By the time the Commando reached Sphakia, most if not all the evacuation craft had left and only a quarter of the unit survived. Many were prisoners but a few sailed a landing craft for six days, reaching North Africa under a sail made of blankets held together by boot laces. 11 Commando was now the only effective amphibious force in the Med, and was called on to outflank the 22nd Algerian Tirailleurs’ positions north of the Litani river, which the Australians were to cross in driving north from Palestine into French Syria.
Captain C.H. Petrie RN commanding HMS Glengyle knew that the river-mouth would be hard to find at night and the frequently heavy surf on this coast made any landing difficult. He therefore searched for someone with local knowledge and found Sub-Lieutenant F.N. Colenut RNVR, an ex-Palestine Policeman, who with great courage swam ashore on the night of 6-7 June to reconnoitre the beaches. The next night Captain Petrie was ready to put the Commando ashore at first light north of the river. They were commanded by the fiery and some say ‘hated’ Lieutenant-Colonel P.R. (Dick) H. Pedder, who second-in-command was Major Geoffrey Keyes, son of Admiral Keyes, at that time Director of Combined Operations.
Dick Pedder divided his Commando into three groups. Captain George R.M.H. Moore’s men landed on the left (most northerly) beach and struck at the French artillery lines some way back from the river. The other two groups—under the CO and second-in-command, intended to circle the redoubt covering the bridge at Kafr Bada, capturing this crossing before its demolition charges were blown. George Moore and the Colonel got ashore to plan, although a near-full moon was setting behind them and they faced a sunrise giving too much light for comfort on the run-in. Geoffrey Keyes’s cavaliers, as he called his Troop which was recruited from several famous cavalry regiments, moved inland some way before discovering they were south of the river. They had to borrow a boat and under intermittent but sometimes heavy fire, the cavaliers ferried themselves to the north bank.
Meanwhile Dick Pedder’s men pushed toward the rear of the redoubt against stiffening resistance. He was killed, his junior officers all wounded, and RSM Fraser—this was the Scottish Commando—led the men forward, capturing the local barracks and some French troops moving forward to reinforce the redoubt. George Moore, by this time, had taken several field guns and howitzers, his men at one point becoming embarrassed by having more prisoners than commandos. However, the French Algerians were not yet finished, for an increasingly heavy mortar barrage was falling on the Commando’s positions when Geoffrey Keyes arrived to reorganise the attack, taking the redoubt by lunchtime (1300 hours). ‘No 11’ returned to Cyprus having lost a quarter of their strength with 123 casualties, but Layforce was not brought up to strength. Although the Greek islands, amoung other obvious targets, offered scope for raiding, the shortage of escort ships and the senior commanders’ preference for formal battles as the best way to destroy large enemy forces prevented any further major amphibious raiding during that summer and the winter of 1941-42 in the Med.
A night raid was made, however, by 40 men from 8 Commando going outside the perimeter of the besieged Tobruk. On the night of 17-18 July 1941, they slipped through the Italian lines and ‘walked briskly, it was like an English summer night’ to the rear of two Italian strongpoints known as Twin Pimples. Their rubber boots helped them move silently and quickly while the 18th Indian Cavalry Regiment put in a frontal assault on the hills. The commandos got within 30 yards at the Italians before being challenged. Forming line—a skirmish line as the Rangers would say—they charged, and in three or four minutes controlled the two hillocks. Australian sappers blew up the ammunition bunkers and the commandos left the hilltops within 15 minutes of their attack, a timing judged to a nicety for Italian artillery began a bombardment of the positions when the commandos had barely left them.
One of Bob Laycock’s aides, Captain Evelyn Waugh, a Royal Marine at that time, has left some revealing diaries and notes of the brigade’s service aboard the Glen ships. Describing the clash of service personalities seen through this novelist’s eyes, 8 Commando was ‘boisterous, xenophobic, extravagant, imaginative, witty, with a proportion of noblemen which the [Royal] Navy found disconcerting’. For, he goes on to explain in his diaries, the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) officers aboard included many callow youths self-conscious of their position. Captain Philip Dunne likened this to the guard on a train in which the army were first-class passengers. Philip Dunne had been in the raid on the Twin Pimples and was a former member of parliament; like many other officers in 8 Commando he was well-connected, for this Commando included many Guards Brigade officers and men, their CO, Bob Laycock, having served with the Royal Horse Guards. To many of the bank clerks, insurance salesmen, and other juniors from industry and commerce, the young RNVR officers in charge of landing craft flotillas, such pedigrees meant more than they would to most men in the 1970s. But as the war years passed, these youths became men and experience in action counted in their favour. Relationships improved by late 1943, although Evelyn Waugh has suggested that they might have done so in 1941 had ‘both (services) been inefficient in the same way (as, indeed, the navy liked 3 Commando)’. The comparison may not be the whole story, for John Durnford-Slater commanding 3 Commando was by no means inefficient, even if he gave all the appearance of a casual approach to his soldiering. There was also a carefree attitude among the many peacetime yachtsmen who set the tone of RNVR crews in Combined Operations: the soldiers going ashore into hostile fire had to take a more serious view or they would not have survived.
Layforce was disbanded in the late summer of 1941, most of the men returning to their regiments. Others went back to the United Kingdom and six officers with 53 men under Bob Laycock remained in the Middle East as a raiding force attached to the Eighth Army. There were already a number of other special service units operating in the desert, and Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott was serving for a time with one of them: the Long Range Desert Group. Jock Lewis and Paddy Mayne from Layforce joined David Stirling’s 62 Commando (see Appendix 7) that became the Special Air Service (SAS), but theirs is another story.
Bob Laycock’s small force were given the job of capturing or killing General Rommel in what was thought to be his headquarters at Beda Littoria some 125 miles (200km) from the coast and over 500 miles (800km) from Alexandria. Sailing in the submarines HMS Torbay and HMS Talisman, they were off Hanna on the night of Thursday 13 November 1942. Captain J.E. Haselden, a British Intelligence officer disguised as an Arab, signalled the beach was clear and the commandos paddled ashore. With a heavy sea running, several men had been washed off HMS Torbay’s casing and only half the party were able to land. They spent Friday drying out their gear until rain added to their discomfort as they lay up till nightfall. At 2000 hours Geoffrey Keyes, recently promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, led inland 32 men who would attack Rommel’s house. With them was Lieutenant Roy Cook and six men who would cut the headquarters communications with Cyrene Tobruk. Bob Laycock with a sergeant and two men stayed near the beach in the hope that the remainder of the party could land, and they protected the assault parties’ escape route.
After travelling for a couple of days they were brought by their guides to a cave, and on Monday morning (17 November) during several thunderstorms Geoffrey Keyes reconnoitred the enemy buildings. With the help of an Arab boy he was able to draw a map of the headquarters’ layout, Corporal Drori—a Palestinian—acting as interpreter. The raiders moved towards the German headquarters at 1800, although the storms made the going ankle deep in mud. They had six hours to midnight when their attack would coincide with the opening of the Eighth Army’s November 1941 offensive against Rommel.
After four and a half hours of slipping and sloshing through the mud, the commandos were at the bottom of a 250-foot (over 75m) escarpment, its slope treacherously slippy in the wet. Halfway up a dog barked as the raiders froze still while a door opened, its light streaming out less than 100 yards away. A man shouted. The dog stopped barking and the door slammed shut. At the top
of the slope they followed a track towards the headquarters. Goeffrey Keyes and Sergeant Jack Terry, who had been with Keyes at Litani, went 50 yards ahead after the Arab guides left them and Roy Cook set out for the telephone pylon he was to demolish. Then the main party was approached by an Italian and an Arab but Captain Robin Campbell and Corporal Drori persuaded them the patrol was German and they reached the positions for their assault.
Keyes, Terry, and Campbell pushed through a hedge and ran up some steps, opening the front door. A German coming through the vestibule beyond, grabbed Geoffrey Keye’s tommy-gun and in the confined space the four men jostled for a split second before Robin Campbell shot the German—a .38 pistol making less noise than a tommy-gun. Inside the large hallway the raiders found an empty room leading from the hall and a man coming down stairs fled at the thump of a tommy-gun burst. A second door opened on to a room with 10 Germans standing about. Geoffrey Keyes fired a few rounds (from his Colt .45) before closing the door, while Campbell drew the pin from a grenade. On reopening the door to lob this in, Geoffrey Keyes was shot before the grenade exploded.
They moved Geoffrey Keyes outside the building, a natural reaction among even the most highly trained soldiers, but their commander was dead. Going back into the hall, Robin Campbell found all was silent and he went out towards the back of the building where he was mistaken for a German and badly wounded by one of his own men. Hit in the leg, he would not allow the men to carry him back to the beach and Jack Terry led them there, a difficult journey over bare hills and skirting sand seas they reached the coast on Thursday, two days after the raid. That night HMS Torbay signalled that conditions were too rough to take off the commandos and she would be back the next night, but during Friday the commandos were attacked first by Arab levies of the Italians and finally by Germans.
By breaking the party into small groups, Bob Laycock with Jack Terry got through the line of enemy riflemen and into the hills. Others were not so skilled or lucky—escaping in these situations needed a fair measure of good fortune, however skilfully the commando made use of his field craft. Five or more of them were murdered by Arabs; others were captured.
The Colonel and Sergeant, however, made an incredible trek covering many hundred desert miles in 41 days, often living on berries, and once eating the stomach of a goat whose remains they went back to dig up after burying them two days ealier. Despite their starvation they reached the Eighth Army lines, with the help of friendly Arabs, and were in time for Christmas dinner. Within the week Bob Laycock flew back to England where he took command of the Special Service Brigade (see Appendix 7) on Charles Haydon’s promotion as military adviser to Lord Mountbatten.
For his leadership in the raid on what was thought to be Rommel’s headquarters Geoffrey Keyes was awarded the Victoria Cross, but the raiders’ bravery was misdirected through no fault of theirs. This headquarters was a supply troops’ centre, and Rommel as far as is known, had never visited it. Such errors of intelligence would be avoided during 1942 and later by an extremely efficient intelligence organisation attached to Combined Operations Headquarters. A brilliant RAF Officer of World War I, Wing Commander the Marquis of Casa Maury, organised this handpicked team of intelligence officers from all three British services who were later joined by a number of Americans. From this department came a completely detailed file for the St Nazaire raid, the flow of reconnaissance studies on Normandy beaches, and the many cross-links between commando, SOE and partisan reports building up a picture of enemy dispositions on the beaches to be invaded.
In operations, however, the full benefit of this knowledge could not always reach the small parties of raiders who were involved in what might be termed support for local armies. M-section of the SBS, for example, were landed from the submarine HMS Una with little time for proper rehearsal on the afternoon of 11 August 1942. Their purpose was to disrupt a German bomber base in range of a relief convoy sailing to Malta. The available information was meagre—sketchy might be more apt—before the three officers, two NCOs, a guardsman, and a marine, under Captain George Duncan prepared to launch their canoes when the submarine surfaced about 2100 hours. ‘After 36 hours in artificial light, the night seemed terribly black’, Eric Newby has written, but once the canoeists were accustomed to it ‘it seemed very bright indeed’. One canoe was holed in launching and had to be left behind: the other three got away in arrowhead formation with a strong wind at their backs raising a nasty swell. Bombers thundered a few hundred feet over their heads.
Corporal H. H. Butler and Eric Newby—whose book Love and War in the Apennines opens with a full account of this raid—felt very lonely when they reached the beach, for 50 feet (15m) away was a wire entanglement some 20 feet (6m) wide. They carried the canoe to the wire, set the fuses in their thermite bombs—‘big black conkers’ on white cordtex lines of fuse—concocted with plastic explosive. They buried the canoe and retraced their steps to the water’s edge, so they could remove all their own footmarks, before cutting a path through the wire midway between two blockhouses 150 yards (over 130m) apart. Avoiding the more obvious anti-personnel mines, they were through the wire an hour after leaving the submarine, but they were behind schedule. This was a quick in-and-out job, and the submarine would lie off the coast until an hour after midnight. They hurried on, down a deserted track, hearing the appalling sound of marching men which turned out to be only the champ of a horse’s teeth as it chewed grass; they crossed a high wall and blundered into a farm, but its barking dogs roused no one. Half a mile further on they were in the workshop area of the aerodrome among buildings frighteningly bright with lights. Here they left some bombs on crates of new engines—‘it seemed a terrible waste of explosives’ when they intended to prevent bombers taking off the next day.
They were just about to split up and place their charges when a squad of Italians came up. George Duncan’s ‘Camerati Tedeschi’ did not sound very convincing: an Italian took a shot at these ‘German comrades’. Yet all might have been well had not one of the raiders fired back. Immediately floodlights lit the airstrip, lorries started up, Very lights were fired. In the confusion Eric Newby was about to shoot a German shouting loudly when the figure growled in lowland Scots: ‘Don’t shoot you stupid bastard. It’s me.’ The raiders dodged into the shadows of the workshop buildings, thankful there were no guard dogs as reported from Cretan airfields.
‘What we ought to do’, said George Duncan, ‘is …’
‘Eff off’ answered an NCO. ‘Eff off while there’s still time.’
This experienced raider’s advice was taken, and the parked JU 88s were left in their many ranks as the men headed back for the beach. They dropped their bombs at the base of a pylon which could be repaired in a couple of days or less, and were moving south-east when a lone RAF Wellington bomber came in, a planned diversion that put out all the airfield lights—by its presence, not its bombs. By now it was 2230 and they were among the coastal batteries and apparently empty trenches when Sergeant Dunbar, bringing up the rear, stepped on what he took to be ordinary ground. He fell through the groundsheet cover of an Italian defence post and was wounded before being captured. Fortunately for M-section, though, this outpost apparently had no telephone contact with its company headquarters.
Coming through some wire they were equally lucky when 12 Italians saw them, but instead of starting a fuss, they pushed off, and the commandos continued their scurry towards the canoes. But which way were these? North or south of where they now came through the wire? Rather than follow the Italian patrol, they turned left and came to the gap they had cut in the wire some two hours previously. One canoe was unusable and they launched the other two with three men up, in a rising wind. Offshore they flashed their hooded torch but no submarine appeared and they had no infrared RG. By 0300 both canoes were waterlogged, and when Eric Newby’s sank they clustered round their last canoe, pushing it towards the shore opposite the rendezvous for the next night. They never reached it. The sun was rising on a beautiful
morning. Mount Etna’s smoke-plume ‘like a quill of a pen’ away to the north above the haze, when some friendly fisherman pulled them out of the water about breakfast time.
HMS Una come in three nights running, but M-section were all prisoners. Despite the German bombers, however, five of the 14-ship convoy reached Malta, including the oil tanker Ohio.
A month later the Middle East Commando, temporarily reinforced by Royal Marines and other troops, carried out the last North African raid to take place before the commandos took over their new roles spearheading invasions. In a series of disruptive forays aimed at diverting the Axis’ attention from the build-up of forces for the El Alamein battle, the commandos were to land at Tobruk, reoccupied by the Axis that summer. This port lay some 300 miles west behind the Axis front and on their main supply route from Tripoli a further 300 miles (480km) to the west. Although supplies could be landed at Tobruk, it could handle only a tenth of the 600 tons a day needed by the German and Italian armies, but it was nonetheless a forward supply area with vital storage tanks holding petrol essential to the Afrika Korps if they were to maintain their positions before Alamein. Around the time of this raid SBS canoe parties would land on Rhodes, the SAS (Special Air Service) would go overland to raid Benghazi, others would attack the airfield at Barce; while a fighting patrol from the Sudan Defence Force raided the Gaillo Oasis.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 19