The Lost Band of Brothers

by Tom Keene

  A champagne toast followed, after which each volunteer was kitted out with dark clothing and plimsolls.

  Small, inconspicuous groups of volunteers left Cameron Road that evening and made their way to Apapa Wharf in Lagos harbour where the two tugs loaned by the Governor, Vulcan and Nuneaton, lay quietly moored side by side. Stores were already loaded and the men – some of whom had enjoyed perhaps rather more of Cameron Road’s hospitality than was strictly wise – embarked: ‘By midnight the decks of the Vulcan vibrated with snores and 560 lbs of the Administrative department were fast asleep on Nuneaton’s sun deck,’ recorded Leonard Guise.19 At 0530 on 11 January 1942, and with Vulcan towing Nuneaton, Maid Honor Force with 41 men set sail south-east for Fernando Po. Zero Hour – the assault on Duchessa d’Aosta and the tug Likomba – was scheduled for 2330, 14 January 1942.

  At last, after days of uncertainty, confusion, obstruction, objection and administrative incompetence, Operation Postmaster, an act described by one author as ‘flagrant piracy in a neutral harbour’20 and by one of those involved, SOE’s Leonard Guise, as ‘a cut-out operation. In other words, simple theft’ had begun:21

  MOST IMMEDIATE. [SOE headquarters to SOE Lagos]: [Sent 10 Jan 1942]

  From Brigadier Gubbins to W4 [Laversuch] FOR W01 [March-Phillipps] from M:

  GOOD HUNTING. AM CONFIDENT YOU WILL EXERCISE UTMOST CARE TO ENSURE SUCCESS AND OBVIATE REPERCUSSIONS. BEST OF LUCK TO YOU AND ALL MH [Maid Honor] AND OTHERS.22

  Gubbins’ ‘am confident you will exercise utmost care’ may have smacked a little of their chief whistling nervously in the dark, but it mattered little. For March-Phillipps and Appleyard particularly, actually casting off and heading out into the soft light of an African dawn with the unequivocal prospect of coming to grips with the enemy at journey’s end must have come as something of a relief. March-Phillipps replied to Gubbins back in London:

  GREATLY APPRECIATE YOUR GOOD WISHES WILL DO OUR BEST23

  Notes

  1. Geoffrey, 99.

  2. Ibid., 72.

  3. HS 7/244.

  4. Ian Fleming and SOE’s Operation Postmaster, 109.

  5. HS 3/86.

  6. Ibid.

  7. HS 3/91.

  8. HS 3/86.

  9. Geoffrey, 108.

  10. HS 3/86.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. HS 3/92.

  17. Secret War Heroes, Marcus Binney, 132.

  18. HS 3/91.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Anders Lassen, 82.

  21. Ibid, 83.

  22. ADM 199/395.

  23. HS 3/87.

  8

  Assault on a Duchess

  Aboard the tug ST Vulcan, Capt. March-Phillipps distributed his core unit of men who had come out from England as part of Maid Honor Force. with him, targeting the merchant ship Duchessa d’Aosta, were Capt. Appleyard, second-in-command; Anders Lassen; Denis Tottenham; Ernest Evison, the cook; André Desgrange; ‘Haggis’ Taylor, March-Phillipps’ batman; and Leslie Prout. With Lt Graham Hayes would be Tom Winter and ‘Buzz’ Perkins, the baby of the party. Their mission was the seizure and towing out of the smaller German tug Likomba. The remaining men aboard both vessels were allocated their place in one of five different teams: cable party, engine-room party, boarding party, back-up boarding party and towing party.

  Nuneaton was towed alongside as far as the bar at the mouth of Lagos harbour and then slipped astern on a long tow. As both vessels crossed the bar, the ebb tide met the swell of the open sea and:

  the heavily laden tugs wallowed like pigs. This was most unfortunate for the volunteers, most of whom were not accustomed to small craft, and some of the poor fellows took fully two days to recover from their agony. As for the crew, if any of them had felt bad they would not dare have shown it, for the wrath of Gus would have descended upon them like an avalanche!1

  Leonard Guise (W10) was also aboard. He recalled:

  Vulcan wallowed slowly along with Nuneaton dancing along behind like a naughty puppy on the end of a lead … By midday Nuneaton’s crew were hors de combat … Vulcan was having her own troubles. The ship’s movement was not so bad but at least 2/3rds of the volunteers were extremely ill.2

  That evening March-Phillipps relented and allowed the crew of Nuneaton to board Vulcan where the movement was less nauseous. The following day sunshine, easing seas and good food from Evison improved everyone’s spirits. The Nuneaton, however, was still being towed. That same morning, whilst the recovering crew were having tommy-gun practice on Nuneaton’s sundeck, she suddenly lurched onto her side and threatened to capsize. Still being dragged through the water on the end of her long tow by Vulcan and with her bilge keel now plainly visible, stores were jettisoned into the sea and men rushed to the port side and prepared to abandon ship as the Skipper, up to his neck in water in the wheelhouse, fought to keep his ship afloat. As screams of fear came from the flooding engine-room below, Lassen, the only professional seaman amongst the Maid Honor crew, leapt to the stern of Vulcan, grabbed an axe and, without waiting for orders, severed the tow. No longer being dragged through the water on her side, Nuneaton slowly righted herself and the crisis was averted. ‘Undoubtedly,’ recalled Leslie Prout:

  Andy’s prompt action saved Graham’s tug from total loss. Graham [Hayes] and Tom [Winter] swam about retrieving their previous provisions and cases of beer, heedless of sharks or barracuda. Eventually, reprovisioned from the large tug, and with her engine again in action, Graham’s vessel got under way and the voyage was resumed.3

  The tow was not reconnected and both ships now proceeded eastwards under their own power.

  Each member of the boarding parties was issued with a cosh – a foot-long metal bolt sheathed in rubber. March-Phillipps ordered at one of his briefings: ‘When possible – intimidate. If not, use force. Speed is essential.’ Too right it was. Whilst Bren gunners were instructed to ‘deal with any boats. Shoot across bows. No useless slaughter’,4 the thought would have occurred to the more perceptive amongst the raiders that, if the operation degenerated into a straight shot and shell fire-fight, then the game would be as good as over. And that it would take more than a few judicious bursts of Bren to cover their escape and withdrawal.

  On the Tuesday, weapons were cleaned and all ranks – including the volunteers – practised with tommy guns and Brens as they emptied magazine after magazine into the heaving ocean. Michie’s air photographs of the harbour, the Duchessa d’Aosta and the Likomba were studied, ships’ plans memorised and explosive charges assembled. March-Phillipps briefed each team on their precise role in the coming attack and, after boarding ledges had been fixed on the bridge deck of Vulcan to simplify the swift and silent movement from ship to ship in groups of four, all boarding parties, dressed for action and carrying weapons, practised their response to the call to Action Stations and the strict order of their assault.

  They had sailed from Lagos in the early hours of Sunday, 11 January 1943. On Tuesday evening Nuneaton stopped and put two Folbots over the side with orders to creep up on Vulcan: ‘This was highly successful, the Folbots approaching within a few yards without being seen,’ March-Phillipps reported.5 Wednesday was spent steaming slowly into position out of sight of land. The plan of attack was minutely adjusted and there was another briefing from March-Phillipps while ‘Explosives were made ready on both ships and a cold lunch was served on Vulcan because the galley stove was occupied by an earnest figure boiling and moulding plastic [explosive]. Torches, pistols and Tommy-guns were issued and that afternoon when the island was sighted everything was ready.’6

  It was at this point, as Vulcan and Nuneaton were moving quietly into their final pre-attack positions, that disaster nearly overtook Operation Postmaster. The approach into the mouth of Santa Isabel harbour and the attack on the two vessels themselves were supposed to coincide with the town’s midnight, power-saving blackout which plunged the
town and harbour into all-enveloping darkness. But Fernando Po, being Spanish, kept to Spanish time in Madrid – whilst Lagos and March-Phillipps had their watches set to Nigerian time, one hour ahead. Maid Honor Force had arrived early. And the lights were still on.

  March-Phillipps’ formal after-action report makes no mention of his own conduct thereafter, or what actually happened next. Leonard Guise, however, was more forthcoming.

  At 2200 both vessels lay about 4 miles north of the harbour of Santa Isabel, the town lights still showing clearly. At 2315 Nuneaton moved ahead and very slowly crept closer to the harbour. Guise reported afterwards:

  Some dismay was felt aboard her when an excited and well-known voice came bellowing through the darkness: ‘Will you get a b-b-b-bloody move on or g-g-g-get out. I’m coming in.’ As Zero Hour was 12pm and the whole scheme swung on the extinction of the town lights which it was known would occur at that hour, this demand was resented.7

  He remembered later:

  Gus was all teed up and he wanted to go in and there was for one moment a rather sticky little scene when we on Nuneaton could hear Gus quite loudly disclaiming that he’d every intention of going in and to hell with it. Gus himself struck me as completely intrepid, almost to the point of overdoing it because … this was not really a military operation. It was a burglar’s operation and burglars don’t go in shooting. But Gus gave the impression that he much preferred to do a job when he did go in shooting.8

  The captain of the Nuneaton, Lt Goodman, had heard enough. Taking matters into his own hands he simply swung Nuneaton’s bows across Vulcan’s path and stopped dead. Leonard Guise recalled: ‘After some furious comments from each ship, common sense prevailed and Vulcan sheered off into the darkness to wait.’ Perhaps Louis Franck’s reservations, expressed in London to Colin Gubbins that previous November, held some merit after all.

  At midnight local time – 0100 by March-Phillipps’ watch – both ships were about 200 yards outside the rim of harbour lights. Nuneaton was ahead with Vulcan astern and to starboard. Ashore, in Santa Isabel, and right on cue, the lights went out: ‘What had been a well-illuminated display became utter darkness.’9

  There was no moon. Ahead, through the darkness, they could just make out the dark gleam of the Duchessa d’Aosta. The Likomba lay unseen, her position noted. Nuneaton moved slowly ahead and then stopped 40 yards inside the two flashing lights that marked the harbour entrance to lower her two grey-painted Folbot canoes. One headed off in the wrong direction before being frantically recalled, the other made her way silently towards Likomba, both two-man crews paddling silently in the darkness as they closed in on their quarry. Lt Graham Hayes and Sergeant Tom Winter were in the first canoe and two volunteers – District Commissioners William Newington and A.F. Abell – were in the second. Nuneaton restarted her engine – ‘with a honk that could have been heard for miles’10 – and swung away into the darkness around the west of the harbour to bring her up alongside Likomba. As she did so Vulcan swept past between the two harbour lights, heading around the east side of the bay in a gentle curve that would place her port side alongside the starboard side of the Duchessa.

  On Vulcan the boarding parties formed up fully armed, packed together on the mess deck as they waited to take their place on the boarding planks run out over the tumblehome of Vulcan’s sides. There was a stern light on the Duchessa and one or two lit cabin portholes attested to people aboard. As they swung round closer, engine stopped but still under way, figures could be seen on the after-deck. But there were no shots and no shouts as Vulcan closed the last remaining yards, her armed boarding party clustered tightly together on the boarding platforms. Just seconds to go now. March-Phillipps was in front.

  Nearby, Graham Hayes and Tom Winter closed in on the Likomba. As they did so ‘we were amused to see a lighted window in which the light was dipping and flashing, mixed up with which we read the repeated signal OK, OK.’ It was, said Tom Winter later, ‘The most ancient of spy signals, a blind raised and lowered at a lighted window by the docks.’11 Graham Hayes reported: ‘The work done by our agents ashore had been very thorough which probably accounted for the absence of the two officers from the Likomba when the canoe parties boarded.’12

  Indeed it did. Reminded by Major Victor Laversuch that 65 per cent of the success of Operation Postmaster rested upon his ability to lure away the officers of both Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba to a shore-side dinner party, SOE Officer Capt. Richard Lippett (W25) had not failed his friends. He – using as local cover a sympathetic anti-Falangist, Don Abalino Zorilla – had organised a ‘dry-run’ party just after Christmas which had been attended by most – but not all – of the German and Italian officers aboard Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba. Thanks to the depth of SOE’s coffers, the drink had flowed particularly freely and the party had been judged a great success. So successful, indeed, that the German officers aboard Duchessa had felt compelled to extend a return invitation to a party aboard ship on 6 January. That too had been a success. Now Lippett had countered with a second invitation. And this time all eight Duchessa officers – including the Acting Captain Umberto Valle and the officers of the Likomba, including Capt. Specht – had accepted. Now, as Vulcan and Nuneaton eased quietly into position on silent engines, as nervous men fingered their weapons and bunched together on boarding ramps, as four men in double Folbot canoes dug their paddles deep into dark water and moved in on their targets, all those officers were seated at the Casino Restaurant above the port, their backs to the harbour, their night vision conveniently wrecked by the considerate lighting of Tilley lamps that had been provided to keep the party going as soon as the town lights had been doused at midnight.

  Meanwhile, in the harbour below, the attack on the officer-less Likomba was already underway:

  The watchman on the Likomba challenged and flashed a light as the canoe came alongside the lighter (a barge which was secured along the starboard side of the Likomba). Non-commital noises were made in reply and the watchman came forward to help with the painter as he was under the impression it was the Captain coming back on board. A letter was proffered and intimation made that it was for the Captain. The watchman said that both officers were ashore.13

  For the second time that evening the second canoe, manned by District Commissioners Abell and Newington, set off to attack the wrong ship. Realising their mistake in time, they swung away from an empty Spanish launch, paddled alongside and boarded Likomba:

  The first and more professional of the two [canoes] were challenged by a native from the Likomba but he took no immediate alarm when asked for his master in pigin English. As however the visitors came aboard he became unhappy, and when a second canoe followed and the chains blew, he and two of his mates went sprinting down the long deck and went popping over the side into the sea like performing gymnasts over a horse.14

  They were not the only ones discomforted by the explosion. A third team of two from Nuneaton were boarding just at the moment the charges went off. Their task was to secure the tow between Likomba and Nuneaton:

  As the two figures clambered over the side loaded with Mills bombs, Tommy-guns, hatchets, torches and the towing hawser, a somewhat Australian voice roared ‘Get out you …! I’ve just blown!’ He certainly had. Both the climbers were blown into the air and landed, one on the sundeck, the other on a bollard back aboard Nuneaton. The first had his Mills bomb blown unexploded from his hand, and the second received a cracked rib. Then the stern moorings, after one misfire, went off and the Likomba was adrift and still completely divorced from Nuneaton. A second attempt to board from Nuneaton went well and though Likomba was fast turning, the hawser was made fast and the party was over.15

  Aboard Vulcan, it was the closing moments. In the van was Lassen, cosh at his waist, a length of thin messenger line over his shoulder coiled and ready to throw. As Vulcan passed the rope ladder leading to the cabin deck, he leapt aboard. Vulcan touched and March-Phillipps and the first wave of five raiders crossed to the D
uchessa, their moment of maximum danger and commitment covered by two Brens on the roof of Vulcan’s bridge. Vulcan had hit hard. Now she recoiled, touched again. Another six raiders jumped aboard followed by a final party which included a doctor with medical supplies, who found that Vulcan had now moved too far forward to trans-ship and had to cross on an 8-foot bamboo ladder thrown across a dark abyss. All reached the Duchessa without mishap.

  March-Phillipps and ‘Haggis’ Taylor made their way straight to the bridge whilst Lassen looped his messenger line around a bollard on the Duchessa and flung the coiled line back to Robin Duff aboard the Vulcan: ‘Pull!’ yelled Lassen. ‘Pull, Robin! Pull like fuck!’ Duff pulled. First the light messenger and then the heavy towing hawser came aboard, hauled in by Lassen on his own. Meanwhile, SOE’s Desmond Longe (W30) was following March-Phillipps and ‘Haggis’ as they hurried to the bridge:

  We ran up the little ladder from the well-deck on the promenade of the merchant ship, chased along the gangway. By this time we had a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. The first thing I knew was something between my legs and I went for a burton and I thought it was a panicking Italian, or something or other. In actual fact it was a pig because the Italians had two or three pigs on the deck at the back.16

  Like the Duchessa’s days at anchor, those of the pig were also numbered. As boarding parties hurried through the ship, herding startled and unresisting prisoners ahead of them to cluster under armed guard in the after saloon, the explosives teams made their way to stem and stern of the Duchessa with their primed charges: Appleyard to the bows, Eyres and Long to the mooring cables astern. ‘There was no resistance worthy of the name,’ reported March-Phillipps afterwards. ‘… the whole operation, from entering to leaving the harbour, went according to plan.’17 And, so far, though the middle-aged stewardess aboard Duchessa had fainted at the sight of the boarding party, not a shot had been fired. ‘Only one blow was struck, and that was when one of the volunteers found an enemy officer “looking aggressive”. The poor wretch did not look very aggressive after a tap with his assailant’s “persuader”.’18 Other Italian crewmen were struck a little later after showing a reluctance to lie down on the deck: ‘Their sick heads were due to having no English … a large Public Works Official had to take to his persuader and play a quick arpeggio on their heads. The wounds were not very grave, and the casualties served a very good breakfast next morning.’19 The original plan had stipulated that Duchessa’s charges would be blown first. Only then would Graham Hayes and his men blow the restraints holding Likomba at anchor. It didn’t work out that way: ‘As the Nuneaton had given doubtful proof of her abilities on the way to Fernando Po, it had been decided to blow the cables on the Likomba as soon as ready,’ reported Graham Hayes.20 The charges blew, Nuneaton picked up the tow and Likomba with another vessel lashed to her side began to move steadily towards the mouth of the harbour. The second vessel, the yacht Bibundi, was added as something of an afterthought. Hayes’ first instinct had been to cut her adrift: ‘Take her, Graham, because of these,’ urged Tom Winter, shining his torch over snapshots he had found in the cabin. These showed a woman – perhaps the owner’s wife – posing against a swastika flag flying from the Bibundi’s jackstaff.21 Expensive snapshots. Now Bibundi too was a prize of war.