The Lost Band of Brothers

by Tom Keene

  But Maid Honor Force came under SOE, not Combined Operations. A certain amount of negotiation took place, after which it was decided that the new force, while still administered and financed by SOE, would come under Mountbatten’s operational control. As mentioned, it would be known as the Small Scale Raiding Force and would operate under the cover name of No 62 Commando or, to SOE, ‘Station 62’. It was all part of Mountbatten’s ‘new broom’. Under Admiral Keyes there had been no centralised European raiding system: raids on the enemy shore were the responsibility of the army commander-in-chief defending the English territory opposite, with the Channel itself seen as a sort of First World War no-man’s-land. The poorly thought-out theory was that the army would obtain the assault boats they needed for each raid through the local naval commander-in-chief who, in turn, would ask for the boats from Combined Operations. It didn’t work. Now, with Mountbatten at the helm of a newly centralised, reinvigorated system, raids across the Channel became more numerous.

  As his proposal worked its way swiftly through the various layers of Higher Command within SOE, Combined Operations and the Chiefs of Staff, there was now another distraction that took March-Phillipps’ eye off the dangerous business of planning to raid the enemy coastline. Her name was Marjorie Stewart.

  One evening at SOE Headquarters in Baker Street, a discreet little party was held to welcome home the Maid Honor heroes of Fernando Po. One of those invited to attend to add glamour to drab khaki was SOE agent-in-training Marjorie Stewart, an attractive actress who had volunteered for SOE the year before. About to go away on parachute training to Ringway, she had met Gus earlier in the day – in the Baker Street lift in Norgeby House on her way to her desk at the Polish and Czech Section of SOE. When he asked her later what she did she replied she was the lift girl. Baker Street, after all, was a house of duplicity and many secrets:

  I had no idea who this rather eccentric but highly characterful and bright-coloured figure I met was … He was very brown, very sunburned and he had high colour and the whites of his eyes were startlingly blue … and although he was dressed in a uniform which is khaki, he had britches and rather beautiful boots and a bush hat and the boots naturally were beautiful leather because he always made a great fuss about having his boots made at Maxwell and so they were beautiful horse-chestnut, wonderful colour … In the evening I was going to a party and Gus’s sister Diana had come into our office and said they were having a party for the Maid Honor people and would I go … I’d heard about it because everybody was talking about Maid Honor when I first joined SOE and I didn’t understand what they were talking about for a long time because I thought it was May Donna, and then I eventually saw papers about it and realised it was Maid Honor and I’d heard about it and I’d read the report … and it was an interest and an excitement to everybody that they’d done very well and they were coming safely back … and then we went on to the party for the Maid Honor people at Nell Gwynn house and I arrived rather late with Alfgar [her escort] and Gus [said] almost immediately: ‘Are you married to that man?’ And I said no I wasn’t … He said ‘I’ve seen you before’ and I said: ‘Yes, indeed you have. I took you up in the lift this morning. I work the lift at 74 Baker Street.’ He believed for quite a long time that I was the lift girl. And it was a very splendid party and very chatty then we went on to dinner at the Gargoyle and I remember dancing with Gus … Yes, I liked him. He was a very attractive personality to meet: good looking and quick and I suppose he did stammer although I didn’t notice his stammer for ages … it was sort of inevitable. I’m trying to think what happened then … Oh, yes: he asked me to go and have dinner with him so we went and had dinner at the Ecu de France. And I can remember – again, one always does – exactly what I wore and it was a very nice dress and I thought I looked splendid and so fortunately did he! But, anyway, we went and had this splendid dinner at which he asked me to marry him. So I said that was ridiculous and he didn’t know anything about it. That I think was the third time we met.14

  Impatient as always, March-Phillipps was in no mood to take prisoners. He launched his unremitting amorous assault from within the offices of SOE Headquarters: ‘There was also an occasional visitor,’ remembered SOE agent Patrick Howarth:

  a tall man with a sun-tanned complexion, a stammer and a generally distinguished appearance of the kind most readily described as soldierly. This was Major Gus March-Phillipps. It soon became apparent that his visits were mainly for the purpose of seeing Marjorie Stewart, and I began to feel my presence was something of an embarrassment to them. In this I was right.15

  ‘He was a man of quick decisions, certainly,’ Marjorie remembered:

  And we chatted and had a splendid time and that was all very enjoyable and very nice and very exciting and I suppose he wanted probably to find someone to be attached to and I always felt the whole thing was completely inevitable … it literally just happened. I can remember saying, rather pompously, perhaps: ‘Oh, you don’t mean you want to marry me, all you mean is I’m an attractive young woman. You’ve come back from a wearing time that’s gone very well … all you want to do is go to bed with me.’ ‘Not at all, not at all, shouldn’t dream of it. Sharn’t until I’ve married you.’16

  For all, it was a time of sudden passions, of whirlwind courtships and quick marriage in which each day might be the last. Thirty years on, and the memories remain undiminished:

  I saw a lot of him for a few days. You have to remember that, in a war, everything was speeded up … He came with me to look at Aldford Street, my cousin’s house where I was going to go and live and we had the most wonderful Saturday afternoon. Piercing cold it was at that time – bitter, bitter – and we had a lovely look at this shut-up empty house with gleams of very cold wintry sun coming in and he was enchanted by the house which was a very pretty one where you [Henrietta March-Phillipps] were born … and then we went for a lovely walk in St James’s Park. He certainly didn’t mind breaking rules. The lake was frozen, so we just didn’t see the notice saying nobody was to go on the ice and had the most exciting, lovely walk round the island in the lake. But it was thick ice and we walked across the ice rather rapidly not to get caught by stray keepers and had a wonderful exploring walk round the little island in the lake. It was a heavenly afternoon altogether.17

  Gus and Marjorie were married on 18 April 1942 at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street, London W1. The reception was held afterwards at the house they had visited that cold February afternoon at 2, Aldford Street, London W1. Colin Gubbins’ private diary recorded simply: ‘Marjorie and Gus. 2 o’clock.’

  †††

  Although March-Phillipps’ plans for a significantly expanded Maid Honor Force had still to be ratified by the Chiefs of Staff, it appeared from an early stage that approval would be something of a formality. Accordingly – and with Gubbins’ support – March-Phillipps and Appleyard set out from London to find a suitable base for their secret new raiding force. They headed first of all back to the Antelope Hotel in Poole harbour, scene of their departure to West Africa and Operation Postmaster six months ago. It seemed like a lifetime: ‘We stayed in Poole at the old Antelope Hotel which was our shore HQ last summer’ wrote Appleyard. ‘They gave us a great welcome.’18 Landlord Arthur ‘Pop’ Baker, it seems, remembered his friends. From there they set out to explore the local countryside. March-Phillipps already knew much of it well: he had lived at Bere Regis, just a few miles away, before the war when he had been making a living as a novelist. Luck, providence or local contacts led him now to a sixteenth-century manor house.

  Notes

  1. Duchessa d’Aosta was sailed to Scotland and renamed as the allied transport Empire Yukon. She was scrapped at Spezia, Italy, in 1952. Maid Honor, however, sails on. It is the name of an Appleby family-owned Southerly 42RST sailing yacht commissioned by Geoffrey Appleyard’s niece Penny and her husband, Adrian Heyworth, out of Herm in the Channel Islands.

  2. HS 3/87.

  3. The
Secret History of SOE, William Mackenzie.

  4. HS 3/87.

  5. PREM 3/405/3.

  6. These were promulgated in the London Gazette on 28 July 1942.

  7. Anders Lassen, 89.

  8. HS 7/235.

  9. HS 3/89.

  10. It would be found by autumn that ‘One prisoner is worth about ten dead Germans.’ (COHQ Most Secret Memo to OC No 62 Commando, 26 November 1942).

  11. Commodore J. Hughes-Hallett, RN. Excerpt from Mountbatten Broadlands papers.

  12. The Commandos 1940–1946, 152.

  13. Ibid., 153.

  14. Family tape loaned to this author.

  15. Undercover, Patrick Howarth, 20.

  16. Undated recording of interview conducted by Henrietta March-Phillipps with her mother, Marjorie Stewart. Recording passed to the author by her family.

  17. Family audio tape loaned to the author.

  18. Geoffrey, 111.

  11

  Anderson Manor

  Anderson Manor nestles in rich, rolling Dorset farmland in a fold of land slightly north of the main road between Bere Regis to the south-west and Sturminster Marshall to the east. It is approximately 10 miles north-west of Poole Harbour and within rumbling lorry journey of Portland, Poole and Gosport, the likely ports of embarkation for the raids March-Phillipps and Appleyard hoped would soon follow. Privately owned, Anderson Manor is an imposing, Grade 1 Listed building dating back to 1622. It is a quadrangular, brick-built house with stone dressings and quoins, seven large rooms and a huge, walk-in arched fireplace in what was once the original kitchen. The main house of three stories has a symmetrical front with projecting gable wings at each end, and the roof is topped by two groups of four tall, octagonal-shaped brick chimneys, one for each of the master rooms below. Several floors boast mullioned and transomed windows with lead lights. Served by a wide staircase and gleaming wooden panelling up to the echoing, oak-floored bedrooms above, the property also supports a range of out-buildings, kitchen gardens and ancient walled flower beds. There is even a moat that dries out in summer, fed by the Winterborne River running across the front of the property. The main entrance has a heavy oak, iron-studded door with ancient inset spy-hole. There are formal gardens and even a private place of worship, the twelfth-century St Michael’s Chapel and family graveyard on the edge of the Manor’s grounds.

  Tucked away from prying eyes at the end of an arrow-straight, tree-flanked driveway, March-Phillipps and Appleyard saw immediately that Anderson Manor would make an ideal headquarters for SOE’s No 62 Commando. Possessing neither running water nor electricity, the Manor reeked of history and the precious jewel that was the England March-Phillipps and his men felt they were fighting for. Better yet, Gus realised he had a slight acquaintance with the owner, Major Cholmondeley. Negotiations followed, reassurances were given about troops’ respect for private property and, after protective boarding was tacked over the ancient oak panelling, a generator was installed to provide lighting, a pump was set up to provide water from the well and Anderson Manor was as ready as it would ever be for this latest invasion of heavily armed troops. Appleyard remembered their first visit:

  During the Friday’s house hunting we located an eminently suitable and magnificent house about seven miles from Wareham and ten from Poole. It is a large and very beautiful Elizabethan house and is in every way ideal for our purpose … The house is very much in the country, in a training area and with beautiful gardens. The head gardener is staying on and in our waiting times of which, I suppose, there are bound to be a great deal, we shall, when not training, give a hand in the grounds and gardens. The house, after the owners go, will be almost fully furnished … Dorsetshire was looking lovely – a really spring-like day. In the woods we found primroses and lovely scented purple violets, and the gardens were full of crocuses.1

  That same day – 21 March – March-Phillipps sent a secret signal to Brigadier Gubbins urging him to give him the authority and financial sanction to press ahead, and reviewing progress to date.2 All was moving ahead most satisfactorily: the Chiefs of Staff had by then authorised the creation of a special raiding force under joint SOE and Combined Operations control.

  SOE’s role would be to provide the men for the raiding parties themselves, some 40 per cent of whom would be foreign nationals whose secondment would also provide a ready pool for Combined Operations to draw on for other missions without breaching security by having to approach governments-in-exile directly for their loan. SOE would be responsible for providing the operational and training base (Anderson Manor), its administrative staff and transport and whatever specialised low-profile approach craft the unit might need. SOE was also to be responsible for providing arms, ammunition, explosives and what were euphemistically referred to as ‘special stores’:

  Combined Operations were to provide two Motor Launches, their crews, maintenance and the equipment that would carry the raiding force off-shore to their target area. Actual operations and target selection would be controlled not by SOE, but by Combined Operations. It was a plan, evidently, that had Gus March-Phillipps’ approval. He urged Brigadier Gubbins: ‘This whole project undertaken by us in conjunction with Combined Operations is of major importance and it is incumbent upon us to put everything we know into it. Undoubtedly the Chief of Combined Operations [Lord Mountbatten] will take the greatest personal interest in it and also the Chiefs of Staff. We must, therefore, make every effort to get our part of the bargain carried out by the agreed date.’3

  Anderson Manor was ready for occupancy in late April. The old team reassembled as the men of Maid Honor Force, scattered to the four winds for security reasons on the heels of Operation Postmaster, gradually filtered back to Dorset, where they were reunited with friends whose trust had been earned on live operations. Initially there would be about thirty men under training living at Anderson Manor: ‘nearly all officers,’ observed Appleyard. The high proportion of officers was deliberate policy by March-Phillipps, who wanted to have to hand the nucleus for rapid expansion: he planned to double his force from 50 to 100 within three months. Among these early arrivals were Anders Lassen and André Desgrange, both of whom had found themselves seconded briefly after Postmaster to the SOE mission’s training school in Lagos.4 March-Phillipps himself lost no time in settling in, writing back to his soon-to-be wife in London:

  This is the first letter I have written to you, so it’s rather a great event. I wonder if it’s a record. Apple thinks it is. I wish you were here. It’s really a marvellous place, and the weather is perfect. Every morning I ride out through woods full of primroses and bluebells and violets with the dew still on them, and the sun shining through the early morning mist. I think that when the war is over we must settle down here, perhaps in this house if we’re very great people then, and spend a lot of time in the garden. It’s one of the most perfect gardens I’ve ever seen. Take great, great care of yourself for me, and I will do the same for you. And one day we will have peace and really get to know each other.5

  In the meantime, however, there was the business of war and the training for war.

  Lt Sparks, RNVR, was appointed senior Motor Launch Commander and began taking over the two designated motor launches, 347 and 297, that were lying at Portland and converting them for silent, clandestine use. Major J. Wynne, the newly appointed Planning and Intelligence Officer attached to SSRF, made contact with the Intelligence Departments of both Combined Operations and Home Forces and submitted a first list of potential targets at the end of that same month.

  Anderson Manor very quickly earned a local reputation as somewhere top secret: ‘I was the telephonist at Bere Regis during the war’ Ethel Brown remembered. ‘I did the night shift from 10pm to 6am. I remember the Anderson Manor lines were the top row on the board and all calls were scrambled so that we couldn’t hear the conversation. Anderson Manor was something to do with the Home Office and was closely guarded.’6 Closely guarded, most certainly. And nothing whatever to do with the Home O
ffice.

  Amongst those who joined the new unit at Anderson Manor was Peter Kemp, former fighter in the Spanish Civil War and ex-member of the abortive Operation Knife team that never made it to Norway. He had completed SOE’s rigorous training in Scotland, after which nothing particular seemed to excite his attention. Cruising the SOE Baker Street offices in February and looking for interesting work, Colonel Munn, one of his instructors at Inverailort in 1940, advised him: ‘You had better join my old friend Gus March-Phillipps. He is recruiting officers for a scheme of his which should be just up your street.’7 It was. The introduction to both March-Phillipps and Appleyard was to change his life:

  However overworked and misapplied the words ‘personality’ and ‘genius’ may be, it is difficult to avoid their use in a description of these two remarkable characters … [B]y religion a deeply sincere Roman Catholic, by tradition an English country gentleman, [Gus] combined the idealism of a Crusader with the severity of a professional soldier. He was slightly built of medium height; his eyes, puckered from straining against tropical glare, gave him an enquiring, piercing and even formidable expression, only slightly mitigated by his tendency to stammer. Despite an unusually hasty temper he had a great sense of fairness towards his subordinates. In battle he was invariably calm. He was intelligent, without any great academic ability. Above all, he had the inspiration to conceive great enterprises, combined with the skill and daring to execute them; he was also most fortunate in his second-in-command. Of calmer temperament but similarly romantic nature, less impetuous but more obstinate, Appleyard combined a flair for organisation and planning with superb skill in action and a unique ability to instil confidence in time of danger.8