Commandos and Rangers of World War II

by James D. Ladd

  Carrying Chamberlain and with Stuart Chant limping, his team followed Donald Roy’s assault, reaching the pump-house and ignoring the Germans who fled. The commandos blew in its steel door, and, leaving Chamberlain, who could hardly help himself along, to guard it, they ran down the long stairway to the pumps 40 feet below. Their torches barely penetrated the gloom, but they could have laid the charges by feel in complete darkness: all their training was paying off. The charges, linked by two rings of cordtex, were set to fire and the squad ran for cover clear of the building. Captain R. K. Montgomery RE—an old friend of Bill Pritchard and like him a coordinator of demolition squads in the raid—moved them further away. The windows of the pump-house blew out with a roar of debris and crashing concrete blocks, one falling where they had first taken cover. Inside the pump-house there was little more to do, but they smashed the transformer oil pipes with sledgehammers and threw down some tar baby incendiaries. Christopher Smalley’s men had already destroyed the great wheels in the winding-house. As these squads withdrew, Montgomery threw an incendiary into a shed, sending it up ‘in a colossal sheet of continuous flame’.

  The three squads making for the northern caisson, including Bob Burtenshaw’s men who were not needed at the southern caisson, were less fortunate. Corran Purdon and four corporals, including ‘Johnny’ Johnson, a Gordon Highlander of 12 Commando who carried through his task although severely wounded before leaving the destroyer, made for the northern winding-house (‘A’ on diagram). They were closely followed by Gerard Brett with a largely Irish squad from 12 Commando. The giant Bob Burtenshaw, sporting a borrowed naval cap (Commander Beattie’s), swung his walking-stick, his monocle firmly in place, unconcerned by the frenzy of gunfire as they came over the destroyer’s bows. He hummed softly ‘There’ll always be an England’ and joked as he shifted the weight of his rucksack ‘as if on a walking holiday’. Moving along a dockside with its crane-tracks, bollards, and railway lines is no jaunt in daylight; at night the going can be grim.

  The tiny protection parties for these three squads were down to 10 men through casualties before landing, but they led the way, stifling small arms fire from near the burning Forge de l’Ouest, then clearing an enemy trench in a skirmish round a dockside crane. Padding behind them were the demolition squads, Corran Purdon’s men held for a tense few moments in the open when every second might draw more fire as they smashed the northern winding-hut door (‘A’). Inside they placed their charges and sledge-hammered the electric gear. All was ready for demolition, but in going to report this, the burly Corporal Chung was wounded, the two parties on the caisson being under heavy fire.

  Gerard Brett, wounded in both legs, had been dragged to the protection of a low wall before his team slipped across the caisson, killing two Germans who appeared out of the gloom on the east side. The hatch trap door into the caisson would not come open and fire was coming from all sides, including the north where three ships were moored beyond the caisson on the Penhouet Basin’s south quay. Burtenshaw took charge and 12 18lb (8kg) charges were lowered against the outside (north) underwater face of the caisson, the cords tied to the guard rail. Tarred timbers covered in grit-unlike the gates at Southampton—protected the caisson’s sides, and the men took some cover behind these timbers’ projections when the Penhouet ships opened accurate fire with their 20mm guns. No doubt these gunners had seen Sergeant Carr’s two further attempts to blow open the hatch. Bob Burtenshaw, realising they must at least silence the ships lying inside the dry-dock, south of the caisson, took several men with him along the wall, firing their pistols down into a tanker undergoing a refit. More effective was the rush by two of the protection squad firing their tommies as they ran down the ship’s steep gangplank. When Germans appeared on the west dockside, Bob Burtenshaw—still humming ‘There’ll always be an England …’ ran at them firing his pistol, despite his wounds. The Germans scattered, but the Lieutenant and a corporal were killed. Sergeant Carr—a tall regular Royal Engineer—went back along the caisson, found the hatch still unopened, and decided the wreath of underwater charges at least must be blown. Coming back from this explosion he checked the damage—in the tradition of his Corps—and heard the gurgle of water flowing into the dry-dock.

  The machinery in the winding house was blown before the parties withdrew carrying Gerard Brett. All the possible demolitions north and south of the dry-dock were now complete, but attempts to damage the submarine basin’s southern lock had failed. Bill Pritchard, whom we left going ashore at the Old Mole with his demolition control party and Philip Walton’s demolition squad, protected by Tiger Watson’s men, moved into the Old Town in commando fashion: each party, indeed each man, when alone, moved towards the target without waiting for support. Bill Pritchard got within sight of the steel lattice bridge (‘D’) before heavy fire forced his corporals to take cover in a concrete hut. Pritchard and one corporal then nipped back across the open roadway to drop a 10lb charge between two tugs moored in the basin, and their dash back to the hut, a mere 60 yards or less from the approaching enemy, was achieved without mishap. They heard the muffled thud as the charge blew before they set off to see how others were faring on this southern lock.

  The three corporals left in the hut were told ‘to do what you can’ for no one had appeared to blow the bridge. Meanwhile Captain Bill Pritchard and his corporal—a Scots engineer apprentice, Mac, I.L. Maclagan—jogged silently down the lock’s east wall but found none of the expected demolitions at its gates. They heard the tramp of boots but saw no one, although the enemy appears to have marched boldly but sometimes indiscreetly into the area. There was no one at the pumping station in the Old Town, so the two of them headed back through the dockside streets to find out what was happening. Rounding a corner Bill Pritchard ran into a German. No shot was fired before Mac killed the rifleman with a tommy-gun burst, but the captain had been wounded, and his last order gasped through heavy breathing ‘ … report to HQ’ was followed by the lone corporal. Threading his way past the echoing warehouses, boarded shop fronts, and silent cafes, he returned to the concrete hut, only to find there the body of Philip Walton. Undeterred, Mac now made his way down the side of the now dangerous Old Town Place back to Colonel Newman’s headquarters.

  Watson’s party, with some of Walton’s squad, had fought a firefight around this place and had been forced northward between buildings on the basin wharf which was where their Colonel appeared. Cheerful, and unaware of the failures at the southern lock, he urged on young Watson, who steeled himself for another attempt at breaking through the place. However, before a further attack could be made they were told to withdraw, because the Colonel needed all his little force regrouped.

  Next day the Germans found that the one-time schoolmaster and lieutenant of 2 Commando Philip Walton, and maybe one of the corporals from Pritchard’s squad, had laid charges on the bridge, but this brave effort had been foiled by lethal fire at close range.

  Regrouping at the Colonel’s command post began around 0300 hours, 90 minutes after landing. On coming ashore Charles Newman had set up his headquarters near the bridge (‘G’) across the lock leading from the Entrance. Bumping into a German, the Colonel, with natural politeness, said ‘Sorry’ before the man surrendered and persuaded his mates to do the same. The Colonel then made his rounds of the southern parties while Bill Copland, landing from the destroyer, visited those to the north. But as they checked their tiny forces—a hundred or so ashore—the first German Stosstruppen, Thrust Troops, were moving into the docks over the bridges of the submarines’ basin’s southern lock (‘D’) at 0150 hours. There was more to come: about 5,000 troops and seamen were in the area, including the crews of the five minesweepers and four harbour defence boats and the technicians of the naval Works Companies Nos 2 and 4. The Stosstruppen of 703 and 705 naval flak battalions moved into the Old Town, while the Works Companies came towards the north caisson from both east and west.

  Troop Sergeant-Major Haines—landed from ML 6—reporte
d to Newman and early in the fight lay out in the open with a 2-inch (51mm) mortar firing on the guns across the submarine basin. When a ship shifted position to silence him, Sergeant-Major Haines drove it off with a bren gun! The Headquarters’ 38-set (see Appendix 5) could not contact Ryder on the MGB and Newman did not at first realise how few men were ashore. Donald Roy’s assault party joined him and John Roderick’s men came back, crossing a now silent Compbeltown’s bow. Chris Smalley had earlier come upon ML 2 alongside in the Entrance and scrambled aboard with his squad, but in trying to get her forward guns firing he was killed before she was afire and had to be abandoned about 0245 hours. Other commandos may have got ashore for—as mentioned earlier—some German guns were silenced beyond John Roderick’s objectives, but after landing no other commandos got away in the MLs.

  Crouching behind some railway trucks the commandos formed a tiny perimeter facing the Old landward side and around the buildings just south of the Entrance. They were being attacked on every side but the northward quay towards the destroyer. Newman and Copland walked to the edge of the entrance, a grenade silencing one post a mere 25 yards away; over the water the searchlight of the Mole could be seen beamed on the river. The entrance was an inferno of petrol fires as flames flared and flickered across the water, sending a black column of heavy smoke mixed with the MLs’ white smoke-screens slowly rolling north-west on the still night air above the wrecked boats. Most of the older searchlights were out now, and only the fires lit the quays and the gaunt dockside warehouses that echoed to the sharper burst of a tommy-gun’s fire and the sharper answering rent of a German Schmeisser’s more rapid fire. The Colonel checked with Bill Copland whether they should call it a day: ‘Certainly not’ was the Major’s assured reply, for all felt the confidence of success.

  Some two hours after landing they moved out of the perimeter in parties of 20 or so, with Michael Burn lopping in the van followed by Donald Roy with the strongly armed assault parties. Behind these came the demolition squads. Troop Sergeant Haines brought up the rear as the raiders moved towards the Old Entrance lock bridge (‘G’) but had first to swing north round the buildings on the east of the basin. In the next few minutes the small parties moved in quick spurts from the deep shadow of one warehouse to the next black patch of cover. Donald Roy led the way when contact was lost with Mike Burn, for in these dark moments a dash for cover could plunge men into enemy defences. One party supported another with covering fire as best they could. There were unexplained holdups, enemy strongpoints catching the leaders in heavy fire perhaps, or a few moments loss of direction as they probed forward. Sergeant-Major Haines was sent forward at one point and with Donald Roy got the column moving. Tiger Watson was wounded; Donald Roy killing his friend’s attacker, for this was a personal battle of man against man in the shadows, even though at the same time there was the impersonal hammer from machine-guns and 20mm cannons firing from beyond the basin and its locks. This more distant fire let up long enough, however, for the column to make its way beside the buildings on the east side of the basin. The German gunners no doubt feared firing on their own men in these warehouses.

  The Colonel at one point was firing his revolver over Donald Roy’s shoulder, and reaching the place they could see the bridge (‘D’) 70 yards off. ‘Away you go lads’ sent the leading squad dashing for the bridge literally under a hail of fire, for the startled Germans were shooting too high. Those minutes of fighting in the shadows had extended to an hour or more. But once over the bridge they met the first vehicles of a German column and the Commando force were scattered. They left the streets, making their way across gardens and by back ways into the town to hide in buildings. Most were captured: a few, with the inevitable brutality of war, were killed needlessly—one young soldier was shot as he surrendered, another, with his head between kilted knees, died with a knot of Germans looking on.

  Out on the river earlier in the battle, Commander Ryder had ordered the MGB back alongside Campbeltown and gone ashore with Leading Seaman Pike—an expert in German signals, part of the bluff—to make sure the destroyer was locked into the southern caisson, but he did not know how the battle was going ashore. He came away from the Old Entrance, having collected those of the destroyer’s crew not taken off by ML 6, and as Micky Wynn came up with his special MTB, Robert Ryder told him to fire the torpedoes at the outer lock gate in the Old Entrance. These time-fused torpedoes fired, Micky Wynn set off at 0230 for the sea down river, while Commander Ryder moved into midstream to check the position, coming between the wrecks—five MLs were now blazing hulks—to within 250 yards (230m) of the Mole’s batteries as Able Seaman Savage and his mate, AB F.A. Smith, fired into the outer emplacement, silencing its 20mm gun. However, the Mole was still held by Germans, and moving back to the Old Entrance Bob Ryder saw that somebody—a party from an ML? Germans?—had manned Campbeltown’s oerlikons and was firing across the entrance. The MGB’s decks and meagre cabin spaces were covered with wounded, many being hit for a second and third time, and so the Commander decided the MGB must withdraw, although he was reluctant to leave.

  There were six miles of gauntlet to run before reaching the open sea, and some damaged craft limped through this passage while others were still able to set off at some speed, making smoke cover with their special equipment. Micky Wynn used all his 3,000hp to make over 40 knots (75kph) until, with a neat piece of boat handling, he stopped alongside two men on a Carley float life-raft. This few seconds’ pause was all the German gunners needed to set MTB 74 on fire. ML 6, caught in a searchlight, was also hit and afire, and survivors from the two craft drifted down river on rafts, many of them badly wounded—Micky Wynn had lost an eye and been rescued unconscious from the MTB’s charthouse. Later that Saturday afternoon, about 1400 hours, three of them, including Micky Wynn, were picked up by German patrol boats; a fourth man, Able Seaman Len Denison, swam to a concrete pile in the river. They were the only survivors from the 36 aboard the MTB and ML 6.

  ML 14 which had not landed her commandos because their leader and the boat’s skipper were both badly wounded, was one of the last boats to reach the Old Mole. A little after 0530 hours she was 45 miles (75km) from the estuary, when she crossed the tracks of the Wolfe-Möwe destroyers, sent out earlier that night to sweep for mines that the Germans thought had been laid by the British force. The first two passed the ML in the dark but Jaguar came to investigate, snapping on her searchlight as she closed on the ML in the start of an hour-long ship-to-ship fight. The ships struck in a glancing blow that rolled some men off the ML’s deck, and on the next pass the small destroyer came within 100 yards, firing two of her three 105mm (4.1in) guns and her 20mm guns into the ML Sergeant Tom Durrant, Royal Engineers and 1 Commando, was badly wounded in the first exchange of fire as the ML’s commandos and naval crew brought their light weapons to bear on the German destroyer. When the gunner on the after twin-Lewis was killed. Tom Durrant took over although he already had several serious wounds, and he collapsed still firing these guns at the German destroyer on her third or fourth attempt to approach the ML. Before the wooden boat sank, however, her crew were taken off and treated with the utmost courtesy by Kapitän Leutnant F.K. Paul, who accepted the ML’s surrender: a tribute he paid to a gallant foe, and evidence if this is needed that chivalry is the prerogative of individuals, not nations. Tom Durrant died aboard the destroyer, honoured by his enemies as well as his friends.

  As the MGB came out of the river, Able Seaman Bill Savage was found dead at his gun before the boat reached her destroyer escorts waiting at sea. These had already had a brief clash with the German destroyers and now headed north with the MGB were MLs 5 and 15, but ML 15 had to be abandoned. Four other MLs reached England—ML 8 made the passage on one engine and MLs 6, 12 and 13 had some damage and casualties.

  About 1030 on Saturday morning, HMS Campbeltown’s warhead blew up, bursting the caisson: the river poured into the dry dock. There is no reason to believe any of the raiders were aboard at the time, although
two rumours have persisted through the years. The French believed there were British officers aboard, and others think someone came back to fire the explosive, for there was more than an hour’s delay on the set time. However, the only unauthorised visitors appear to have been souvenir hunters and men foraging among the stores. By 1030 all those with the knowledge to blow up the warhead were dead or prisoners. There seems every likelihood that faulty fuses caused the delay.

  Throughout the day the Germans were unusually jittery, and several French men and women were killed in mistake for commandos. But by Sunday night order was restored, although at least one German officer was shot at while driving through the town—probably by Germans of another unit. On Monday the docks were re-opened and the stevedores were at work when Micky Wynn’s first torpedo exploded at 1600 hours; an hour later the second one went off. French workman fleeing from the dock were fired on because the Germans thought this was an organised rising, the explosions coming so long after the raid that they took them to be the work of the Free French Resistance Movement and threatened reprisals if the ‘revolt’ did not stop. There is little doubt that some Frenchmen fired on Germans during the raid and afterwards, although on this occasion no hostages were shot. Nevertheless, already 16 French were dead including a child of five and a man of 76.

  In addition to this price for their success, the Allies had lost 169 raiders killed and about 200 taken prisoner. Comparisons in blood are an inadequate measure of courage or military achievement, but these raiders’ losses were a far greater proportion of their force—369 from 611 army and naval personnel—than were lost in the World War I blocking of Zeebrugge when 195 men were killed from a force of 1,784.[*] But whereas the submarine pens were re-opened within four days in 1918, after the St Nazaire raid this dry-dock was not repaired until the 1950s—one reason perhaps why the British were not popular with all the townsfolk for many years afterwards.