England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  Unlike his brother, who had served in France, Peter Reynier had not seen action before he got to Madagascar and this second morning was certainly noisier than the first. The battalion had breakfasted at 2 a.m. and spent the last hours of darkness edging closer to the Joffre line. By zero hour they were already forward of the line’s anti-tank ditch and awaiting the end of the air strike. It looked impressive enough; the pilots were so low it was hard to believe the French could miss them, but when they got up to advance it did not seem to have reduced by one iota the amount of artillery and machine-gun fire coming their way. ‘Further, the defences remained undisturbed by any intervention from the rear by the South Lancashires,’ notes the regimental history. ‘Casualties mounted rapidly.’

  For a short while the Scots Fusiliers’ 3-inch mortars set up 200 yards behind the anti-tank ditch hit back and they thought they had scored a direct hit on one machine-gun post. But they rapidly ran out of its heavy ammunition, all of which had to be hand carried, and the officer in charge died trying to replenish it. Stuck between the anti-tank ditch and the Joffre line, it seemed that the Scots had walked into their own little Somme. There was scant cover and most of those nearest the Vichy defences crawled into shell holes where they were pinned down. Half a dozen men under D Company’s Sergeant Knox would remain in one for sixteen increasingly thirsty hours. ‘We tried several times to get out but the snipers were too hot for us so we waited until darkness.’

  Reynier and his platoon seem to have been in a similar position though perhaps even closer, for they were almost in striking distance of a loopholed concrete emplacement in a sector of the line the French called Rue Placers. It was still not long after first light when Reynier decided there was a good chance he could open the way for his men to rush it. Armed with mills grenades and his revolver, and using every dusty shrub and dent in the ground he could find, he belly-crawled patiently towards it. Gripped tightly in his right hand was the spring-loaded safety lever of a mills bomb, the safety pin already removed.

  In overall command of his target, which consisted of riflemen and a 75mm gun behind sandbags on the roof with a section of machine gunners inside, was Lieutenant Bande of the 3rd Company, 2 Régiment mixte malgache. Reynier had got within 20 yards of it when one of Bande’s roof lookouts spotted him and squeezed off a shot which hit him in the side of his mouth. Springing to his feet, Reynier dashed forward and received a second bullet wound in the left arm just as he threw his grenade with great accuracy at one of the loopholes of the pill box. It came straight back.

  Fortunately for its occupants, and perhaps even with this eventuality in mind, they had left their anti-scorpion mesh in place. The grenade exploded close enough to Reynier to leave him stunned and bleeding copiously from head and other wounds. And there he might have bled to death if Bande and a couple of his men had not risked leaving their cover to drag their fallen enemy inside and set to work with field dressings. Bande, a regular soldier, was so impressed by Reynier’s courage and delighted to discover he was half French that, at his first opportunity, he sent a letter about it to Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Armstrong, the lieutenant’s commanding officer. Armstrong appended it to his successful recommendation for a Military Cross, a rare occasion when the most relevant part of a gallantry citation came from the enemy.

  ‘He told us, and it is certainly the truth,’ wrote Bande, ‘that he had wanted to carry out an assault on the gun and open a path for your men. That action is one of a brave man. I believe I can tell you that, for you can be sure that the French can pick one out.’

  Certainly, thanks to Maréchal Joffre’s prescient planning, the French could fairly claim to be facing fearful odds with unbowed heroism. If it was allowed to go on much longer there was a danger it would eclipse the considerable British naval achievement of bringing so much so far with so little fuss.

  The East Lancs had fared no better than the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Lieutenant Brian Wood, a platoon commander in C Company, found himself advancing over ground that was ‘flat and open with only a few straggly bushes’. They passed by some dead oxen and a smashed truck containing corpses. Then a shell wounded five of his men, the most seriously a private who had a grenade detonated in one of his pouches ‘blowing away most of his right elbow and side’. When their carrier platoon went forward to support them with some extra Bren-gun fire they travelled over the same stretch of road Simon’s tanks had used with the same result. Three out of eight carriers returned, though some of the four-man crews, often wounded, straggled back on foot.

  Nor did they find it any safer in the brigade HQ area in La Scama village where Lieutenant Wood and the rest of his company had been ordered to retire.

  Our position was most unhealthy. We were collecting all the ricochets and overs fired at the forward companies, as well as direct sniping and machine-gun fire which zipped through the bushes a few feet over our heads. The cry of ‘stretcher bearer’ here and ‘stretcher bearer’ there began with monotonous regularity and the stretcher bearers never hesitated. Who would be next on their list? One buried one’s face towards the ground and, in a lull, turned on one’s side or back and dozed or smoked.

  Doing their best to give the French some of their own back was Bombardier Bailey and the other gunners of 455’s Light Battery. Their neat little 3.7-inch pack howitzers, an accurate gun popular with the British Indian Army for keeping Waziristan in order, had been unlimbered by the meat canning factory and there was a brief period when they seemed to have quietened the French down. Then suddenly the .75s were onto them and two of their signallers became the battery’s first casualties, killed as they tried to get an abandoned Peugeot started.

  The gunners, like everybody else, were desperately short of wheeled transport. Force Eight winds continued to delay its unloading and among the late deliveries were 455’s two 25-pounders and their towing tractors, which were heavier than the pack howitzers and fired a shell almost three times as big. Twelve more 25-pounders, a battery attached to 17th Infantry Brigade which was beginning to come ashore, should have been up with them but HMS Bachaquero, a converted Lake Maracaibo tanker, had had enormous difficulties landing them.

  Bachaquero was supposed to be one of those innovations that would make all the difference but she had proved a great disappointment. She had been designed and operated by a British company that needed a tanker that could transport oil from the Venezuelan salt lake over a sand bar to the South Atlantic’s oil terminal on Aruba Island. Her shallow draught and sturdy nether parts proved irresistible to the Royal Navy who requisitioned her and two sister ships. A Clyde shipyard had fitted bow doors and a ramp and turned the Bachaquero into the world’s first Landing Craft Tank.

  Because even the Valentines were light enough to load onto an ordinary infantry landing craft, for her debut it had been decided that instead of tanks the former oil shuttle would carry the guns plus fifty-four vehicles for various units including the battery’s towing tractors. But when the great moment arrived for the Bachaquero to deliberately run her strengthened bows aground, open her vast doors and watch her cargo drive away with a menacing growl it had taken an entire awful day.

  Admittedly, an uncharted reef and uncleared mines meant that over three hours were wasted trying to land on the 29th Brigade’s beach at Baie Ambararata before, at her top speed of 8 knots, the ship chugged round to neighbouring Courrier, where 5 Commando had landed. There she made repeated attempts to get far enough up the beach to land her cargo. Eventually two of the guns with their tractors were tugged and pushed onto dry land by gunners of 19 Field Battery, some of whom nearly drowned doing it. Then at dusk, on a rising tide and two guns lighter, her captain made one last attempt and the Bachaquero was finally beached in water sufficiently shallow to disgorge totally.

  The guns should now have been rushed up to the La Scama front and would have been had it been possible in the dark to find a way over rough ground that would connect them to the road there. In the end, they did the next best thing and
followed the Commandos’ route to Diego Suarez and onto the Andrakaka peninsula from where, shooting across the water, the Joffre line was well within range. It was not ideal because they had nobody to tell them where their shot was falling but it was better than nothing. There was one more delay. On the way there the sloop D’Entrecasteaux, which was lurking in a cove after a second air attack had failed to finish her off, took a few pot shots at them as they drove by, killing one man and wounding several more. Eventually, they were ready to contribute at about the time the British had concluded that the attack had failed and were calling it off.

  Major General Sturges, unhappy Gallipoli veteran full of foreboding, turned up at Brigadier Festing’s headquarters at 7 a.m. and his worst fears were confirmed.

  It was quite clear the attack had failed. The only artillery, 455 Light Battery, was withdrawing. It would have been folly to have done anything else. Isolated infantry were creeping back with their rifles pointing in all directions. The whole of 29 Brigade was deployed or being deployed, and with the disappearance of many of the leading troops in the dawn attack, assumed to be casualties, units were considerably under strength. A good deal of most irritating enemy sniping and unaimed rifle fire was going on. To this was added shelling from .75s which was a good deal more terrifying than effective. The shelling set fire to the bush … These fierce and rapidly spreading bush fires caused no serious casualties but resulted in serious confusion and loss of equipment. Very little artillery had as yet come into action owing to the failure of the Bachaquero; and what there was in action, had great difficulty in obtaining observation.

  At La Scama Captain Hector Emerton, 29th Brigade’s Royal Artillery spotter for naval fire support, was on the top floor of the canning factory where management kept offices with panoramic views. Below him 455 Light were beginning to pull out. For a while he had been in the ludicrous position of having no communication whatsoever with these gunners, who were practically in hailing distance, while trying to keep in contact with ships whose guns were now out of range. With his field glasses he could spot the smoke and sometimes the muzzle flash of the French artillery which he estimated at less than 2,000 yards. It was an ideal observation post, though at a price. ‘The trouble was, it was the only two-storey building in the area and an obvious place to site an OP. Consequently, I was intermittently shelled. At one time, while I was in occupation of an upstairs room, a shell landed downstairs. I went to the aid of a soldier who had been grievously wounded but he died in my arms.’

  There was no doubt that for the moment the British were outgunned and even the navy could not help. The Joffre line was a good 20 miles from the west coast. This made it out of the question for the Ramillies to join in the bombardment with her 15-inchers because she did not have a shallow enough draught to get in range. The same applied to the cruisers with their 8- and 6-inch guns. Only the destroyers could navigate the shoals and get close enough to fire with their 4.7-inch guns.

  Emerton had started off with the eight 8-inch guns of the county class cruiser HMS Devonshire at his disposal, which would have made a devastating contribution had the enemy been obliged to make his stand closer to the west coast. Now he had to share the destroyer HMS Laforey with Bill Knight, brother Royal Artillery officer who had gone ashore with the Commandos at Courrier Bay. Knight and the Laforey worked well together. That second morning ashore, following D’Entrecasteaux’s surprise attack on the artillery convoy from the Bachaquero, he had directed the blind fire over an isthmus, which left the defiant sloop beached and burning with most of the survivors captured by Commandos.

  But calling in fire on a ship close to shore was an easy target, especially when you were not under fire yourself. From his precarious post, almost staring into the cannon’s mouth, Emerton could only hope that he got the French artillery before they got him. As it turned out, it seems neither side achieved anything that could be counted as conclusive, though the observation officer was lucky to get out in one piece. Later in the day the Fleet Air Arm reluctantly, because they preferred a more offensive role, provided the destroyers with Swordfish spotters and this was more effective.

  Yet considering the size of Rear Admiral Syfret’s fleet, the French must have been relieved not to find themselves under much greater bombardment. The main reason for this was Prince of Wales syndrome. After the loss of Britain’s best battleship and the Repulse off the Malayan coast there was a great reluctance to risk capital ships. Syfret could have sent his big guns around to the east coast, where they would have been easily in range of the Joffre line, but he feared they would be easy meat for the coastal batteries protecting the entrance to the main anchorage there. So far he had risked only one ship on that coast when the cruiser Hermione, famous for having once rammed and sunk an Italian submarine, had staged a D-Day diversion, and that well south of the coastal guns in question. But now Syfret was going to take a bit of a chance though, in one of those awful calculations admirals and generals have to make, he had already decided that the men and the ship involved were expendable.

  In the early afternoon of 6 May Major General Sturges, having endured a bone-rattling Bren-gun carrier ride back to the beach from La Scama then a soaking in a landing craft in a choppy sea, was welcomed by Syfret aboard his flagship Ramillies. According to his host, who had just finished his lunch, Sturges looked: ‘Hot, begrimed and unhappy. Things were not going well.’

  Sturges was not quite as down as he looked. He had a new plan. On his way back the road had been full of fresh-looking troops, some of them wearing solar topees instead of steel helmets and marching to the sound of pipes. These were Brigadier Rupert Tarleton’s newly landed 17th Brigade: 6th Seaforth Highlanders, 2nd Northamptons and another battalion, the 2nd, of Royal Scots Fusiliers. ‘New heart was put into everyone,’ recalled the weary Lieutenant Wood of the 2nd East Lancs. ‘What an effect they had on tired troops.’

  Since they had so few tanks or artillery Sturges had decided to make a virtue of a necessity. Between dusk and the rising of the almost full moon at 11 p.m. Tarleton’s brigade would make a surprise attack, what he called a ‘silent night advance and assault’. There would be no covering barrage to alert the enemy that they were coming. Just dark shapes edging nearer then a sudden rush of men at about the time the defenders should be settling down for the night. Sturges had calculated that ‘provided they could stick the heat, dust and sniping’ most of these reinforcements could reach the forward area by 6 p.m. ‘I ordered zero hour for 20.00 hours – later postponed until 2030 – and arranged for the maximum harassing fire from artillery and the air during the remainder of the day.’

  Now he had come to see Syfret, who as Combined Commander was his senior, to ask a favour. He wanted the navy to stage a diversion. Originally it been intended that 5 Commando, having captured Diego Suarez, would seize whatever small boats were available to cross the narrow strip of water and be hammering at Antsirane’s back door while 29th Brigade was kicking in the front. But Commando HQ had insisted that they could not find anything suitable. Patterson, the Commandos’ medical officer, was incensed. He knew that two serviceable boats had been located and blamed the alcoholism of their commanding officer – ‘too dithery from being without a drink for 12 hours’ – for their failure to act.

  When the facts came out the culprit was eventually sent home in disgrace, a rare thing in the British military where heavy drinking was often tolerated as a good man’s fault.* At the time all Sturges knew was that he needed another diversion and, being a Royal Marine himself, he turned to his own corps. ‘I wished to try and arrange for a destroyer to force the entrance of the harbour and land a party of Royal Marines in the dock area, thus making direct assault on the town from the rear. This, even if the destroyer was lost, would draw the enemy’s fire, create a diversion and give the main night attack the best possible chance of success.’

  Syfret immediately agreed to provide the destroyer HMS Anthony and fifty marines from the contingent aboard the Ramillies whe
re they helped to crew the 15-inch guns and provided the band which in action doubled as stretcher-bearers. But, as he later admitted, his outward show of enthusiasm disguised deep forebodings. He thought that Sturges’s hastily planned night attack against a strong position with troops exhausted from an 18-mile march in full kit, however fresh they were when they started, offered no more than a 10 per cent chance of a breakthrough. However, this had to be balanced against recent Japanese and German successes and the desperate need for the troops and ships under his command to be elsewhere. ‘Prolonged operations, which we so much wished to avoid, was the unpleasant alternative … The Anthony’s chance of success I assessed as about 50 per cent, my advisers thought 15 per cent and, of the Royal Marines, I did not expect a score to survive the night. The next few hours were not happy ones.’

  On top of these concerns was a nagging fear for the safety of his ships. Not only were two Vichy submarines still unaccounted for but intelligence reports indicated that Japanese U-boats based in newly captured Penang Island off the Malayan coast were moving towards the western half of the Indian Ocean. Then, in the course of the day there were developments, not always immediately known to the Combined Commander, that made the prognosis look a little less gloomy.

  First of all another battery of 25-pounder guns was found. They were the other half of 9 Field Regiment, the Royal Artillery unit attached to 17th Brigade. Instead of being shipped on the revolutionary roll-on-roll-off Bachaquero they had travelled on the troop ship Mahout with the expectation that they would be unloaded once Diego Suarez port was captured. But since there was a gun shortage, the sea was calmer, and somebody was feeling lucky, they had been lowered onto bobbing landing craft and brought into action at La Scama at about the time Sturges was boarding the Ramillies to request his diversion.