15
Haugesund (27 Apr, Checkmate)
8
Herm (27/8 Feb, Huckaback)
39
Jersey (25/6 Dec, Hardtack 28)
42
Landet (22/3 Mar, Roundabout)
4
Normandy beaches (31 Dec by COPP)
29
Onival (3/4 July, Forfar Easy)
22
Onival (26/7 Dec, Hardtack 5)
22
Quineville (26/7 Dec, Hardtack 21)
34
St Valery en Caux (2/3 Sept, Forfar Item)
25
Sark (25/6 Dec, Hardtack 7, repeated 27/8 Dec)
43
Sognefjord (22 Feb–3 Mar, Crackers)
6
Stord Isl (23/4 Jan, Cartoon)
7
Ushant (3/4 Sept Pound)
46
1944
Bray-Dunes Plage (16/7 May, Tarbrush 3)
13
Isle de Yeu (25/6 Aug, Rumford)
48
Less Hemmes (15/6 May, Tarbrush 5)
16
Les Moulens (18/9 Jan, Postageable)
32
NORMANDY (6 June, Overlord)
29
Norway—see also diagram on Norway p243
Onival (17/8 May, Tarbrush 10)
22
Quend Plage (15/6 May, Tarbrush 8)
21
Schevneningen (24/5 Feb, Premium)
11
Walcheren (15 to 26 Oct, Tarbrush recces failed)
12
WALCHEREN (1 Nov, Infatuate)
12
1944/5
Route of 2nd Rangers numbered from Vire (51) to Brest (45) and then eastward to Pilsen (59):
NORMANDY (6 June 1944)
29
Vire
51
BREST (20 Aug to 17 Sept 1944)
45
Paris—not numbered
Luxemburg
52
Sinzig
53
KASSEL
54
Gottingen
55
Leipzig
56
Merseburg
57
MULDE RIVER
58
Pilsen
59
1945
Route of 1 Commando Brigade numbered from west to east (60-66):
Asten (16 Jan)
60
Venraij (20 Feb)
61
WESEL (25 Mar)
62
OSNABRUCK (5 Apr)
63
LAUENBURG (29 Apr)
64
LUNEBURG
65
Neustadt (3 May)
66
1945
Other locations lettered from west to east:
BIESBOSCH (4 Cdo Bde)
A
Maas River (4 Cdo Bde)
B
Minden (4 Cdo Bde)
C
RIED (5th Rangers)
F
WEHINGEN (5th Rangers)
E
Zerf (5th Rangers)
D
There were nevertheless plenty of suggestions for targets: St Nazaire was considered but dismissed because shoal waters were thought to make a sea approach impractical; Dieppe appeared too heavily defended; and many suggested moves to occupy distant islands were ruled out by the impossibility of maintaining garrisons. In the last category was a proposal from Sir Stafford Cripps, British Ambassador in Moscow, for the occupation of the coal-mining and strategic island of Spitsbergen, but Allied sea power would not stretch to convoying supplies for a garrison so far from home waters. Instead a raid was mounted. Canadian troops trained with the British amphibious forces at Inverary (Argyll) and were then taken in SS Empress of Canada to land on the island, 600 miles from the North Pole on 24 August 1941. The eventual landing force was smaller than planned because naval air reconnaissance showed the Germans had not garrisoned the island. The Canadians’ ship then took 2,000 local Russian miners and their families to Archangel, returning nine days later on 2 September to take off the men of the Edmonton Regiment and Saskatoon Light Infantry who, with sappers and some Norwegians, had destroyed the mines. The raiders’ principal memory, however, is the smell of Eau de Cologne drunk by the miners who were allowed no spirits on the island. By the time the Canadians were safely back in a British port, the ship had sailed 7,000 miles (13,000km) on the round trip.
Another commando raid that summer was mounted by 12 Commando; 16 men led by 2nd Lieutenant Pinkney landing near Ambleteuse where they made a general reconnaissance returning safely to England, although a stoker on the naval craft was killed by enemy action, probably during the withdrawal.
In October 1941 Sir Roger Keyes was replaced by the 41-year old naval Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin of King George VI. Lord Mountbatten’s orders from the Prime Minister made the invasion of Europe the main objective with ‘a programme of raids in ever-increasing intensity’. After a service lifetime in the Royal Navy, the Commodore quickly established the essential liaison with the Chiefs-of-Staff, ministries, and others whom the Commandos depended on for weapons as well as shoestrings. Within weeks Combined Operations headquarters were to take on a new vitality.
One final raid was made from plans conceived under the old management, 100 men from 9 Commando attempting to capture a gun battery near Houlgate. Two Rob Roy canoes had been in ahead of the main raiding force on the night of 22/3 November, one pair of these canoeists were caught—described later—and the second missed their rendezvous, paddling back to England. The main force came ashore the next night and followed a strict timetable. This prevented them fully exploiting their initial landings as they had to start their withdrawal before an assault could be mounted on the naval guns installed behind Houlgate. On their return to the beach, an hour’s flashing of torches was needed to catch the attention of the landing craft crews who had withdrawn too far from the beach according to one report. This pantomime aroused the defenders and showed clearly the need for better ship-to-shore communications.
The organisation for all but very small raids was now formulated, with Lord Mountbatten as Chief of Combined Operations (CCO) having adequate staff to prepare outline plans for raids. Any Commander-in-Chief in a theatre where raiding forces would be involved was asked to comment on the outline plan, which was then put to the Chiefs of Staff. On their approval of the scheme, a force commander was appointed with responsibility for detailed planning and coordinating the army, navy, and air force units involved. He also issued the detailed orders, arranged training, and led the raid. Any extra equipment or special materials he required could be obtained through the agency of the headquarters’ staff. CCO was responsible for obtaining final approval of the force commander’s plan from the Chiefs of Staff Committee of which he was a member, and the plans were always subject to the naval Commander-in-Chief’s blessing for no major dispositions of ships were made without his say-so.
The organisation was more complex than may appear from this summary. Liaison with the RAF Chiefs in various theatres, for instance, was made through their representatives on CCO’s staff. But the success of the organisation lay in the men who ran it as much as in the formal orders (set down in a minute of July 1942). The Prime Minister gave Lord Mountbatten a free hand and he selected six brilliant senior officers who, like the Commodore—soon promoted Vice-Admiral—had a flair for cutting red tape and reconciling different services’ points of view. Also on the new team were two scientists. Professors J.D. Bernal and Solly Zuckerman, chosen for their original minds by the Chief Government Scientist. They worked on the plans for future operations. Later Geoffrey Pyke, whose snow vehicle is described in Chapter 9, joined COHQ on the recommendation of a Government minister. Targets would now be more specific, equipment more deadly, and the whole Combined Operation’s set-up run like a taut ship in the fashion of the destroyer HMS Kelly, which the CCO had sunk beneath
him off Crete earlier that year.
For men like Stan Weatherall, whom we left experiencing his first long journey by canoe, this reorganisation swept away the frustrations of the summer of 1941. He was recruited into the second Special Boat Section operating across the Channel from Dover, after the second-in-command of No. 1 Troop had called for volunteers—duties unspecified—as the Troop walked by his chair in the middle of a field. This way there was no pressure to volunteer.
The SBS had been established in Dover to help naval forces attack shipping as well as to make beach reconnaissances. In November 1941 they became 101 Troop of 6 Commando, with Lieutenant Smith in command, and were attached to the naval shore base HMS Lynx, from which they operated, with MTBs, submarines, or other carriers taking them to the area of their target beaches. They were joined by their former Troop commander, Captain G.C.S. Montanaro (Royal Engineers). Lieutenant Smith failed to return from one recce, and it was later learnt that he and his companion, Lance-Corporal C, Woodhouse, had capsized in heavy surf, losing their paddles. They made their way inland, but Lieutenant Smith, without badges of rank, and Corporal Woodhouse, wearing sergeant’s stripes, were taken prisoner. Fortunately this confusion of ranks also foxed the Germans, for ‘Lieutenant Smith’ was a nom de guerre. He survived four years as a prisoner of war and after the war returned to run the family business in the north of England. A second canoe on this mission was paddled back to be safely picked up five miles from the English coast. Although the two canoeists who were ashore had been barely 200 yards inland they had gathered sufficient information to confirm that LCAs could land on the beach.
In December 1941, under the new management, Combined Operations headquarters promoted three major raids. The first, planned for 9 December, was by the full 6 Commando and half of ‘No. 12’. But on the passage to Norway, an accidental explosion killed six men and wounded 11 others. Although the loss would not have affected the landing, doubts about the Force’s navigation caused the senior naval officer to call off the raid. The second raid was a diversion, for now that raiding was becoming more organised, full use could be made of feints and diversions to distract defenders from intended targets, and in a wider strategy the whole policy of raiding would involve a major distraction of the enemy towards an invasion of Norway, not France.
On Boxing Day, 26 December, 300 men of 12 Commando under Lieutenant-Colonel S.S. Harrison went ashore on the Lofoten Islands in a diversion raid. They landed at 0600 hours, unopposed by a German garrison satiated on Christmas fare; the commando planners picking times for a strike force to land when the enemy were likely to be off-guard. In white hooded overalls and trained for snow warfare, the Commando quickly occupied the two harbours on the westerly island of Moskenesöy, where they found the local Norwegians anxious they should stay in case there were German reprisals. How much intimidation took place after the previous raid is hard to gauge, but in 1955 Charley Head, who had been signals officer with 3 Commando in March 1941, revisited the islands and learnt that no one was shot after the March raid, although some houses had been burnt down. Nevertheless there was a fear of greater reprisals, and many hostages were shot in Europe, sometimes in the mistaken belief that commando actions were the work of local resistance fighters.
In December 1941 there were risks of Allied ships being bombed now that the Germans had improved their Norwegian airfields. However, the Arctic night, with no sunrise from 10 December to 3 January in these latitudes, tempted Admiral Hamilton to keep the strike force of eight destroyers and the cruiser HMS Arethusa in support of a prolonged visit, until a German bomb fell close to the cruiser, forcing the decision to withdraw after two days’ occupation.
While 12 Commando were creating their diversion. Vaagsö Island was the main commando target that Christmas. This first raid against a defended port was regarded by Lord Mountbatten as a ‘test pilot run’. ‘For nobody knows quite what is going to happen and you are the ones who are going to find out’, he told the raiders.
Vaagsö raid by 3 Commando, 27 December 1941.
The way this raid was organised, the commando landing, and street battles make this a classic of fighting raids. There were five assault groups. Group 1 was to land at Hollevik on the island’s south shore, to clear a known defence point and villages a mile to a mile and a half from the town of South Vaagsö, and then move in support of Group 2, which was to land just south of the town and capture it. Group 3 was to capture Maaloy, an island 500 yards (450m) long and only 200 yards (180m) wide lying not far from the town quays. Group 4 was a floating reserve lying offshore in their landing craft until required to reinforce one of the other Groups. This practice became common in the Pacific, but later British major assaults usually had a timetable for landing reserves. The fifth Group at Vaagsö was to be carried by the destroyer HMS Oribi up the Ulvesund, part of the Inreled Channel, for a landing near Kapelnoes point north of the town, to cut the road in order to prevent reinforcements from North Vaagsö reaching South Vaagsö.
The southern town was thought to be defended by 150 men from the 181 Division, with a solitary tank and 100 men of a labour corps building defences. There were known to be four coastal guns, mounted with anti-aircraft batteries, on Maaloy to defend the Ulvesund anchorage where convoys sheltered in bad weather or gathered before crossing more open waters not protected by outer islands. A twin-tube torpedo battery covered the entrance to the fjord, and away to the north was a German mobile battery of 105mm guns at Halsor. No German warships were thought to be in the immediate area and only some four squadrons of fighters and bombers—an estimated 37 planes—were flying from Herdia, Stavanger, and Trondheim.
Brigadier Charles Haydon was military commander, and with Admiral Burrough, commanding the naval force, he sailed in the 6-inch gun cruiser HMS Kenya. Ashore the troops were commanded by Colonel John Durnford-Slater, the Commanding Officer of 3 Commando, who did most of the detailed planning for the raiding force which was made up from the entire 3 Commando, reinforced by two Troops from ‘No.2’ with additional Royal Engineers from ‘No.6’, Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) personnel from ‘No.4’, intelligence officers from the War Office, and a Press Unit. Photographers from this Unit were to take some of the finest action shots of the war.
Troop commanders and the men were briefed from a model with each house’s position shown and other fine details except place names, so avoiding the possibility of literally fatal slips of the tongue. Once aboard two LSIs, the raiders carried out successful rehearsals at Scapa Flow (north Scotland), despite the navy’s understandable challenge to the carrier ships’ small craft bobbing about in the night. On Christmas Eve these two LSIs, HMS Prince Leopold and HMS Prince Charles, sailed for Shetland with a screen of four destroyers, taking a rough pounding in force 8 to 9 gales that put 14 feet of water in the forward part of Prince Charles. At the Sollum Voe anchorage this 145 tons of sea water was pumped out and the ships patched up, causing a day’s delay but also giving time for Christmas dinner and a night’s sleep with everyone fully recovered from sea sickness, a malady with no respect for rank or courage.
Sailing on the night on 26 December—the day Colonel Harrison’s men landed in the Lofoten Islands—the Vaagsö force met the submarine HMS Tuna on station as their navigation check at 0700 hours off Vaagsfjord and steamed up the fjord between spectacular snow-covered hills glinting in the dark. Although reveille had been at 0400 hours, the landing would not be made until first light at 0850. The LSIs anchored in a bay beyond the sight of and direct fire from the Maaloy batteries, giving the assault craft a run down the coast round a headland before heading for the beaches, while the cruiser bombarded Maaloy and destroyers engaged other targets.
Colonel John Durnford-Slater led in 200 men of Troops 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Group 2) from 3 Commando, and 100 yards from the beach he fired 10 Very lights, signalling the navy to stop their bombardment. As he stepped ashore, three RAF Hampden bombers made a low-level attack, placing their smoke bombs in so close a screen for the landi
ng that phosphorous from a sheet of flame set fire to the Colonel’s tunic. One bomber, hit by fire from a German trawler went out of control and dropped a bomb among the landing craft, while the other bombers had to climb sharply in a stream of tracer to avoid the cliff behind the town. One landing craft was set on fire by the bombs that fell short, and many commandos suffered terrible burns from the phosphorous. Ammunition, grenades, and demolition explosives went off in a deadly firework display. The wounded were treated by the Commando’s calm Irish doctor. Captain Sam Corry RAMC, who remained unruffled by the turmoil, and the casualties were sent out to the ships.
This landing by Group 2 was deliberately made at the base of some sheer, snow-covered rocks 30 feet high, for no German machine-guns were likely to cover such an apparently impossible landing point, the enemy unaware the commandos had developed their techniques for such rough landings. They got ashore dry shod—as they described those landings in which you do not get your feet wet—but in these harsh conditions, Lieutenant Arther Komrower suffered severe back and leg injuries when he was crushed between a rock and the 10-ton assault craft that had been on fire.
More aircraft provided cover, with Coastal Command Blenheims dropping smoke to screen landings and fighter-bombers—again Blenheims and Beaufighters—putting a protective umbrella over the raiding force for the next seven hours by flying 400 miles (650km) from Wick, north Scotland, or 250 miles (400km) from Shetland.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 4