by Max Hastings
Major Earl Jellicoe, son of the World War I admiral, led the SBS with notable courage and exuberance. On the night of 9 September Jellicoe, abruptly plucked from the fleshpots of Beirut, was parachuted onto Rhodes with a wireless operator and an Italian-speaking Polish officer who served under the nom de guerre of ‘Major Dolbey’ and had never jumped before. Dolbey broke his leg on landing. Jellicoe, finding himself under fire as soon as he hit the ground, felt obliged to swallow the letter which he carried from General Maitland-Wilson to the Italian governor, Admiral Inigo Campioni. When the shooting stopped, however, Italian soldiers transported the British party to Campioni’s quarters. There, with Dolbey interpreting amid acute pain from his shattered leg, Jellicoe set about persuading the governor to throw in his lot with the Allies.
At first, Campioni seemed enthusiastic. But when he learned that the British could hope to land only a few hundred men on Rhodes, while strong German forces were on the spot, his zeal ebbed. He was still prevaricating about active, as distinct from token, belligerence when 6,000 men of the German assault division on Rhodes staged their own coup, overran the whole island and made prisoner its 35,000-strong Italian garrison. Jellicoe and Dolbey were fortunate that Campioni allowed them to sail away and avoid capture. General Maitland-Wilson wrote later that the admiral’s spirit ‘was clearly affected by the delay and by the fact that the Germans were there while we were not’. The unfortunate Italian had the worst of all worlds. Having disappointed the British, he was later shot by the Germans.
Possession of Rhodes and its excellent airfields enabled Hitler’s forces to dominate the Aegean. The only prudent course for the British was now to recognise that their gambit had failed, and to forsake their ambitions. Far from doing this, however, they set about reinforcing failure. If they could seize other nearby islands, they reasoned, these might provide stepping stones for an October landing on Rhodes, to reverse the verdict of 11 September. This was a reckless decision, for which immediate blame lay with Maitland-Wilson, but ultimate responsibility with Churchill, who dispatched a stream of signals urging him on. Not only did the British lack strong forces to fight in the Dodecanese, but an opposed assault on Rhodes would have required a bloodbath, in pursuit of the most marginal strategic objective. The Times of 18 September reported the launching of operations in the Dodecanese, and commented:‘Presumably the Germans will try to oust the Allies by landing parachutists, but it is hoped…that the Allied forces will be sufficient to thwart the German efforts. Thus the situation in the Aegean becomes pregnant with possibilities.’
These were not, however, to the advantage of the British. What followed in September and October 1943 was a débâcle, punctuated by piratical exploits and dramas, each one of which was worthy to become a movie epic. Patrols of the Long Range Desert Group, deprived of sands on which to fight since the North African campaign ended, began descending on the Dodecanese by landing craft, plane, naval launch, caïque, canoe and boats of the superbly named Raiding Forces’ Levant Schooner Flotilla. A company of the Parachute Regiment was flown into Kos by Dakota. Men of Jellicoe’s SBS reached Kastellorizo in two launches, and thereafter deployed to other islands. Companies of 234 Brigade, the only available British infantry force, were transported piecemeal to Kos and Leros as fast as shipping could be found to get them there.
A squadron of South African-manned Spitfires was deployed on Kos, which alone had an airfield. A British officer set up his headquarters there alongside that of the Italian garrison, conspicuously hesitant new allies. An officer of SOE landed on Samos, followed by several hundred troops. A general serving as military attaché in Ankara crossed from the Turkish coast. There were soon 5,000 British personnel scattered through the archipelago. Command arrangements were chaotic, with almost absolute lack of coordination between army, navy and air force. But in those naïve early days, many of the newcomers relished the sensation of adventuring upon azure seas and islands steeped in classical legend. Amid barren hills, olive groves and little white-painted village houses, British buccaneers draped in sub-machine guns and grenades mingled with the local Greeks, breathed deep the Byronic air, pitched camp and waited to discover how the Germans would respond.
They were not long left in doubt. Hitler had no intention of relinquishing control of the Aegean. The Germans began to meet tentative British incursions by sea and air with their usual energy and effectiveness. Almost daily skirmishes developed, with RAF Beaufighters strafing German shipping, Luftwaffe planes attacking Kos, LRDG patrols and elements of the SBS fighting detachments of Germans wherever they met them. An officer of yet another British intelligence group, MI9, found himself suddenly hijacked – and shot in the thigh – by pro-fascist sailors on an Italian launch ferrying him between local ports. These men changed sides when they heard on the radio of Mussolini’s rescue from mountain captivity by Otto Skorzeny’s Nazi commandos. On several islands Germans, Italians and British roamed in confusion, ignorant of each other’s locations or loyalties. Two British officers being held prisoner found their Austrian guard offering to let them escape if he might come too. Captors and captives often exchanged roles as the tides of the little campaign ebbed and flowed.
The prevailing theme was soon plain, however. The Germans were winning. In Greece and the Aegean they deployed 362 operational aircraft, many of which were available to operate in the Dodecanese. The South African Spitfire squadron on Kos was hacked to pieces in the air and on the ground by Bf109s. RAF Beaufighters lost heavily in anti-shipping strikes which inflicted little damage upon the enemy. German bombing demoralised the British – and still more, their new Italian allies – as well as destroying Dakotas shuttling to Kos. The Royal Navy was dismayed by the difficulties of sustaining supply runs to tenuously held islands under German air attack. British troops in the area were a hotchpotch of special forces, intelligence personnel, gunners, infantry and ‘odds and sods’, lacking mass, coherence and conviction. The main force, 234 Brigade, had spent the previous three years garrisoning Malta, where its soldiers gained much experience of bombing, hunger and boredom, and none of battle. In the fifth year of the war, when in almost every other theatre the Allies were winning, in the eastern Mediterranean Churchill contrived a predicament in which they were locally vulnerable on land, at sea and in the air.
On the morning of 3 October, the 680 soldiers, 500 RAF air and ground crew and 3,500 Italians on Kos awoke to discover that German ships offshore were unloading a brigade-strong invasion force whose arrival had been unheralded, and whose activities were unimpeded. It was a tribute to German improvisation that such an operation could be staged with little of the training or specialist paraphernalia which the Allies deemed essential for amphibious landings. The Germans mounted the Kos invasion with a scratch force, supplemented by a paratroop landing, against which the RAF launched ineffectual air strikes. The British defenders lacked both mobility and will to leave their positions and mount swift counter-attacks.
The island was twenty-eight miles long by six wide, with a local population of 20,000. Its rugged hills, impervious to entrenchment, rose to a height of 2,800 feet. In two days’ fighting, 2,000 Germans supported by plentiful Stuka dive-bombers secured Kos for a loss of just fifteen killed and seventy wounded. Some 3,145 Italians and 1,388 British prisoners fell into their hands, along with a mass of weapons, stores and equipment. Neither the Italians nor RAF personnel on the island showed much appetite for participation in the ground battle. It was a foolish delusion in London to have supposed that Italian troops, who for three years had shown themselves reluctant to fight the Allies, could any more readily be motivated to take on the Germans. The men of the Durham Light Infantry were outnumbered, inexperienced, and never perceived much prospect of success. Churchill described the defence of Kos as ‘an unsatisfactory resistance’. While this was true enough, responsibility rested overwhelmingly with those who placed the garrison there. The worst victims were the Italians, who paid heavily for their brief change of allegiance. On Kefal
lonia, in the Ionian islands, the Germans had already conducted a wholesale massacre of 4,000 ‘treacherous’ Italian troops who surrendered to them. On Kos, the victors confined themselves to executing eightynine Italian officers. A few dozen determined British fugitives escaped by landing craft and small boat.
In the days and weeks following the loss of Kos, Churchill in vain pressed Eisenhower to divert resources from Italy to recapture it. A game of hide-and-seek persisted on other islands, between Hitler’s units and British special forces. The Germans staged a further airborne landing on Astipalaea. Luftwaffe aircrew, accustomed to the depressed spirits of many of their countrymen who knew that the war was being lost, were amazed to find exuberant paratroopers in Junkers transports en route to a drop zone singing, ‘Kameraden, today there is no going back.’ At this late stage of the war, the obliging British had provided the Fallschirmjäger with a field on which there were still victories to be won.
The Long Range Desert Group, whose men were not organised, trained or equipped to fight as infantry, suffered heavily in desultory battles. The main British force left in the Dodecanese was now based on Leros, an island much smaller than Kos and twenty miles further north. When the British commander there heard that German prisoners on nearby Levitha had overpowered their captors and seized control, he packed fifty LRDG men onto two naval motor launches, and dispatched them to retake it. Once ashore, the LRDG fought a series of little actions with the Germans in which four raiders were killed and almost all the others captured. Just seven escaped at nightfall, by courtesy of the Royal Navy. Levitha remained firmly in German hands.
Churchill was dismayed by the unfolding misfortunes in the Aegean, as well he might be. Brooke wrote on 6 October: ‘It is pretty clear in my mind that with the commitments we have in Italy we should not undertake serious operations in the Aegean…[but] PM by now determined to go for Rhodes without looking at the effects on Italy.’ Churchill chafed to travel personally to North Africa to incite the Americans to address themselves to Aegean operations. Cadogan wrote: ‘He is excited about Kos and wants to lead an expedition to Rhodes.’ The prime minister tried in vain to persuade Washington that Marshall should fly to meet him in Tunisia, there to be persuaded of the virtues of the Aegean commitment. On 7 October he wrote personally to Roosevelt: ‘I have never wished to send an army into the Balkans, but only by agents and commandos to stimulate the intense guerrilla activity there. This may yield results measureless in their consequence at very small cost to main operations. What I ask for is the capture of Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese…Leros, which at the moment we hold so precariously, is an important naval fortress, and once we are ensconced in this area air and light naval forces would have a fruitful part to play…I beg you to consider this.’ He argued that operations in the eastern Mediterranean were ‘worth at least up to a first-class division’. The Americans disagreed. They transferred some Lightning squadrons to Libya, to operate in support of the Royal Navy in the Aegean. But, as other priorities pressed, after only four days these aircraft were withdrawn. Since the Germans were operating much superior Bf109 single-engined fighters, it is anyway unlikely that the twin-engined Lightnings could have altered the local balance of air power any more than did the RAF’s Beaufighters. But the British were bitter that they were left to fight alone.
In London on 8 October, The Times said of the fall of Kos: ‘It cannot be expected that every allied venture will be successful: but there is no denying that the state of affairs in the Dodecanese is causing disquietude.’ The paper asked pertinent questions about why stronger Allied forces had not been committed. That day, Brooke wrote in his diary: ‘I am slowly becoming convinced that in his old age Winston is becoming less and less well balanced! I cannot control him any more. He has worked himself into a frenzy of excitement about the Rhodes attack, has magnified its importance so that he can no longer see anything else and has set his heart on capturing this one island even at the expense of endangering his relations with the President and with the Americans, and also the whole future of the Italian campaign. He refuses to listen to any arguments or to see any dangers!…The whole thing is sheer madness, and he is placing himself quite unnecessarily in a very false position! The Americans are already desperately suspicious of him, and this will make matters far worse.’
All Brooke said was true. That same day, 8 October, Churchill wrote again to the Americans, addressing himself to both Eisenhower and the president: ‘I propose…to tell Gen. Wilson that he is free if he judges the position hopeless to order the garrison [of Leros] to evacuate…I will not waste words in explaining how painful this decision is to me.’ But Leros was not evacuated, as it should have been. Churchill cabled Maitland-Wilson on 10 October: ‘Cling on if you possibly can…If after everything has been done you are forced to quit I will support you, but victory is the prize.’
On 13 October, John Kennedy wrote in his diary: ‘It does seem amazing that the PM should spend practically a whole week on forcing forward his ideas about taking an island in the face of all military advice…Jumbo [Maitland-Wilson] chanced his arm in occupying Kos and the other Aegean islands.’ Churchill cabled Maitland-Wilson on 14 October: ‘I am very pleased with the way you used such poor bits and pieces as were left to you. Nil desperandum.’ And again to Maitland-Wilson, copied to Eden: ‘Keep Leros safely.’ Churchill referred to Leros, absurdly, as a ‘fortress’, even less meaningful in this case than when he had used the same word of Singapore and Tobruk. The C-in-C, desperate not to disappoint the prime minister, persevered. Given the scepticism of Brooke, why did not the CIGS assert himself, and insist upon withdrawal from the Aegean? The most plausible answer is that, when he was fighting Churchill almost daily about much bigger issues, notably including the prime minister’s enthusiasm for an invasion of Sumatra, Leros seemed insufficiently important to merit yet another showdown. Win or lose, the campaign represented only a marginal drain on resources. Brooke could not hope to overcome the prime minister’s passions on every issue. Instead he stood back, and watched the subsequent fiasco unfold.
For five further bloody weeks, the British struggled on in the Aegean. The battles which took place in that period at sea, in the air and on land more closely resembled those of 1941 than most Allied encounters with the Germans in 1943. The Royal Navy’s cruisers, destroyers, submarines and small craft sought to sink German shipping, and to bombard ports and shore positions, while subjected to constant air attacks by the Luftwaffe’s Ju88s. With the loss of the field on Kos, the RAF’s nearest base was now 300 miles away. Even old Stuka dive-bombers, powerless in the face of fighter opposition, became potent weapons when they could fly unchallenged.
There were many savage little naval actions in the narrow waters between the islands. On 7 October, for instance, the submarine Unruly conducted an unsuccessful torpedo attack on a German troop convoy, then in frustration surfaced and engaged the enemy with its four-inch deck gun until driven to submerge by the appearance of the Luftwaffe. Unruly later torpedoed a minelayer carrying 285 German troops. The cruisers Sirius and Penelope were caught by German bombers while attacking shipping, and Penelope was damaged. The destroyer Panther was sunk on 8 October, and the cruiser Carlisle so badly damaged by bombers that after limping back to port she never put to sea again. The Luftwaffe sustained constant attacks on Leros’s port facilities, so that British warships had to dash in, dump supplies and sail again inside half an hour. The RAF’s anti-shipping skills were still inferior to those of the Germans, and Beaufighter strikes cost the British attackers more heavily than their enemies. Even when raids were successful, such as one by Wellington bombers on the night of 18 October, the results were equivocal: the Wellingtons dispatched to the bottom ships carrying 204 Germans, but also 2,389 Italian and seventy-one Greek prisoners. By 22 October a total of 6,000 Italian prisoners had drowned when their transports succumbed to British air strikes, while 29,454 Italian and British PoWs had been successfully removed to the Greek mainland,
and thence to Germany.
The cruisers Sirius and Aurora were badly damaged by Ju88s, while German mines accounted for several British warships including the submarine Trooper, which disappeared east of Leros. Almost every ship of the Royal Navy which ran the gauntlet to the Dodecanese, including launches, torpedo-boats and caïques, had to face bombs, heavy seas in the worsening autumn weather, and natural hazards inshore. The destroyer Eclipse was sunk on 23 October, while carrying 200 troops and ten tons of stores. The navy reluctantly decided that it could no longer sail destroyers in the Aegean during daylight, in the face of complete German air dominance. The RAF continued to suffer heavily – in a single day’s operations on 5 November, six Beaufighters were destroyed, four crews lost.
On 31 October, the senior British airman in the Mediterranean, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, wrote: ‘We are being pressed to throw good money after bad. The situation is fundamentally unsound.’ John Kennedy urged Alan Brooke on 28 October that ‘the price we were paying [for Leros was] too great and the return too small to justify retention’. Brooke professed to agree, but told Kennedy that at that day’s chiefs of staff meeting the decision had been made to hang on. It had now become too difficult to withdraw the garrison in the face of German air superiority. In his own diary, Brooke called Leros ‘a very nasty problem, Middle East [Command] have not been either wise or cunning and have now got themselves into the difficult situation that they can neither hold nor evacuate Leros. Our only hope would be assistance from Turkey, the provision of airfields from which the required air cover could be provided.’ Such aid was not forthcoming.
