Churchill's Secret Warriors_The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII

by Damien Lewis

  Flying a Jolly Roger didn’t quite fit with the cover story. In a characteristic fit of anger, he ordered the flag be taken down and burned. But as always, his rage was short-lived. Under Appleyard’s steadying hand the tow was got underway once more, sans Jolly Roger.

  *

  Understandably, London had insisted on absolute radio silence for the duration of Operation Postmaster. If the enemy managed to intercept just one message from the raiders it could blow the all-important aspect of deniability wide open. Which is how the Vulcan came to be steaming hell-for-leather for her rendezvous, not knowing that there was no way on earth that HMS Violet could get there.

  Somehow, the British destroyer had managed to run herself aground while en route to the meeting point. HMS Violet was stuck fast around the mouth of the mighty Niger River, which disgorges into the Gulf of Guinea via a vast delta, creating treacherous shoals and sandbanks far out to sea.

  With HMS Violet stuck fast no British warship was about to make the rendezvous with the Operation Postmaster raiding force anytime soon. Worse still, no radio warnings could be issued in either direction – to either the flotilla of ships under the command of March-Phillipps, or to those waiting anxiously for news of the raid in London.

  *

  Unsurprisingly, as dawn broke across the Gulf of Guinea the atmosphere in Santa Isabel was somewhat frantic. The German Consul on Fernando Po, plus the Spanish Governor had both sent long, coded telegrams to their respective governments, decrying the raid. Acting Captain Umberto Valle, the Duchessa’s commander, had radioed a report to the Italian authorities, declaring that his ship had been seized by a large tugboat of ‘unknown nationality’, complete with all 28 crew.

  Those reports, together with further radio intercepts, would give London the first hints that Operation Postmaster had been successful. But Santa Isabel town itself remained awash with intrigue and unsubstantiated rumour. Every party imaginable seemed to have fallen under suspicion for the raid. To the Free French and the British – the obvious suspects – had now been added the Americans, and even a party of mysterious anti-Fascist Spanish ‘rebel pirates’ led by Zorilla.

  ‘Wild rumours were rife,’ remarked agent Lippett, of the morning after the raid, ‘especially when it became clear that Zorilla was not to be found …’ Reports were that Zorilla had, ‘… slipped the moorings from the D. de A [Duchessa d’Aosta] and went off with the ship … Some said it was the Free French, others Vichy French, from Dakar, others said it was the English. In fact no one knew anything, or no one saw anything.’

  There were some among the local Spanish and African population who couldn’t help but express their amazement at the skill and dash of the raid. Heinrich Luhr, husband of the ill-fated dinner party’s ‘host’, even went so far as to suggest that only Germans could have executed such an accomplished attack, and that all who had done so would be awarded the Iron Cross.

  But around the bay, now denuded of its Italian and German ships, the mood quickly darkened, and especially when the official investigation – led by Captain Binea, the Falangist commander of the Colonial Guard – got underway. The dinner party – particularly those who had organized and paid for it – became the key focus of the investigation.

  By midday the first suspects were being arrested by Captain Binea’s men and taken in for questioning, Herr and Frau Luhr foremost among them. The Spaniard Zorilla’s absence had been conspicuous from the very start, and rumour had it that he had plied the dinner guests with so much drink that none had been able to react to the raid taking place in the harbour. In short order Zorilla’s closest friends and colleagues were also rounded up for interrogation.

  No one knew of course that it was a tiny dugout canoe piloted by a local fisherman that had spirited Zorilla across the sea to safety – all apart from Richard Lippett, and the SOE agent and mastermind of the Fernando Po deception was doing his best to keep his head well down. But Lippett soon found his Spanish friends deserting him, and he sensed that it was only a matter of time before Captain Binea’s men would come for him.

  *

  In London, meanwhile, there was mounting consternation and concern. Apart from a short cable received from Vice Consul Lake, direct from the Santa Isabel Consulate – ‘Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba sailed midnight 14th’ – there had been little further news. The expected coded radio message from HMS Violet – Postmaster successful; the trigger for the next stage of the cover story to be launched – hadn’t been received. It was well past the planned rendezvous time, and yet the airwaves remained stubbornly silent.

  As the Spanish and Axis media began to bemoan a ‘gross breach of neutrality’, M, the War Cabinet and Winston Churchill himself felt unable to respond. If the full truth became known, it was all but inevitable that Spain would be forced into hostilities against Britain. The missing flotilla had to be found and the great deception maintained.

  *

  Unfortunately, March-Phillipps had reached the mid-ocean rendezvous point only to discover that HMS Violet was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t the faintest idea as to why the British warship had failed to appear, but there was little use in speculating on that now. March-Phillipps had to act, and he had to do so quickly and decisively. The longer the Vulcan and the Duchessa d’Aosta remained stationary at the rendezvous point, the more likely a roving enemy warship or aircraft would happen upon them.

  His only option was to press onwards, west towards Lagos – the nearest British port. The problem was, the Nuneaton with her two German ships in tow was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, the smaller tugboat’s engine trouble had persisted and she was somewhere to the east of them struggling to make headway.

  But it didn’t escape March-Phillipps’ attention that her fate might be infinitely worse. The Nuneaton may have drifted closer to Fernando Po, and been re-taken by the Spanish authorities, aided by some very angry German and Italian ships’ officers. And if that were so the great gamble would have turned decidedly sour, Operation Postmaster becoming a spectacular and costly failure.

  Their detractors – waiting like hungry vultures – would have a juicy carcass to fight over.

  Chapter Eight

  It was 17 January 1942 – three days after the raid – when matters reached their lowest ebb. While the German and Spanish press were having a field day, London could say nothing. It was as if Britain was being forced to fight with one arm tied behind her back and while gagged, and it was a losing battle.

  The German press was loudly proclaiming that a force of British warships had carried out the raid, and that the captured ships’ crew had been executed. Even the supposedly neutral Swedish press was decrying the British aggression. There were angry street demonstrations in Spain, as the Falangist press accused the British of being responsible for an unprovoked assault. The Spanish newspaper Arriba’s report was typical. The raid was ‘planned with the most revolting perfidy and embraced every form of cowardice and cruelty. It seems all members of the crew … were assassinated.’

  Hour by hour, the pressure on the London architects of Postmaster kept growing.

  Worse still, in Santa Isabel the inevitable had occurred: SOE agent Richard Lippett, the cool and consummate conductor of that end of the great deception, was taken in for questioning. Lippett had prepared for the coming interrogation with the utmost care, but still its rigour and aggression disconcerted even him, especially as it was carried out in what Lippett described as ‘very Gestapo-like’ conditions. At every turn the beak-nosed, sunken-eyed Captain Binea tried to pin something on him: his lavish gifts to all those involved; his funding of the fateful dinner parties; his close friendship – his partnership – with Zorilla.

  Lippett dealt with the accusations the only way that he could, by deflecting them onto the absent Zorilla, his Spanish cohort, who by now was safely in Nigeria. Lippett was booked to leave Fernando Po in six days time, taking the regular steam ferry to the mainland. He knew that if he’d made his getaway at the same time as Zorilla, t
he case against the British would have been infinitely more damning. So he’d opted to stay, to help deflect suspicion away from the perpetrators of the raid. But the decision to do so was threatening to cost him dear.

  Lippett’s performance during his grilling was superlative. ‘I was thankful that no younger man had gone through what I had,’ Lippett wrote, ‘as they may have broken him down.’ In fact, his act had been almost too convincing. By the time Lippett was hauled in for a second session of questioning, Binea’s attitude had changed completely. He seemed convinced that Lippett was what he claimed to be – the archetypal upstanding, incorruptible Englishman.

  Captain Binea explained that he was intending to bring charges against those who were ‘Zorrilla’s closest collaborators’, and that he would need Richard Lippett to give evidence in the trials against them. Lippett was to be one of Captain Binea’s key prosecution witnesses, and accordingly he was refused an exit visa to leave the island.

  Richard Lippett, SOE agent W.25, was trapped: Postmaster’s great deception risked being blown wide open.

  *

  They say that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. The day after Lippett’s second interrogation by Captain Binea, London secured its first piece of positive news. A message had finally reached British ears regarding the fortunes of the Operation Postmaster armada – or at least one half of it.

  On 19 January HMS Violet’s commander, Lieutenant Nicholas, had cabled a short communiqué: ‘Have intercepted Duchessa d’Aosta in 003 degs 53’ North 02’ East steering westwards. Have placed prize crews aboard without opposition. Escorting to Lagos unless otherwise ordered.’ The message absolutely fitted the needs of the deception. Behind it lay the wider story: the British destroyer had finally managed to shake herself free of the sandbank and go to the British raiders’ aid.

  In theory, March-Phillipps, Appleyard, Lassen and their raider cohorts were now formally ‘under arrest’, as were the ‘mutinous’ Italian crew. But of Graham Hayes and the others aboard the Nuneaton, the Likomba and the Bibundi there had been no further sign. Ever since March-Phillipps had made the agonizing decision to leave the three ships wallowing in the lea of Fernando Po, there had been no further sighting of them.

  To all intents and purposes they had disappeared.

  Still, the cable of the 19th from HMS Violet was seen by London as being enough to warrant a response to the accusations being pumped out by the Axis media, and that of her supposedly neutral allies.

  That very day the Admiralty issued the first counter communiqué:

  In view of the German allegations that Allied naval forces have executed a cutting out operation against Axis ships in the Spanish port of Santa Isabel, Fernando Po, the British Admiralty consider it necessary to state that no British or Allied warship was in the vicinity of Fernando Po at the time of the alleged incident. As a result, however, of the information obtained from German broadcasts, the British Commander in Chief dispatched reconnaissance patrols to cover the area. A report has now been received that a large unidentified vessel has been sighted and British naval vessels are proceeding to the spot to investigate.

  The statement was a masterpiece of double-speak and deception – one deliberately designed to suggest that the Germans, by means of their wild accusations, had brought the subsequent misfortune upon themselves.

  Curt instructions were issued to the SOE head of operations in Lagos: long before any of the ships reached harbour, the raider crews were to be spirited away and kept hidden. As far as M and the wider SOE were concerned, no one bar the Maid Honour’s crew and a small circle of insiders should ever know that this clandestine force had existed. The Italian prisoners were to be transported up country, and incarcerated in a POW facility far away from curious eyes or ears.

  *

  It wasn’t until Wednesday 21st January that the Vulcan and the Duchessa d’Aosta finally reached Lagos, under escort of HMS Violet. As chance would have it, the Nuneaton and her two charges would also materialize at around about the same time. Despairing of locating an escort, Hayes and crew had been forced to make do and mend with the Nuneaton’s engines and, dodging potentially hostile vessels and warplanes en route, their little armada had limped into the nearest British port more or less unaided.

  Gus March-Phillipps was finally able to send a telegram to London, informing M and his political masters of the success of his mission: ‘Casualties our party absolutely nil. Casualties enemy nil, apart from a few sore heads. Prisoners: Germans nil, Italians: men 27, women 1, natives 1.’

  Congratulatory telegrams were sent by return, both from M and from the British Prime Minister himself. Now the challenge was to keep the role played by Churchill’s secret raiders in Operation Postmaster hidden for the duration of the war.

  Three days after the five ships had made it safely into Lagos, the Spanish government issued its first note of ‘most energetic protest’ about the attack. All the facts led the authorities in Madrid to deduce that ‘the act of aggression was carried out by ships and elements in the service of British interests or direct collaborators with the British forces operating on the coast of West Africa.’

  Behind the diplomatic angst and aggrieved language lay a simple truth: ten days after the attack the Spanish still didn’t have a clear sense as to who exactly was responsible for the raid. They strongly suspected British connivance, but that was about as far as they could go. That in turn meant the most important aspect of Operation Postmaster – its deniability – had been sustained.

  In a ‘MOST SECRET’ report submitted to M and others, five days after March-Phillipps’ flotilla reached Lagos harbour, ‘CAESAR’ – Lieutenant-Colonel Julius Hanau, M’s deputy at the SOE – sounded an exultant note of triumph:

  Now that POSTMASTER is in the bag, I feel you may care to have the enclosed record of its romantic and dramatic career set out chronologically from its early days until the climax was reached.

  In that report, CAESAR reveals that the Nuneaton – together with the Likomba and Bibundi – actually ran aground on the night of the raid, after the tugboat’s engines failed. Fortunately for Operation Postmaster, she was refloated and managed to make her getaway with her prizes in tow. CAESAR goes on to praise the dash and daring of the raiders, and to lament bitterly those who stood in Postmaster’s way:

  The operation not only achieved more than its material object, but it achieved it in such a way that the task of the Foreign Office and the Admiralty in meeting the political and legal aftermath has been reduced to a minimum. We hope that SOE will be permitted to demonstrate that what was possible in Fernando Po is possible elsewhere: perhaps on the next occasion it will not be found necessary to preface twenty-five minutes compact and decisive action by over four months prolonged and desultory negotiations.

  Caesar also stresses the value of POSTMASTER to the SOE, in terms of proving its modus operandi:

  POSTMASTER was the first special operation of any scale to be undertaken by S.O.E. in a neutral port, and was therefore something of a test case – nor is it the easiest task to spirit away on a dark night an 8,000-tonne liner moored close into shore without leaving any trace of one’s visit. No reports from any sources have indicated that any tangible evidence of British complicity was left behind.

  But in a sense, CAESAR had spoken too soon. He’d forgotten one crucial element: Richard Lippett.

  *

  Agent Lippett’s fortunes were looking decidedly dark. He feared that if he were forced to give ‘evidence’ against his Spanish friends in what amounted to a court martial, he would crack. While all SOE agents were sworn to wage total war with no holds barred – putting normal moral objections aside in time of war – this was a step too far. If found guilty, his Spanish friends would face a long period of imprisonment and possibly even execution.

  By now London had issued several formal statements claiming that the Italian and German vessels had been seized fair and square on the high seas. If Lippett broke during the court ma
rtial, the British government would be exposed at the very highest level. He had to be spirited away.

  All options were explored to get Lippett off the island, but every which way seemed to be blocked. Captain Binea was determined to keep his prime witness close at hand, so the Spanish certainly weren’t going to grant Lippett permission to leave. Alternately, if the British Consulate were to organize some form of escape and their involvement was discovered, Britain’s role at the heart of the Postmaster deception would be revealed.

  Eventually Lippett – suffering intense fevers due to a bout of malaria – decided that he had no option but to follow in Zorilla’s footsteps and engage a native fisherman to paddle him across the water to Nigeria. He had many friends among the Nigerians resident on the island – most of whom were strongly pro-British – and he made arrangements with one of them to help execute his escape.

  On 25 February 1942 – six weeks after the raid – Lippett made a break for it. He travelled overland to a remote coastal village. But while waiting for the fisherman to collect him, word reached Lippett that a contingent of Spanish police had arrived seeking his arrest. With the native canoeist failing to appear, Lippett did the only thing he could: he made a solo break for it.

  Hurrying down to the shore to steal a native canoe, Lippett ran into a Spanish Colonial police officer. In his younger years Lippett had been something of a heavyweight boxing champion. Despite being weakened by malaria, he punched the living daylights out of the Spanish policeman and laid him out unconscious. As he neared the beach he had to do the same to a second police officer, before he was finally able to grab a dugout and push it into the foaming surf.