The Lost Band of Brothers

by Tom Keene

  March-Phillipps outlined his plans to create a raiding force that would take the fight to the enemy shore: ‘As I listened to the details of this plan and realised its enormous possibilities, the clouds of frustration that had hung over me during the last few months vanished.’9 Before he left the office in Knightsbridge, Peter Kemp and his friend John Burton were both on the strength of the Small Scale Raiding Force. It would be some weeks, however, before Anderson Manor was ready for occupancy. What would they like to do in the meantime, asked Gus, democratically? The answer, they decided, was to get really fit for the raiding work that lay ahead and brush up their knowledge of fieldcraft and demolitions. So back they went to the Western Highlands for more commando training, this time at Inverailort. It was the usual stuff, refined and honed to a new intensity through the sweat, hardship and experience of countless courses:

  Carrying tommy-guns and fifty-pound rucksacks, we tramped across the hills in mist and darkness, trying to find our way by compass, stumbling over invisible obstacles, sinking into bogs and falling into gullies and ravines … within three weeks we were thoroughly fit, competent at demolitions and accurate with pistol and tommy-gun.10

  Peter Kemp went back to London in time for March-Phillipps’ wedding on 18 April 1942 where he met both Graham Hayes – ‘a quiet, serious-minded young man with great personal charm, courage and strength.’ – and Anders Lassen – ‘a cheerful, lithe Dane with a thirst for killing Germans and a wild bravery’.11

  The operational personnel started moving in to Anderson Manor on 24 April. Arrangements were made for experts in explosives, small arms and knife fighting, security and escape and evasion to visit Anderson Manor once training had begun. First operations, it was hoped, would take place in the middle of May but would depend upon the time it took to arm and fit out the two MLs. At this stage, the strength of SSRF stood at eighteen officers and five other ranks.12 The new unit plunged immediately into a period of intensive training. It was commando Scotland all over again, but without the midges.

  Another new volunteer was Capt. Francis Howard, Baron Howard of Penrith, known to all as ‘Long John’ because of his height:

  Appleyard was doing the interviewing and decided to take me on, despite my age being rather above the average [he was 38] … There were rather more officers than men and our training was probably fairly standard … We trained with plastic explosives, gelignite and so on. We did grenade throwing, pistol shooting. There were ranges all round the manor. We did some exercises with live detonators stuck in potatoes which we threw at each other; one had to duck out of the way or risk being hurt … It was a very pleasant unit in which everyone got on extremely well, and there didn’t seem to be much difference between the ranks. It was an extraordinary happy experience, in a way. There was a cherub in the garden and there was a slightly dangerous practice of letting off all our guns at his navel!13

  Within the grounds of Anderson Manor they built a covered ‘double-tap’ pistol range and an assault course with ditches full of barbed wire. They turned the old butler’s pantry into their armoury. Explosives were kept in an air raid shelter outside; the ancient moat, filled with barbed wire, had to be jumped; a Nissen hut was erected for close quarter gutter fighting a la Sykes and Fairbairn – the two Shanghai policemen turned SOE killing instructors whose double-edged, needle-pointed, custom-designed daggers each man now carried. Ropes were slung high in the ancient limes lining the driveway and these had to be climbed up and then crossed in full equipment. There were also night compass exercises across country. Sergeant Tom Winter recalled:

  We did a lot of compass training in the local area. Whether we got back to where the transport was waiting depended on the accuracy of our compass work. If we didn’t get back to the transport in time, it would leave without us. We would then have to make our own way back to Anderson … I remember one training scheme doing astro-navigation, using the stars, around Bovington tank training area. Desgrange and I were challenged by a sentry at Bovington camp, who thought we were spies, especially since André Desgrange, who was a Free French Naval Petty Officer, couldn’t speak a word of English. Because of the secret nature of our work, we didn’t carry identification and couldn’t say where we were based. All we could do was give them the London telephone number of SOE and ask them to confirm who we were.14

  There were also numerous exercises in individual initiative: troops would be paraded early and ordered to reassemble at a precise location a hundred miles away the next morning. How they got there was up to them. After conversations with his son, Ernest Appleyard remembered: ‘The men were trained to value comradeship and friendship … Punishments were avoided. If a man did not make the grade he left the Troop and that was all – very few ever left.’ In between night stalking exercises, rock climbing on the Dorset coast and much hard marching with weapons and full equipment in all weathers, the unit practised living off the land. Appleyard wrote to his parents:

  We have had some interesting training schemes to fill the time up and all last week were out on Exmoor and the north Devon coast on a special living-out scheme. We were entirely independent and living solely on a very concentrated special ration and sleeping out under hedges, etc … The aim was to see if we could march 30 miles or so a day without packing up. Quite a holiday, except for carrying a 45lb pack and the rations … It was a scorching week but really was great fun. My party and I walked 120 miles in four days – Exeter, Lynmouth, Lynton, Ilfracombe, Barnstaple, Exeter. Mostly over rough ground and tracks.15

  Captain The Lord Howard remembered the same exercise rather differently:

  We were paired off together and, after being set down somewhere between Anderson Manor and Lyme Regis, had to walk to Lynmouth in North Devon about sixty miles away. We had sleeping bags on our backs and hard rations, we had a little tea and some chocolate in our pockets. We slept out on Exmoor under the stars and arrived in Lynmouth so very hungry that we went down to the sea and began eating winkles and molluscs that we prised off the rocks with our knives.16

  One of those Captain The Lord Howard paired up with was Anders Lassen, the Dane who had excelled during Operation Postmaster. Now, at Anderson Manor, he continued to impress:

  I feel that being in the same unit as Andy Lassen was rather like serving with Achilles. For Andy did easily what nearly everyone else found difficult. Other people were very good on the assault course. They were all so fit but Andy, without seeming to take any trouble, was much the best. He just floated everywhere, up the ropes and then along them … And if there was considerable risk, Andy enjoyed it all the more. It was wonderful to see him. When everyone else was straining and making an effort or pulling themselves together, he’d just enjoy himself and do the assault course better than anybody.17

  He excelled at knife-fighting, too:

  A knife would be dropped between two men, who would make a grab for it. The one failing to pick it up would have to defend himself against his armed opponent. Lassen earned a reputation for being almost impossible to disarm when he had the knife.18

  He was developing into a formidable enemy: ‘He had a real hatred for the Germans, much more than most of us had. I’ve always wondered about Andy’s hostility to the Germans,’ mused Lord Howard after the war. ‘Was it simply that they had invaded Denmark? Andy was very nice, not a frightening man – but when he said that he’d like to kill Germans, I believe that he meant it.’19

  Lassen had formed a particular bond with March-Phillipps: ‘There was an affinity between Gus and Andy. I think that the combination of dash, pride, distain and immensely serious purpose attracted Andy to him,’ recalled Marjorie March-Phillipps. She visited Anderson Manor two or three times:

  It was a beautiful house and the weather was always lovely. I can still see Andy Lassen by the balustrades of lawn alongside the river. Straight yellow hair, a high complexion that was also sunburned, and a rather gappy grin because a lot of front teeth had been bashed out. Andy behaved impeccably while I was there b
ut you could see he was wild. One of the wildest of the lot, I’d say. Gus was pretty wild himself, but not like Andy.20

  Lassen’s obsession was pistol shooting, knife throwing and hunting with bows and arrows. The author has been shown the attic door jamb into which Andy Lassen used to fire arrows from a 20-yard range whenever someone entered the room, delighting in missing them by the narrowest of margins. How delighted they were is not recorded.

  A very great deal of their training was done at night: darkness and periods in which there was no moon would be their chosen milieu of operations over on the other side. With time, practice and training, darkness became their ally, their friend:

  On our first night exercises we were all very uncertain and noisy, but in a surprisingly short time we became accustomed to the work; within two months we were able to find our way in silence over unknown country at a surprising speed, to crawl noiselessly under barbed wire and to stalk sentries on our stomachs …21

  They were learning the skills that would soon save their lives.

  There was particular emphasis on boat work, the means by which they would both reach their target and exfiltrate afterwards. At first, Combined Operations had given them those two motor launches – MLs 347 and 297 – but these proved too slow for their needs, were mechanically unreliable and had to be returned to their makers with engine heating problems, resulting in further delays.22 In time, both were replaced by MTB 344, a small, fast motor torpedo boat with a top speed of 33 knots, which they christened The Little Pisser because of its size and turn of speed. Stripped of its torpedo tubes and armed only with two Vickers machine guns either side of the bridge and a couple of drum-fed Lewis guns aft, The Little Pisser carried an upturned Dory or flat-bottomed, canvas-sided collapsible Goatley assault boat lashed upturned on her after-deck. She would rely upon stealth, silence and speed to ensure her survival and evasion of marauding German E-boats. Commanded by Lt Freddie Bourne and based at Gosport, Portsmouth, MTB 344 was destined to become their means of transport to and from the enemy coastline on most of their raids.

  Post-war, Freddie Bourne remembered the impact the two SSRF officers with their contrasting styles made upon him from the outset; he used to go up to Anderson Manor for briefings and remembered how, on operations, March-Phillipps used to slip a long cook’s knife down his trouser leg:

  He [March-Phillipps] was a tall, well-connected person. He recruited his friends. [Appleyard] was his First Lieutenant. A University man. Charming. Again, very brave. But whereas March-Phillipps had all the dash and flare and the outgoing signs of a Commando, Appleyard was much more the thinker. I don’t say [he was] the brains of the operation but he gave a great deal more detailed thought to what the men were going to do when March-Phillipps set up the inception of the scheme.23

  It was agreed between them that MTB 344 would close the enemy shore on silenced engine, and then let go an anchor on a grass line. The dozen raiders of the SSRF would then transfer to the smaller Goatley or Dory for the silent, nerve-wracking paddle or row ashore. That approach and the extrication afterwards across open water was recognised from the outset as the time of maximum vulnerability: ‘We practised in every kind of weather, under all sorts of conditions, until we had perfected our training in disembarkation, landing and re-embarkation,’ Peter Kemp remembered. All kinds of boats and canoes were used to develop landing techniques and increase water-confidence. ‘We also did a lot of practice at sea because the whole of Poole harbour was at our disposal as well as most of the coast,’ recalled Captain The Lord Howard:

  The beaches were supposed to be mined but we got through the wire and used all those wonderful beaches and sandbanks. We had a large rowing boat for hard, difficult work against the tides; we also had canoes in which we went up the rivers and round the harbour as far as Bournemouth … Training was designed to accustom us to the sea, particularly rough seas. Sometimes they were too rough. I once made a canoe party pull under the cliffs at Bournemouth because we were getting swamped. We then dried off in an empty house. We tended to do that. If there was an empty house, we’d use it. During training our discipline was extremely strict. March-Phillipps and Appleyard demanding the highest standard of efficiency from everyone. There were no punishments, nor were any necessary: we knew that the lives of us all would depend on the skill and competence of each. Off parade relations between officers and other ranks were easy and informal, almost casual. We were a very happy unit.24

  March-Phillipps insisted all men were up and about by 6am. Between then and breakfast he did not mind what they did – they could run, walk, shoot – just so long as they took some form of early morning exercise before the training day began.

  The men of No 62 Commando were entitled to wear the green beret,25 but only once they had attended – and passed – Achnacarry. March-Phillipps encouraged all ranks to wear civilian clothes off duty and off base, particularly when travelling the few miles down the road to the thatched pub The World’s End at Almer outside Blandford. Here officers and other ranks mixed freely, though not without raising an eyebrow from a senior officer attached to the Royal Tank Corps at nearby Bovington: ‘He complained to Gus that his staff car had been held up by a crowd of us, men and officers, spread across the road on bicycles and holding each others arms as we rode away from the pub,’ Ian Warren, one of the newer recruits, remembered. ‘Gus lectured us saying: “This has to stop. Here, ranks don’t matter. Outside, you comply with military discipline.”’ It was a discipline that did not stop either March-Phillipps or Appleyard scrawling their names on the pub ceiling. Their names remained there until the thatched roof of the pub was destroyed by fire after the war.

  It wasn’t just the members of this secret unit who found themselves swept up in an atmosphere of mutual support and quixotic enthusiasm for the dangerous task that lay ahead as the quiet summer weeks of training slid by. Head gardener Reg Mullins also relished the informality engendered by March-Phillipps: ‘Always called him Gus, you know. There was no Army at Anderson. No army regulations. We were just a happy little band.’26 Lt Tony Hall, ex-London Scottish and Intelligence Corps, agreed: ‘He [March-Phillipps] was a very reasonable man and he had a complete contempt for small regulations that sometimes make life in the army tiresome and uncomfortable. As long as a man did his job properly on training and on operations it didn’t really matter what he did outside.’27

  Tony Hall, aged 30, joined SSRF in April 1942. In peacetime he had been a successful writer and radio producer. Perhaps a little more sensitive than most, he was one of those who found that Anderson Manor soon came to embody something of the spirit that shaped the way they wished to fight their war:

  It seemed so mad that there was this wonderful house, this charming, small manor dedicated in its way, in its surroundings, to peace. The mulberry tree, the nuts, the kitchen garden and all the rest of it – and yet this was being used for war. It had everything. If you are in a house like that, and you know that here is the England that you’re fighting for … He [Gus] was creating a world of people who loved the idea of doing a thing honourably and this sounds, I know, another piece of chi-chi, but it’s not. If you had Gus as a leader you would know that nothing would ever be done that was of evil intent.28

  By early June, unit strength stood at twenty-four officers and fourteen other ranks with one further officer and four other ranks about to join. Training by day and by night, ashore and afloat, was refined and intensified. The weeks came and went and still there was no mission, nothing in the wings to repay all that training, boat work and weapon handling, although one raid, submitted to Combined Operations, had been cancelled ‘owing to the intervention of C [SIS]’.29 Peter Kemp described this time as ‘a disheartening period of frustration and delay’ during which SSRF personnel at Anderson Manor were broken down into two groups: one for mission-specific and one for general training. Meanwhile, they waited. Delays were officially put down to problems with the MLs, to bad weather, to periods of full moon, or even to what
became known as ‘convoy nights’, when whole areas of sea were closed off to let convoys move up or down the Channel: ‘Keyed up as we were, standing by night after night, sometimes setting out on a raid only to turn back after an hour or so, we all found this period of waiting a heavy strain on our nerves. For March-Phillipps and Appleyard it must have been nearly intolerable.’30

  Bad weather and ‘convoy nights’ may only have been part of the problem. More probably, perhaps in light of what we know now and that ‘owing to intervention of C’ quoted above, it may well have been simply another example of the aggressive needs of SOE rubbing up against the greater passive strategic requirements of SIS, a recurring problem earlier identified long before Operation Postmaster. It had got no better during Maid Honor’s convenient and time-soaking deployment to West Africa the summer before. During that early June of 1942, for example, three SSRF missions were cancelled because they ran contrary to the operational needs of SIS: Operation Starboard was planned to destroy a watch post on Île de Batz, off Roskoff, Brittany; Operation Statement was to attack a similar isolated watch post on Île Milliau; Operation Syncopation was to attack a lighthouse and its tiny garrison on Île de Bréhat. All three – and the meticulous and detailed planning that went into each one – came to nothing. Each was listed simply as ‘Cancelled C-in-C Plymouth owing to interference with SIS.’31 In all, nine raids – including Operations Hillbilly, Mantling, Promise, Underpaid, Weathervane and Woodward – would be worked up and then cancelled at the last moment because of this irreconcilable clash between SOE/CO and SIS. Each of these pin-prick raids would have involved the stealthy approach to an isolated Observation Post or watch-tower followed by the capture and/or killing of the German garrison.