The volunteers were accepted only if they were proficient shots with experience of at least one automatic weapon and had completed a basic course in field craft. They were trained soldiers in the military sense, with a knowledge of fire-and-movement and similar elementary tactics. Their physical fitness was also tested, 25 per cent failing this medical. In 1940, though, the selection was informal: each Troop officer interviewed volunteers during visits to units, whose commanding officers were reluctant and sometimes understandably downright obstructive before parting with their best men. The Troop officers, themselves selected by each Commando’s Colonel in 1940, included men like Peter Young and Mike Calvert who, in the next few years, would greatly influence the development of the commandos and other Special Forces.
Under their first senior officers each Commando took on an individuality suited to their independent role, with the trust between officers and men as the foundation of Special Forces’ discipline. Their supreme punishment was a return to their regular units-RTUed.
Once the days of Admiral Keye’s private armies were over, the War Office reasserted its control over the Commandos; and under Charles Haydon’s guidance the unwieldy 10-Troop Commandos were reformed, the Brigadier (later Major-General) revising their organisation into Commandos, each of six Troops, based on an organisation he set out in a report of February 1941 (see Appendix 2 for examples). At this date the Commandos officially had neither heavy weapons—heavy for them that is: 3 inch (75mm) mortars and medium machine-guns—not adequate transport, for they were still essentially shipborne raiders.
The intention in 1940 was to raise 6,000 commandos and 1,750 men for the Independent Companies, but by the early summer of 1943 there were only 3,700 men in the Special Service Brigade, which had absorbed the Independent Companies; 2,000 rangers: and a few smaller units—about 150 men in the COPPs, for example—to cover a wide range of special operations, particularly those that would be essential to a successful invasion in north-west Europe. General Bourne, Adjutant-General of HM Royal Marines (analogous to Commandant in the USMC), was persuaded to offer his RM Division to General Eisenhower, who consulted Lord Mountbatten. At this time the British were getting the measure of the forces they would need for an invasion of Europe and the Admiralty wanted the RM Division to man landing craft. A logical step was to re-group the Division and some other RM forces, 10,000 Royal Marines remustering as landing craft crews and 6,000 forming two Special Service brigades with a 20 per cent reserve.
In his excellent history of the Commandos, The Green Beret, Hilary Saunders explains the commando soldier having ‘to regard himself as expendable … [he bore] the same relationship to the general army as a monk or friar does to the ordinary Roman Catholic’. But whatever the type of operation, large or small, raiders were highly trained, for where they ventured there were plenty of dangers, without adding the risks of inexperience and needless casualties. This training not only included tactics and developing great physical endurance, but also gave men the motivation to become the ‘expendable friar’ of military orders. Although there were a number of colourful characters like Colonel ‘Mad Jack’ Churchill, most commandos and rangers were not supermen but Tommies and Joes superbly trained.
The aim of the training was to produce those individual soldiers capable of carrying through a mission on their own when others in their group or other groups were killed or put out of action. An obvious trait, perhaps, for SBS and COPP canoeists, but not as widely understood in relation to Commando and Ranger Battalion actions. In the early 1940s, much of this motivation and training was encouraged by the Commando’s privilege of a civilian billet, which also saved the cost and trouble of organising camps, meals, and other barrack services. A daily allowance—initially 6s.8d., later 7s.6d. (37½p, or about $1.50 in the 1940s)—for billets was paid and the men were left to find their own quarters. In later years these were often found by the billeting corporal, but throughout the war commandos, in theory at least, could do what they wished with this allowance provided they appeared properly dressed on parade, Keyes having successfully fought off a War Office move to bring them to heel in barracks. A few commandos lived rough for a time: one officer in dispute with his hotel, saved 13s.6d. a day—his billeting allowance—by camping on the local golf course.
Most landladies made second homes for the men, running them hot baths after an exercise, cleaning their equipment, and treating them as the heroes they were in the early 1940s.
The reorganisation in 1941 enabled commanding officers to strengthen their units by reducing the number of junior officers, a few of whom had not proved satisfactory Troop or Section commanders.
By 1942, the typical Troop programme had settled into weapon training during mornings, map and compass exercises in the afternoons, with a weekly 20-mile route march or a cross-country run; every third week there was a Commando exercise in which all Troops took part. There was nothing routine about these programmes, for officers in the Special Forces excelled in creating initiative tests.
These fun and games had a serious purpose, for raiders trapped ashore after the raid had to make their way hundreds of miles across hostile territory to reach safety. Bob Laycock’s and Sergeant Jack Terry’s journey has been described. Graham Hayes reached Spain with the tragic consequences mentioned earlier. After the St Nazaire raid, Troop Sergeant-Major George Haines and Sergeant Challington, despite their wounds, got away from the port, but were captured in the nearby country, Lance-Corporal Howarth reached Vichy France and after eight months in jail finally escaped back to England. Corporal Wright and Private Harding reached Marseilles and home with the help of individual French men and women and an expatriate American women. Corporals Wheeler and Sims, finding not all French people friendly and most of them frightened, made a 250-mile (400km) journey on foot and bicycles to Azay-le-Ferron in Vichy France, where they were befriended by several families, and escaped to Gibralter after many close shaves. But not every escaper made a direct line for home. Sergeant-Major Tom Winter, captured when the SSRF’s dory was sunk at St Honorine, found a way out and back into his Polish prison camp for a series of nightly visits to teach the Polish Resistance how to use explosives. Sentenced to 10 years’ solitary confinement, he finally escaped when the Russian advance reached the prison camp. Captain Charles Shudstrom and other rangers were equally successful in continuing their fight after escaping from prison camps, leading Italian partisans in raids on German supply columns and lines of communication.
Commando training was put on a more formal footing in February 1942 when the Depot (later the Commando Basic Training Centre) was set up by Charles Haydon at Achnacarry. Set in a lonely glen some 14 miles from Fort William, the Inverness-shire Achnacarry castle home of the Chief of the Camerons became the finest infantry training centre in the world and perhaps of all time, for its motivation of men for battle, under the ‘Laird of Achnacarry’ or ‘Rommel of the North’, to give two affecionate nick-names for Lieutenant-Colonel Charles E. Vaughan, founder and Commandant of the Centre. The men even grew to ignore the weather, although the live ammunition and explosive charges placed along each battle course were a different matter. All trainees treated these with increased respect but less fear. On their arrival they were halted in the castle drive to read the tombstones among the trees—‘he showed himself on the skyline’, ‘he failed to take cover in an assault landing’, and ‘he did not know the difference between cover from view and cover from fire’ were among epitaphs for imaginary recruits that all who survived never forgot. The assault course was part of the legend. Bill Darby’s 1st Ranger Battalion had a stiff course, no effort being spared in exploding charges in the river and firing live rounds as the men came over the ‘death slide’ and other courses. But after an unimpressive first 10 days, in the view of one instructor, they ‘got with it’. Later, Colonel Darby was to say after a Ranger action in Italy that ‘the achievements were due entirely to the training at Achnacarry’. Many rangers also carried with them the repeated
chant of their British instructor: ‘It’s all in the mind and the heart.’
Charles Vaughan was sure of this and believed that any man properly trained could march seven miles in an hour if he had the will. If this sounds fast by infantry standards of four miles an hour, the speed march should be explained as a march and run in which most men after Special Forces’ training, could cover 14 miles (22km) in some five to ten minutes over two hours.
A landing exercise, renowned for the closeness of instructors’ fire, a 36-hour scheme in the Scottish hills with a night attack, and some off-beat lectures were all part of the course. If the landing craft were on the wrong beach, the trainees just had to run to make up time. If they had climbed the wrong hill for that night attack, they had to run to the right one. They learnt to cook rats and eat them, to climb cliffs and enjoy it some practised on the cliffs in their spare time, a dedication perhaps, although there was nothing much else to do in your spare time. They learnt to kill silently; they fired enemy weapons; they practised unarmed combat. Above all, they learnt the determination to keep going or they failed the course.
Men of the smaller specialised units like the Special Boat Section (SBS) and Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPPs) did most of their training with their units, which evolved around their equipment. Each Troop in a Commando also specialised in particular skills with a Boating Troop, a Parachute Troop from which came men of liaison parties dropped with the Airborne Regiments, and a Cliff Climbing Troop. But on the exercise Brandyball, as in the Ranger landings at Pointe du Hoc, every man climbed. The exercise was intended to put the whole of 4 Commando through a stiff climb up the 300 foot (100m) Brandy cliffs near St Ives, Cornwall, in one of the most startling examples of Special forces’ training: it was almost as dangerous as an operation against the enemy.
One fundamental difference between the commandos of 1940 and those of 1943 was the changed attitudes of many senior commanders to Special Forces. After watching Brandyball, General Montgomery considered 4 Commando ‘real proper chaps’, a quaint expression that became a catch-phrase in ‘No.4’. It was a far cry from the early summer of 1941 when the detractors of the Commando idea ungraciously refused them the right to an individual cap badge: ‘The Army Council feels men would rather carry the badge … of their own regiments’, going on to compare the proposed special badge with those of Hitler’s Blackshirts. The men of Commando units continued to wear their regimental badges but on a green beret. This was introduced in late 1942 after the senior officers of 1 Commando, stationed in Irvine (Ayrshire) at the time, decided on a beret, probably at the suggestion of their Adjutant, Captain B.G. Pugh. There were men from 79 different units in the Commando and the beret would give them a uniform headdress that stowed away easily in a pocket. The Adjutant asked a firm of local tamoshanter makers for a sample, using the now familiar green cloth, this firm stocked at that time for a striped Scots hat with a red bobble atop. The beret was worn in battle by commandos, symbolising a spirit not dependent on military hierarchy but on a sterner self-discipline to win.
Special Forces training was closely linked to the various ploys devised by Combined Operations headquarters to further political strategems that could not always be carried out by regular forces. Nowhere was this more clearly shown than in the training and organisation of the two Commandos—12 and 14—that operated in a series of raids on the Norwegian coasts the stark facts of which are summarised in the diagram on p. 243.
The hydro-electric power station at Glomfjord was a target for one raid which illustrates the way 20 well-trained and superbly led troops can achieve a strategic impact far beyond the likely military strength of so tiny a force. The power station supplied the principal aluminium plant in Norway, and its destruction could reduce the German supply of aluminium for aircraft and other military uses. Captain Gorden D. Black probably knew this when he led his men ashore from a Free French submarine and they set out to cross the ‘black glacier’ that Captain J.B.J. (Joe) Houghton had recced a few hours before in a four-hour climb with a companion. These men of 2 Commando, with several Free Norwegians, marched all next day (Saturday, 19 September) after crossing the glacier, and towards evening came in sight of the feed pipes carrying water down the steep mountainside to the power-house turbines. As the raiders moved along a narrow track across the sheer face of a mountain falling steeply into a lake, they trod carefully, for a dislodged boulder could send a small landslide crashing noisily into the lake. They successfully crossed this hazard, and by dawn on Sunday they were able to look down on the power station as they lay up despite the cold—snow lay deep on the mountain slopes. At 2300 hours that night they made their attack. Joe Houghton and a Norwegian (?) came from the cover and crawled close to the guardroom where they were able to overpower the sentries, killing one. Meanwhile two other commandos, Sergeant Smith and Guardsman Fairclough, set their charges on the power-house machinery, while Lance-Sergeant O’Brien, with a companion, blew a section from the large water-feed pipes. All six raiders returned to the main party, enjoying the flame of two successful explosions before they moved away over the mountains. However, they did not get far before they ran into a German patrol; both Gordon Black and Joe Houghton were wounded and captured with six other raiders. One of the party was killed. After being taken to Germany, the two officers were shot in accordance with Hitler’s order to slaughter all who took part in commando raids.
Examples of raids against German occupied Norway, 1941 to 1944.
Inner Leads (ice-free channels between coast and islands)—No. 30 (Royal Norwegian) MTB Flotilla with 30 commandos some using Welman midget subs and Limpets, with naval personnel in chariot human torpedoes, attacked shipping in several raids during 1942-3, Norwegian-manned fishing vessels collected intelligence and set up dumps of fuel for the MTBs.
Lofoten Isl-3 Cdo 4 Mar 1941, 12 Cdo 26 Dec 1941, see text.
Glomford-12 men from 2 Cdo landed from submarine destroyed 2 of 3 turbines and piping of hydro-electric plant 20/1 Dec 1942, see text.
Landet Rovdelfjord—6 men from North Force were to keep swing bridge open for torpedo attacks but bridge guarded and raid abandoned 22/3 Mar 1943.
Haugesund—6 men from 14 Cdo in canoes from an MTB with coble were all lost no record of landing 27 April 1943.
Vaagsö—3 Cdo 27 Dec 1941, see text.
Sognefjord—16 men from North Force in 2 MTBs ashore 8 days despite bad weather in this 120 by 3 mile fjord, made recces and laid mines 22 Feb to 3 Mar 1943.
Stord Isl (Lillebö)—50 men from 10 and 12 Cdos in 4 MTBs, destroyed iron pyrites’ mine and ore-handling installations, one nco killed, 23/4 Jan 1943.
Vermok—32 airborne troops in 2 gliders lost in trying to destroy plant making heavy water 19 Nov 1942.
In addition to the raids on Norway, the policy of cross-Channel raids continued through the winter of 1942. The Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment (see Appendix 7), following a policy of destroying economic targets, and ships taking the latest radar and radio equipment, etc. to Japan. Landing in five Rob Roy canoes they set out to paddle 70 miles (112km) to Bordeaux up the Gironde. Two canoes were lost as they came through a tide rip after leaving the submarine HMS Tuna on 7 October 1942; a third disappeared after going inshore among moored ships. The remaining pair, under the detachment commander Major E.G. (Blondie) Hasler RM, reached a promontory by daybreak and spent the day under their camouflage nets, where some fishermen found them but did not give them away. Two more days and nights, hiding by day and paddling by night, brought them to Bordeaux docks, where they set about systematically fixing limpets with nine-hour delay fuses to several blockade runners. Blondie Hasler, with Marine W.E. Sparks in the canoe Catfish paddled up the west bank; Crayfish with Corporal H.E. Laver and Marine W.H. Mills, took the east bank. Catfish’s crew successfully mined a 7,000-tonner and a Sperrbrecher, going unnoticed as they drifted on the tide while a sentry’s torch flickered over them. They mined two more ships: another 7,000-tonner and a small tanker. In al
l they had placed 10 limpets, and Crayfish had used eight in mining a large and a small vessel, before the canoes met in mid-stream. Next morning, the tide running against them, these cockleshell heroes became separated. Catfish’s crew were captured but later escaped to England, Corporal Laver and Marine Mills were shot while prisoners of the Germans.
Raids were also carried out by units from the Inter-Allied 10 Commando (see Appendix 7), whose two French Troops had done extensive training since the Commando’s formation in January 1942. The Commando included Czechs, Hungarians, and the famous X Troop (formerly No.3 Troop) of Germans and Austrians with cover identities and false military records in British regiments. From among them were drawn men who joined British commandos on several raids, including those of Forfar Force who began raiding for general military intelligence when most of the French civilians were removed from a 15-mile (24km) belt along the coast. Under Major R.W. Fynn, who later that summer took command of 2 Commando, the Force made a number of raids. These in 1943 involved a veritable Chinese puzzle box or dories in MTBs, and inflatables in dories. In one of the raids a party, dressed in special camouflage suits, stayed ashore early in September for two days. Their only passports were the chocolate bars they exchanged with the fishermen near Eletot for picture postcards: no ordinary scenic views, but pictures marked to show German defences along the coast. The raiders might have stayed longer but peregrine falcons caught their carrier pigeons on the wing with messages to delay the commandos’ pick-up.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 27