Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII

by Damien Lewis

  Later, Mann was cooking up an evening meal – an ‘all-in’: several tins of food emptied into a billie and boiled up together – and the officer ordered Mann to serve him.

  ‘Oh no, not in this outfit,’ Mann countered. ‘In this outfit, you get your own.’

  By the time they were back at base camp Mann had been put on a charge by the officer. He was relieved of his gun and his fighting knife and locked in the military gaol. For sheer devilment as much as anything Mann had recorded his religion on his Army papers as ‘Russian Orthodox’. He spoke English with a foreign accent, so he figured he could pass as Russian anyway. He called the head gaoler and demanded to see the Russian Ambassador, claiming he was a Russian citizen seeking to complain about the conditions of his imprisonment.

  ‘We had all sorts of nationalities in the unit, so the gaoler wasn’t to know any different,’ Mann explained. ‘No one wanted trouble with the Russians, and within hours I was out of there. I got a riotous reception when I made it back to camp. They all wanted to know how I’d got myself out of gaol, what trick I’d pulled. But it just goes to show the kind of self-reliance the unit taught you, and of what an individual is truly capable when needs must.’

  Weapons training had to encompass every type of arms imaginable – including the guns and the ammo of the enemy, which the raiders would be expected to scavenge and utilize as they saw fit. In nearby Jerusalem, Jellicoe’s men had access to their very own equivalent of Experimental Station 6, the SOE’s school for bloody mayhem, wherein Lassen had refined his skills of silent murder.

  Dubbed the ‘Killer School’, the main aim of the Jerusalem establishment – situated in a former police station – was to prepare the new recruits for the physical and psychological rigours of what lay ahead, as small raiding forces went into battle against far larger formations of regular German and Italian troops.

  Recruits went through the Killer School in batches of thirty, and they were left in no doubt as to what lay ahead. ‘When you burst into a room full of enemy soldiers, you must remember …’ an instructor cautioned. ‘Shoot the first man who moves, hostile or not. His brain has recovered from the shock of seeing you there with a gun. Therefore he is dangerous. Next shoot the man nearest to you. He is in the best position to cause you trouble.’

  Every day was spent working with weapons. The favourite of the raiders remained the Tommy Gun. It wasn’t light, weighing in at around 12lbs loaded, but firing two .45 calibre bullets per second it truly packed a punch. As a bonus, its reliability was close to legendary. Drum magazines were frowned on, as they tended to jam. Clip magazines holding twenty rounds apiece were the norm, although the men were taught not to fire bursts, but to tap the trigger so as to fire fast, accurate, single round shots. On lengthy operations behind enemy lines ammo was too precious to spray off on automatic. They were taught to fire from a boxer’s crouch, with the Tommy Gun held in whatever grasp came to hand, as long as the muzzle was on target.

  From the legendary Leonard Grant-Taylor, a 49-year-old veteran of the First World War and an ace weapons instructor, they learned close-quarter shooting with either the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, or the Colt 45. Grant-Taylor welcomed trainees with the following brief introduction, which left little to the imagination: ‘This is a school for murder. Murder is my business. Not a vague shooting of people in combat, but the personal, individual killing of a man in cold blood. It is an art which you have to study, practise and perfect.’

  And study, practise and perfect they did. They learned to shoot a pistol with either hand to accommodate whatever way a door might open. They were trained to use whatever enemy weaponry might come to hand. They were taught to handle the distinctive Maschinenpistole 40 submachine gun – often dubbed the ‘Schmeisser’ – and the Italian equivalent, the Beretta MAB 38. Plus they were introduced to the rugged reliability of the Luger P08 pistol, and the booby-trapping qualities of the Model 24 Stielhandgranate – the Germans’ infamous stick grenades.

  In the Killer School’s passing-out test, each man had to fire ten rounds from whatever submachine gun he favoured, each of which had to nail a pop-up target. Those targets were entirely realistic, bearing in mind the kind of fighting that was coming: they sprang out unexpectedly from behind doors, cupboards or from darkened stairways. The passing-out test was undertaken only after each recruit was put over the school’s obstacle course several times, so he was hot, sweaty and out of breath even before the start.

  Jellicoe’s men were left in no doubt as to the Killer School’s credo, embodied in its informal slogan: ‘Aim for his guts and he’s surely dead.’ The belly was the largest part of a man to shoot for and few ever recover from a stomach wound.

  Winston Churchill had set great store by Jellicoe’s men. He was convinced that it was time to ‘play for high stakes’ in the eastern Mediterranean, an area of vital strategic importance to the Allied cause. He described Jellicoe’s force as ‘composed of soldiers of the very highest quality’, a fighting force that had been transformed from an SAS squadron into an ‘amphibious unit resolved to recreate at sea the fame which it had won on the sands of the desert’.

  In recreating that fame, no man would play a greater part than Anders Lassen.

  *

  It was June 1943 when the raid on the Cretan airbases – codenamed Operation Albumen – got the final go-ahead. Command of Operation Albumen would fall to David Sutherland, Jellicoe’s number two, who, in his quiet, calm manner had a touch of the Geoffrey Appleyard about him. The targets were three Cretan airbases: Timbaki, Heraklion and Kastelli. Each was to be hit by one group of raiders, and Sutherland split his force into A, B and C Patrols for that purpose.

  Briefings issued to the force gathered at Athlit made the objective of the operation crystal clear: ‘Primary tasks will be the destruction of as many aircraft as possible on the allotted airfields. Targets other than aircraft (e.g. petrol or bomb dumps) will only be attacked if it appears that this is the best way of destroying nearby aircraft … Ten Lewes bombs, with fuses and delays will be carried by each man.’

  As with Operation Postmaster – the Fernado Po raid – Operation Albumen would be a multilayered undertaking. An information campaign would be wrapped around the raids, one orchestrated by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) – a SOE spin-off involved with propaganda operations – working out of Cairo and London. The aim of the PWE was to win the information war by getting positive stories of the raid seeded into the British media at the earliest opportunity.

  To that end the raiders were tasked to send a single-word signal – ‘SUCCESS’ – from the field, just as soon as they had hit their targets. That signal would trigger the PWE’s media campaign, which was designed to steal a march on the German’s propaganda machine. The speed of their operation is reflected in the PWE’s briefing on Operation Albumen, marked ‘MOST SECRET – OFFICER ONLY’: ‘It is hoped that D patrol signal will be received before first light. The reports from C and B patrols are unlikely to be received until 8 hours after the attacks … However, on receipt of the first success signal from one patrol the communiqué will be released … with the highest priority for handing immediately to the BBC.’

  Indeed, the BBC had a crucial role to play on two levels. Apart from breaking news of the raid to British listeners, the BBC would also broadcast vital reports in Greek to the Cretan people. Those planning Operation Albumen fully expected the Germans to take reprisals against the locals, upon whose help the raiders would in large part rely. The broadcasts in Greek were to help soften the blow, and to deflect blame for the raids away from the islanders.

  To that end each patrol was ordered to carry with them a decoy. ‘A specially prepared flag will be left in the target area to indicate that the raid has been carried out by British troops.’ That decoy should leave little room for any German misinterpretation: it was a Union Jack. It was to be reinforced by discarding ‘certain articles of equipment (e.g. steel helmets, cartridge cases, etc.) … which will show t
hat the raids have been carried out by British Army personnel’.

  Sutherland appointed the 22-year-old Anders Lassen as the commander of C patrol, and selected 23-year-old Lieutenant Kenneth Lamonby to command B. Ken Lamonby had joined the Suffolk Regiment in December 1940, and as yet he was untried and untested in battle. His acceptance into Jellicoe’s raider force was largely due to his excellent seafaring abilities, and he was the recruits’ sea-training instructor at Athlit.

  In the balmy waters off the coast Lassen, Nicholson, O’Reilly, Jones, Holmes and all underwent a new and testing form of instruction that would be crucial for the coming missions. Under Lamonby’s watchful eye, they had to practise launching an inflatable rubber dinghy from a submarine’s half-submerged upper surface. With the swell washing across the exposed deck the work was never easy. It was made even more challenging in that all such launches would have to be conducted at night with the crew having to paddle several miles navigating on a compass bearing, to land on enemy-held territory.

  Perhaps due to their shared love of the sea, Lassen and Lamonby struck up a close friendship. Lamonby knew all about the Dane’s fearsome reputation, and in Lamonby – a man seemingly forever with a pipe clamped between his teeth – Lassen was doubtless happy to have a fellow seafaring man in their number, especially as the coming raids would rely on seaborne access above all other means to strike at the enemy.

  As Jellicoe’s force prepared to penetrate deep into Crete, so Geoffrey Appleyard was readying himself for a series of airborne missions over Sicily – softening-up raids for the Operation Husky invasion force that would follow. With Appleyard serving with the main body of the SAS, based largely out of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, the two former brothers-in-arms had found little chance to meet since their deployment from Britain, some three months earlier.

  Little did they know as they prepared for their respective missions that neither would ever get to see the other alive again.

  *

  At dawn on 17 June 1943 Jellicoe’s raiders gathered at Athlit for their final mission briefing. The scene was fairly typical for this nascent force of pirate-desperadoes, though not one repeated much throughout the rest of His Majesty’s Armed Forces. There were few signs among the gathered men of what would normally be defined as ‘military discipline’. No saluting; no heel-clicking or stamping.

  Indeed, most of the assembled throng appeared to be on first-name terms, regardless of rank, and many were addressed by – often seemingly illogical – nicknames. Lassen’s was easy enough: ‘Andy’. So was Jellicoe’s: ‘The Lord’. But Dick Holmes had somehow become known as ‘Jeff’, while one rock-hard Scottish operator seemed only to answer to his sweetheart’s name, ‘Myrtle’.

  As to their dress, it was largely up to personal taste and tended toward the idiosyncratic. Dick Holmes sported a pair of giant Canadian paratrooper’s boots, which reached almost to his knees, above which he wore a pair of baggy khaki shorts. The overall effect was almost comical: that was until you saw the steel in the man’s eyes. Others wore South African military leather boots, with baggy, sandy-coloured parachute smocks above them, their hoods drawn close against the early morning chill.

  ‘There was no bullshit, no saluting,’ as ‘Jeff’ Holmes described it. ‘Best of all you were among like-minded fellows who also hated spit and polish … I told myself I was fighting men who hadn’t done the training I had. They hadn’t jumped out of airplanes or marched for miles on end. In my mind I was better than them and that gave me – and I think the rest of the boys – a tremendous advantage … We were superior not only physically, but psychologically.’

  The assembled force bristled with weapons. Among the ubiquitous Tommy Guns were a couple of Schmeissers, plus an American M1 Carbine, which could double as a passable sniper rifle. From somewhere the men had got their hands on a consignment of Italian grenades – nicknamed ‘Red Devils’ after a then-popular British firework. Though smaller and less lethal than the Mills bomb, the advantage of the Red Devils was that you could carry more, and follow close on the frighteningly loud explosion to finish off a stunned enemy.

  As the force set out by army truck heading for the port, only Sutherland knew of their intended destination. Tucked into his battle tunic was Operation Instruction No. 166, marked ‘MOST SECRET. OFFICER ONLY’, outlining the plans for the coming raids.

  By the time the force set sail by fast Motor Launch – an 86-foot-long vessel reminiscent of the fondly remembered Little Pisser, and designed chiefly for submarine chasing – Sutherland’s patrols had been welded into tough fighting units. B patrol, led by Lamonby, included Dick ‘Jeff’ Holmes plus two others. C Patrol, led by Lassen, consisted of Jack Nicholson, Sydney Greaves and Ray Jones. The third force – A Patrol – was scheduled to follow four days later, aiming to hit Timbaki Airbase at the same time as B and C Patrols struck their targets.

  Despite their friendship, there was some good-natured banter between Lassen and Lamonby, as the Motor Launch sped towards the distant target at approaching twenty knots. Only Lassen and Sutherland among the men on that vessel were veterans of raiding operations deep behind enemy lines. The remainder were new to guerrilla warfare, and it was now that the Athlit training was to be put to the test.

  As the cloak of night descended over the Mediterranean and the slender craft motored across the dark water, so the tension began to mount inexorably. Crete lay some 600 miles to the west of the raiders’ departure point, so they had ample time in which to contemplate the mission now before them. Several miles out from Crete’s southern coastline the Motor Launch slowed to a crawl, creeping in as close as possible to their intended landfall at Cape Kokinoxos, a spit of land pushing south into the sea.

  At just past midnight the launch cut her engines and dropped anchor. Hearts were pounding among the dozen-odd raiders, as they prepared to launch their inflatable dinghies and paddle to shore. Before Lassen and Lamonby’s patrols lay the daunting challenge of traversing the entire breadth of Crete – the largest of the Greek islands – for they were landing on the southern shore, and the target airfields lay on the opposite coast.

  No more than thirty miles as the crow flies, the real distance Lassen and Lamonby’s patrols would have to trek was many times that, as their route twisted and turned, and climbed and fell across Crete’s incredibly rugged interior. A range of high, snow-capped mountains running east to west lay across their path – consisting of the White Mountains rising to some 8,000 feet, the Idi Range rising to a similar height, and the slightly lower 7,000-foot Dikti Mountains.

  In among the towering peaks lay countless knife-cut gorges, plunging valleys, dead-end high plateaus and massive, echoing cave systems. On the southern coast, their intended landing point, the climate was more akin to that of North Africa, temperatures climbing to the mid-40s degrees Celsius. As they crossed the island heading north the climate would become progressively more Mediterranean, but even then the midday heat would still reach the debilitating low-30s.

  Not only that, but each man would be laden down with some 70–80lbs of personal kit, weaponry, explosives, food and water – a crushing load to carry in such heat and across such terrain. It was all the more fortunate then that Jellicoe’s men had had a chance to acclimatize to such scorching temperatures and physical rigours, during the previous months’ training at Athlit.

  The task before the raiders was made all the more difficult in that each patrol was supposed to hit its target on the same night, to maximize surprise. D-Day for the mission – the hour to launch the attacks – was in just twelve days. That was the time available to the men to navigate their way across the impenetrable spine of the island, to find and recce their targets, and to set their final plan of attack, all the while trying to avoid contact with the German and Italian garrisons, or their roving patrols.

  During the war for North Africa Crete had been a major transit point for the German Afrika Corps, and its airbases remained key to air operations across the eastern Mediterrane
an. There were reported to be four German or Italian troops on the island for every native Cretan. The island was crawling with the enemy.

  It was fortunate, then, that there was some extra help on hand. As the raiders paddled silently towards the rocky shoreline, a British operative was supposedly awaiting them on shore.

  When Allied forces had been driven out of Crete in 1941, the British had chosen to leave behind a scattering of men to help organize the Cretan resistance. Those men had learned to speak Greek and had lived the same hard life as the locals. They’d needed to possess nerves of steel to remain hidden in the remote mountains, as German and Italian troops did their best to hunt them down.

  Spearheaded by the Greek Sacred Squadron, a unit made up of former Greek soldiers and officers now fighting to free their homeland, the Cretan resistance at first consisted largely of peasants armed with a smattering of antique rifles and shotguns. But in spite of their lack of modern weaponry, the spirit and morale among the Cretan guerrillas was high, and their intelligence on enemy movements across the island was second to none.

  Their leader, Monoli Bandouvas, had been among the first to offer the foremost British stay-behind, Major ‘Paddy’ Leigh Fermor, his full support. Under his role as an honorary Cretan guerrilla leader, Fermor – who after the war became a famous travel writer – was appointed an SOE agent. Disguised as a shepherd named ‘Michalis’, he had survived in the rugged mountains for approaching two years now. Together with his very capable second in command, Captain Bill Stanley Moss, Fermor had set up a network of Cretan intelligence agents and guides all across the island.