by Damien Lewis
Four miles out from Santa Isabel the Nuneaton crept into the lead, SOE agent Guise taking up his place in the bows to guide her into the harbour. Even in the thick darkness he was confident he could steer the Nuneaton through the various buoys and markers, getting her safely to where she needed to be.
Zero Hour for the attack was 2330 hours – as soon as the electricity supply to the port had been cut.
*
Four miles across the dark sea a group of dinner guests at Santa Isabel’s Casino Restaurant were having a fine time indeed. The merry party consisted of some two dozen diners, among whom were eight Italian officers from the Duchessa d’Aosta, including the ship’s Acting Captain, Umberto Valle. Beside him sat the distinctive figures of the two German officers from the Likomba, one of whom was the ship’s commander, Kapitan Specht. The stubborn and opinionated Specht had refused to attend the previous party. Naturally suspicious, it was only when that one had passed off without incident that he was willing to accept an invitation to a second.
Zorilla remained only for long enough to ensure that all ship’s officers were present and properly seated – all with their backs to the sea – and that the alcohol was flowing freely. Around 11.00 p.m. the Spaniard quietly slipped away. Down on a hidden part of the shoreline a canoe was waiting to spirit him to safety, but no one on the terrace of the Casino Restaurant seemed to notice his departure. Too much fine drink and food was being served, as the Tilley Lanterns glowed gaily and the conversation was batted to and fro.
SOE agent Lippett, meanwhile, had dined quietly with a Spanish friend at a quayside eatery, after which he took his customary ‘digestive stroll’ around the harbour. Final checks done – there was no unusual activity, bar the noisy party on the terrace of the Casino Restaurant – he strolled back to his hotel accommodation. The night was dark as pitch, apart from the odd flash of lightning on the distant horizon, as a tropical storm raged over what looked like the jungles of the mainland.
Hoping that Zorrila’s voyage across the Gulf of Guinea would be untroubled by such storms Lippett retired to his hotel room and laid down to rest. Orchestrating all the subterfuge, lies and intrigue of the past few weeks had been a hugely stressful and exhausting high-wire act, and SOE agent W.25 Richard Lippett was soon fast asleep.
But as Lippett slumbered, secure in the knowledge that he had done everything possible to prepare matters shore-side, an unforeseen and potentially ruinous drama was playing out at sea.
It was all down to timing.
Understandably perhaps, March-Phillipps and Appleyard had assumed that Fernando Po was in the same time zone as nearby Nigeria. It wasn’t. Perversely, the island ran on Madrid time, which meant that it was one hour behind the nearby African mainland. The problem only became apparent as the two vessels rounded a headland and the harbourside town hove into view. It was midnight by the British operators’ watches, but the lights of the houses and streets of Santa Isabel remained stubbornly ablaze.
The assault force was heading into target an hour too early. Clearly if they sailed into the harbour while the entire bay was lit up the results would be disastrous. Operation Postmaster depended on the cloak of darkness hiding the raiding force until the very last possible moment, and on striking with total shock and surprise. All of that would be lost, and the mission would have come to grief due to the most elementary of errors.
The lead ship, the Nuneaton, slowed to a dead crawl as a row broke out on the bridge of the Vulcan. March-Phillipps was apoplectic. How could the SOE’s intelligence – which up until then had been faultless – have failed to warn them of the time difference? A gifted leader of men, one whose fearlessness, brilliance and integrity drew others to him, March-Phillipps had one major flaw: his temper. It could flash in an instant as it had done now, the man exploding into a paroxysm of rage. He also had a slight stammer, one that would worsen noticeably with his mood.
‘Will you get a b-b-bloody m-m-move on!’ his voice yelled out across the still waters. ‘Get a bloody move on or get out! I’m coming in!’
On the bridge of the Nuneaton the ship’s commander, Lieutenant Goodman, took decisive action. He swung his vessel across the bows of the Vulcan and cut his engines, so halting the larger ship in her path.
Under Appleyard’s calming influence March-Phillipps was persuaded of the suicidal nature of sailing into Santa Isabel before the lights went out. There seemed to be no option but to remain where they were, just a few hundred yards off shore, engines idling and hoping they wouldn’t be spotted.
And so the raiders waited for the town to go dark – faces black as the night, silent and poised to strike.
Chapter Six
As luck would have it, Richard Lippett had also worked his magic with the man whose job it was to cut the town’s electricity supply as the midnight hour approached. By suitably unorthodox means – a glittering financial incentive; a clandestine lover seeking a passionate tryst under cover of darkness – Lippett had persuaded the town’s electricity engineer to flick the switch a good few minutes early.
At around 2315 Madrid time the first of the lights around Santa Isabel town blinked out, and one by one the windows all around the bay went dark. No sooner had they done so than the two waiting vessels began to inch their way forwards. The Nuneaton took the lead with Guise in the bows, gesturing this way and that as he studied the buoys marking the safe passage into the harbour. The Vulcan came tight on the Nuneaton’s stern, as Tugmaster Coker followed the course that Guise steered through the shallows.
The harbour seemed as quiet and dark as the grave. Two pinpricks of light drew the eye. One was the terrace of the Casino Restaurant, from where uproarious laughter and the odd burst of singing in Italian echoed across the silent waters. The other was the window of the Reverend Markham’s house, at which a Tilley Lantern burned, its light reflected in a yellow ribbon of brightness that stretched across the bay towards the hidden ships.
As the Nuneaton and Vulcan crept ahead all eyes turned to that lone window. Sure enough, just as the men had hoped it would be, a blind was raised and lowered before the Tilley Lantern – the prearranged signal that all was as it should be in Santa Isabel Harbour, or at least, as the raiders intended it to be. A mug of fortifying rum was handed around the boarding parties, as both vessels cut their engines. Whether they’d started this mission as highly-trained agent-commandos or Colonial Service volunteers, they were all seadogs and desperadoes to the last now.
Rum downed, the men lay facedown on the deck as the tugboats drifted forward, the gentle lap of the water under their hulls seemingly deafening in the silence. The progress appeared painfully slow and the tension was unbearable. The same thought was on every man’s mind: would they sneak past unseen and make it to the target ships undetected?
After what seemed like an age the Nuneaton drifted to a stop in the heart of the harbour. The darkness was so intense that Hayes and Winter, the lead boarding party, could barely see their hands in front of their faces. Working largely by feel alone the first folbot was lowered into the sea. The two raiders climbed aboard, whereupon agent Guise pointed out the bearing they needed to take to get them to the Likomba. The bay was a mass of impenetrable shadow.
Dipping their paddles into the still water, Hayes and Winter – the vanguard of the raiders – set out. Behind them, the two District Commissioners-turned-brigands lowered themselves into their tiny vessel. Pistols, coshes and Tommy Guns firmly stowed, they too began to paddle. At first they seemed to be heading in entirely the wrong direction, before Guise cried out a muted course-correction. Their role was to act as the vital back-up to the lead raiders. If Hayes and Winter ran into trouble, the District Commissioners were to provide brute force and firepower.
In the forward canoe Hayes and Winter had to keep their wits absolutely about them. They had their weaponry hidden and a cover story ready to hand. If a sentry aboard the Likomba were to challenge them, they were to claim to be Kapitan Specht and his fellow German officer re
turning from a thoroughly enjoyable dinner party ashore.
After five minutes paddling they brought their canoe alongside the Bibundi – the pleasure yacht tied to the side of the larger German ship – so as to better screen their approach. But as they did so a torchlight pierced the darkness and a voice yelled out a challenge.
‘Who goes there? Identify yourselves!’
The blinding light was coming from the deck of the Likomba, and it was fully upon Hayes, in the fore seat of the folbot. Whoever it was that had cried out, they were clearly hyper-alert, for he and Winter had made practically no noise whatsoever as they paddled towards the two ships. Hayes opted to use the cover ruse, rather than to reach for his Tommy Gun. He was painfully aware that if he opened fire now he would blow the mission wide-open, before the force manning the Vulcan had the time to board the Duchessa d’Aosta.
Using a few words of broken Spanish and German, Hayes grunted a suitably inebriated-sounding reply.
‘Kapitan Specht … Party … Returning to ship.’
In response two figures came forward, as if to help ‘their Kapitan’ aboard. Both were local African members of the ship’s crew. But just as soon as they spied a blackened-up Hayes, they realized this wasn’t their ship’s officer. There was a moment of confusion, before the second folbot emerged from the gloom, District Commissioners Newington and Abell with their Tommy Guns leveled over the side.
No sooner had the two watchmen realized they were staring down the gaping barrels of two .45-calibre machineguns, than they turned and ran. They sprinted forward, dived off the Likomba’s bows and began to strike out for land some fifty yards away. Fortunately, the shock and surprise must have been so complete that neither man had thought to raise the alarm.
That suited the raiders just fine. After all, they were supposed to minimize casualties. No useless slaughter. But it did raise the worrying possibility that the sentries would alert the shore-based defenders, once they reached dry land.
Hayes – the boarding force commander – had no time to worry about that now. The four men surged aboard the larger ship, Hayes and Winter making a beeline for the anchor chains. Each had a rucksack bulging with pre-made explosive charges, and each carried enough to cut all the moorings, should either be put out of action. They bent to their task fore and aft, as the two District Commissioners hurried through the length of the vessel, Tommy Guns and coshes at the ready.
To their rear the Nuneaton closed in, inching her way alongside. With the first target ship declared clear of enemy forces, the towrope had to be attached, ready for the getaway. Charges set, Hayes and Winter steeled themselves to wait for the appointed moment – so they could blow the anchor chains as the main assault force surged across the decks of the Duchessa d’Aosta.
Lashed to the side of the Likomba, the 70-tonne pleasure yacht, the Bibundi, presented Hayes with a real dilemma. If it was a Spanish vessel and they towed her away along with their main prize, a diplomatic incident was surely in the making. The words of M’s telegram – Am confident you will exercise utmost care to ensure success and obviate repercussions – echoed through his mind.
Hayes was tempted to cut the Bibundi free. But in the main cabin his fellow raider, Winter, discovered damning evidence as to the vessel’s identity: photos of the Bibundi flying a Swastika, with a lady – presumably the owner’s wife – posing beside it.
‘Let’s take her, Graham,’ Winter whispered, showing Hayes the photos.
Hayes agreed: the Bibundi deserved to be seized as a prize of war.
They were ten minutes into the assault, and still there hadn’t been so much as a cry of alarm from the shore. Sound carries well across still, night-dark waters, yet the bay remained a crucible of calm.
Such peace was about to be well and truly shattered.
Hayes detected the first muffled cries echoing across the water. Presumably the Vulcan was nearing her target – the giant Italian liner-cum-cargo ship. Assuming the boarders were about to swarm aboard her decks, he decided it was time to blow the Likomba free and make their getaway. At the same time the young Buzz Perkins and SOE agent Guise were about to jump across to the German tugboat, towrope in hand.
Guise and Perkins were weighed down with Tommy Guns and Mills bombs – pineapple-shaped hand grenades – so it was some leap to make. As Hayes and Winter set the fuses alight on both fore and aft anchor chains, Perkins and Guise leaped across from one vessel to the other; Guise with a grenade gripped in his hand, in case of any trouble. But as they landed on the Likomba’s bows Hayes cried out a frantic warning – for he and his fellow raiders had just taken cover in anticipation of the coming blasts.
There was a violent flash and the first explosion tore across Santa Isabel Harbour, ripping the peace of the night apart. It took a deal of plastic explosives to cut a large steel hawser in two. As the first charge detonated the blast caught Perkins and Guise in the open, plucking them off the Likomba’s deck and hurling them into the darkness.
The two men disappeared from view, – Hayes convinced that he had killed both of them.
*
Just a few hundred feet to the east of the Likomba lay the massive form of the Duchessa d’Aosta. Indeed, the entire expanse of the U-shaped harbour was little more than 3,000 yards across. That first explosion flashed across the compact confines of the bay, the punching roar of the blast thundering across the Italian vessel’s decks, rebounding off the sheer volcanic rock of the harbour walls and echoing back and forth across the water.
Aboard the Vulcan Anders Lassen – as always armed to the teeth – heard and felt the blast’s power, as he tensed himself to jump. Beside him on the makeshift assault platform were Appleyard and March-Phillipps, laden down with explosive charges, while above them on the roof of the bridge a pair of Bren-gunners hunched over their weapons. All eyes scanned the shadowed form of the Italian ship for any crewmen drawn to her decks by that first explosion.
Even before the Vulcan bumped alongside the Duchessa d’Aosta, the nimble form of Lassen made the leap, a line grasped in one hand and his free arm making a grab for the ship’s rope-ladder. As his feet made contact with the rungs, a second explosion from the direction of the Likomba threw a momentary blaze of light across the bay, for an instant blinding the eyes of the raiders.
March-Phillipps, Appleyard and Haggis Taylor – March-Phillipp’s batman – followed on Lassen’s heels, making a mad dash for the all-important ship’s bridge. A sure-footed Lassen looped the line around the nearest ship’s bollard, tossed the loose end back through the darkness towards the Vulcan’s bridge – which was level with the larger ship’s main deck – giving an exultant yell as he did so.
‘Pull! Pull Robin! Pull like fuck!’
Robin Duff, the Vulcan’s second in command, grabbed the line, dragged it tight and made it fast.
‘All fast!’ he cried back to Lassen. ‘All fast!’
Finally, the British tugboat and the biggest prize – the Italian liner-cum-cargo-ship – were lashed together.
A bamboo ladder was lowered to bridge the eight feet or so separating the two vessels, and the remainder of the boarding party – Maid Honour Force veterans, SOE agents, plus Colonial Service volunteers – streamed across. But as the boarders rushed fore and aft of the 464-foot vessel, one of the SOE agents went crashing to the deck, felled by a powerful but unseen assailant.
Fearing that the ship’s crew had woken up to the assault and were fighting back, agent W.30, Captain Desmond Longe, struggled to his feet, pistol in one hand and knife gripped in the other. But worried, and distinctly inhuman squeals, revealed that his attacker was actually a large pig running loose on deck, one of three such porkers no doubt intended for the ship’s kitchens.
The only sentries that appeared to have been set were two Africans, one of whom dived into the sea at the sight of the fearsome raiders, while the other allowed himself to be taken prisoner without a fight. The main deck of the Duchessa d’Aosta had been seized by total surprise,
and without a shot being fired.
With March-Phillipps safely installed on the ship’s bridge and the main deck clear, Appleyard and Free Frenchman Desgranges were able to dash forward with their charges, in readiness to blow the forward anchor chain. To the rear Desmond Longe – fully recovered from the pig attack – accompanied by a Maid Honour Force regular, crouched at the stern, as they prepared to set their charges.
They had six stern cables to deal with, and time was clearly against them. Now that the explosions from the Likomba had rung out across the bay, they feared it was only a matter of moments before the power was switched back on in Santa Isabel town – and they would be lit-up like ducks in a shooting gallery.
On the ship’s bridge March-Phillipps was desperate to get the below-decks area locked down. He was acutely aware of the number of Italian crewmen ensconced down there, who by now surely must have realised they were under attack. As long as they could keep the Italians trapped below, they should be free to blow the anchor chains and drag the Duchessa towards the darkness of the open sea, and victory.
As the SOE had been at pains to point out, the Italian ship would represent ‘the richest prize of the war so far’. Just as March-Phillipps was savouring such thoughts, a cry of challenge rang out in Italian from somewhere below him.
Equally as quickly came the fearsome roar of a response: ‘Get ’em up! Get ’em up!’
It sounded as if the Italians had finally mustered their forces to mount some kind of resistance.
Directly across from March-Phillipps there were problems aboard the Vulcan too. In the bowels of the tugboat, the African stokers – sweating buckets as they shoveled coal, bringing the boilers to maximum pressure – had reacted to the explosions that thumped across the water just as Leslie Prout, the Maid Honour Force champion boxer, had feared they might.
