On arrival at the War Office, Bob sought an immediate interview with Dill, whom he had not met since he had enlisted the support of the CIGS to join the Commandos. Dill’s Military Assistant asked him to leave the document in the office for onward delivery, which Bob, mindful of his instructions, refused to do. Minutes later he was ushered into the CIGS’s office:
When I went in to see Dill he greeted me with ‘Come in, come in, we’ve been waiting for you for several days. Let’s have a look at this offensive document you’ve brought with you. The wires from the Middle East have been red hot to say that it is scurrilous in the extreme and that they disagree with practically every word in it.’ I was not surprised.7
An officer was sent round immediately to Combined Operations HQ to demand that Keyes should surrender his copy. In due course the criticisms of the Inter-Services Committee were toned down significantly, and only the sanitized version of the report survives on the record.
His official duties out of the way, Bob went straight to the Berkeley Hotel, where Angie was staying. With the children still in Canada, Angie had felt that she should make a contribution to the war effort and had accordingly become involved in the British Restaurants. The first of over 2,000 of these had been set up in 1940 on the initiative of the Prime Minister, specifically to help those who had been bombed out of their homes or who were experiencing difficulties with rationing. They were run by local authorities, notably the London County Council, or by voluntary organizations, and provided a basic but nourishing meal from a canteen-type operation for 9d. Angie became involved in the administration and also acted as a volunteer at one of the restaurants.
After spending the night in London, Bob and Angie went down to their small cottage at Hawthorn Hill, only to receive shortly afterwards a message from the Prime Minister inviting them both to spend the weekend at Chequers. Bob’s recollection of the other guests was that they included General Sir Alan Brooke, at that time C-in-C Home Forces, and General Sir Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff in his capacity as Minister of Defence, which would establish the date from Brooke’s diary as 19 July. Bob later recalled:
At luncheon on Sunday the Prime Minister suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I thought I had sent you with the Commandos to the Middle East. May I ask what you are doing back here in this country and why the force which you command has not been used in the role for which it was raised and trained?’ In answer to the first I explained that the whole future of the Commandos in the Middle East was dependent on the vexed question of how the heavy casualties we had suffered could be replaced. I had reported to Sir Roger Keyes and now awaited his instructions. The Prime Minister, looking slightly belligerent, interposed to say that any instructions I received would probably come directly from him.
In answer to the second question, Bob cited the Bardia raid and the Litani river operation as instances of the correct use of Layforce, but said that GHQ Middle East had never appreciated its capabilities and felt that it had been foisted on them.
The Prime Minister then asked Bob for his opinion of COHQ. Bob expressed his strong personal admiration for Keyes, but said that he believed that the admiral was persona non grata with the Chiefs of Staff. Perhaps, he continued, someone younger might be appropriate.
‘Oh, indeed,’ replied the Prime Minister, ‘and who have you in mind?’ …
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I remarked, ‘I should have thought someone like Dickie Mountbatten.’
It may well be that Mr Churchill was never even remotely influenced by my reply; certain it is, however, that Captain the Lord Louis Mountbatten, as he was then, replaced Keyes not long afterwards.
Bob did not dare to repeat this conversation to Mountbatten until many years later, since when he next met him, in early 1942, Mountbatten told him how upset he had been at his removal from the command of his first capital ship, the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, before it had finished refitting in Norfolk, Virginia!
The Prime Minister sprang into action immediately. On 23 July he sent Ismay a minute:
I wish the Commandos in the Middle East to be reconstituted as soon as possible. Instead of being governed by a committee of officers without much authority, Brigadier Laycock8 should be appointed Director of Combined Operations. The three Glen ships and the D.C.O., with his forces, should be placed directly under Admiral Cunningham, who should be charged with all combined operations involving sea transport and not exceeding one brigade. The Middle East Command have indeed mistreated and thrown away this invaluable force.9
He followed it up with another on 16 August:
1. I settled with General Auchinleck that the three Glen ships were all to remain in the Middle East and be refitted for amphibious operations as soon as possible.
2. That the Commandos should be reconstituted, as far as possible, by volunteers, by restoring to them any of their former members who may wish to return from the units in which they have been dispersed, and that Brigadier Laycock should have the command and should be appointed Director of Combined Operations.
3. The D.C.O. and the Commandos will be under the direct command of General Auchinleck. This cancels the former arrangement which I proposed of their being under the Naval Commander-in-Chief.10
It was not to turn out at all as Churchill prescribed.
Bob was able to take some leave, which he spent mostly with Angie, although he also visited Wiseton and had an audience with the King, who seemed very interested in his activities and asked a number of questions about Angie’s mother and her sister Pempie. Charles Haydon then organized for him a lecture tour of all the Commando units in the UK to talk about the operations of Layforce and the lessons learnt from them. By the last week in August he was writing to Angie that he had never been so bored, repeating his lecture twice a day for eight consecutive days, which were largely spent in Scotland.
At the end of August he was informed by the War Office that a passage had been arranged for him back to the Middle East and he duly set off for Liverpool to board the ship. He was unpacking his suitcase when a movements officer arrived and bundled him off again in great haste, explaining that the Prime Minister, extremely annoyed that Bob was being sent by the long sea passage, had decreed that he should be given priority by air. This allowed him to spend two more nights with Angie in London before catching a Sunderland flying boat from Plymouth.
This time the journey was the shortest possible at the time, flying the length of the Mediterranean rather than taking the ‘reinforcement route’ by which he had travelled to England. The first stage was to Gibraltar, where Bob and the only other passengers, Admiral Sir Frederick Dreyer11 and his Flag Lieutenant, stayed with the Governor, Lord Gort, whom Bob had not seen since he had served at GHQ BEF and who expressed his bitterness about his treatment after Dunkirk. Another guest was Arthur Smith, on his way back to London on behalf of Auchinleck. Smith was far from pleased that Bob was being sent back by the Prime Minister, telling him that he could see no future for the Commandos for as long as it was impossible to replace their losses.
The next stage was to Malta, where the Sunderland arrived after dark but in the middle of an air raid. As it circled the island at low speed, trailing red streaks from its exhaust, Bob was astonished that the aircraft was not attacked, but the bombers eventually withdrew and it touched down in Marsaxlokk Bay. Bob stayed with the GOC and spent the next morning looking round the shelters which had been constructed out of the natural rock. On the evening of 6 September the Sunderland arrived at Aboukir Bay and Bob travelled directly on to Cairo, where he booked into Shepheard’s Hotel.
Chapter 13
Flipper
Shortly after Bob returned, he was sent for by Auchinleck. The C-in-C reiterated the difficulties likely to be posed by the lack of casualty replacements, but promised his support and sent him on to see Major General Neil Ritchie, Smith’s deputy. Ritchie was far more sympathetic than his superior. He suggested that Bob should start work on the organization of a new Spe
cial Services formation, using whatever resources were to hand. He also told Bob that David Stirling had recently put forward a proposal for a parachute commando which had found favour with Auchinleck and that this should be included in his proposals.
Initially encouraged, Bob set to work. There were clearly certain units in the Middle East which he could include in a new formation, but it would, inevitably, be much smaller than Layforce. A, B and D Battalions were now long since disbanded, and the subsequent delay had meant that most of those who had opted to remain in Special Services had lost patience and applied to be posted elsewhere. The obvious starting point was thus C Battalion, which had returned to Amiriya from Cyprus at the end of the first week of August, whereupon its officers and other ranks were offered the same choices as had been placed before the other battalions a month or so earlier. Bob asked Geoffrey Keyes to come and see him in Cairo and learnt that, after those who had opted for the alternatives had been accepted, the Commando had been reduced to nine officers and 250 men, all of whom had chosen to stay in a reconstituted formation. Together with those from the other battalions who remained unposted, this might provide the basis of one complete commando.
The second constituent part of Layforce which still existed was the Folbot Troop, albeit that it was effectively under Royal Navy control and based on HMS Medway, the submarine depot ship in Alexandria. Shortly after Bob’s return to Egypt he received a letter from Courtney, who wrote that he had heard that Bob would be commanding all Special Service units in the area, in which case he would be delighted to join. Courtney went on to say that it was imperative that all folbotists should be trained in the light of the section’s experiences, as some operations were taking place outside his control and mistakes were being made. He suggested that he himself should return to the UK to form a new section on the back of his experience and that, together with those operating in the Mediterranean, this could be developed into a Folbot Corps.
The next step was to find out what David Stirling was up to. Whilst B Battalion had been idle in Mersa Matruh in June, Jock Lewes had obtained permission from Bob to conduct an experiment with parachutes, which until then had not been used by the Army in the Middle East. Approaching an RAF HQ near Fuka, Lewes persuaded the commanding officer to allow him, Stirling and three others to jump out of a Vickers Valentia transport plane. In spite of the fact that they had had no training apart from being shown the basic principles, everyone landed safely except Stirling, whose parachute had been partially ripped on leaving the aircraft, resulting in his hitting the ground far too fast. He damaged his spine quite badly, even losing his sight for a short time, and was admitted to the Scottish Military Hospital in Alexandria. Whilst there he developed a proposal for a new type of force which would hit the enemy behind his own lines, but from the air rather than the sea.
Stirling argued that landings from the sea were wasteful, since they had to use relatively large numbers of troops and valuable naval units which were highly vulnerable. It would be much better to land small parties by parachute behind enemy lines, although there were circumstances in which they could go in by sea or by land. He proposed that the new organization should be independent, under the direct control of the Commander-in-Chief. He added to the paper a specific proposal for multiple attacks behind the lines in support of a new offensive which he understood was being planned for that autumn.
Stirling’s problem, once he was discharged from hospital, was how to get his paper into the hands of the C-in-C. He decided on a frontal attack, brazening his way into GHQ where, after a very unsatisfactory encounter with an officer who had taught him at Pirbright and been distinctly unimpressed, he barged without invitation into Ritchie’s office and placed the paper on his desk. To his surprise, Ritchie took it seriously, agreeing to show it to Auchinleck. Having found initial favour, Stirling was authorized to recruit six officers and sixty men from the remnants of Layforce, plus some administrative staff, and to establish a base at Kabrit. The name of the unit, conceived by none other than Dudley Clarke, the creator of the commandos and now fast becoming the master of deception at GHQ Middle East, was to be L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade.
Recruitment for L Detachment was relatively straightforward as far as the other ranks were concerned. Stirling obtained a good number of volunteers from members of his old No. 3 Troop of 8 Commando, which had been largely absorbed into 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, and recruited the balance from the Depot Commando at Geneifa, where they were awaiting posting. The officers proved to be more difficult. Most of those who had been in 8 Commando turned him down. In Mather’s words, ‘We really could not give it credence and we thought we knew David too well for it to work.’1 The one man Stirling was determined to have, however, was Lewes, who was still in Tobruk, whither Stirling went to persuade him. After some initial reluctance, Lewes agreed to join.
Another officer recruit was Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, formerly of 11 Commando. Mayne was a born fighter, who had represented his university as a heavyweight boxer and been capped both for Ireland and the British Lions at rugby. He did not confine his pugnacious disposition to the battlefield – he had done very well on the Litani – or the playing field; once he had drunk too much alcohol, he was all too inclined to violence. When Bob visited C Battalion in Cyprus on 23 June, before leaving for England, he found Mayne under suspicion of having assaulted a fellow officer in the dark after a mess dinner on the previous night. Keyes was keen to have him court-martialled, but Bob persuaded him to drop the charge and had Mayne flown out of the island. Stirling later found him at Geneifa and had little difficulty in persuading him to join L Detachment. When asked if there would be any fighting, Stirling is said to have replied, ‘Only against the enemy’!
Bob produced his first paper on the reorganization on 16 September, a week after he arrived back in Egypt. It set out the history of Layforce and the reasons for its disbandment, before referring to the decision to reconstitute a new force, which would be available for reconnaissance, the securing of beachheads, and sea and airborne attacks on the enemy’s flank and rear. He saw the limitations as being the availability of suitable ships and the undesirability of forming a greater number of units than could be more or less continuously employed. From units currently available the force would consist of one General Service Commando of 230 all ranks, one SAS Commando of 70 all ranks and the Folbot Troop of 30 all ranks. He proposed that any reinforcements should not come from the Middle East, but from the Special Services Training and Holding Unit at Lochailort.
There was, however, one other unit which GHQ Middle East was prepared to let Bob have. This was 51 Middle East Commando, which had been left in East Africa when the two other Middle East Commandos had joined Layforce as D Battalion. Its origins were unusual. It was originally raised by Lieutenant Colonel H. J. Cator in Palestine as No 1 Palestine Company, Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and was composed of both Arabs and Jews, who were unsegregated. It left the Middle East for Europe in early 1940 and was employed on the BEF’s lines of communication. After a brief period defending the English coastline, it was shipped back to Egypt, where it was augmented by further recruitment in Palestine and renamed 51 Middle East Commando. Following a typical period of cancelled operations on the coast of Egypt and Libya, it was sent down to Eritrea, where it joined the British offensive against the Italians, playing a significant role at Keren and Amba Alagi. With the campaign in East Africa concluded in the early summer, it was available for new operations.
With 11 and 51 Commandos, L Detachment and the Folbot Troop, Bob was able to prepare a far more comprehensive paper, which he presented to GHQ at the beginning of October. This looked at the history of the commandos and concluded that the Middle East was actually a more suitable theatre than Northern Europe for their deployment: raids by sea from the UK could never make a serious impact against a well-defended coast, but in the Mediterranean they could attack the Axis lines of communication, from land, sea or air. He then looked at the rol
e of the Glen ships, which he concluded were too slow and vulnerable and could only be used with an escort of destroyers and either an antiaircraft cruiser or fighter cover. He therefore proposed a drastic reorganization, which could only be justified if raiding remained the primary role of the new force; subversive activities would be better handled by SO2, the forerunner of SOE, or G(R), the department at GHQ responsible for covert operations. He later summarized his proposals:
In the first place I suggested that the Commando Group should be completely self-contained and independent, not only being equipped with its own means of transport but also that it should recruit and command the personnel who operated the ships, aircraft and vehicles required.
The organisation I advocated consisted of a Headquarters and three Wings. The first, airborne (David Stirling’s S.A.S with its own aircraft), the second, seaborne with its own landing ships (I suggested converting two destroyers) and the third, landborne, formed by the existing Long Range Desert Group which was already functioning with admirable efficiency in the Western Desert. I further recommended that this force should be kept in a high state of readiness under the control of the Combined Service Commanders, but that any of the three should have a call on its participation in any operation which commended itself as appropriate to them. Thus, for example, the R.A.F might wish raids to be conducted with the object of destroying enemy fighters on the ground; the Army might require diversionary raids in conjunction with their own land offensives; or the Navy might consider that sabotage operations against ‘E’ boat or submarine bases might pay a dividend.2
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