The Lost Band of Brothers

by Tom Keene

  Reynolds and Torrance, who were not included in the raiding party, drove over to us for dinner. It was an uncomfortable meal; conversation was artificial and constrained, for all our thoughts were with our friends crossing the Channel on their desperate mission. As we stood in the garden afterwards silently looking down over the vale of the Stour and watching the shadows creep across the meadows beside the river, Torrance put my fears into words: ‘Don’t telephone, Peter. As soon as we have any news I’ll come over myself and let you know.’

  I slept little that night: Burton, my close companion for the last eighteen months, was with March-Phillipps and I hated not to be there beside him in the battle … All next day I loafed about, irritable and unhappy, with no word from Anderson. Long after dark I heard a truck draw up to the gate and rushed out to meet Torrance. His thin, dark face was puckered with anxiety and grief: ‘We’ve lost the lot! Apple came back tonight with Freddie Bourne – I’ve just left them in the Mess.’7

  MTB 344 had sailed from Portsmouth and passed the Needles at 2012 on the evening of 12 September 1942.

  The night was unusually dark with patches of fog in coastal regions. It was dry and there was a light breeze out of the north east. Sea state was Slight, wind Force 2–38 as The Little Pisser picked up speed in open water and began banging her way due south. On board – in addition to Lt Freddie Bourne and his crew of seven – were Capt. Geoffrey Appleyard beside him on the bridge acting as navigator, Major Gus March-Phillipps and ten members of the Small Scale Raiding Force, many of whom were officers: Capt. Graham Hayes, Capt. John Burton, Captain The Lord Howard, Lt Tony Hall, Maitre André Desgrange, Company Sergeant Major Tom Winter, Serjeant Alan Williams and Privates Jan Hellings from the Netherlands, Adam Opocznski (cover name Orr) from Poland and Richard Lehniger (cover name Leonard) from Czechoslovakia. Lassen was not on the raid. He had been rewarded with a weekend pass for his work on Operation Branford.

  The passage out was uneventful and Cap Barfleur was rounded on dead reckoning almost exactly two hours later at 2210 although the land, once again, was obscured by fog. Keeping close inshore to avoid German minefields, speed was reduced to 12 knots to lessen main engine noise as, keeping to the main inshore Le Havre–Cherbourg shipping route, MTB 344 laid off a course that would take her directly to a position off Sainte Honorine. Taking lead-line soundings every two miles during the last 6 miles of the approach, MTB 344, now on her auxiliary silent engine, approached the target area with those on the bridge straining to catch sight of land. There was now no fog but it was so dark that, despite the 100-foot cliffs that rimmed the coast, France remained unseen until half a mile off shore. They were searching, particularly, for that gap in the cliffs they had identified on the aerial reconnaissance photographs:

  As far as I remember we went the night before and we were meant to climb up a certain cliff and if one went along one could see a little kink in the cliff. And we couldn’t find the ruddy kink in the cliff … so we went the following night and we still couldn’t find it. Then Gus said: ‘What do you think, chaps? Shall we have a bash?9

  The men’s replies are not recorded. Almost certainly, there was no debate – nor, indeed, was March-Phillipps asking a genuine question. This was now the second time they had approached the enemy shore on the same mission. To March-Phillipps, a further cancellation must surely have appeared insupportable: they had come across the miles of empty sea to kill the enemy, not to evade him. Precisely where that enemy might be encountered may have mattered little. From this remove, March-Phillipps’ remarks appear to have been a statement of intent qualified by the uncertainly of their precise location, rather than a genuine question to heavily armed men tensed, nervous and girt for battle. Appleyard reported afterwards:

  Owing to the extraordinary dark nature of the night it was not possible to locate the spot at which the cliff was climbable even from only 400 yards to seaward and, as the climb could only be made at one particular point, it was decided that the landing would have to be made on the beach at Ste Honorine itself. The MTB was therefore anchored in three fathoms of water NNE of the gap in the cliffs and between 300–400 yards offshore at 0017 hours.10

  The canvas-sided Goatley was lowered carefully over the stern and the men embarked. The die was cast:

  I was supposed to be quite a dab hand with a tommy-gun, so I was the one who got in first, so if there was any trouble as we immediately landed I’d be the one who’d go ‘brrrrrrrrr’ with my tommy-gun. As I was holding on to let the next person in, the boat was going up and down and I thought to myself: Oh, God – how the hell are we going to get back from this one? And I hadn’t the slightest idea. But it didn’t worry one at that time, you know. You see, you’re young, you’re strong and … nothing can assail you. I’d got some spectacles, spare ones in my battledress, and I remember throwing one damp pair away and putting on a clean pair as we left, rather like putting on a top hat or something to go ashore.11

  They cast off from MTB 344 at 0020 and made for the right-hand side of the gap in the cliffs seen 300–400 yards away in the darkness.

  They were more than 3 miles off course. Although they did not know it, they were paddling now, not towards lightly defended Sainte Honorine with its high cliffs but towards the long, flat, open beach at heavily defended Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer away to the right, or west. Ahead, a small, steady white light could be seen at the foot of the cliffs and, as they drew closer, another white light flashed once from the top of the cliff. Committed now, they paddled on silently towards the shore.

  The beach they approached and the defences they were about to encounter were a country mile apart from those they had faced on Operations Branford and Barricade. The Normandy coast and, particularly, the shores that rimmed Baie de La Seine from Barfleur to the north-west to Honfleur below Le Havre to the east – those long, flat, exposed sandy beaches – made the area one of the prime sites for a possible allied invasion. And, long before the arrival of Erwin Rommel, the Germans knew it. Now, with the failure of the major allied raid on Dieppe less than a month previously and Canadian troops bloodily repulsed, German defences were on high alert all along the coast whilst the slave-labour construction of Hitler’s much-vaunted Atlantic Wall by the Todt Organisation had begun in earnest five months previously.

  The coastline facing MTB 344 that dark night was defended in depth. The area to the centre and north-west of that whole area of Calvados was the responsibility of 7th Army’s 716th Infantry Division headquartered in Caen. The Saint-Laurent-Sur-Mer sector of that static Division’s area of responsibility was handed to 726th Infantry Regiment commanded by 47-year-old Colonel Munstermann whose headquarters lay a few miles inland at Bayeux. Under his command were the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, Infantry Reserve, who were responsible for six Stützpunktes (strong points). Each of these consisted of several small bunkers equipped with anti-tank guns, searchlights and machine-guns. They were ringed with barbed wire and mines and supported in turn by three or four Widerstandneste (resistance nests). These were surveillance posts supported by machine-guns, concrete emplacements and firing bays linked by narrow trenches. As the men of SSRF paddled towards the sandy shore they were unaware that they were off course and approaching the killing grounds of Stützpunkt 29 and its three Widerstandsnest, WN 29A, WN 29B and WN 29C. This was not some overlooked, remote and isolated backwater like Casquets. This was a potential invasion beach. And the men from Anderson Manor were unlikely to encounter elderly reservists wearing hair nets.

  WN 29A was located 220 yards from and about 100 feet above the beach. Between beach and position was a belt of marshy ground. WN 29A was manned by twenty-seven men including four NCOs equipped with rifles, two heavy machine-guns, two 9mm Schmeisser sub-machine-guns – considered by many to be the best personal weapon of the war on any side – a few Luger P.08 pistols and two grenade launchers.

  WN 29B was below, on the beach, 275 yards away to the west. Protected by barbed wire, it was manned by two NCOs and nine men. Between
them they had seven rifles, a light machine-gun, a sub-machine-gun, pistols and a flamethrower.

  WN 29C was also on the beach, but further west again from WN 29B. It was manned by an NCO and thirteen men armed with rifles, light and heavy machine-guns, a flamethrower and a 75mm PAK anti-tank gun.

  Each unit patrolled ceaselessly, maintaining visual contact between each Widerstandsnest. Sometimes they took with them a guard dog held on a short leash.

  The Goatley, with eleven men aboard, approached the shore. They were on a falling tide two hours after high water:

  As soon as the Goatley touched down on the beach at about 0020 hours, we saw that we were too near the houses to be able to leave it there with safety. We pulled the boat 200 yards to the east away from the houses and then hauled it up above High Water mark to the base of the cliff. There we left Capt. The Lord Howard in charge of the boat and the rest of the party made their way inland just east of the houses … We went inland and made a good recce for the next fifty minutes … After this we made our way back to the beach again to commence operations from there.12

  In Geoffrey, Ernest Appleyard, writing from post-war sources, claims March-Phillipps and his men then heard a German patrol approaching and decided to ambush the patrol and attempt to capture a prisoner:

  The German patrol walked straight into the trap but the fight that developed was so fierce that all seven of the enemy were killed. When Gus was searching the dead for maps and other useful documents, another and much larger German patrol was heard running towards them … To attempt to stay and fight these superior forces was hopeless and so Gus’s party ran for their boat.13

  This account, written in good-faith by a man who was not there, does not accord with the recollections of one who was. Tom Winter’s account of Operation Aquatint continued:

  We had just reached the back of the beach when we heard a patrol coming which consisted of about seven or eight men. They came along the track at the top of the cliff from the East. We were inland of the track on a small depression and well under cover and would not have been discovered had it not been for the dog which was with the patrol. We intended to try and get back to the MTB and get away, but the dog scented us.14

  They had been bumped by Patrol No 1 from the 3rd Reserve Company of 726th Infantry Regiment, who had been ordered to maintain walk-round contact with all three Widerstandsnest that night. Presently they expected to meet another patrol moving west to east towards them. Patrol No 1 commanded by Corporal Wichert consisted of four men armed with rifles, hand grenades and a sub-machine-gun. One of the men, Private Kowalski, carried a light machine-gun and with him was a guard dog, held tightly on a leash. Private Kowalski’s dog started to growl, then bark and stain at the leash. Challenged by both Wichert and Kowalski, their ‘Halt! Wer da?’ was greeted by a single shot. Wichert loosed off a burst of automatic fire, which was answered by a shower of British hand grenades. These fell in the shelter trench behind the observation post and did no damage.15 The Germans now noticed the Goatley on the beach and lobbed down stick grenades. Amid the chaos, the flashes of grenades, the lights, the crackle of small-arms fire and the confusion of shouted orders, Tony Hall moved forward to grab a prisoner:

  I remember grabbing hold of one chap, a Goon, and dragging him down to the beach, and he was saying the whole time ‘Nicht Deutsch! Nicht Deutsch! Checkish! Checkish! Nicht Deutsch, Checkish!’ and I was sort of saying ‘Oh, we’ll sort that out in the boat, you know’ and then somebody came up and clobbered me from behind.16

  Tony Hall had been hit on the back of the head by one of the German sentries using a metal-headed stick-grenade as a club. His would-be prisoner scrambled away to raise a wider alarm: by 0132 the entire German coastal zone would be on Level 2 Alert. Knocked unconscious, Tony Hall, the peacetime writer and radio producer who had prayed for courage in the quiet, peaceful chapel at Anderson Manor just a few hours earlier, was left for dead on the beach.

  Captain The Lord Francis Howard had been in charge of the Goatley on the beach directly beneath the shower of grenades thrown down by the alerted German patrol: ‘In the scrap, I got shot in the leg and could hear the patrol saying in German: “Look, there’s a boat.”’ March-Phillipps and the rest of the men dragged the Goatley down to the receding water’s edge, scrambled aboard and began paddling out into the darkness of the open sea towards MTB 244. It was a desperate business. They were paddling for their lives with no way of shooting back. Equipped only with wooden paddles, they were now at the mercy of a full-alerted enemy, their only ally, darkness. Howard remembered: ‘We got a certain way out – and then everything went up. Flares and more shooting.’17

  Tom Winter recorded:

  We tried to fight our way out, but unfortunately the Headquarters of the German detachment was not very far [away] in one of the houses and the alarm was raised. We managed to disperse the patrol and succeeded in getting 100 yards out to sea in the Goatley. Verey lights went up and they soon located us and started firing but we were not in a position to return the fire. We had all got away except Lt Hall who we left on the beach, presumably dead, as he had a terrible wound in the back of his head … Capt. The Lord Howard was wounded while assisting the party to re-embark, but we managed to get him away in the boat.18

  ‘Coming out again the boat, I think, would have sunk anyhow,’ recalled Howard:

  Whether it was actually holed or a shell landed nearby, I don’t know. But certainly, long before we got anywhere near the naval boat [MTB 344], the ship sank. Turned over, in fact … It was a small boat with a canvas bottom. It was really very unsuitable … And Gus and several of the others tried to swim out to the boat [MTB 344]. The only person I’ve met since who got anywhere near it told me that he actually got fairly close to the boat but it was, of course, dark. The boat didn’t see him … and though they didn’t see him he saw it sailing away … The only reason I survived was that I actually was swimming about in the dark, being tossed around, I hit something and it happened to be the over-turned boat.19

  The man who got close but not close enough to MTB 344 was Tom Winter. ‘It was, of course, very difficult swimming because the tide was still on the flow [sic] and we could not make much headway. The Germans were firing at us all the time.’20 Winter somehow made it back to the beach. Weapons lost to the sea, exhausted, floundering ashore in sodden battledress, he was fired on again at very short range. The shots missed. He was then taken prisoner and dragged off to German headquarters.

  Some 400 yards off-shore staring out from the bridge of MTB 344, Appleyard and Bourne could do nothing but wait and watch in an agony of uncertainty as the fate of their friends played out on the enemy shore. After the initial flurry of tommy-gun fire and grenade explosions seen at 0050, Appleyard reported – although perhaps unsurprisingly, timings between MTB and shore party survivors do not mesh precisely – that red and green Verey lights, grenade explosions and more machine-gun fire spread up and down the coast for the next half hour. To begin with, MTB 344 remained unseen. Then, at 0120, she was spotted in the light of flares as she lay out at the edge of darkness and came under accurate machine-gun fire from three machine-guns on the clifftop. One of these rounds put the starboard engine out of action and a larger gun on shore – perhaps a 3-pounder – started firing heavier shells at the gunboat, all of which exploded harmlessly further out to sea. Aboard MTB 344 they then heard English voices calling from somewhere ahead but the messages were confused and indecipherable: ‘As the MTB was now fully illuminated by flares and under considerable fire at 400 yards range, the anchor cable was cut and the MTB steamed 2 miles directly away from the coast.’21 Hidden once more by her cloak of darkness, The Little Pisser’s engine was declutched and the power throttled down slowly to give the audible impression that she was moving out to sea. The firing then ceased. Verey lights continued to illuminate the sea close inshore.

  The men on MTB 344 were not about to abandon their friends. A pause – and then The Little Pisser began to creep back
towards the danger zone at slow speed on silent engines and with her infrared contact light burning at the masthead. She came to within half a mile of the beach and stopped again. She stayed there, rocking to the swell as they watched and listened, straining for sight and sound, for forty-five minutes. There was no more firing but the Verey lights continued to be sent up while, on the clifftop, the Germans attempted without success to bring a searchlight into action. Appleyard, Bourne and the Vickers gunners on either side of the bridge scanned the darkness. Nothing. No signals, no sign of their friends. What might possibly have been the Goatley was spotted in the fizzling light of one of the flares. It was lying broadside on to the right of the beach above high water mark and almost up against the sea wall. No one was with it and the sighting could not be confirmed in the uncertain light.

  At 0225 MTB 344 came under fire again but this time from the sea. She had been picked up in silhouette against the shore in the light of the flares. Now seven or eight shells exploded between her and the shore, fired apparently from at least two unseen German patrol craft closing in astern from the north and north-west to cut off her line of retreat. A dozen more shells screamed over from seaward, one of which landed 20 feet off the starboard beam, drenching the ship with a cascade of water: ‘E-boats were well-armed, fast. We wouldn’t have had a chance with them. We had two twin Vickers on each side of the bridge, .303 only. We wouldn’t have stood an earthly against them.’22 Now the machine-gunners on the cliffs spotted them and opened fire, too. It was time to leave. MTB 344 swung away to the east down the coast and slid once more into darkness. Lt Freddie Bourne recalled: