Night Raid

by Taylor Downing

  They went straight into the prepared plan, quickly gathering the containers and emptying them. While they were doing this, Charteris was supposed to check out the route to the beach. But almost immediately he realised that something was wrong. There was not a row of trees at the end of the valley as there should have been. For a few seconds he was completely baffled. Where were the trees? Had the model been wrong? Then the horrible truth dawned on him. He and his men had been dropped in the wrong valley. It looked roughly right, but the slopes on either side were not steep enough. The wood they were due to form up against was not where it was supposed to be. But if he and his men weren’t where they should be, where on earth were they? Charteris had no idea in what direction the beach was, or how far away. He had a moment of panic. He was behind enemy lines with no idea where he was. He later wrote in his report, ‘I don’t mind saying that was a nasty moment. I felt very lost.’1

  As nineteen men from two aircraft gathered around their young officer, fully kitted with all the equipment from the containers, they looked to him for direction. But he had no idea which way to lead them. The valley was completely unfamiliar and the landscape bore no relation to the countryside they had studied so carefully on maps, models and aerial photographs. Moreover, Captain Ross and his team of nineteen men were not there with them. Had they been dropped at the correct drop zone or were they miles away as well, trying to work out what to do? As the men struggled to come to grips with what had happened, the next wave of four Whitleys passed overhead. Charteris knew they would be flying in a north-easterly direction. So at least he knew which direction north was. The problem was, had they been dropped too soon, in which case they would have to go north to find Bruneval and complete their mission? Or too late, and would have to go in the opposite direction to join up with the rest of the party? Charteris took a gamble and calculated that it was most likely he had been dropped too soon. He told the men that they should head north, but they had to move at speed as they might be several miles from Bruneval.

  He worried to himself that he was wrong, that they would get so far and then have to turn around, retrace their steps and head off in the opposite direction. He knew this would be disastrous for morale. Trying not to show his concerns, he ordered his men to spread out in a rough diamond shape. He led from the front and the men set off in what he desperately hoped was the right direction. With speed of the essence, he led his men in a slow run and they jogged off to the north at what Charteris reckoned was about 6 mph. The fact that Charteris had been dropped in the wrong place and didn’t even know if he was heading in the right direction was not a good start to the raid.

  The German soldiers in the vicinity had been roused by the sound of the low-flying aircraft. The sergeant in charge of the platoon at the Hotel Beau-Minet had seen in the distance further inland what looked like British paratroopers dropping to the ground. At precisely 0015 he called his company headquarters at La Poterie to report that he believed the enemy had dropped parachute troops in the vicinity. Company commander Oberleutnant Huhn was immediately alerted. It so happened that the company had been carrying out an exercise that night and about thirty men had just returned to base. Huhn immediately ordered them to march to Le Presbytère to reinforce the Luftwaffe troops there. This was not good for the British raiding party. They had anticipated that it would take at least two hours for any troops from La Poterie to arrive on the scene, but the first platoon were on their way within minutes of the first Para landing.

  Huhn also ordered the sergeant at the Beau-Minet to alert the guard at the Stella Maris. The NCO in charge was told to take a section and man the machine-gun positions above the villa and on the other side of the cliff. At this point the German commander still had no idea of what was going on, how many men might have landed or what their objective could possibly be. But, thanks to his quick response, the German defenders were rallying far more rapidly and efficiently than the British had hoped.

  Five minutes after Charteris and the first contingent had jumped, at 0020, Major Frost and his party of men arrived over their DZ. Frost was the fifth out of his aircraft and had the responsibility of tugging on the cord that released the containers from the Whitley’s bomb bay. As he went down he had time to look around him, and in the bright moonlight he recognised the terrain exactly as the model had shown it, with a row of trees by a steep gully. Frost and his party, the forty men of Jellicoe, Hardy and Drake, were dropped right into the centre of their intended DZ. This was a fantastic feat of flying by the pilots and navigators of the relatively slow-moving, heavily loaded bombers, who for the last few minutes had been flying under continuous anti-aircraft fire. The RAF crews with their cool heads had dropped this group of men perfectly on target.

  For Frost and his men, the night’s work was now beginning. He landed softly in the snow after a perfect descent. Then, partly due to nerves, partly as a consequence of suddenly hitting the cold night air, and partly because of all the cups of tea he had drunk before emplaning, Frost felt an urgent call of nature. The first thing he did on landing in occupied Europe behind enemy lines after removing his parachute was to relieve himself. He realised this was ‘not good drill’, as paratroopers are at their most vulnerable in the moments after landing, but he later rather proudly described it as a ‘gesture of defiance’.2

  Sergeant-Major Strachan soon appeared in order to check that his commanding officer was all right, then led the men in gathering up their containers, unpacking the equipment and forming up in their allotted positions by the line of trees. With everyone present and correct they quickly moved off, silently and stealthily, towards the plateau on the cliffs. They saw no evidence of any German alarm and after only about ten minutes they had covered the required six hundred yards and reached the Villa Gosset. There was no sign of any reception party waiting for them. Relieved that the security of the mission had apparently been preserved, Frost gave the order for the men to pan out as planned. By about 0040 the villa and the Würzburg radar apparatus was surrounded. So far, everything for Frost’s men had gone exactly to plan, and not a single bullet had been fired.

  Imagining that the Villa Gosset was the headquarters of the Luftwaffe radar platoon and their associated signallers and defenders, it was written into the plan that the attack on this building would mark the formal start of the raid. There had been much debate about how to enter the villa, but Frost was surprised to find the door wide open. When everyone was in position he went up to the door and at the last minute remembered to blow his whistle, the signal the paratroopers had been waiting for. He blew a long, hard blast. On the sound of it, the night raid began in earnest.

  Frost and six men charged into the ground floor through the open door. Frost fired eight rounds from his pistol. Another group of men burst in through windows on the other side of the house. They threw grenades into each of the four rooms on the ground floor but each room was completely empty. The paratroopers charged up the stairs, yelling at the top of their voices in English ‘Surrender’ and in German ‘Hände hoch’. Along with this they screamed out obscenities… in English. It was enough to get their blood up and to terrify any enemy soldiers.

  They burst into a room on the first floor where a single German soldier with a rifle was looking out the window towards the Würzburg. The poor man did not stand a chance. The first Para into the room killed him with a burst from his Sten gun.

  To Frost’s surprise, there were no other Germans in the villa. It was completely empty except for this single man. There was not even any furniture in any of the rooms. What they did not know was that the RAF had bombed the conspicuous looking building about six months earlier and an incendiary had dropped on the bed belonging to the sergeant in charge. From that point on, the German soldiers had avoided using the villa, thinking it was safer to sleep outside in the dugouts. In all their planning the Paras had anticipated an intense fire fight to gain control of the villa. But now in minutes it was theirs. It all seemed to be too easy.

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p; As he surveyed the villa’s bare rooms, Frost heard firing and the sound of grenades being thrown around the radar installation itself, a hundred yards away outside. After a few more shots had been fired everything went quiet. He told his men to wait on guard in the villa. Everyone was in a state of heightened tension but they maintained strict order. Frost and another soldier went outside and ran across the grass the short distance to the radar installation. Here there had certainly been a skirmish. The Paras’ orders had been to take as prisoners only men who appeared to be radar experts or operators. Lieutenant Peter Young followed this to the letter. The Germans had been in their dugouts around the radar installation when the firing began. They were soon overwhelmed. Everyone had been killed or had run away into the dark. Young moved through the dugouts to ensure that there were no survivors and said he would have shot anyone who was not a radar operator. Even Sergeant McKenzie, his hardened NCO, had been shocked by this and had called him a ‘cruel bastard’. But orders were orders.

  Young later reported that all the Germans had been killed in the skirmish; after the first sentry to challenge the Paras had been shot dead, ‘we hunted them [the rest of the Germans in the dugouts around the Würzburg] out of the cellars, trenches and rooms with hand grenades, automatic weapons, revolvers and knives. Most were killed, but some ran away.’ He described how one of those who had tried to run away had fallen about ten feet down the side of the cliff. The Paras quickly found him and ordered him back up the cliff side with his hands up. Young remembered, ‘At the time I thought I had never seen anything funnier than a German trying to scramble up the lip of a cliff with his hands up.’3

  When Frost arrived, Young told him that five Germans were dead. At that moment the Paras appeared with the prisoner who had fallen over the edge of the cliff. They had retrieved him and now he stood before the British Paras, petrified. They must have looked a terrifying sight, their faces blacked up and ‘with their blood up’, as it was said at the time. They could see he had Luftwaffe markings on his uniform. He clearly had something to do with the radar. Frost called for the interpreter, Nagel, the man known as Private Newman. He immediately went up to the prisoner and with his bare hands ripped the Luftwaffe badge off his lapel. A soldier asked, ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘For my personal satisfaction,’ replied Nagel. It was the first time the German-born Jew had seen a German soldier in uniform and the hatred he felt erupted in this spontaneous act.

  Frost wanted to try to find out from the terrified prisoner the strength of the local German garrison. Through Nagel, he asked the prisoner how many Germans there were in the immediate vicinity. With a sudden swell of courage, the German replied defiantly, ‘One thousand.’ Sergeant McKenzie struck him hard across his jaw with the butt of his rifle. Another man made it clear that he thought they should kill the prisoner now. Stunned and near to tears, the prisoner’s courage collapsed and he rapidly started to tell his captors that there were only a hundred Germans in the neighbourhood. This was exactly what the intelligence reports had predicted.

  Alarmingly, however, the prisoner said they had all been warned an hour ago that British parachutists had landed in the vicinity. It appeared that the prisoner’s name was Heller. He admitted that he was from a Luftwaffe signals regiment and he explained that he operated the big radar they were standing next to. This was just the sort of prisoner that the Paras wanted. He could be a valuable addition to the night’s work. Frost instructed his men to keep the German under guard. Delighted with how the raid was progressing so far, Frost then turned his attention to the radar. The engineers had been kept in the shadows up to now. It was time for them to come forward and fulfil their part of the mission.

  Flight Sergeant Charles Cox, whose task it was to dismantle the Würzburg, had been in the same Whitley as Major Frost and had joined the men in the singing as they flew over the Channel. Reputed to have a good voice, Cox bellowed out a solo of ‘The Rose of Tralee’, trying hard to make himself heard above the engine noise, and was mightily cheered by the others when he finished the song. Cox remembered that when they were a few minutes from jumping Frost passed around a flask of tea mixed with rum and he had a couple of small sips from it. Like for everyone else, the next few minutes passed quickly in a blur. Cox jumped as number seven from the plane. He remembered hearing the command ‘Number Seven – Go!’ and recalled dropping through the hole. He remembered the tug as his parachute opened and then landing softly in the snow. He gathered in his parachute and felt a strong sense of loneliness, standing there in the silence of a French field, far from home. Then the others began to appear in the darkness and Cox ran to the canisters, which were easy to spot with their flashing coloured lights. He and the other Paras unpacked the elaborate trolleys they had brought to carry off the radar apparatus. Some of the men now headed off with Frost to attack the villa and the radar. Cox was told to remain in the rear until the location was secure.

  The RAF sergeant loaded up the trolleys with all the other equipment, and he and a couple of sappers moved off towards the forming-up position, where they would meet Lieutenant Vernon and the rest of the engineers. This was to the left of the main group, just above the steep slope that ran down to the road and the small village of Bruneval. It was tough going pulling the loaded trolleys across the snow and at one point they had to pull them over a barbed wire fence. Cox cut his hands doing this, and thought ‘First blood to Jerry.’ But at about 0040 he met up with Vernon, who had also had a good jump and with the rest of the engineers had arrived at the rendezvous in perfect time.

  The men lay for some time in the snow listening to the sound of the fighting around the villa and the Würzburg. Then it fell silent. After a few minutes they heard grenades going off in the valley below. Cox thought to himself that there must be a battle taking place for the village. Vernon told Cox and the other sappers to stay where they were as he crawled forward to see if they had the all-clear to approach the Würzburg.

  When he reached the installation there was still some confusion among the Paras around the site. Vernon made contact with Lieutenant Young, who told him they had found nothing in the dugouts and trenches of any interest and that the villa appeared to be empty of equipment or papers of any sort. Vernon tried to make contact with Frost but couldn’t find him in the dark. Frost was told that the engineer was there but couldn’t locate him either. ‘Vernon, Vernon, where are you?’ he called out urgently. Vernon was only a few yards away as it turned out. Frost told him the site was secure and he could now start his work.

  About ten minutes had passed, and Vernon sent a runner back to tell Cox to come forward with the trolleys. Soon after 0100 Cox rejoined Vernon at the radar apparatus. The paratroopers were kneeling and in position all around the Würzburg. This was what they had come for. The target of the mission was there in front of them. The lives of thousands of aircrew could be saved if the components they took now helped the boffins back home to understand how this device operated.

  Cox began to size up the apparatus. Just as he had expected, it consisted of a big conical transmitter aerial about ten feet in diameter, supported on a chassis. Behind this was a cupboard or cabin about four feet high by three and a half feet wide and a few feet deep. In addition to this was the unit containing the electrical operating gear. The whole radar installation was in a pit with a two-foot wall running around the side of it. Vernon started to take photographs of the apparatus with his Leica. But the flashes immediately provoked a response from the enemy. From the copse at Theuville known as the Rectangle the enemy opened fire.

  The Wehrmacht infantry platoon that had been out on exercises had now joined up with the Luftwaffe ground troops at Le Presbytère. Together these men had moved forward to the tree line between the Freyas and the Würzburg on the cliff plateau. Their immediate response was to think that the Freyas had come under attack, as this was a bigger installation, older and more established. But it did not take them long to realise that the British paratroopers appea
red to have occupied the Villa Gosset and had attacked the Würzburg installation instead. Although these were mainly Luftwaffe ground troops, most of them were armed with rifles and they had with them two light machine guns. As soon as they had surveyed the situation and lined up behind the trees they opened fire. The British parachute troops were only about four hundred yards away and were clearly visible in the bright moonlight against the snow.

  The final party of British paratroopers, the group known as Rodney commanded by Lieutenant Timothy, had been third to jump, five minutes after Frost and his men. Everything went smoothly for the first of the four aircraft and the men jumped at 0024 right into their correct DZ. It was another instance of masterly flying by the RAF. The second aircraft, however, dropped its stick short of Bruneval. They took some time to form up with the rest of the section on the ground. There was a further problem in the third aircraft. The first group of men were again dropped in the wrong valley. Then, the number five paratrooper caught his foot in the static lines of the men who had already jumped. He was somehow thrown forward and found himself suspended head first, with his feet caught in the lines, three-quarters out of the hole in the base of the aircraft. It was a terrifying position to be in. The remaining men managed to haul him back in. The pilot, with steely nerves despite the anti-aircraft fire, agreed to fly in a circuit out over the sea and come around again. When they were over their DZ, the rest of the men jumped, including the brave man who had nearly been thrown out of the plane on his first attempt.4 It was the one jumping mishap that night and it only delayed the forming up of the men who had reached the correct DZ by about five minutes.