Churchill's Secret Warriors_The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII

by Damien Lewis

  Schofield had never been in sustained combat, but he stood his ground. As the Stukas howled in, he yelled out words of reassurance to the fellow RAF men manning his position.

  ‘It’s impossible for the Germans to hit this spot,’ Schofield declared, gleefully. ‘Their bombs will fall short ‘cause of the angle of approach needed to avoid the hills.’

  It proved true. Time and again the Stukas tried to bomb the 20mm gun emplacement, but their bombs slammed into the slopes below and the houses of the town itself, leaving the tower unscathed.

  In the winding streets Lassen’s Irish Patrol was already in action. O’Reilly noticed the Dane freeze by a wall. He had an uncanny sixth-sense for finding the enemy, almost as if he could smell Germans. Lassen indicated there were soldiers on the far side. On a signal, Lassen and O’Reilly burst into the open and fired over the German’s heads, who promptly surrendered. They took two prisoners, but now it would be down to bitter fighting at close quarters.

  The streets of Symi town are labyrinthine, and it was a real art to get close enough to the enemy to engage them – an art in which Lassen excelled. Underfoot, the narrow, winding roads are paved with white cobbles, the steps scaling the steeper slopes worn smooth with time. The hobnailed boots of the Germans rang and clattered as they dashed from cover to cover, while the felt soles of Jellicoe’s raiders padded silently through the streets, as they stalked the enemy.

  A second patrol, led by Englishman Lieutenant Charles Bimrose, pushed into eastern Symi – the direction of the German attack, but it seemed that the enemy had already seized the high ground overlooking the town. A line of ancient windmills marked the ridgeline, terrain that the Italians had been charged to defend. But the Germans had brought with them a unit of Italian fascists, who were exhorting their brothers through loud speakers to turn on the British. Torn, the Italians it seemed had abandoned their positions.

  A German machine gun had been established on the ridge, from where it could pour down fire into Symi’s rabbit warren of streets. Bimrose’s patrol was the first to feel its heat. He and his men played hide-and-seek with the German gunner, as they dashed from cover to cover. Then Bimrose’s patrol was hit in an ambush. A stick grenade was tossed over a wall, exploding at the feet of Seaforth Highlander William Morrison. Bimrose’s sergeant was hit by a burst of follow-up fire and Bimrose himself took a flesh wound in the arm.

  For an instant his advance faltered, before Bimrose himself, enraged by what had befallen his patrol, charged forward and decimated the enemy position. Two Germans were killed and one wounded, after which Bimrose withdrew his men to better cover. But William Morrison died from the wounds he’d suffered in the grenade attack, and Bimrose’s sergeant was seriously wounded.

  Bimrose briefed Lassen on what he’d discovered about the German strengths and numbers. Lassen’s men had studied the layout of Symi town and knew it well. The newly arrived Germans did not. Lassen held his men back so as to draw the Germans in, and then the trap was sprung. Time after time as they tried to storm the ancient fortress of the Kastro the German troops were ambushed, Lassen himself stalking and killing three at very close quarters.

  As the morning dragged on the ancient alleyways rang with savage bursts of gunfire, and echoed with grenades exploding, plus the bloodcurdling cries and screams of the dying and wounded. Bullets zigzagged and ricocheted across cobblestones, chasing the German attackers along the twisting streets, and gradually their offensive began to peter out.

  As their battered forces regrouped on the town’s outskirts, something extra was needed to drive them back to their boats. Lapraik decided to send Lassen and his patrol to put some steel into the Italians’ spine. So far, the 140-strong Italian garrison had played little part in the fighting, apart from giving up the high ground. The Germans needed to be driven off that ridge, so who better to do it than those troops who had first abandoned it.

  Lassen presented the Italians with a stark choice. ‘You may be shot by the enemy, but if you run you will be shot by me.’

  In spite of the pain from his burned and blistered legs, Lassen had worked himself up into some kind of a trance – one very likely fuelled by Benzedrine, and doubtless fanned by his fervent killer instinct. With the Italians’ resolve thus stiffened he drove them up through the burning-hot terrain, which all about them droned with the rhythmic chirp-chirp-chirp of cicadas.

  As they hit the ridge, the Italians were forced into action against their erstwhile allies. The last of the German positions were cleared and they were driven back to their boats, Lassen and his Irish Patrol chivvying the Italians, guns at the ready. One Italian was injured in the fighting, but none had been killed, and at least the honour of the Italian nation had been somewhat restored.

  By three o’clock that afternoon the German commander had withdrawn his men to the spot where they had first landed, and he started to evacuate his wounded. But the battle was far from over. At four o’clock a larger German vessel hove into view – a landing craft packed full of reinforcements, steaming full speed for Pedi Bay. It was crucial that it be prevented from making the shore.

  It was now that the scavenged Breda cannon came into play. Lassen dashed up to the gun emplacement, took control of the weapon and opened fire on the landing craft, using the white plumes of spray thrown up by the falling rounds to walk them on to the target. Within moments the 20mm armour-piercing rounds were tearing into the vessel, its overcrowded deck being swept by a whirlwind of shrapnel.

  Lassen kept at it until the ship’s commander, fearing the gun was going to sink her, made an about turn and set a course back to Rhodes – not a man among his assault force having managed to put ashore.

  Seeing the German boats disembarking from the beach, Lapraik ordered his men to give chase. They readied one of the caiques at anchor in Symi harbour and set sail, but it proved too slow to catch the German ships. Yet its very presence forced the retreating armada to alter course, driving the vessels into range of the Bren guns that Lapraik had positioned along the Kastro’s thick walls.

  The Bren is deadly accurate out to 600 yards, but its maximum range is three times that. The German vessels were well within that distance. Lapraik’s machine guns raked the ships’ exposed decks, targeting them for the entire length of Pedi Bay, and until they turned south around the headland for Rhodes. The battle for Symi was finally over, but no one among the town’s defenders believed for one moment that the wider war for the island was done.

  *

  General Ulrich von Kleemann, the overall commander of Axis forces in the region, was furious when he heard about the defeat. He had some 40,000 troops stationed on nearby Rhodes, yet a handful of British raiders and turncoat Italians had defeated him. He ordered the island to be bombed into oblivion.

  At 0800 hours the following morning the first flight of Stukas swept in. Coming in at around 5,000 feet, the Ju-87s rolled through 180 degrees above the town and plummeted in a 90-degree dive towards earth. Air-brakes kept the dive speed constant at a maximum 600kph, and the first bomb was released some 400 metres above the target, at which stage the pull-out began – the Stuka leaving a thick black plume of blasted smoke and dust in its wake.

  Packed with 650lbs of bombs, the Stuka was designed as a precision ground-attack aircraft. But over Symi that morning the bombing proved largely indiscriminate, and designed to terrorize the island population. Every two hours a new wave of dive-bombers swept in, and it quickly became clear that the entire population of Symi was to be made to pay for the German defeat. As they screamed out of the burning blue, even Lassen – who seemed to feel no fear – found that the Stukas could strike terror into his soul.

  Another of Lapraik’s men, Lance Corporal Robert McKendrick, was killed, and all across the town there were civilian casualties, as Symi’s ancient streets were torn apart. Most of the buildings were built without any cement, and even a near-hit from a Stuka collapsed them into a pile of rubble and dust. Bereft of any air cover, Symi was hugely vulne
rable. The Stukas were able to dive so low that the island defenders could see the faces of the pilots through the Plexiglas cockpit, the banshee wail of the aircraft’s sirens drilling into their ears.

  Just after lunch Lapraik’s headquarters took a direct hit. Lapraik escaped unharmed, but two of his men were trapped beneath the heap of rubble. One was Tom Bishop, originally from the Grenadier Guards. The other was Sidney Greaves, who together with Nicholson had done such a sterling job on the eastern side of Kastelli Airbase three months earlier, as Lassen and Jones had hit the western side.

  A former miner serving in Lapraik’s force led the search party, as they tunnelled in to free the two men. Porter Jarrell, the American medic-cum-raider, was at the forefront of the rescue operation, as was an RAF doctor, Flight Lieutenant Leslie Harris. As the Stukas continued with their terrifying strikes, the rescuers managed to clear an airway to the lower of the two figures, Sidney Greaves. He was trapped by the heavy debris lying on his stomach, and Bishop was above him, his foot pinned under the wreckage.

  With Stukas tearing through the skies, the rescue force faced a terrible dilemma. They needed to free Bishop in order to get to Greaves, but if they tried to move the weight off Bishop’s foot, the whole lot might collapse and crush Greaves completely. The only option was to amputate Bishop’s foot where he lay, drag him free and then attempt to prop up the wreckage and lift Greaves out from below.

  To make matters worse, the RAF doctor had suffered a wrist injury in the blast, so he would only be able to guide Jarrell through the operation. He’d lost most of his medical equipment under the debris, and Jarrell only carried the bare basics. Together, they managed to gather a few forceps, some tourniquets, a scalpel and scissors, plus some chloroform to deaden the pain. But the only tool available with which to amputate the leg was a small carpenter’s saw.

  Despite this, Bishop agreed to the amputation in an effort to save his brother warrior’s life. With the RAF doctor and Jarrell hanging half-inverted in the narrow space, and with others holding onto their feet at ground level to keep them from falling, the operation got underway by flickering candlelight. After the tourniquets had been wound tight to cut off the blood flow, Jarrell began sawing through Bishop’s leg, under instructions from the doctor.

  The wreckage rang with Bishop’s cries of pain. Another flight of Stukas howled and wheeled overhead, like dark birds of prey, but neither Jarrell nor Harris paused in their task. With the foot finally sawn off, they were able to drag Bishop clear, whereupon he was given intravenous blood. But the shock and the bomb blast that he’d suffered, plus the crushing injuries must have proved too much.

  Bishop died shortly after they’d pulled him free.

  Undeterred, Jarrell crawled back into the dark, dust-choked hole, squeezed through a gap between the debris and managed to reach Greaves. Whispering words of encouragement and comfort to the injured man, Jarrell managed to get an injection of morphine into him, and then a rubber tube was lowered via which he was able to feed some water into Greaves’ parched, dust-dry throat.

  But in spite of such efforts Sydney Greaves died before he could be pulled free. Porter Jarrell had spent some twenty-seven hours crawling among the shattered debris of the headquarters building, trying to save two men’s lives. At any moment a hit from a Stuka could have sent the rest of the building crashing down on top of him. He emerged blood-spattered, caked in dust from head to toe, utterly exhausted and on the point of collapse.

  Flight Lieutenant Leslie Harris, the RAF doctor, summed up the terrible situation, and Jarrell’s actions and his nature, succinctly. ‘It was one of the most horrific operations I’ve seen. I couldn’t perform it myself because I had a wrist injury through falling on the rocks, so I could only guide …’ Jarrell, he said, was ‘a fantastic bloke, with his Red Cross on one shoulder and a machine gun over the other … They hadn’t a hope in hell, but we thought that we had to try something.’

  At dawn on 10 October – three days after the German assault force had been beaten back from the island – the Stukas returned in earnest. Wave after wave pounded the town. That morning, Lapraik received orders to withdraw. At first he resisted, although the suffering of the islanders was causing all the raiders – Lassen more than most – serious anguish.

  Lapraik agreed to evacuate his wounded, along with the German and Italian prisoners. On 12 October, after further savage bombing sorties, the orders to withdraw were repeated. Finally, the raiders bowed to the inevitable and pulled out. They could be proud of the fact that no ground force had vanquished them, and that in leaving Symi they were saving the long-suffering islanders from any further death and devastation.

  Yet even as they sailed away from Symi Island, Anders Lassen was about to be called back in again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A week after their withdrawal, Lassen received a message via the clandestine radio at Abbot Chrysanthos’ monastery, warning him that a force of Italian Fascists had been installed on Symi. After their defeat at the hands of the British raiders, the Germans were reluctant to reoccupy the war-torn island. But they were happy to send in the Italians, who’d been offered a stark choice: either they would fight in Hitler’s cause, or be sent to the prison camps. The Italians had been ordered to keep a close watch on Symi, and especially on the rebellious islanders.

  Following the radio call from Abbot Chrysanthos, Lassen sailed back to Symi with his Irish Patrol, aiming to do what they did best – a snatch and grab raid. Striking by surprise in the darkness, Lassen and his men took eight Italians captive and blew up their radio station – the one through which the Italians were supposed to keep General von Kleemann, the German commander on Rhodes, acquainted with any developments on the island.

  The Italians had long suspected Abbot Chrysanthos of being in league with the British. The abbot knew that the Italians had him under surveillance, but still he kept his secret radio functioning, feeding intelligence back to the raider force. Following Lassen’s return, the Italians proceeded to take their revenge. They killed the abbot and his radio operator nephew, silencing the radio once and for all.

  When Lassen learned of this he asked permission from Jellicoe to launch a third raid. Permission granted he sailed to Symi, attacked an Italian artillery post at night, killing the officer in charge of it and several of his men. And so the spiral of attack and counter-attack, revenge and counter-revenge spun out of control, as unrest spread across the Aegean as far as the Greek mainland.

  In a repeat of the atrocities following the Kastelli and Heraklion raids, civilian resistance was brutally suppressed, German tanks steamrollering houses, their occupants crushed under their tracks. In one town, Kalavrita, on mainland Greece – long a focal point of guerrilla activity – the Germans executed every male above the age of fifteen. They were marched onto a field on the outskirts of the village and machine-gunned. The dead amounted to some 700 – from grandfathers, to fathers and schoolboys.

  By now Jellicoe’s raiders had been fighting in Greek territory, alongside Greek partisans, and sheltered by Greek civilians, for six months or more. Most, like Lassen and Stud Stellin, had learned to speak more than a smattering of Greek. To many, it was becoming like a second language – mispronounced and bastardized but understood nonetheless. The mutual respect and affection between raiders and islanders kept growing.

  Islanders and raiders shared much in common: a burning individualism; a tendency towards anarchic thoughts and actions; a certain raggedness of dress; an abiding disrespect for mindless authority; an innate affinity with the underdog; an in-born toughness and physical endurance; an incurable love of the black market.

  Raiders and islanders had grown exceptionally close, Jellicoe’s fighting men risking their very survival to help the locals. Radio operator Jack Mann had been sent on a raid on the island of Chios, in the Aegean. He and a fellow raider had managed to trap a German E Boat by posing as Greek locals, and forcing the six-man crew to surrender. But dealing with the plight of t
he locals had proved harder than fighting the enemy.

  Mann had been called to a house crowded with civilians, where a nine-year-old-boy was said to be dying. ‘They asked if we had a doctor,’ Mann recalled.

  ‘We didn’t. But Fred said to me: “Zucky” – that was my nickname in the unit – “why don’t you see what you can do for him?” The islanders were literally starving to death before our eyes. I had some Vitamin C tablets, sugar and water, and I mixed up a rehydration solution for the boy. He’d hardly drunk it, when the colour came back to his face and he perked up mightily.

  ‘Then this massive queue formed outside, as everyone kept calling to me in Greek: “Doctor! Doctor! Doctor!” Of course, I had no medicines to speak of and no formal medical training. What could I do? We ended up giving them all the food we had. They were starving. Luckily, another patrol pulled into the island and we managed to get some supplies off them, otherwise we’d have starved ourselves!’

  As news of German atrocities reached their ears, Jellicoe’s raiders – Lassen, Stud Stellin, Nicholson and O’Reilly first and foremost – thirsted for vengeance. Thankfully, across the Dodecanese island chain they were about to return to what they did best – butcher-and-bolt raids. Holding territory as they had tried to do on Symi and the other islands really didn’t play to their strengths.

  By means of hit-and-run attacks they could strike terror into the hearts of those they most wanted to terrorize – the German commanders. But first, they would need to regroup, and replace those men lost to death and injury. Then they would need to find a secret pirate base – somewhere in neutral waters – from which to launch the coming attacks.