Night Raid

by Taylor Downing

  Meanwhile another more serious drama was taking place. The last of the landing craft, with Frost on board, had made contact with its MGB, and the major clambered up from the ALC on to the faster vessel. There he was told that two signallers had made contact with the naval flotilla. They had been in the group with Sergeant Lumb, in pursuit of whom Charteris had sent Corporal Campbell when the battle at the Stella Maris was over. But, pinned down by heavy fire, they had been unable to get to the beach while the landing craft were there. They arrived on the beach as the last vessels were pulling away, and sent a message pleading with the navy to come back to get them.

  Frost immediately volunteered to return in a boat to look for them. But Commander Cook forbade this. Telling Frost about the two German destroyers and the E-boats that had very nearly spotted them, he explained that for the safety of the whole party, sailors and Paras alike, they had to get out quickly before dawn. The party could not split up and leave one of the boats at the beach. Frost reluctantly accepted Cook’s decision. But he hated the idea of leaving men behind.

  In fact, in the chaos of the beach embarkation, six men had been abandoned, one of whom was badly wounded. Remarkably only two Paras had been killed in the raid, Privates McIntyre and Scott. Their bodies were left in France.10 Eight others had been wounded, the most serious of whom was Sergeant-Major Strachan, and they were all successfully evacuated. No RAF or Royal Navy personnel were killed, wounded or missing. In his estimate, after he had had time to speak to all his officers and do a tally, Frost concluded that they must have killed at least forty Germans – although, it turned out later that this was a major exaggeration.

  Out in the Channel, it was time for the small flotilla to make its escape. The transfer on to the gunboats was complete by 0326. The faster MGBs now began to tow the slow-moving landing craft. But by this time the south-westerly wind had reached about Force 5 and they could make only a relatively slow six knots in the choppy sea. The landing craft started to take on water, slowing things even further. Two of the craft broke their tow ropes, which had to be repaired mid-Channel. By dawn they were still only about fifteen miles from the French coast. They would have a long trip ahead. MGB 312, with Cox, Preist, twenty other men and the radar apparatus aboard, had been dispatched directly to return to Portsmouth, where it arrived safely at 1000 on Saturday morning.

  After the intense drama of the last few hours, most of the men were able to take it easy on the journey home. The lucky ones on the MGBs had gone below deck. The naval crews made a real fuss of their passengers, who were given blankets or duffle coats brought out specially for them. There were portions of bully beef and sweet biscuits with pots of tea available. And on more than one boat the crew generously distributed a good dose of naval rum. Although the small MGBs tossed and turned in the rough seas, the men could dry out and keep warm. Some of them dozed, though many were still high on adrenalin and chatted away endlessly to each other. Most of the men were badly seasick during the journey back. Sergeant Forsyth remembered one man having so much of the navy’s rum that he was blind drunk when he got back and could barely walk.11 On one of the boats, the ship’s doctor gave Strachan much-needed medical attention.

  Charteris, the hero of the night’s action, found himself on a boat with Nagel, the German-speaking private, and Corporal Georg Schmidt, the telephone orderly whom he had taken prisoner. Charteris spent much of the journey back talking with the prisoner and learning about life for the German sentries at Bruneval. On Cook’s boat another German prisoner, Tewes, was violently sick over the side of the vessel. Cook went up on deck to find a paratrooper clinging on to the PoW’s leg as he threw up to prevent him from falling over the side rail. Asked what he was doing, the Scottish paratrooper replied, ‘Sir, I’ve come a long way to get a Hun prisoner and I’m damned if I’m going to let this bastard get awa’ the noo.’12

  Frost on his boat felt that he did not deserve the fuss that the naval crew were making of him. Increasingly worried about the men they had left behind, he blamed himself for not double and triple checking that everyone was on board the landing craft. The reality was that in the circumstances this had just not been possible. It had been a case of every man for himself. It was almost inevitable that with the communication failures that had plagued the operation from the moment the Paras landed, combined with the wide dispersal of the force over cliffs and woods, some men would miss the order to withdraw. But in the few hours of the Channel crossing, Frost grew more and more annoyed with himself. For a while he completely lost sight of the fact that the operation had been a success.

  As they neared the English coast, however, he got a message from Preist on board MGB 312 that the radar equipment they had brought back was in good shape and was going to reveal almost everything the scientists wanted to know. When he heard that, Frost snapped out of his gloom and was considerably cheered. He was in a much better mood by the time he got back to Portsmouth.

  About an hour after dawn the men on the returning flotilla of little ships heard a welcome sound. A squadron of Spitfires flew low over the ships. It was the escort provided by the RAF to ensure that enemy aircraft could not attack the vessels coming back to England. Flying around in a wide circuit, the Spitfires covered the rest of their journey, providing in the words of one of the naval officers a ‘lane of fighters’ to welcome them back.13 Not long after, four French naval corvettes sailing out of Portsmouth appeared in order to provide the flotilla with a naval escort. It was a nice touch for the French navy to welcome back a raiding party from occupied France. And finally two British destroyers, HMS Blencathra and HMS Fernie, came out to accompany the MGBs and the landing craft into Portsmouth harbour.

  Word had got around that men from a successful raid were returning and most of the boats in the harbour tooted their whistles loudly, while some played ‘Rule Britannia’ over their loudspeakers. As they approached the Prinz Albert, one of the Spitfires dived low and dipped his wings in the traditional RAF salute for a job well done. It was by now 1630 on Saturday 28 February and it was proving to be quite a welcome for the returning Paras. Photographers and a newsreel film cameraman were waiting to record their arrival. Wing Commander Pickard and most of the pilots who had flown the Paras from Thruxton the night before had come down to welcome them home and to hear first hand what had happened to them. Smiling and cheerful, they were on board the Prinz Albert within the hour, enjoying the hospitality and comforts of this spacious ex-passenger ship. Frost remembered that in the bar that night there was ‘some serious drinking to be done’.14

  There was one other important person waiting to meet the Paras on the Prinz Albert. Alan Humphreys, a journalist from Reuters who had been accredited by the Admiralty and the War Office to Operation Biting, was a bright young reporter who had covered a couple of commando raids before and was thought by the military authorities to have done a good job and to be thoroughly reliable.15 Humphreys had been, in today’s parlance, ‘embedded’ with the Royal Navy for the operation. Based on the Prinz Albert for about ten days, he had been briefed in detail and had lived through the anxious period when the weather had caused a postponement for several days. He sailed out with the Prinz Albert on 27 February and saw the landing craft being disembarked at night to go in to pick up the paratroopers. He then returned to Portsmouth with the Prinz Albert to await the outcome of the raid.

  When the men from C Company came back on board, he spoke to many of them and started to write up a report of the raid, stressing, as he had been briefed to do, that the operation was ‘combined’. He wrote that the RAF had taken the parachute troops to France, the navy had brought them back, and the infantry had provided vital support from the landing craft as they came under attack from the cliffs. He stressed the Scottish element in the Para force and the regional balance of the other men who had taken part.

  Humphreys’ report was passed on to the BBC and over the next couple of days was syndicated to all the major newspapers. Within hours of their return, the Pa
ras of C Company would be heroes.

  19

  Aftermath

  If the Paras who had come home to Britain were seen as returning heroes, those left behind at Bruneval were treated very differently. Throughout the night the Germans had been active in the whole area. At 0445 the official message had gone out, ‘The enemy attack is over.’ But several units mobilised along the coast continued to converge on Bruneval and La Poterie. They included light artillery and motorised infantry, while soon after 0600 a Panzer unit arrived on the scene. These were the troops, well equipped and raring for action, that the Paras would have had to face if the raid had gone wrong or if the navy had not collected them in the nick of time.

  Also arriving at La Poterie in the early hours of the morning were the two senior German officers with responsibility for the area around Bruneval, Lieutenant General Joachim Stever, commander-in-chief of the 336th Infantry Division, and Colonel von Eisenhart-Rothe, commander of the 685th Infantry Regiment. They began an immediate investigation of what had happened and what the British raid had been about. Confronted with a variety of confusing and contradictory reports, one of which strangely claimed that the Freya radar station had been entirely destroyed, the first thing they did was to organise patrols to search the fields, valleys and farms around Bruneval as soon as dawn came up.

  Private Donald Sutherland, a member of Charteris’s section, had been wounded as the men moved up through the woods towards Bruneval. Having sustained five bullet wounds, three in his left shoulder, one in his elbow and one in his wrist, he had been left behind near a farm in the woods called Des Echos with a small supply of morphine that helped him get through the night. Early in the morning, German soldiers had visited the farm and searched every room. From the wood nearby, Sutherland heard the sound of the Germans in the farmhouse.

  After they had gone, the seriously wounded Para, cold, hungry and in pain, decided to come out from his hiding place. He went up and knocked on the door, which was opened by the farmer’s wife, Madame Delamere. She spoke no English and the young Scottish soldier spoke no French; ‘Tommy, Anglo,’ he said, waving his identity discs. Seeing that he was frozen and in a bad way, she took him inside. Her husband soon appeared in the farmhouse kitchen, where they gave him some hot coffee and a swig of the local apple brandy, calvados, to revive him.

  Realising how badly wounded the young soldier was, his left arm heavily swollen and the morphine he had been taking for the pain now beginning to wear off, they knew he desperately needed medical care. But the nearest hospital was ten miles away and the area was crawling with Germans. The punishment for hiding an enemy soldier was death for the male householder and imprisonment for the rest of the family. Towards 0900 they heard the German soldiers returning. Sutherland insisted he wanted to surrender and they must hand him over so he could be taken to a doctor. This they did, but not before he had torn off the airborne wings from his shoulders and had given them to the family. They hid them and kept them for the duration of the war. The German soldiers were delighted to have found a prisoner and took Sutherland away to the Hotel Beau-Minet, where a German doctor examined him and patched his wounds.1

  Privates David Thomas and John Willoughby and Lance-Corporal John McCallum were part of a small group from Nelson that, pinned down by German fire, had become detached from the others during the advance through the woods towards Bruneval. When the shooting ceased they managed to get down to the beach, but to their amazement they saw the last of the landing craft departing. They had not heard any call to withdraw. Willoughby started to wave and shout out. McCallum used his radio to send a signal that there were men left behind, but no one responded. Before long enemy soldiers descended to the beach and the three Paras took refuge in a small cave. The enemy soldiers did not stay long and the three men ventured out once again on to the beach.

  There, to their surprise, they met two more Paras, Frank Embury and George Cornell, from Sergeant Lumb’s group. They had got lost earlier in the combat, and Charteris had sent men to try to find them after the battle for the Stella Maris. They too had arrived on the beach to see the landing craft departing. The five men huddled together and, realising that the navy were not coming back for them, discussed what they should do next. They were aware it would be too difficult to survive inside enemy-occupied territory as a group of five. Embury and Cornell decided to head inland and try to escape into the southern, unoccupied zone of France. The others thought they were better off staying on the coast. They agreed to split into two groups and went their separate ways.

  McCallum, Willoughby and Thomas headed south along the pebbles. Before long they found another cave and decided to wait there until dawn. At about 0830 a Luftwaffe patrol, tasked with trying to find the missing radar operator, Heller, came down on to the beach. It was feared that Heller had fallen down the cliff edge and might be in trouble. As the Luftwaffe soldiers searched the beach they found a body, but it was not that of the German radar operator, it was a British paratrooper who appeared to have fallen down the cliff and had died of his injuries during the night. This was the second Para to die as a result of the raid. His identity tags showed that his name was Private Alan Scott.

  As the Luftwaffe soldiers continued their search, they approached the cave the three Paras were hiding in. The men, freezing cold and exhausted, decided to give themselves up. To the astonishment of the Luftwaffe patrol three British paratroopers emerged from the bottom of the cliff with their hands up. The surprised officer took their surrender. The three were told to collect Scott’s body and the small group were led back up the road from the beach.

  At this point the Luftwaffe patrol met with another patrol led by Oberleutnant Huhn, commander of the 1st Company. To the surprise of the British, an argument then erupted between the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht officers as to who should take responsibility for the prisoners. As the defence of the beach had been the responsibility of Huhn and his men, he insisted on taking charge of the prisoners. Eventually the Wehrmacht prevailed and Huhn took them back to the Hotel Beau-Minet.

  Back at the hotel the senior German officers were still eager to find out what the raid had been all about. General Stever, who spoke fluent English, had a conversation with Private Sutherland after he had received medical attention. The general was courteous and patient and entirely correct in his questioning, but the Para was defiant and refused to say anything other than to give his name, rank and serial number.

  After a few minutes Stever decided he would get no further with the wounded Para. As he went to depart, Sutherland thought he ought at least to show some mark of respect to the most senior officer he had probably ever met, so he stood to attention and saluted the general with his healthy arm. When the other three Paras arrived there was a happy reunion with Sutherland before he was taken away by ambulance to a military hospital at St-Romain-de-Colbosc near Le Havre. He later made a good recovery.

  The German officers now began to interview the three new prisoners, but again they would only provide the most basic information to their captors. Passing in and out of the rooms of the hotel, Madame Vennier, who had helped the French underground six weeks before, was impressed with the demeanour of the British prisoners and made clandestine signs of support to them when the Germans were not looking.

  Eventually the three men were taken away. Waiting for transport at La Poterie, a group of French schoolchildren passed the prisoners, who made secret V-signs to the youths with their fingers. The three were taken to Étretat and then to Paris. At each place they were treated well but were questioned further. Then they were taken on to Frankfurt and finally to Berlin, where they were interrogated again at Luftwaffe headquarters. The men were of particular interest as they were the first British Paras captured by the Germans.

  The Luftwaffe officers were surprised that unlike the German Fallschirmjäger, the British Paras were part of the army and not the RAF. General Martini himself, head of the Luftwaffe’s signals division, interrogated the three Paras, as he a
ssumed that, having been sent on a raid to seize German radar, they would be radar specialists. He must have been disappointed to find that they knew remarkably little about either British or German radar.2