The Lost Band of Brothers (28 page)

Just four days after Operation
Dryad
SSRF mounted another raid – Operation
Branford
.

The Operation was to be commanded not by Major March-Phillipps but by Capt. Colin Ogden-Smith.
6
Branford
was a reconnaissance, not a fighting patrol. Its objective was the tiny barren island of Burhou, half a mile long and 300 yards wide, that lay 3 miles north-west of Alderney and less than half way between that island and Casquets light. The intention of the reconnaissance was to establish if the island was occupied by the enemy and if light pack artillery could be landed there to provide fire support for a possible invasion of Alderney. Amongst the ten men who went to Burhou with Ogden-Smith that night was James Edgar, former member of the Gordon Highlanders and Intelligence Corps and recent SOE courier. Edgar seemed to have spent most of the war so far either in Field Security or locked alone in a first class railway carriage on a crowded steam train puffing north, ferrying seven packages – always seven – of differing size of what he felt sure were explosives between London and Leuchars airfield in Scotland for onward transit to Lerwick, Shetland and the ‘Shetland Bus' (the SOE/SIS operation that ran agents, radios and explosives into enemy-occupied Norway).
7
He was recruited into SOE because of his skill with languages: he spoke fluent French. From there he transferred into SSRF after announcing that he was ‘fed up and said I would like to get into some action. And then I found myself being interviewed by March-Phillipps in London.' He remembers him chiefly because he had:

the most appalling stutter. Dare I say it? He made a rather poor impression. What was my opinion of him, March-Phillipps? Well, I didn't really get to know him. He separated from us down at our army establishment very much on his own. He, being a regular army officer [sic], still carried on as they did. He had a horse and a batman and at six o'clock in the morning he went for his usual ride. We never really saw March-Phillipps … March-Phillipps was mainly upstairs where they created models of lighthouses and so on. Only the officers saw those before a raid, not the other ranks. The person we saw was Appleyard … in my opinion, Appleyard ran the whole show really … He was wonderful; an absolute gentleman.
8

Appleyard, boat-bound now because of his injured leg, had elected himself Navigating Officer for Operation
Branford
.

They sailed from Portland aboard MTB 344 at 2100 on the night of Monday, 7 September 1942. The weather was fine with a light wind and a gentle swell from the south-west. Within the hour the port engine packed up and they turned for home: an MTB with one engine out would fall easy prey to marauding E-boats. The boat's mechanic persevered, however, and nursed the engine back to life. Fuel pressure restored,
The
Little Pisser
swung back on course with a decision taken that, at the slightest further engine problem, the mission would be aborted. The engine ran smoothly and MTB 344 closed on the Ortac Rock, between Burhou and Casquets. The sea was by this time very confused and before Ortac was finally identified, breaking water was seen in every direction as if the sea was boiling over reefs. Course was altered on one or two occasions to avoid what appeared to be dangers, until Ortac stood out indisputably and the confused and breaking sea was identified as the Pointer Bank and the Danger and Dasher rocks, which have plenty of water over them. After that it was all plain sailing.
9

They dropped anchor at 0015 and Capt. Ogden-Smith, Second Lt Lassen and six other ranks transferred to the Goatley for the 600-yard, eight-minute paddle to the rocky shore. The sea this close inshore was now absolutely calm with no appreciable tidal set and, with the Goatley held off by kedge anchor, the landing party of six men – cox and bowman were left aboard – scrambled ashore to make their way over 60 yards of broken rock that was wet and slippery with kelp and seaweed to the dry rockline above the reach of high water. From here they made their way uphill towards the crown of the island 400 yards away where once had stood a small stone-walled house long shattered by German artillery practice. Here the team separated to complete their search, Capt. Ogden-Smith taking two men and Corporal James Edgar taking the others and heading west:

We came across this little hut which was empty … All I was told to do by Ogden-Smith was go across the other side of the island and investigate it, see what's there … I was thinking always, are we going to meet some Germans, are we going to get shot up or something?
10

The island was deserted. There was no sign of any recent habitation nor of any new defence works. On reconnaissance missions such as this, the discovery of what was not there was as important as the discovery of what was. The raiding party withdrew back to the waiting Goatley and were home again, docked at Portland, at 0430 without further incident. Capt. Ogden-Smith was able to report: ‘Pack artillery or mortars or loads requiring two or three men are practicable. Wheeled or tracked guns would present great difficulties, there are no sand beaches and all landings would have to be made over rock.' Second Lt Anders Lassen came in for praise, once again, for his ‘excellent judgement and seamanship throughout the operation'. Major March-Phillipps added his own views on the end of his officer's report at the end of a third successful mission:

Navigation among the Channel Islands is difficult, but once that difficulty is mastered these islands would appear to present innumerable targets, with obvious advantages over mainland targets in that they are so much more easily recognised. An MTB once within that wilderness of rocks and tide is safe from hostile surface craft and indistinguishable from the rocks themselves, and the landing craft is in a similar position.
12

It was to prove a prescient and astute observation.

The intelligence gleaned by Operation
Branford
, prized from the enemy foreshore and brought home at dawn to Combined Operations Headquarters by the courage of a few brave men, was interesting, but stayed locked away deep in some file, for Alderney was never invaded. Appleyard wrote home shortly afterwards:

We were out again the other night (Monday) but it was a small and very unobtrusive party whose mission was purely a reconnaissance with a very particular end in view. No one was met, and I am quite sure no one on the other side ever knew we had been. It was in the same district as the previous one in which we robbed the nest and removed the seven eggs! … I was unable to go ashore, of course, because of my ankle, but I navigated the party and, from that point of view, it was by far the most interesting of anything we have yet done. It was great fun, as there was quite an element of cheek involved!
13

Operations
Barricade
,
Dryad
and
Branford:
three raids – and innumerable false starts – which all took place in just twenty-four days. And next week, almost certainly, there would be more; and the week after that. Perhaps that was why Appleyard's letters home now contain, behind the mandatory cheerfulness of a young officer writing home to anxious parents, a sense of sober reflection:

Thank you for your prayers, Dad. And Mummy's too. I know they are a great help, and many of us pray very earnestly for the success of these parties … When you pray, don't just pray for our safety, but also pray for our success and our cause, and for one of the greatest things our little unit may help to achieve – the building up of morale in our own forces. When you pray for me, pray for courage and steadfastness and for my team spirit and loyalty to the other chaps on the job.
14

It was a sentiment of thoughtful, responsible Christian morality that might have surprised Commodore, later Vice Admiral, John Hughes-Hallett RN, Mountbatten's naval adviser. After the war, in his address to the Royal United Services Institute in November 1950, Hughes-Hallett referred to both March-Phillipps and Appleyard as those ‘most gallant and imaginative young army officers'.
15
It seems unlikely, however, in view of what had passed between them and what was still to come, that he spoke so highly of them when they served – as they were about to – under his own particular command.

  
1
.  
Geoffrey
, 119.

  
2
.  
The Steel Hand from the Sea
, Combined Operations.

  
3
.  HS 7/286.

  
4
.  See
Cloak Of Enemies
by this author.

  
5
.  HS 7/286.

  
6
.  Killed in Brittany whilst fighting with the French Resistance on 29 July 1944.

  
7
.  James Edgar interview with the author, 2012.

  
8
.  Ibid.

  
9
.  DEFE 2/109.

10
.  James Edgar interview with the author, 2012.

11.  Ibid.

12
.  DEFE 2/109.

13
.  
Geoffrey
, 118.

14
.  Ibid.

15
.  Vice Admiral Hughes-Hallett paper to RUSI, November 1950.

Major March-Phillipps had not taken part in Operation
Branford
, the raid on the deserted island of Burhou. But he had appended to the end of Capt. Ogden-Smith’s after-action report his own astute appreciation of the advantages of silent, inshore raiding amongst the off-lying rocks and islands of places like Burhou. It was an appreciation that, by default, highlighted the disadvantages of using MTBs and Goatleys on less shielded, mainland targets where objectives would be harder to pick out against a continuous shoreline, where MTBs would be exposed to sudden attack by E-boats, and where both MTBs and Goatleys would have nowhere to hide. It was, perhaps, a counsel of perfection. And wars have little time for that.

Their next operation was scheduled for the night of 11–12 September 1942, just four days after the successful completion of
Branford
. This time – March-Phillipps’ recommendations notwithstanding – Operation
Aquatint
would be back on the Normandy mainland, down the coast apiece from Barfleur and the site of Operation
Barricade
.

Their mission would be to destroy enemy installations, kill Germans and take prisoners to the west of Port-en-Bessin, a village on the coast north-west of Bayeux on the very eastern edge of what, two years later, would become D-Day’s
Omaha
beach.

The shoreline offered a long, flat open beach with high bluffs, or cliffs, behind. In the briefing room upstairs in Anderson Manor, March-Phillipps and Appleyard studied the area intently. On 26 June 1942 a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire had taken high-resolution photographs of the French coastline. Under close scrutiny, these pictures from RAF Medmenham
1
showed there was a gap in the cliffs about half a mile east from the village of Sainte Honorine to the west of Port-en-Bassin where a cluster of houses were believed to be used to billet German troops. The plan was to go ashore, scale the cliffs, move inland along the clifftop, attack the first German-occupied house they came to, capture a few prisoners and bundle them back down the cliffs to the waiting Goatley – and away. That, at any rate, was the plan.

Their operational orders from COHQ stated that the senior officer had full discretion to cancel the raid ‘should he, for any reason whatsoever, consider that it is inadvisable to proceed’.
2
On the night of 11–12 September they duly set out for their target area. As they closed within a few miles of the enemy coast March-Phillipps found the night too foggy. He cancelled the raid.
The Little Pisser
swung her bows to the north and took them home with not a shot fired. Now, the next night, 12–13 September, they were going in again.

For everyone involved at Anderson Manor, it was a time of increasing tension. Head gardener Reg Mullins remembered: ‘They used to go up on the farm there, Mr Stevenson’s farm. They used to have a fine time up there. Hay-making, messing about, anything to occupy the mind until these nights came, you know.’
3
Others, Tony Hall for example, found their courage in solitude:

I always felt frightened, and if one was involving oneself in something that was definitely possibly fatal – being of my age – there was still some time when one thought that the church was the place one went to. And there was a chapel at Anderson, you see, and I remember I used to go and absolutely wet my knickers, you see, but the thing was on the old basis: don’t let
me
be afraid. And the last, the final night when we sort of took off, I went there and, hidden away in a corner, was Gus as well. You know it … it helped me. And if he saw me it must have helped him.
4

Tony Hall did not have a monopoly on fear: ‘I think he [Gus] was a very brave person,’ recalled Marjorie March-Phillipps, ‘because I think he was a very brave
nervous
person. I’ve told you [Henrietta March-Phillipps] often that he wrote to me and said “Please send me lots of Sanatogen [a nerve tonic] – it makes me feel very brave!”’
5
That afternoon, before they left Dorset, March-Phillipps tried to call Marjorie:

I had been in the office in Baker Street and had gone out to do something, or get something, and came back and I can remember very exactly the very nice girl who was supposed to be working for me telling me that he’d rung up and … it was most extraordinary … he’d rung up – to say goodbye. And it was a most astonishing physical sensation of my heart, or something, just absolutely dropping like a stone.
6

As in Operation
Branford
, Appleyard was to go on
Aquatint
as navigator aboard MTB 344; his ankle injury still prevented him from going ashore. Peter Kemp’s deep stab wound to the thigh on the earlier Operation
Dryad
to Casquets meant that he had only just left hospital and was convalescing at home with his wife in their rented cottage in the nearby village of Spettisbury, about 5 miles from Anderson Manor: