Dorlin House at Acharacle in Argyll, Scotland, was originally known as the No. 3 Combined Training Centre. It was used by the Royal Navy as early as 1940 but was commissioned as HMS Dorlin in 1942 following the British Naval tradition of christening shore-based establishments with the names of ships. The HMS Dorlin was the site of several assault courses and a specialized boat training centre operated by Mountbatten’s Combined Operations which allowed the commandos to train for pinch operations. (photo credits 8.1)
Commandos in the type of landing craft used during the raid, seen here during a training exercise in Scotland, February 28, 1942. (photo credits 8.2)
Once this portion of the training was complete, the recruits moved on to the basic intelligence-training phase, where they learned to recognize enemy vehicles, uniforms, documents and equipment; to conduct searches of premises to recover sensitive material; and to interrogate prisoners—and endure interrogation themselves should they fall into enemy hands. They then went on to advanced intelligence work—in chemical warfare and the interpretation of aerial photos. They received demonstrations of enemy electronics, wireless sets and radar, and learned how to photograph documents on the spot. Some of them specialized in map reading, topography and hydrography, and a few allegedly went off to Scotland Yard for an “intensive three-day crash course in safe blowing and other such arts.”20
In late May, the Marines moved to the Isle of Wight, where, unknown to them at the time, the training regimen was shaped specially to prepare them for their first major role—in the small French coastal town of Dieppe. There, on that island off the south coast of England, one of the platoons, No. 10, would become the prototype for Ian Fleming’s latest brainchild—a naval intelligence commando unit for pinch purposes, or, as he would call it, his Intelligence Assault Unit, or IAU.
On March 20, 1942, Fleming approached his boss John Godfrey with an intriguing proposition. His memo, entitled “Proposal for Naval Intelligence Commando Unit” and signed with his famous “F” scrawled at the bottom, went straight to the heart of the four-rotor crisis.21 He conceded that he had poached the concept directly from the Germans, and that he intended to draw the original cadre for his IAU from the No. 10 Platoon of the Royal Marine Commando’s X Company. (After Dieppe, the platoon would evolve into the nucleus of the illustrious 30 Assault Unit, whose motto would be “Attain by Surprise.”)22
“These ‘commandos,’ ” he wrote in his proposal, would “accompany the forward troops when a port or naval installation is being attacked and, if the attack is successful, their duty is to capture documents, cyphers etc., before these can be destroyed by the defenders.”23 Their first duty, before any operation, would be to assemble a list of the types of materials required by all sections in the Naval Intelligence Division and then to ferret out every scrap of information they could about possible locations where these pieces might be found in a given port. Once the target had been established, the unit would be inserted into a combined operation to train with the assaulting force. It would “proceed with 2nd or 3rd wave of attack into the port, and make straight for the various buildings etc., where the booty is expected to be found, capture it, and return.”24 Undoubtedly incorporating the lessons from the pinch raids on Lofoten and Vaagso, Fleming’s proposal for the NID to create its own intelligence-gathering commando unit stemmed straight from the four-rotor crisis and the desperate need to pull in German intelligence materials. At first, Fleming envisioned that his small elite unit would comprise a platoon’s worth of hand-picked men, specifically trained to conduct pinch raids ashore under the cover of larger operations.
Fleming’s proposal did not come at Godfrey out of left field. In early December, a month before the pinch policy shift that abandoned targeting lone ships at sea in favour of pinching material onshore, the Secret Intelligence Service, headed by Stewart Menzies—known to all as “C”—had warned the NID that German naval intelligence had successfully employed a commando unit of its own—the Marine Einsatzkommando, or MARES for short.25* Members of this unit would accompany the assault waves of advancing forces and seize “documents, charts and naval stores,” perform “counter-demolition missions in captured harbours,” provide “operational intelligence concerning the harbour,” and interrogate “POWs [and] civilians” while conducting “counter-espionage work”—even going so far as to work in plain clothes during the invasion of Russia so their capture of documents would not be traced back to Germany.26 The report highlighted the great successes of the German commandos in Greece, Crete and Yugoslavia, where they had captured not only top secret British material but the entire staff of the Yugoslav army’s North West Command, along with a complete set of their papers.27
For Godfrey, the notion of “a force of armed and expert authorized looters” made a great deal of sense, for several reasons.28 First, instead of relying on ad hoc boarding parties as had happened in the Norway raids, his Naval Intelligence Division would be able to select and rigorously train its own “private army” with intimate knowledge of its special requirements—and, by extension, of Bletchley Park’s too. Armed with the appropriate firepower, the commandos would be able to overtake the local defences, prevent the last-minute destruction of the Enigma machines and their supporting code and cipher books, and get out undetected.
Ian Fleming’s MOST SECRET proposal for the creation of a Naval Intelligence commando unit to carry out raids specifically to “capture documents, cyphers etc … to make straight for the main buildings etc. where the booty is expected to be found” and bring it home. His “F” is scrawled at the bottom. Also visible, scribbled in the lower left margin, is Admiral John Godfrey’s enthusiastic support, “Yes, most decidedly,” and his next directive, “but we won’t submit”—to Mountbatten, since Godfrey preferred to push the idea of working in collaboration. (photo credits 8.3)
Second, having a trained commando unit at the ready would give the NID a consistent and dedicated tool for pinching. In a sense, such a development was a natural extension of the process Godfrey had been building up over the previous year, and it offered, if successful, a chance not only to solve the four-rotor problem but to re-establish and maintain a constant flow of the vital materials needed to feed the Bletchley beast.
Third, the NID would no longer have to risk sending Ultra-indoctrinated officers, as it had done in Norway with Captain Jasper Haines and Lieutenant Commander Allon Bacon, to execute the pinch, which had created the possibility of precious secrets being compromised should these officers be captured and interrogated. The employment of a fully armed commando unit trained specifically for this hit-and-run work would greatly limit that unwanted prospect. Their knowledge would be confined to these particular missions and specific target requirements; and although the commando unit’s officers and senior non-commissioned officers would know what to look for and where, they would remain ignorant of why it was needed, and even of the very existence of Bletchley Park and its secret work.
Fourth, now that the NID was working closely with Combined Operations, it had the physical means—the vehicle—with which to deliver a commando unit effectively to an onshore target and to cover the commandos’ existence by blending them seamlessly into a larger raiding operation.
That was the young Commander Ian Fleming’s ostensibly simple but game-changing suggestion. He also proposed that the unit should come directly under the command of the new director of Combined Operations, Louis Mountbatten, about one month before it took part in any raid, so it could train with the general assault forces.29 “Nothing but good could come of an organization which would enable our intimate knowledge of the port to be constantly at the disposal of the attacking force,” commented one of the section heads examining the proposal at NID.30
The whole idea had a swashbuckling flair to it, well in line with the prevailing tone that Mountbatten sought for Combined Operations and that Churchill adored. Sweeping down on the target in lightning-quick fashion, overcoming the enemy, and scooping up Ultra Secr
et material that could help win the war or re-inject life into a now sagging empire had a romantic allure for officers who were hopelessly desk-bound in Room 39. After the war, Fleming reflected flippantly on his various plots to outfox the enemy, calling them “nonsense” and chalking them up to “those romantic Red Indian daydreams so many of us indulged in at the beginning of the war.”31 In truth, however, many were deadly serious—a matter of life and death for those involved, with enormous potential in their results—and more calculated than he was willing or able to admit publicly given the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act, even in the postwar period.
Stripped of their swagger, these schemes reflected a sober reality that was consistent with Fleming’s Machiavellian nature. Essentially, he and Godfrey deemed the unit expendable in those operations designed to pinch what they listed as “A-1 targets”—the code and cipher material. The history of 30 Assault Unit lays out the lethal intent underlining this target grading with cold aplomb, defining it as “material and documents of the highest operational priority, the importance of which is sufficient to justify the mounting of special operations and the incurring of heavy casualties on the part of 30 assault unit.”32 Taken in isolation, this passage is remarkable, but given the context of the times and what was at stake, it is not surprising. Neither, perhaps, is the fact that Godfrey secured a positive nod for the creation of the unit from his fellow heads of intelligence on the Joint Intelligence Committee, who filtered intelligence schemes for the chiefs of staff. In due course the chiefs too gave their sanction to Fleming’s commando unit.
With the raid at St-Nazaire and the pinch attempt at Myrmidon less than two weeks away, Fleming suspected that a new operation currently in development, and loosely scheduled to take place in August or September 1942, would provide the earliest opportunity to get his assault unit into action. Operation Sledgehammer was essentially a strategic operation with political overtones, designed to postpone demands from the Soviet Union for the Allies to open a second front in Western Europe. It called for the landing of British and American (mostly British) divisions to capture either Brest in Brittany or the Cherbourg peninsula in Normandy. The plan, pushed largely by the Americans and generating little enthusiasm among the British chiefs of staff, was designed to draw German land and air forces into a giant battle of attrition, luring units away from the eastern front and Stalin’s hard-pressed Soviet Red Army. For Fleming, the idea of slipping his newly minted Intelligence Assault Unit into the larger operation made perfect sense: the big German naval bases at Brest and Cherbourg had long been considered prime pinch targets.
In late March, and with Godfrey’s blessing, Fleming sent the proposal to Louis Mountbatten’s flamboyant Combined Operations intelligence officer, Wing Commander Marquis de Casa Maury. “Bobby” de Casa Maury, a Cuban-born playboy, was a controversial figure who attracted open scorn and ridicule from the established set in Whitehall. Although he had flown for the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and, during the interwar period, had held a commission in the air force reserves, he was rumoured to have been promoted far above his ceiling. With no obvious background for the job—his main claims to fame were revitalizing Bentley Motors and establishing the Curzon and Paris cinemas in London as art house theatres—his personal connection as a former admirer of Mountbatten’s wife, Edwina, appeared to be his main qualification for the job.33 On April 1, De Casa Maury returned Fleming’s docket with an encouraging note attached: “CCO [Mountbatten] likes the idea and suggests a conference should be called at this Headquarters under his chairmanship to discuss the matter fully.”34
But the covetous tone of Mountbatten’s request made John Godfrey balk. Realizing the immense potential of Fleming’s concept, he ordered that the IAU remain firmly in the hands of the Admiralty—or, more particularly, of his own NID:
On further consideration I think it would be a mistake to turn over the working out of an “advanced Intelligence unit” to the CCO. CCO’s main function is chiefly of an operational nature, and an Intelligence set-up similar to what has been proposed is bound to get low priority. Moreover, to turn it over to him is an admission that he and his Intelligence staff are better able to work out such an arrangement than DNI, DDNI and Section 17. I should therefore like the matter to be tackled by Cdr Drake and Cdr Fleming under the supervision of the DDNI, who is requested to treat the matter as one of primary importance.35
Part of Godfrey’s opposition stemmed from his genuine desire to ensure the commando unit’s proper organization, training and development and its potential for solving the crisis. At the same time, his memo clearly demonstrates an increasing tendency within the Naval Intelligence Division to go it alone—and especially for Godfrey to add yet another resource to his ever-widening empire.
Operation Sledgehammer would soon be pushed to the back burner and eventually shelved permanently, much to the relief of the British chiefs of staff. Instead, they decided to embark that fall on Operation Torch—the invasion of North Africa. The cancellation did not deter Godfrey and Fleming from pressing ahead: with the failure of Operation Chariot at St-Nazaire to produce any German intelligence materials, and with the abortion of Operation Myrmidon at Bayonne before it had even begun, Dieppe suddenly loomed large on their radar screens.
* Thermopylae refers to the ancient battle for the small mountain-pass town in Greece in 480 BC, when a vastly outnumbered force of soldiers from the Athenian city-states—in particular Sparta—held off, with self-sacrificing courage, an advancing Persian juggernaut that vastly outnumbered it.
* There is nothing in the Admiralty’s intelligence files to suggest that the creation of the Royal Marine Commando in February 1942 stemmed either from the change in pinch policy in January towards operations on shore rather than at sea or from the need to solve the looming four-rotor crisis. The reason seems to have been the mundane need to save the division from the bureaucratic chopping block. The timing, however, could not have been more fortunate for all concerned.
* “Dits” were Royal Marine tales, repeated in the barracks or the mess, that conveyed essential lessons learned through a less than formal manner.
* Although the report did not mention it, Fleming had escaped the clutches of MARES in 1940 when he was cleaning out the SIS safe in Paris ahead of the advancing Germans. In 1943 MARES carried out the highly successful raid on Grand Sasso, where the rescued Mussolini failed miserably later that year in trying to capture Marshal Tito, the Communist partisan leader in Yugoslavia.
NINE
DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT
Dieppe was a small seaport and it would be interesting to capture it for a time and then withdraw. It had no particular military significance but was about the right size for a divisional attack.
—CAPTAIN JOHN HUGHES-HALLETT, UNPUBLISHED MEMOIR
August 19, 1942, did not mark the first enemy attack on the seaside resort of Dieppe and its inhabitants, les Dieppois. Over its thousand-year existence, its geographic location, less than seventy miles from England and not far from the Dover Straits, the narrowest part of the English Channel, had led to both fortune and suffering. Vikings, foreign navies, marauders, pirates and privateers had all paid the old settlement costly visits, the most recent being just two years before, when the Germans invaded France and unceremoniously evicted the British Expeditionary Force from the continent at Dunkirk. The British had held on to Dieppe, the closest port to Paris and one of the six principal deepwater ports in France, until the last possible moment, then quickly tried to destroy its facilities to deny their use to the Germans. The combination of German attack and British sabotage inflicted some damage, but the port remained operative even though several “block ships” had deliberately been sunk just outside the harbour mole, or breakwater. Although the submerged wrecks did not cut off access completely, they prevented large ships from accessing the port and made navigation treacherous for smaller inbound vessels as well.
Located at the mouth of the river Arques in a br
eak in the cliff-lined coast, Dieppe sits squarely between two formidable three-hundred-foot headlands that stretch a mile and a half in opposite directions to the tiny seaside villages of Puys and Pourville. In between the two headlands lies the chert-rock beachfront, “the poor man’s Monte Carlo,” beloved of British summertime visitors. For more than half a century, British tourists had arrived in Dieppe’s sheltered port on ferries from Dover, Newhaven and Portsmouth, anxious to walk along its beaches, picnic in its fields, paint its stellar vistas or lounge in its seaside or port-side cafés before a stroll on the grassy promenade or a game of chance in its famous beachfront casino. Dieppe was a convenient draw for military and naval officers, writers, painters and socialites—la colonie of temporary émigrés who leased or purchased property by the sea. Among them was the beautiful Clementine Hozier, Churchill’s future wife, who called Dieppe her home for a year at the turn of the century.
Tucked away just a few hundred yards behind the line of hotels on the beachfront lay the town proper, including the port, its entrance guarded by the eastern headland known in English as Pollet Cliff (the Dieppois call it le Pollet). Crowned by a large church, Notre Dame de Bonsecours, this vantage point provided a spectacular view out to sea for visitors—and for defenders too. Anyone standing atop the cliff could see halfway across the Channel, glance over the beach to the fourteenth-century castle on the western headland, or gaze straight down into the inner channel that led to the port behind this promontory—to the interlocking basins of its outer and inner harbours.
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