Raiders

by Ross Kemp

  Leaving their dead and wounded comrades behind for the medics and the crew to attend to, the Commandos of Group Three leapt over the sides of the wrecked destroyer and, splitting into small parties, sprinted for their assigned targets. Behind them in the harbour bloody carnage was being played out as the two columns of motor launches, carrying Commando Groups One and Two, were shredded by withering enemy fire. Proving to be every bit of a problem as they had been in the rehearsal exercise, the searchlights lit up the little ships in a brilliant light that allowed the shore gunners to pick them off almost at will. The small, lightly armed wooden craft were no match for the big-calibre shells or the sheer volume of fire from the smaller guns. Very soon after the battle had begun, many of the launches were ablaze and cries of agony rang out across the water, mingling with the burst of shells and the rattle of machine-gun fire in a hellish chorus.

  The starboard column, carrying Group Two, was to land her Commandos at the Old Entrance to the harbour’s main basin, 100 yards from where the Campbeltown had come to rest. The first motor launch, ML 192, had been hit by a shell during the approach and was burning furiously alongside the east jetty. Her captain gave the order to abandon ship and the wounded were lifted into the Carley float life rafts. Nine soldiers were killed or too seriously wounded to continue and four crewmen were also lost. But Captain Michael Burn, the party’s leader, and four others managed to jump into the water and scramble ashore, swimming past the dead body of one of the section commanders as they did so.

  The second and third launches in the column overshot the disembarkation point after the crew were caught in the glare of a powerful searchlight. As they turned round to head back, ML 268, which had been fourth in the column and was carrying a large contingent of eighteen Commandos, was hit by relentless, close-range fire as she made her approach. She burst into flames and then blew up as the auxiliary fuel tank on deck and the demolition party’s explosives caught light. Half the crew jumped overboard in time but sixteen soldiers were killed in a huge explosion.

  ML 156, the fifth of Group Two’s six launches, had already taken heavy fire when a direct hit on the bridge severely wounded its captain Lieutenant Fenton, the leader of the Commando assault group, and a number of his men. The ship’s second-in-command took over and pressed on towards the Old Entrance but, when heavy fire claimed him and the third officer, as well as one engine and the steering gear, there was no option but to withdraw.

  Witnessing the bloody mayhem on the northern side of the Old Entrance, Lieutenant Rodier in ML 177, the final boat in the column, diverted at the last moment and went alongside the steep stone steps on the other side of the small quay where the enemy fire was lighter. His quick thinking almost certainly saved many lives and ML 177 thus became the only one of the six ships in Group Two to succeed in putting its troops ashore. It was, however, a hollow success, as there were no demolition parties to support. They were on their own. At this point, Commander Ryder’s gun boat appeared and disembarked Lieutenant Colonel Newman and his HQ party at the northern steps of the entrance. Some of the German guns had been silenced by now and CHARIOT’s military commander was able to get ashore without the loss of any of his seven men.

  Using his loud-hailer, Ryder ordered Rodier to go to the Campbeltown and take off as many of the wounded Commandos and crew as he could. At the same time, ML 262 under Lieutenant Burt, one of the launches that had overshot the Old Entrance, arrived on the scene. The Commandos she carried were jumping onto the quay when the southern winding shed, a stone’s throw across the water, exploded with an ear-shattering blast. It was heartening for the others to know that at least some demolition parties had managed to get off the water and reach their target. Moments later, the five-man party responsible for laying the charge – Lieutenant Smalley’s from the Campbeltown group – ran down the quay. ML 262, which had just re-embarked a separate party, took them aboard. As they headed out, they came under heavy fire again and suffered a number of casualties, including Smalley who was killed outright. The launch was damaged too but Burt managed to escape downstream.

  ML 267 under Lieutenant Beart, carrying a reserve of fourteen Commandos, had turned back to make a second attempt at the Old Entrance but, under heavy fire, burst into flames as she tried to land her men. Jumping overboard to escape the flames, nineteen crew and Commandos died in the water, most of them machine-gunned in the burning oil. The lucky ones were drowned. Ryder witnessed the horrific fate suffered by so many from his starboard column as his gun boat raced down to the Old Mole to assess Group One’s progress there. In his report, he wrote: ‘On leaving the Old Entrance, however, I could see that matters had fared badly there. The approaches were floodlit by searchlights from all directions and a deadly fire was being poured on the M.L.s still gallantly attempting to go alongside.’

  While the Commandos in the motor launches battled the devastating enemy fire to try and get ashore, their colleagues on the Campbeltown, many of them already carrying wounds, were pouring over the sides of the stricken destroyer. They too were feeling the full force of the enemy guns that continued to spray the ship from both sides of the river. As they did so, Commander Beattie immediately set about arranging the withdrawal of his crew and the wounded before scuttling his ship. The plan was to send the destroyer to the bottom so that if the charge failed to detonate, the entrance to the dock would remain blocked to the Tirpitz for up to a year.

  The two assault groups were the first into the fray but their exit was impeded by the number of wounded men lying in the blood-spattered gangways and well-deck. There was no option but to drag some of them out of the way in order to get the attack under way. Urged on by Newman’s 2iC, Major Copland, the men of 2 Commando hurried through the smoke, flames and raking fire to clamber down the hanging ladders to the dock. Lieutenant Roderick’s party descended by the starboard side of the bow and quickly silenced a gun emplacement, strafing the gunners with their Tommy guns and disabling the gun with a small explosive. Working in small groups, covering each other in fire-and-move advances, Roderick’s men used a shower of grenades to destroy their second target, a 3.7-cm flak gun that had been hammering the Campbeltown from its position on a nearby roof.

  A third gun they were to target had already been silenced by the Navy’s guns and, their tasks complete, Roderick’s men set up a blocking position to thwart a German counterattack. In the space of those few, frenetic minutes, four of his men had fallen. The other assault party, led by Captain Roy, destroyed a gun position that had been hastily abandoned at the sight of the Commandos streaming along the dockside, firing Brens and Tommy guns from their hips. The emplacement was put out of action and Roy took up position, as per their orders, at the Old Entrance bridge, which they were to hold until all the demolition squads had withdrawn to the evacuation point on the Old Mole.

  The first demolition team from the Campbeltown into action, led by Lieutenant Chant, had reached their target before the immediate area had been cleared of enemy guns. Chant and one of his sergeants, Chamberlain, were carrying severe wounds sustained in the run up the river. Struggling to walk, Chant had taken injuries to his leg, arm and hands, while Chamberlain had been hit in the shoulder and had to ask one of his ‘buddies’ to carry his heavy haversack laden with explosives. Their task was to destroy the pumping house, next to the Campbeltown, which would render the dock tidal and prevent the Tirpitz and all other large warships from using it for a great many months. It was considered the most important of all the demolition assignments.

  Having blown the door to the pump house, Chamberlain, who was weakening by the minute, was left to guard the entrance while Chant and three sergeants disappeared below. Each carrying 60 pounds of explosives on their backs, they descended the labyrinth of stairs into the bowels of the echoing chamber as quickly as the darkness and Chant’s wounds allowed them. Working in the gloom by the light of their torches, it was now that their intensive training back at Southampton’s King George V dock paid off. The layout of t
he machinery was just as they had been led to expect and, one by one, each of the four peeled off to their assigned positions and quickly set about laying their charges. As they finished, Chant was starting to fade and one of his men had to help him climb back to the top as the slow fuses burnt down behind them. Shortly after they had taken cover, the pump house exploded in an enormous roar that reverberated across the dockyard. Adding the finishing touch to their demolition work, the group lit the oil pouring out of the structure and withdrew over Roy’s bridge, hurrying to the Old Mole ready to re-embark.

  The final group of Commandos off the Campbeltown, and the largest, had been handed the most hazardous of the demolition tasks. They were to destroy the northern lock gate and its winding shed. To reach their target, however, they had to run the gauntlet of heavy German fire for 300 yards along the eastern, or left-hand side of the Normandie dock. The group was split into two parties: the first, four NCOs under Lieutenant Purdon, was to blow the winding machinery. The second, eight NCOs under Lieutenant Brett, was to attack the lock gate. Their numbers were boosted by the addition of a reserve demolition group under Lieutenant Burtinshaw. Lieutenant Etches, who was in overall charge of the group, was forced to stay behind having suffered serious shrapnel wounds to both legs and an arm shortly before the Campbeltown made impact with the southern gate. Two men of five in a heavily armed protection squad had also been incapacitated and remained on board.

  Stepping over the dead, the dying and the wounded to get to the ladders at the forward end of the besieged destroyer, Purdon, Brett and Burtinshaw led their men down the sides and into the thick of the battle. They advanced to their target in short bounds, taking cover from the beams of the searchlights and the raking crossfire as and when they could. The heaviest fire was emanating from a German position midway along the dock and it was clear there could be no further progress until it was neutralised. Drilled to perfection by months of training, the three-man protection squad went into action. While one drew the fire, the other two crept forward and lobbed in grenades, killing all inside.

  The two demolition squads had infiltrated deeper into the heart of enemy territory than any other and they soon found themselves under intense fire from a number of positions, including the heavier-calibre guns of the ships moored inside the giant basin to their left. Brett was injured early on and Burtinshaw and six others were killed as the casualty toll mounted rapidly. But, undaunted, the others continued with their tasks. With no officers left standing in the group, Sergeant Carr took control and, having abandoned plans to lay explosives inside the structure, he set about detonating the underwater explosives that had been lowered over the side. Moments later, a muffled boom was followed by the sight of giant fountains of water shooting into the air and pouring through the holed structure into the dry dock. Leaving their dead comrades where they lay, the survivors, each one suffering at least one wound, staggered back through the tumult of gunfire towards the bridge held by Roy’s small, heavily reduced assault party. As they disappeared into the night, Purdon and his men lit the fuses on their charges on the machinery inside the winding shed, echoing those set off by Lieutenant Smalley a short time earlier at the southern end.

  With battle raging in all parts of the dockyard, Lieutenant Colonel Newman and his seven men waited anxiously at the HQ they had established in a building at the Old Entrance close to the bridge held by Roy. His protection party had perished on the water but he was soon joined by the only full Commando party to have made it ashore – from Rodier’s ML 177. He deployed the group, commanded by Troop Sergeant Major Haines, as the HQ’s makeshift protection party, doing his forlorn best to exercise some sort of control over the chaotic scenes around him.

  Five hundred yards to the south of Newman’s HQ, the six launches of the port column of the raiding force were attempting to land the Commandos of Group One on the Old Mole. The fate they suffered under the German guns was every bit as horrifying as that of their comrades from Group Two at the Old Entrance; the courage of their efforts to get ashore was as awe-inspiring as it was hopeless.

  As the first of the six, ML 447, under Lieutenant Platt, had already absorbed significant punishment as it closed on the heavily defended stone jetty. Two machine-gun positions on the Mole raked the vessel, and casualties lay strewn upon her deck as Platt tried to bring her alongside the steps. Captain Birney’s fifteen-strong assault party had already been reduced to roughly half its strength when an artillery shell scored a direct hit and flames engulfed the ship. Platt gave the order to abandon ship, but though a few managed to scramble ashore and some were picked up by one of the torpedo boats, most were drowned or gunned to death in the water.

  As at the Old Entrance a few hundred yards to the north, only one of the six launches managed to get their men ashore. Once Birney’s assault party had been wiped out, there was no chance of the rest overcoming the German defenders behind the walls of the jetty, who outnumbered and outgunned them. ML 457, under Lieutenant Collier, the second in the column, somehow survived the relentless German enfilade from above and managed to disembark one demolition team under Lieutenant Walton, the protection party under Second Lieutenant Watson and a small demolition control party under Captain Pritchard. The fifteen men who made it into the dockyard amounted to 18 per cent of the total number of Commandos scheduled to land at the Old Mole.

  With next to no support, their fate was sealed the moment they began to scramble up the greasy stone slipway towards the German gunfire that was intensifying by the minute. But they pressed on nevertheless, trying to ignore the harrowing screams of their friends and comrades from ML 447 in the water below. As the small groups of men made a dash for their targets, more Germans arrived to strengthen the defences at the Old Mole, extinguishing, once and for all, any hope that the troops ashore could be evacuated from there as planned. As the Germans tossed grenades over the walls onto the landing points below, the weight of fire raining down was so great and the scene so chaotic that the remaining four motor launches were forced to withdraw back into the middle of the river. So it was that of the twelve troop-carrying vessels, only one from each column had succeeded in putting their men ashore.

  Moments after the last of his Commandos had clambered ashore, Collier’s motor launch (ML 457) burst into flames. Lieutenant Burt in ML 262 rushed in to help but both were shattered by enemy fire. There were few survivors. Within minutes, the parties that had managed to land at the Old Mole were also in disarray as they battled in vain to carry out their orders. Lieutenant Walton lost his life trying to blow up the bridge connecting the Old Town to the centre of St Nazaire in an attempt to block German reinforcements. Captain Pritchard died of a deep wound to the stomach, almost certainly at the point of a German bayonet as he rounded the corner of a building. Lieutenant Watson’s team were beaten back by ferocious German defence and fought their way through the dock installations to Newman’s HQ at the Old Entrance.

  To his mounting frustration, Lieutenant Wynn, commanding the motor torpedo boat MTB 74, had been forced to watch the battle unfolding on the dockside, unable to contribute anything more telling than some covering fire for the rest of the force. Commander Ryder had held him back to torpedo the Campbeltown if her scuttling charges had failed to detonate, but once the old destroyer was lying safely on the bottom and stuck fast on the lock gate, Wynn was handed his chance to play his part in the action. Speeding towards the Old Entrance, Wynn unleashed two torpedoes at the lock gates leading to the U-boat basin. Both hit the target and, with their time-delay fuses activated, sank to the river bed. He returned to the Campbeltown and embarked as many wounded men as he could accommodate before making his escape towards the mouth of the estuary.

  It was now that his good nature got the better of him and disaster struck. Orders stipulated that none of the withdrawing vessels were to stop under the German guns to pick up survivors but, spotting two men on a life raft, Wynn didn’t have the heart to roar past them. The speed of the torpedo boat was its only pr
otection against the mighty coastal guns and, as soon as he slowed, one of them traversed its giant barrel. Moments later, two 170-mm shells crashed into the boat causing devastation. Wynn, severely injured, was rescued by his Chief Petty Officer. Together with the others who survived the massive blasts, they abandoned ship. As many as two dozen men clung to the one Carley float life raft as it was pulled out to sea by the power of the retreating tide. When it was later intercepted by a German patrol boat, Wynn was one of only three men still alive.

  The three other motor torpedo boats had provided covering fire during the attempted landings and, using their speed to dodge incoming shells, survived the early exchanges of the action. ML 270 and ML 160 were later hit by shells but managed to patch up the worst of the damage and limp out to sea. ML 298 under Lieutenant Nock was less fortunate. Braving the heavy fire of the German defences, Nock took the boat into the Old Mole and the Old Entrance searching for Commandos to evacuate; finding none, he headed back out into the river. The boat had been hit several times during the night and a fire on board soon drew the attention of the coastal gun batteries as she sped for the relative sanctuary of the open sea. When a volley of large-calibre shells crashed on her wooden decks, the result was carnage and destruction. The few that survived had no choice but to abandon ship and put their lives at the mercy of the tides.