The Lost Band of Brothers (26 page)

three plastic bombs landed right in the middle of the enemy together with a volley of tommy-guns and automatic fire. The effect of the plastic bombs was devastating. Altogether some five pounds of explosive went off within a few feet of the enemy and not a sound was heard afterwards but a few strangled coughs.
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Fire was then opened on other parts of the encampment which showed signs of activity and a retreat was made at the double to the boat.
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Apart from firing white Verey lights and the occasional rifle and pistol shot – no automatic weapons opened fire – March-Phillipps and his men made their way back to the boat on the beach without interference from the garrison they had ambushed. They had been ashore less than an hour. They made their way out to sea towards where they imagined MTB 344 was waiting but, once again, the set of tide and current were misjudged and it was not before 0345 that all were safely aboard the mother ship.
The Little Pisser
then made her way out to sea and raised St Catherine’s Head at 0700 the following morning. They made their way back to Anderson Manor where Peter Kemp was amongst those waiting to greet them: ‘before breakfast they returned, strained and exhausted but content with their night’s work … Although they had taken no prisoners, we all felt it was an encouraging start.’
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Writing up his after-action report on Operation
Barricade
, March-Phillipps estimated that three Germans had definitely been killed, with another three probably killed and a further three or four wounded ‘as the range was almost point blank’. One of the raiding force had been badly bruised after falling on a metal stake. There were no other British casualties. He went on:

Though the operation was only partly successful, because no prisoners were taken, it has proved beyond doubt that a handful of men and one M.T.B. can cause damage on the occupied coastline.

The casualties inflicted on the enemy were not heavy, but they were sufficient to have a very demoralising effect. It is doubtful if the Germans ever realised who or what was attacking them, as the explosion of the plastic bombs used was far exceeding their size. The M.T.B. commander, one mile away, reports seeing distinctly bits of debris flying up in the flames and smoke, and states that the explosion resembled that of a much heavier bomb.

At the time of writing March-Phillipps was evidently still unaware that they had overshot their intended target by almost a mile:

The navigation, with no more than a compass, was exceedingly accurate, and the actual target was only missed in the final approach. But this fact serves to show that a small party of determined men can find some target or other by moving along the coast … Small parties are better than large parties. It is not easy to keep touch in the dark and a large party of men cannot move quickly for this reason … The ideal size for such a party is ten or a dozen men and such a party can produce an effect out of all proportion to its size …

He concluded his first raid report with a plea for further expansion of a concept both he and Appleyard had come to believe in passionately:

The effect of such raids, though small in itself, [sic] can be cumulative if they are continuous. If carried out frequently and over a wide area they would have a demoralising effect on the enemy and corresponding heartening effect on our own troops. They present the best form of training both for commandos and home forces.
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Operation
Barricade
took place on the night of 14–15 August 1942. Operation
Jubilee
, the raid on Dieppe, took place four days later. At least one source suggests that six members of SSRF took part in this raid as part of X Troop, a mixed party including, in addition to SOE, members of both MEW and SIS.
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Their task was to move ashore to the town hall and German headquarters behind the assaulting formations and remove documents and interesting pieces of German equipment. The failure of the main assault, however, also led to the failure of their mission. Yet one on-line unverifiable source
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suggests SSRF were there for a darker reason altogether, and that amongst those tasked to land at Dieppe was Freya radar expert, Flight Lieutenant Jack Nissenthall. His task – had the assault been a success – would have been to inspect and remove secret German Freya radar equipment from a nearby radar station on cliffs between Dieppe and Pourville. It was, it is claimed, vital that Nissenthall should not be captured – not, one may presume, because he might have told his captors why he was there but because, under interrogation, he might have disclosed to the Germans what Britain knew about the Wurgburg and Freya radars and the counter-measures, post-Operation
Biting
, that had been put in place. Nissenthall, it is claimed, carried a green cyanide capsule he was prepared to take in the event of imminent capture. To make certainty doubly sure, the claim stands that the SOE men from SSRF were there to act as both bodyguard and executioners, with orders to kill him if his capture appeared inevitable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no mention of this particular mission briefing in any of the SSRF papers seen by this author.
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In the event, Jack Nissenthall lived to return safely to England with members of No 4 Commando.

Operation
Barricade
, though modest, had been an undoubted success. It established precedent, created a point of reference and gave credence, both within SOE and Combined Operations, to a new concept. Had it failed, cross-channel pin-prick raiding by SSRF might have been put back several months, perhaps even cancelled altogether. As it was, Operation
Barricade
served as a prelude, an appetiser, for what was to come.

†††

What was to come, a fortnight later, after a series of frustrating delays and cancellations due to what became known as ‘
Dryad
weather’, was Operation
Dryad
, a raid whose skilful execution, untarnished success, lack of British casualties, audacity and amusing, operational postscript perhaps temporarily blinded those who did not have to brave dark nights in small boats to the intense danger inherent in night raiding. As Peter Kemp put it years later:

There was a tremendous tension before any raid. It was frightening because either you pulled it off without any loss to yourselves or you were inclined to lose the whole party, because if the enemy spotted you coming in you were a sitting duck. And so the actual paddle, the paddling in was very, very tense indeed. And it was essential, of course, to do it without making any sound at all. And that was very frightening.
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Operation
Dryad
took place on the night of 2–3 September 1942.

Casquets is a group of tide-scoured rocks 6 miles west of Alderney in the Channel Islands and forms part of a sandstone ridge that has proved to be the graveyard of many merchant ships over the centuries. The largest island among these outcrops is 280 yards long and 150 yards wide. From 1724, Casquets had boasted a lighthouse 80 feet tall, with two further distinctive coal-fired stone towers built to prevent confusion with other lighthouses on the French mainland nearby. After the German occupation of the Channel Islands in June 1940, Casquets lighthouse had been turned into a naval signal station manned by a tiny garrison of German troops. Isolated, cut off from the mainland and the possibility of rapid reinforcement, Casquets’ best defence lay in the swirling strength of the 6–7 knot spring tides that tore and swirled around its barren rocks. That same isolation, however, meant that in the summer of 1942, it might have been tailor-made for the attentions of the SSRF. They thought so, too.

The objective of Operation
Dryad
was very simple: to take prisoners. A secondary objective was to remove whatever code books, documents and naval papers they might find lying around. The raid was to be commanded by March-Phillipps with Appleyard second in command. Also on the raid were Hayes, Lassen and Winter.

Planning for the raid had begun, as usual, at Anderson Manor with all ranks spending hours in the conference room studying charts, aerial photographs and even a large-scale plasticine model of the rock, lighthouse and adjoining buildings. Appleyard carried most of the initial responsibility: it would be up to him to find their way through the heavy swell and fierce tide-race they could expect as they approached the rocks. Casquets guarded its lighthouse well with the Channel Pilot warning mariners: ‘The great rates attained by the tidal stream in the neighbourhood of the Casquets renders approach to them in thick weather hazardous.’
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Having been turned back by fog within a few hundred yards of their objective, bad weather or mechanical breakdown aboard MTB 344 – yet again – repeatedly frustrated their attempts to land. At last, as Appleyard wrote to his parents shortly afterwards, referring to the Casquets raid as ‘another successful little party’, it went ahead: ‘You remember I said that some time ago we went somewhere and were beaten by fog at the last moment and although we knew we were within a few hundred yards of our objective we couldn’t find it? … Well … last Wednesday night, which was the ninth or tenth night on which we have tried this particular job, we got it in the bag.
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As so often with these things, it was the waiting beforehand that the men found difficult: all were highly trained, highly motivated and intelligent. Which meant they also had imagination. Sometimes, that did not help. ‘We spent the morning in the conference room and the afternoon resting,’ wrote Peter Kemp, now on the eve of his first raid:

Although we had the greatest confidence in our commanders and in each other, it was difficult not to contemplate the numerous possibilities of disaster. Once we were in the MTB I should feel all right, but I found this period of waiting very hard to bear. We spent the time between tea and supper in drawing and preparing our equipment. There was plenty of it. I was carrying a tommy-gun with seven magazines, each with twenty rounds, a pair of wire-cutters, two Mills grenades, a fighting knife, a clasp knife, a torch, emergency rations and two half-pound explosive charges for the destruction of the wireless transmitter; on top I had to wear a naval lifebelt, an awkward and constricting garment that might save my life in the water but seemed very likely to lose it for me in action. We wore battle-dress, balaclava helmets and felt-soled boots.
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No mention of blackened faces smeared with soot or cocoa to tone down the gleam of white faces in the darkness: ‘If I am to die on one of these parties,’ March-Phillipps had announced to the men aboard
Maid Honor
in Africa, ‘I’ll die looking like an Englishman and not like a damned n*****.’
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In that England in September 1942, it would have taken a brave man indeed, one suspects, to black up in the face of such an attitude – accepted at the time – from a short-tempered commanding officer. Peter Kemp takes up the story:

After a hurried supper we climbed into our lorry. The whole unit turned out in the stable yard to see us off; Tony Hall in an old suit and peaked cap, was ringing the mess dinner bell and shouting in the accents of an American railroad conductor: ‘All aboard! All aboard! Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Chicago and all points east!’ We sang lustily, all tension now relaxed, as we drove through the green and golden countryside towards Portland. The lorry swung into the dockyard, drove onto the quay and halted close alongside the boat; we hurried aboard and dived out of sight below … At nine o’clock we sailed.

With the forecastle hatch battened down to show no light, it was oppressively hot in our cramped quarters. The small craft bounced jarringly across the waves for the wind, which had been Force 3 when we started, was rising to Force 4 with occasional stronger gusts. My companions lay down to sleep on the two wooden seats and the floor; I sat up and tried to read a thriller.
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Others suffered agonies of sea-sickness in the hot, cramped, claustrophobic cabin as they crashed, pitched and rolled across the Channel.

Moving out into mid-Channel from the shelter of land, MTB 344 developed engine trouble and had to reduce speed. It was thus after 2230 before Appleyard knocked on the forecastle hatch and warned the raiders to be ready to come out on deck when called. When they did so it was to ‘a beautiful clear night, bright with stars. The wind had dropped and the sea was moderating.’

Appleyard remembered: ‘I navigated again for the whole job. It was pretty nerve-racking as it’s a notoriously evil place and you get a tremendous tide-race round the rocks. However, all went well and we found the place all right, and pushed in our landing craft.’
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MTB 344 closed on Casquets at 2245. Manoeuvring to within 800 yards of the rocks, she put down an anchor on 50 fathoms of line and the raiders then transferred to the Goatley for that moment of helpless exposure, the final approach. They left the gunboat at five minutes after midnight. The original plan had proposed that two Goatleys would be launched by two separate motor launches, each carrying six raiders. On the day, only one gunboat was used and therefore only one Goatley was lowered carefully off the stern. The men dropped silently into their places. ‘Right! Push Off!’, March-Phillipps called softly: ‘Paddle up!’ They moved away silently into the darkness. It took twenty-five minutes of hard paddling to reach a small bay where waves were breaking white on dark rocks. ‘Many and conflicting eddies of tide were experienced on the approach which took considerably longer than was anticipated, probably because the approach was later than had been calculated and the NE-going flood tide was by then running hard’ reported March-Phillipps. The plan had assumed the Goatley would make for a recognised landing point but, instead, she let out a kedge anchor of her own as the boat was paddled in close to a face of shelving rock directly below what was marked on their charts as the engine house tower. Timing their leap to the surge of the swell in the darkness, all eleven raiders led by Appleyard with the bow line scrambled away after a moment’s precarious imbalance up the slippery rocks, leaving Capt. Graham Hayes aboard to keep the boat from surging forward onto the rocks, with Lt Ian Warren now manning the bow line which Appleyard had tied off. Encumbered by our weapons we slithered about, trying to get a purchase on the rock, until March-Phillipps hissed angrily: ‘Use the rope, you b-bloody f-fools, to haul yourself up!’ They hauled themselves up, ten men against a lighthouse, the black brooding mass of the signal station towering over them in the darkness.
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