by Sadler, John
Then there was, at last, movement in Italy. Two patrols were to be dropped in on 11th June. Bad weather delayed the flights but both went off next evening. Tragedy struck immediately when one young officer, again a relative newcomer, Simon Fleming, died when his ‘chute failed to open. It was a very unlucky drop; another trooper was also killed, some were captured and the survivors trickled back empty-handed. Two additional patrols, led by Ashley Greenwood and Gordon Rowbottom, were due to be parachuted during the following night. Greenwood’s team was dropped miles from their objective, right on top of an enemy-held village. He himself got snagged on the church roof and spent an exciting morning using the graveyard as cover. He escaped but most of his patrol went into the bag.
Gordon Rowbottom’s men also ran into trouble. Though they landed safely enough, the patrol soon encountered an Axis post and split up. Rowbottom was unlucky and got caught. After so much ill-fortune, things improved radically when the truck taking him to captivity went off the road and overturned. In the confusion he grabbed his kit and bolted clear. Next, he managed to find Corporals Buss and Matthews and together they encountered a platoon of partisans. Rowbottom made up for lost opportunities over the next few weeks and was safely extracted before the end of July.4
One other member of his unit, Sergeant Morley, who had also evaded the net, undertook valuable solo reconnaissance before crossing the lines. He was instantly asked to return and guide 1/9th Gurkhas onto their objective. Their CO subsequently recommended Morley for an MM. John Bramley’s patrol was the only one of the four to successfully undertake the intelligence gathering role they’d all been originally assigned: Thus ended this unfortunate mission.5
MFV La Palma
In May 2011 a group of ex-servicemen returned to the Dalmatian Island of Vis (now part of Croatia), Tito’s wartime redoubt and Britain’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ of the Adriatic War.
With Marshal Tito camped in mountain caves, Winston Churchill decided to send a detachment to what is now Croatia, led by Royal Marines, to assist the partisans’ mainland raids. The commitment quickly expanded, with the Royal Navy sending Motor Torpedo Boats to attack German supply ships and the RAF launching air raids.
Churchill’s decision to assist Yugoslavia’s communist-backed partisans rather than the exiled royalists was controversial, even to Sir Fitzroy Maclean, of the Special Operations Executive. Peter Bickmore and Reg Ellis served on a Motorised Torpedo Boat that inflicted heavy losses on the German supply lines.
“We weren’t allowed off the pier,” said Mr Bickmore. “We’d go out looking for the German boats between the islands during the day and returned at night for maintenance drill and rations cooked on two primus stoves before getting some sleep.
“Even when we captured the Germans’ supplies we’d hand them over to the partisans without dealing with them person to person.” Pave Thomic, now 83, was a boy who played in the Hurricane workshop at the airstrip. The impact of the Allied force on local life has left a deep well of gratitude. “Before they came we had nothing, they gave us food and looked out for our basic needs,” he said, “They were life-saving”.6
After these costly frustrations in Italy, Vis offered possibilities. If a mini-air-force had been essential in the desert, boats were the key to the Adriatic. LRDG now added a converted fishing vessel to its inventory, stripped, up-gunned, decks cleared for shipping transport – MFV La Palma was fit to serve. She could carry a couple of jeeps lashed, in best Heath Robinson style, to her decks. Alan Denniff became skipper with ‘Titch’ Cave as bosun. She couldn’t shift above ten knots an hour and took seven to complete her first passage to Vis, but was able to move a significant quantity of stores.7
Vis was an ideal raider’s lair. LRDG could spot enemy shipping targets for the RN & RAF whilst, at the same time, mounting forays against Axis positions on the mainland. Road watch was replaced by shipping watch. Captain Stokes with a four-man team spent five months keeping tabs along the coast. A measure of Stokes’ success was the huge bounty the Germans offered for his capture.
His tiny patrol was constantly on the move, could never relax its guard, and suffered frequently from hunger due to difficulties of re-supply. Their persistence, stamina and fortitude paid ample dividends, however, as Signaller Hansell kept the precious flow of sightings coming. Regardless of their many vicissitudes, damage inflicted on enemy vessels as a result was considerable. This was a classic example of LRDG excelling at their main forte.8 Another patrol, led by Lieutenant Gatchell, worked with the partisans on Vis. They participated in the capture of a well-laden Axis schooner, brimming with supplies and two young ladies adrift from their concert party! The sequel to this agreeable bout of buccaneering does not seem to be recorded.
At Orso Bay by Valona on the Albanian coast, the Germans had a listening post of their own. Stan Eastwood did the recce and found a solid concrete blockhouse with pillboxes at both external angles, well sited, wired in and stripped of cover all around. Lloyd Owen, feeling stale from too prolonged an absence from the field, took charge and beefed up Eastwood’s patrol with two more, under the leadership of Captain Browne, a Kiwi officer just re-lent by General Freyberg. By 28th June Eastwood’s shore group was ready, though an inopportune RAF raid had alerted the enemy.
Crammed into a fast Italian torpedo launch, the three dozen raiders motored out of Brindisi in the early dark, another boat racing alongside as escort. Eastwood guided the party ashore in the timeless calm of a balmy summer’s night. Dawn comes early and it was a hard slog, lugging all their gear off the beach and under reasonable cover. A nearby well provided sweet, clear spring water as Lloyd Owen, Eastwood and Browne set off to recce the target. The enemy, separated from them by a steep-sided ravine, appeared to be at ease, enjoying the warm sun. The plan was straightforward. The assault party would move up at dusk, closing to around seven hundred yards from the fort. As a spectacular curtain-raiser, the RN had offered massed broadsides from three destroyers (HMS Terpsichore, Tumult and Tenacious).
Everyone was in position by 23.00 hours, the warm, humming darkness of a Mediterranean summer seeming almost surreal given the impending barrage. The final signal was to be flashed twenty-five minutes later and shells would begin falling five minutes after that. The Navy likes to be on time and a brilliant star shell, bursting high up, showed the whole enemy post in stark relief. Ranging rounds punctured the dark. More star bursts followed, pulverising rock, shredding scrub and throwing up a dense wall of choking dust. A pause whilst the raiders assessed the damage; not yet sufficient, and another storm of screaming shot was unleashed. As the new dust settled, Stan Eastwood, way up front, led the assault party in. The stutter of small arms fire briefly rounded off the bombardment, then the signal for success.
A trio of traumatised prisoners was dragged down to the beach, their anticipated uneventful evening clearly ruined. There was a rather anxious and extended wait for the boats but the whole party was finally clear by 03.30. Only one of the LRDG had been wounded during the attack, a victim of ‘friendly-fire’. Whilst the results of the raid might have been relatively trifling, the wider effect would send ripples of alarm along the enemy-held coast; nowhere was safe!9
Vis
Moir Stormonth-Darling, indefatigable in spite of so many setbacks, was planning yet another proposal for seven patrols to operate in the north of Italy and support partisan groups there. Inevitably, after a great deal of fresh toil, this idea ended up in the waste-basket like so many of its predecessors. It was at this point that control of LRDG was transferred from Allied Armies in Italy to George Davy’s Adriatic Command. The Brigadier was based at Bari while LRDG still had their principal HQ at Rodi.
Meanwhile, Mike Reynolds had returned to the scene at Orso Bay to find out how the enemy had reacted. This appeared rather bizarre; at one point the Germans seemed determined to rebuild their shattered blockhouse but then, for whatever reason, gave up the idea and blew up what remained of the ruins.10 Vis became the FOB for LRDG patrols, and Archie
Gibson was dispatched to keep an eye on the Axis aerodrome at Mostar.11 The idea was to send back data on enemy planes with such rapidity the Balkan Air Force could scramble and intercept.
As ever, Tim Heywood ingeniously speeded up the receipt and decipherment of signals. Local partisans proved uncooperative and resentful; the Axis far more watchful, very aggressively so, than had been anticipated. Gibson was obliged to stand fast and fight alongside the locals who suddenly became far friendlier. He even became a godfather!12 It is most likely their earlier reticence was a top down order; British forces were not to fight in any attacking moves. These slight tremors of discontent, suspicion and growing dislike would multiply as the Axis withdrawal continued and political ideology came to outweigh military necessity.
In the sultry heat of August another two patrols, one commanded by David Skipworth and the other by John Shute, were infiltrated around Dubrovnik to identify suitable targets for the attentions of SBS. This was a similar relationship to that with David Stirling in the desert. LRDG were viewed, correctly of course, as primarily intelligence-gathering rather than blowing things up. Both SBS & SAS liked the blowing up part and were very good at it.
Skipworth experimented with carrier pigeons but the idea didn’t work; he did, however, identify an important railway bridge so on the evening of 27th August an SBS detachment, commanded by the legendary Anders Lassen (later to win a posthumous VC), was landed. Two nights later, they attacked and severely damaged the bridge. Pursuit was swift and relentless, ending in a full-scale firefight with a weak battalion of Ustachi (pro-Axis guerrillas). As ever, the raiders fought with great gusto and most got clear away, but Skipworth, Sergeant Leech and one of the SBS, together forming a rearguard, were captured.13
John Shute’s patrol got off to a very bad start. Their overloaded assault craft capsized some four hundred yards from the shore. Much of their kit was lost and the radio damaged. They pressed on and identified a railway tunnel ripe for demolition, though this proved far too stout to suffer much damage from the limited amount of explosives they and their SBS partners had to hand. They couldn’t be withdrawn until October by which time their gear was very much worn out. Field operations conducted over such harsh and unyielding terrain were as equally hard on men and equipment as their former desert habitat.
As the shipping watch had proved so rewarding, Tony Browne hatched a plan for him and a W/O to set up a watch on the west coast of Istria (the peninsula which juts out at the top of the Adriatic south of Trieste). Once in situ, the patrol would relay information to a flotilla of fast MTBs lurking offshore that could then pounce on any passing trade.
The mission began well. As Browne was being infiltrated, his MTB took on two Axis schooners, sinking one and boarding the other in best Hornblower style. Tony Browne quietly slipped ashore and set up his eyrie, so well camouflaged that locals working or passing nearby failed to notice. Jack Aitken, another returning Kiwi, went in to take on this watch. In fact, it proved less productive than hoped, but the RAF did score some hits based on his intelligence and, once again, the psychological and morale impact was likely to be far greater.14
Lloyd Owen was convinced, entirely reasonably, that the guerrillas’ swelling successes could be fuelled by a constant supply, not just of guns and ammo but of specialist instruction and guidance – the ‘force-multiplier’ effect again. Fitzroy Maclean famously commanded the liaison mission15 but he and his team were already totally overstretched. That August, a further four patrols, each led by a Rhodesian officer – Jacko Jackson, Joe Savage, Mike Reynolds and George Pitt – were infiltrated, three from the air and one overland.
Jackson’s team had a relatively uneventful time and were able to get on with the job, but Joe Savage found his partisan allies less reliable. The commander of 19 Partisan Division was anxious to take all we’d let him have but offered nothing in return. Surly and recalcitrant, our allies veered firstly towards non-cooperation, then outright hostility. Petty, factional politics was never far away in the Balkans. Savage’s patrol was ex-filtrated by sea on 19th October to the mutual relief of both parties.16
On 27th August, Mike Reynolds landed at a partisan strip near Fiume; for this run he only had three troopers with him. The Germans were clearly aware and on the prowl, probably guessing correctly that he would be trying to set up a coast watch between Fiume and Pola. The coast here is spectacular and beautiful, very difficult to defend but easily as hard for a raiding party to slip through from the landward side. It took him just over a month to get established, and even then the Huns hadn’t given up, using portable direction-finders. The Rhodesians dealt with one enemy patrol which came dangerously close and were never caught. As ever, the emergent foe turned out to be their supposed partisan allies, sensitive that we had a presence, however small, so near Trieste which they coveted. Mike Reynolds, faced with increasing resentment, was pulled out on 17th October.
Looking out for enemy shipping in Trieste and Monfalcone harbours fell to George Pitt, a big strong, friendly character whom no amount of toil deterred.17. This was just as well for his odyssey was destined to be trying. Accompanied only by Signalman Wigens, his W/O, the duo was infiltrated by an American launch onto the small offshore island of Kria, from where they rowed to the mainland. Next, a hard week’s marching north in the direction of Fiume. The September rain was pretty constant and one of their overnight halts proved very exciting when the Axis began a live firing exercise around them!
Their departure was both rushed and ungentlemanly as both had shed their wet clothes to dry them and thus fled with their manliness exposed to all!18 It was three hours before they could reclaim their kit. This was nothing compared to the intransigence of the partisans who ordered them out. Undeterred, Pitt pressed on, at one point with what appeared to be a whole Boche division on his case. Food was short and the pair never got as far as their intended objectives, not for lack of effort or determination. They were ex-filtrated on 20th October.
Gordon Rowbottom was also having a trying time. His patrol was tasked with shipping watch from the island of Vrgada. While taking a small craft across to another wee island, accompanied by three troopers, Sergeant Morley, Corporal Buss and Private McConnell, they ran into a bristling squadron of three E Boats – these were very fast, well armed, German motor launches. It was a singularly unequal contest and they were all captured. Rowbottom lied about his rank and Morley was mistaken for the senior man in the patrol. They were finally put ashore and incarcerated in Split. Here they were kept apart and each interrogated in turn, threatened with a firing squad. This went on for four days yet the LRDG men gave absolutely nothing away.
Finally they were marched into Split and bundled into the rear of a 3-tonner with five guards. The convoy, of around a hundred vehicles, set off just before dark. Soon there was wild shooting, possibly partisans were active or someone simply panicked. The Germans decided on discretion and headed for the nearest ditch. The LRDG men, in pairs, made off in entirely the opposite direction. All four were safely extracted.19
Command & Control
In the desert LRDG had operated over a vast, unmapped and hostile space, bare, stripped, empty and unadorned. Distances were terrific, supply a constant headache. On the shores of the Mediterranean it was very different. Here LRDG operated in Italy, Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, in regions peopled by indigenous partisans who might or might not be friendly according to the season. Operations from the air and across the sea were required. The war being fought by the Allies in Italy bore little resemblance to that being waged by guerrillas in Serbia.
Planning was the essential first stage, and Ken Lazarus and his unit at Bari undertook these initial vital steps. It was the planner’s job to liaise with the Navy and Balkan Air Force, and with Fitzroy Maclean’s and other missions. Ken then had to determine the size of the unit to be infiltrated, what the team would need, their key objectives, who would command, the duration of the mission, obstacles, liaison and lastly, how the group could be
st be ex-filtrated at the end of their assignment. Weather conditions, dropping zones, re-supply and comms all had to be vectored in to the mix. As the LRDG would be putting very few men into very hostile territory, at a considerable distance, with uncertain allies, any slip up in these calculations could spell disaster.20
Communications, as ever orchestrated by Tim Heywood, were an essential component. Heywood had to be able to mesh the new stations into his network, incoming traffic had to be dealt with and the right signallers sent into the field. Radio was the core of good intelligence-gathering; obviously all the keenest observation goes for a Burton if the data can’t be sent back. To say Tim was a genius would perhaps be an overstatement but it is the nearest description I can find for his incredible ability as a signals officer. I don’t think he will mind my saying that not everyone liked him; they couldn’t, for Tim was hard and ruthless. But I am sure there was no one who did not respect him.21
For the insertion itself, going in by sea was favourite. Fast MTB’s proved the ideal marine taxis. They could cover a great space of water in a short time and were low profile, which greatly facilitated unloading. Usually the last few hundred yards of the approach would involve small boats rowed to shore. Clearly, the amount of kit didn’t prove too great a hurdle. With a parachute drop, it was different. Loads had to be carefully packed and weighed, selection of dropping zones, the weather, light, visibility, enemy flak, the need for experienced pilots were all critical. For the patrol to be dispersed over a wide area in hostile lands, in the dark, separated from their supplies and comms, was clearly very disheartening and usually downright dangerous.
The same set of considerations naturally applied to re-supply. The patrol might be on the ground for days, more likely weeks, possibly for months. Getting them out could be another cause for heartache. Lloyd Owen recounts how, in attempting to get Mike Reynolds and his blokes out of a hot spot, he took an Italian launch over the Adriatic, her crew unenthusiastic, in a storm of biblical proportions, sufficient to completely un-man the pressed sailors. Though he could see the signal flashes from the patrol onshore and knew the Axis were close by, it proved impossible to get the craft inshore and the attempt had to be abandoned. The fury of the tempest caused considerable damage to the boat and they returned empty-handed.22
