain. The strategy developed by Raider Force Headquarters to counter von Kleemann was ingenious: it was to trap – and terrify – those troops on their islands, so they could play no further part in the war. It was broken down into three movements.

  In the first, British submarines and Beaufighters – a fighter-bomber variant of the Bristol Beaufort – would scour the islands from below and above the waves, seeking to whittle von Kleemann’s fleet down to the point at which the German general was no longer able to evacuate those troops he had garrisoning the islands. Jellicoe’s raiders would play a key part in this stage of operations – sinking von Kleemann’s ships in their harbours, or seizing them on the high seas.

  The second movement would be spearheaded by Jellicoe’s raiders. They would switch their attacks to isolated, outlying garrisons, forcing the Germans to take to the seas to reinforce those under assault and evacuate their wounded. Once those ships had been lured out of their harbours, British submarines and Beaufighters would strike once again.

  The third phase, which lay entirely in the raiders’ hands, entailed pure banditry. Jellicoe’s men were to launch the nervenkrieg – to borrow a German phrase – ‘the war of nerves’. In the nervenkrieg, every garrison was to suffer the terror of a night raid complete with sabotage and kidnapping. With food and ammunition in short supply, with mail deliveries and leave a thing of the past, and with their horizons reduced to isolated, sun-baked patches of scrub, rock and sea, the German – and Italian – soldiers would always be on edge, fearing the next attack.

  This was to be the phase of the collapse of morale, of desertions and of mass surrender.

  *

  In order to launch phase one, the raiders needed to get themselves established in Turkish waters. Quietly, some forty-odd potential bases had been recce’d all along Turkey’s Aegean coast. The ideal location for the main base quickly became obvious: it was the sixty-mile-long Gulf of Cos, running east of the island of Cos far into Turkey, and surrounded by dramatic mountains and thick forests on all sides.

  On 20 January 1944 a very special flotilla set sail from Beirut, the capital of the Lebanon lying to the north of Athlit. It consisted of a fleet of the raiders’ caiques, plus a 180-tonne schooner, the Tewfik – one that Jellicoe’s raiders had somehow managed to procure. In the Tewfik’s hold were some 4,700lbs of explosives. Not much of it was going to be wasted in the coming months.

  In the lead caique were Anders Lassen, Stud Stellin and the Irish Patrol, and all – even medic-cum-raider Porter Jarrell – were spoiling for a fight. There was also a new recruit among their number – Freddie Crouch. Twenty-six-year-old Crouch was a former policeman who hailed from the East End of London. In the coming weeks Crouch would prove himself to be a born raider: a diamond geezer, as his fellow Cockneys might call him. Crouch would be steady as a rock under fire, and he was destined to become one of Lassen’s stalwarts.

  The raiders packed onto those ships had an extra reason to be happy, in addition to their sailing to war with a large boat packed full of plastic explosives. They also had their pockets stuffed with gold sovereigns. It wasn’t the first time they’d been sent to sea carrying gold, which was useful as
a universally accepted form of currency, one that could be used to pay guides or informers and to purchase supplies. But any sovereigns left over rarely made it back into Jellicoe’s hands.

  More often than not they were ‘the first casualties of a successful operation’, as Porter Jarrell described it.

  Jellicoe had long suspected Lassen of hoarding sovereigns surplus to operational requirements. The men were in the habit of stuffing the small gold coins between the double soles of their boots, to better hide them. Following one raid Jellicoe had even gone as far as searching the Dane’s clothing while he was in the shower. The raiding force commander found nothing.

  Jarrell was able to explain where the missing coins had got to. ‘Andy had taken the gold pieces into the shower!’

  The gold was earmarked for the raiders’ post-operations party kitty. While they fought hard these men played just as fiercely. Lassen’s wartime sweetheart was a dancing girl who performed at the Hotel St Georges, a Beirut cabaret – the diminutive, dusky-skinned and utterly delightful ‘Aleca of Alexandria’. Lassen had got into the habit of ending their epic training sessions with an equally epic session in the hotel bar. He’d make his way there in his jeep, driving at typically suicidal speed, before joining the bewitching Aleca over drinks, whereupon the real partying began.

  But right now, as the armada set sail for Turkish waters, partying couldn’t be further from the soldiers’ minds. There was work to be done.

  *

  The shores of the Gulf of Cos offered the raiders some 200 miles of dark, pine-forested coastline, overhanging shadowed inlets and narrows screened from passing boats by islands. Such a bay might at first glance appear to be empty, but upon closer inspection it would reveal a squat, ugly schooner riding at anchor, with a host of inflatables and folbots tied up alongside.

  A distance away lay a fleet of Motor Launches, plus a flotilla of distinctive caiques. Here and there were other assorted craft, from which some of the raiders were busy fishing for their supper. In the stern of the fat schooner – the Tewfik – squatted a distinctive, semi-naked figure, Lassen, a scruffy little dog at his side. The Dane was whittling away at a length of wood, fashioning a bow with which to hunt wild boar in the forest, Pipo glued to his every move.

  Down below in the dark interior of the ship sat Sutherland, pipe clamped between teeth, transcribing the raiders’ first operational orders. To the front of the ship, Sergeant Jenkins – he who had only recently conjured up that fine Christmas feast – was busy, busy, busy. He was trying to stop one raider from pinching a tin of sausage meat, accusing another of doing the same, while attempting to get his Greek cooks to refrain from preparing octopus for supper – again.

  ‘No octopus.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘Not octopus. Not again. Please.’

  On the hatch beside him Donald Grant, a bespectacled American war reporter, reclined in a deckchair. He was busy compiling an article for Look, a now defunct American glossy news magazine. For a moment Grant put his writing pad down, picked up a recently acquired Luger pistol, and polished it proudly. Grant had been into action alongside these men on their previous Dodecanese raids, and he was an instant convert to the way these piratical raiders did things. Luger cleaned, Grant turned back to his writing.

  Dressed in sand-coloured baggy windproof pants and blouses these taciturn characters unloaded supplies that the Navy had brought them, hoisted the heavy bundles on to their shoulders, gestured for me to follow and set off along the dirt road at a steady pace. As we walked along I realized I was the only one making any noise, so that I finished the two hour journey walking on the soles of my feet in an effort to move as quietly as the rest … They were the scruffiest band of soldiers I had ever encountered, carrying an assortment of weapons which they cleaned meticulously.

  Grant’s welcome into the raiding force had been an unusual one, particularly for a news reporter. Sutherland had asked a group of his officers if they were willing to take a young American newsman with them. ‘Well, will he fight?’ one demanded. Grant, overhearing the challenge, blurted out, angrily: ‘Of course I’ll fight!’

  The next query had come direct from Lassen. ‘Do you know how to carry a pack and a gun?’ Grant confirmed that he did. He was quite happy to carry a weapon as well as a pencil into battle. Lassen had handed Grant a German Luger pistol. ‘Right, you’re in,’ he told the reporter.

  Lassen liked Americans. He was himself part-American by birth – Lassen’s mother was an aristocratic Danish-American – though he never once revealed it to Porter Jarrell, or any other of his fellow raiders. Somehow, Lassen managed to be both an intensely private person, and one who could inspire deep loyalty in others – those who were willing to follow him behind enemy lines on death-defying missions, American newsreporters included.

  By the time Raider Force Headquarters in Cairo had realized that the SBS had embedded a journalist within their number, it was too late to do anything about Donald Grant. The high-ups at Raider Force HQ were enraged, but the proverbial chicken had long flown the coop. Grant had already filed the first of his sensational news reports.

  These British raiders are some of the finest fighting men in the world today … All praise is empty for a soldier who will put on the rags of a peasant and walk through a German garrison, knowing that one false move or word will land him in the torture chambers of the Gestapo. I saw him do this with the calm poise of a man buying a pack of cigarettes in a corner tobacconists …

  These raiding forces would not be very impressive on a parade down the Mall in London. They pride themselves on their beards while on operations … While hiding in the mountains near a German outpost, no-one washes because water is scarce and no-one ever takes his clothes off at night. There is considerable variation in uniform but all are dirty, greasy and torn. About the only common garment to all raiding force men is a strangely hooded jacket, which often makes them appear to be a band of Robin Hood’s merry men stepped out of a storybook, complete with knives slung on their belts … They took me with them when they ambushed and killed a commander of a certain German garrison …

  That German officer had been targeted by Lassen, for he commanded a Gestapo unit that terrorized Greek captives using a great black dog that ripped their throats out. Lassen made sure that the dog was hunted down and killed, along with its Gestapo handlers.

  Lassen had first been dubbed the ‘Robin Hood Commando’ back in his Anderson Manor days, when he’d stalked the Dorset fields and hedgerows complete with bow-and-arrow. Now, thanks to Grant’s reporting, that epithet had been immortalized in print and for the entire raiding force, the toughest unit of which – the Irish Patrol – the 23-year-old Dane now commanded.

  The Tewfik bristled with all kinds of weaponry, a good proportion of which was German. To Grant’s right and further forward on the schooner’s deck, O’Reilly – Lassen’s de facto bodyguard – was cleaning a German sniper rifle that had been liberated during the recent battles around Symi. For a moment he contemplated zeroing it onto a target ashore, before reminding himself that loosing off shots against the Turkish shoreline – even practice ones – probably wasn’t the wisest of moves, especially since the raiders didn’t officially exist in Turkish waters.

  Far aft of Grant a figure dressed in a distinctive peaked German forage cap bent over his task, silently working away, his mind totally focused on what he was doing. Despite his German dress, he was one of the British raiders – a foremost explosives expert, no less – and he was busy making up the charges for the mission that he’d just been warned by Sutherland was in the offing.

  Come dusk the scene livened up noticeably. Those who had been spearing fish or bartering with the local Turkish villagers returned to the mother ship, loudly demanding food. The signallers were badgered for news from headquarters. Was there an update on the plans for the forthcoming raid? Were other targets being lined up for attack?

  As the night darkened, Sutherland pulled Lassen to one side. His orders were comple
te. The first target of the new Dodecanese raiding campaign had been set.

  It would be the island of Halki, and Lassen and his Irish Patrol were to lead it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was 31 January 1944 when Motor Launch 1083 whisked the Irish Patrol out of Turkish waters and into those of the enemy. Halki lay some fifty miles to the west of their secret base, and the fast craft made short work of the journey. Braced in the wheelhouse against the biting January wind, Lassen scented the chill air and the fighting that was to come. He was hoping for some German ships to sink in Halki harbour.

  Beside him, his dog Pipo – the Lion of Leros – seemed equally ready for battle. Pipo would become a constant feature of Lassen’s operations, the four-legged raider being carried on the most arduous treks, and lifted up the worst cliffs and inclines. Pipo had a disgusting habit of peeing on the men’s clothing, and even inside their sleeping bags. It didn’t exactly win the dog many friends, but Lassen wouldn’t hear a word said against him.

  Intelligence from Halki suggested that all was not well on the island. The resistance was strong, the anti-German sentiment unyielding, but as a consequence the enemy had cracked down on the locals mercilessly. Malnutrition among the islanders was reportedly reaching crisis proportions, and so – along with all the raiders’ weaponry – Lassen had made sure that the Motor Launch was loaded to the gunwales with food supplies. Sacks of flour, bags of macaroni, tins of bully beef and sausage meat and all sorts of other staples were heaped around the boat.

  In the face of mass-killing, starvation and economic collapse, the Greek islanders were in greater need than ever. Somehow, Lassen managed to combine extraordinary courage and physical endurance with an innate feel for people’s suffering, and an undying empathy for the underdog.