by Tom Keene
The trouble from SIS’s point of view was that SOE, not content to wait for resistance to develop spontaneously, saw itself as a striking force whose blows would help convince opinion in occupied Europe that Great Britain was fighting on and was neither beaten nor cowed. This was why they planned small scale raids on targets accessible from the sea as well as landing agents and cargoes of arms and explosives for subsequent use.12
That intention of SOE to carry out small raids of their own – despite the creation of Combined Operations with precisely that remit in June 1940, a month before their own creation – remained in place, despite Gubbins’ presence at a meeting with SIS on 16 December 1940 at which the SIS representative stated categorically that his organisation was ‘against Raiding Parties as they might interfere with their organisation from getting agents into enemy-occupied territory’.13 Thus SOE and SIS went together like oil and water, their missions, aims and objectives mutually repellent. Yet both, as Brooks Richards astutely observed, had been mandated ‘at the highest level’ to pursue incompatible objectives.14 Only Winston Churchill, perhaps, could afford to take a more pragmatic view, confiding to General Hastings Ismay later in the war: ‘The warfare between SOE and SIS is a fundamental and perhaps inevitable feature of our affairs.’15 Yet, had there been the time and opportunity for deeper strategic thinking when SOE was created in July 1940, it might not have been.
There was a further complication, a restriction, lying in wait for March-Phillipps and his plans to take the war to France by fishing boat, although this would not become apparent for a few months. After the withdrawal from Dunkirk, the Channel was, in effect, an unregulated ‘no-man’s-water’, where a wide variety of units, army formations and shady organisations took it upon themselves to slip across and poke about on the German-occupied shoreline. The commandos had operations Collar and Ambasssador; SIS had agents to land; SOE had French evacuees they wished to slip back into France: in the absence of a developed air link – which would come later – clandestine passage by sea was the obvious way back to France.
After attempts at liaison with SIS proved unsatisfactory, SOE set up their own man in Helford to requisition French fishing vessels which could blend in with local French fishing fleets and be used to pick up agents and deliver messages, arms and supplies to the French in northern Brittany. The man behind this clandestine delivery and collection service was Gerry Holdsworth, a former advertising executive and Section D agent who had done good work for SIS in Norway before the war and who, since its outbreak, had transferred first to the Royal Navy and then to SOE. Charged by SOE with setting up their own ferry service to France because, as he put it with a characteristic lack of tact ‘other people [i.e. SIS] keep letting us down’, Holdsworth had anticipated the dangers of the enemy on the far shore but had underestimated those of the enemy closer to home. He was, however, soon to know his name: it was Slocum, Commander, later Captain, Frank Slocum, RN.
Slocum had served with the Grand Fleet in the First World War, become a navigation specialist and then ‘retired’ from the Royal Navy in 1936 as a Lieutenant Commander. He had then been surreptitiously seconded to SIS before returning to the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty in 1940 in the rank of Commander RN. Slocum’s Operations Section at the Naval Intelligence Division was responsible for arranging sea transport operations to France. Faced with the conflicting needs of both SIS and SOE, Slocum, it might be supposed, suffered from divided loyalties. He did not. He was, first and foremost, an Admiralty man who believed in the primacy of the Admiralty, the Royal Navy and SIS, in that order; an Admiralty, moreover, that quite literally ruled the waves and whose august Lordships maintained that no operations at sea could take place without what Michael Foot describes as their ‘authoritative assent’.16 The Admiralty already enjoyed a long-established relationship with SIS and thus had little time for SOE, the upstart organisation suddenly foisted into their midst. As the months went by Holdsworth was to find himself increasingly frustrated by this man related to the famous nineteenth-century voyager who was the first to sail single-handedly around the world. Now Hollingsworth found that this twentieth-century Slocum had the power to send SOE round the houses, to veto SOE’s cross-channel missions or, at the very least, place obstacles in their path. And he would do so, moreover, whilst maintaining all the while that he was doing all in his power to help. Robin Richards, Brooks Richards’ younger brother, served with the Helford Flotilla in Cornwall and watched these two powerful personalities – Gerry Holdsworth and Commander Slocum – clash head to head:
Holdsworth was a very independent, tough-minded fellow and he regarded Slocum with great distrust and Slocum regarded him as a hothead and with great mistrust. Gerry Holdsworth was a buccaneer, a strong character. Although he was in naval uniform and had a naval rank he was very informal in his methods in the sense that if he wanted anything he would use any method that he could to accomplish it.17
But this was wartime and Commander, later Captain, Slocum, NID(C) – Naval Intelligence Division (Clandestine) – and later DDOD(I) – Deputy Director of Operations (Irregular) – was the senior officer and the man with the ear of the Admiralty. In time, the bruising Holdsworth–Slocum confrontations could have only one ending. Gerry Holdsworth and Gus March-Phillipps shared similar traits. Had they met they might have got on, perhaps even compared notes. There is no evidence that they did. There would shortly be evidence, however, that Capt. March-Phillipps and Commander Slocum would cross cutlasses. And here too there could be only one victor.
Reviewing undercover maritime activities in the Channel during this period, it is evident Commander Slocum was struggling to meet a number of different and often conflicting mission briefs from the various clandestine organisations that looked to him for transport to and from the French coast. Between February and August 1941 there were twelve different sea transport operations to the north and west coasts of France that fell within his remit. Two of these were for the Free French and de Gaulle’s nascent Deuxième Bureau, seven for SIS and three for SOE. Most important of these perhaps was the SIS Allah mission to set up the ‘Johnny’ intelligence network.18 This was based in Quimper, Brittany, and covered the vitally important new German naval base at Brest. On 21 March 1941 the two German warships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had moved there for repairs. That work – and the subsequent break-out date of the two mighty battle-cruisers – was of huge strategic importance to the Admiralty. Weighed against the importance of keeping ‘Johnny’ supplied with the agents, wireless operators, stores, equipment and money it needed to ensure that vital intelligence kept flowing back from Brest, anything March-Phillipps might wish to offer by way of a nuisance raid or two across the Channel in spring 1941 was likely to be viewed in precisely that light.
In March 1941, however, Commander Slocum’s name was still unknown to March-Phillipps. With Gubbins’ authority, he was able to recruit a few men from ‘B’ Troop together with one or two SOE men he had met during training. He then began to create his as yet unnamed new unit. His mission from Gubbins was to train his men for amphibious duties and to work out ways in which they might raid the enemy shore. So much, then, for SOE sensitivity to the operational concerns of SIS.
Moving to Poole in Dorset on the south coast, only a few miles from the family home in Blandford Forum, March-Phillipps set up a temporary base in the Antelope Hotel in the High Street. The Antelope is an old coaching inn, its brick facade the same as it must have been when Gus first saw it, a life-sized antelope poised to leap into the road below from a first-floor buttressed window set high above the portico. Here he soon made friends with the landlord, Arthur Baker, known to all as ‘Pop’, who rapidly took Gus and his growing number of recruits under his wing. One of those was then Sergeant, later Major, Leslie Prout, who remembered shortly after the war: ‘“Pop” treated us with much kindness over our many exorbitant demands. “Pop” remains today a very great friend of all who served under Gus and Apple, and the Antelope is our nat
ural rendezvous for reunions.’19
Units that train for amphibious operations need boats to train with and, with I’m Alone left astern in Scotland, the need for a boat, or boats, was pressing. March-Phillipps solved his problem with customary directness. A scouting trip took him to Brixham harbour to the west. Here he spotted three ketches – Maid Honor, Tcheta and Our Boy, all of which appeared suitable for what he had in mind. The shipmaster at Brixham ‘is particularly anxious to be rid of them and suggests that we requisition them at once and wire their owners’. Typically, March-Phillipps was now in a fever of impatience: ‘Upham, shipbuilders, Brixham, is standing by to receive a wire from me to put the sails and running gear aboard and will have all three boats ready for sea in a week.’
Maid Honor, particularly, caught his eye. She was a 55-ton Brixham fishing ketch, built in 1925–6 for a local fisherman and named after his daughter Honor. She was a beautiful, wooden-hulled vessel with planks 4 inches thick. She was 70-feet long and 16 feet in the beam. She carried mainsail, topsail, mizzen, jib and foresail and was, like I’m Alone, a real sea boat designed to go everywhere by sail and whose four-cylinder auxiliary had been put in later almost as an afterthought. Gus fell in love with her and rapidly found good tactical reasons to justify her suitability: her reddish-brown sails would offer silent approach to the enemy shore, he reasoned, whilst her hull would not be affected by magnetic mines. He requisitioned her on the spot. You could do that then, in wartime.
He wrote to Colin Gubbins on 11 March 1941:
Permission is asked to wire Upham to start work immediately and to wire the three owners. Authorities at Brixham will co-operate to the fullest extent – both civil and naval … No 1 Commando is now stationed at Dartmouth. Without giving away any trade secrets, I learned that the Colonel and 2nd in command would fall in with almost any project and, I believe that, if approached, they would attach men and officers with sea experience unofficially to form crews and possible raiding parties. The men could live on board on their extra ration allowance, and it would be very much in their own interest to keep silent … I talked with many NOs [Navigating Officers] on M.L. [Motor Launches] duty and what I gathered from them of conditions in the Channel made me a great deal more confident of success. It seems that the enemy patrols are keen but very thin and do not operate much in bad weather. I could operate these boats in dirty weather, without undue risk. If given powers and the word ‘go’ I believe I could have at least one of these boats ready for operations in a fortnight from now.20
To March-Phillipps, every day counted. Britain was fighting for survival; he was desperate to play his part in her struggle.
‘Having obtained agreement in principle to the proposal of small-scale raids Gus pulled off a feat that only he could have got away with,’ remembered Leslie Prout:
Although having no authority to proceed, he calmly requisitioned a Brixham trawler whose attractive name was Maid Honor. With her he secured her Skipper, Blake Glanville, and sailed her from Brixham to Poole. Safely berthed in Poole, Gus informed an astonished Navy of the requisition who in turn informed an astonished Brigadier [Gubbins], who won the everlasting gratitude of the crew by backing us up through thick and thin.
Blake Glanville, a softly spoken, portly sailor in his fifties, stayed with his ship. He would go on to become the unit’s chief sailing instructor and, like ‘Pop’, become devoted to Gus and his band of would-be young raiders who, in the evenings below decks, would be held spell-bound with his tales of life at sea in the old trawler days – ‘I only exaggerate a little, mind’ee!’21 He would also teach them, as all old sailors should, the business of knots and cordage. ‘Always with us was the vast, rock-like and beloved figure of Skipper Blake Glanville,’ remembered Leslie Prout:
He fathered all of us, and taught us all we ever came to know in the handling of the Maid. We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Blake, for the success of his young pupils on the sea was very largely due to the thoroughness of his teaching.
Maid Honor, before conversion to ‘Q’ ship, could sleep five to eight below decks but, wherever they were to sleep, it could not be alongside at Poole harbour, with the busy town and port just a line’s throw off the bows. It was too public. Just as in Scotland, somewhere more private, more secretive was needed; somewhere far from prying eyes. And, just as in Scotland, the answer lay close to hand.
Poole Harbour itself offered 14 square miles of shallow, enclosed water – it was, in effect, a flooded valley – and was one of the world’s largest natural harbours. Seen from seaward and from above, it appeared to represent an apple cut in section with the harbour entrance to the south-east being the stalk of the apple and the largest of several islands – Brownsea – slightly above or to the west, representing the apple’s core. Across the water from Poole town and jutting out into Wareham Channel was Arne Peninsula, the western edge of which ran down past low water mud flats to the River Frome and Wareham town. Today Arne is an RSPB nature reserve that looks north across half a mile of grey water to a distant rash of gleaming summer chalet homes with, to the east, the moored present-day brown and black camouflaged Landing Craft, Assault, of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service at Hamworthy. Back in 1941, Arne was a lonely and secluded wasteland of heathland and heather, of gorse, old oak and silver birch. March-Phillipps moored Maid Honor off Russel Quay. Jan Nasmyth remembered it as a place of ‘sandbanks covered with heather and a little sandy cliff that we used for a firing range’.22 Appleyard makes no mention of the firing range. A keen bird-watcher from childhood, he evidently felt completely at home, describing the area where they were moored as ‘right out in the wilds, miles from anywhere, up a creek. It is very quiet and lonely, but very lovely. Thousands of all kinds of waders and sea birds all around – especially shelduck, herons and curlews. There is a big heronry nearby.’ He later recalled:
One night, Gus and I sailed the dinghy five miles up the river to Wareham, had a meal at the Black Bear and then sailed back again on the ebb in the late evening. It was a still, warm evening and it was one of the most lovely experiences I have ever had – just ‘ghosting’ down in the twilight between great reed-beds, sandbanks and mud-flats with the lovely evening light and no sounds at all but the cries of the warblers and waders and the lapping and rustle of the water against the boat. It really was beautiful.
Appleyard’s warm, lyrical letters home may have made gentle reading, but did little to allay a family’s underlying fears, for they disguised but did not conceal the deadly serious purpose that had brought their son and his particular friend to this remote and beautiful part of Dorset. They were there to train for war. Soon, they knew, the time must come when they would lead the men they had chosen out across the Channel towards the dangers that awaited them all in the darkness beyond the harbour’s mouth. Those men were now arriving.
March-Phillipps’ formation – still unnamed – would be a small unit with never more than a dozen or so volunteers in its present form. Some would come from No 7 Commando, some from SOE. Not all would be British. There would be three Danes, a Frenchman and a Yugoslav to add spice to the mix and interest to the mess deck. Early on both officers realised the need for another officer, someone with professional maritime experience who could shoulder some of the sea-going responsibilities of navigation and watch-keeping. Appleyard knew just the man. Graham Hayes was a childhood friend from the same village, Linton-On-Wharfe; his family home, Kiln Hill, was less than half a mile from Geoffrey’s at Manor House. A skilled craftsman with a talent for working in wood who nurtured post-war ambitions of becoming a sculptor, Hayes had eschewed the family engineering business and served in the merchant navy instead. In 1934–5 he had sailed around the world as a deck-hand aboard the SV Pommern, a Finnish-owned, four-masted, 2,376grt, steel-hulled barque on the grain run from Australia, a voyage unforgettably captured in Eric Newby’s The Last Grain Race in which, as an 18-year-old, he too shipped out before the mast aboard the windjammer Moshulu to sail round Cape Horn in
1939. Hayes had served in the Borderers before volunteering for No 2 Commando, the all-commands unit earmarked for parachute training. Now he transferred again, this time to Poole, bringing with him eventually – after a letter, two telegrams and a great deal of wrangling – his trusted ‘oppo’, Sergeant Major Tom Winter, aged 36. Like Appleyard, Winter had started military service in the Royal Army Service Corps before transferring to No 2 Commando where he had met Hayes. In time, that unit evolved into 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment. A paratrooper with more than 150 jumps to his credit, he had enjoyed none of them. ‘He is a special protégé of Graham’s and the two always work together,’ wrote Appleyard. ‘He is a very good scout, and has seen a lot of different parts of the world and done a lot of tough jobs, and is an expert engineer.’23
Leslie Prout was one of the older originals too, a man of 29 in 1941 with ‘an adventurous personality’, described by Brigadier Gubbins as ‘a good, sensible officer, very loyal and steady’.24 His wartime service with March-Phillipps’ unit saw him rise from Sergeant to commissioned Major within four years. There was André Desgrange, aged 30, described by Appleyard as:
my special protégé [and] one of the very finest chaps with whom I have ever had anything to do … He is a Frenchman, was a deep-sea diver in the French Navy before the war and is also a good engineer … He is big, strong as a horse and has black curly hair and a perpetual grin! He never gets flurried, and is always cheerful and willing for the hardest and filthiest jobs that are going. He really is a wizard and I feel tremendously fortunate to have such a stalwart with me as my right-hand man.