Commandos and Rangers of World War II

by James D. Ladd

  General Truscott’s forces—the 504 Parachute Regiment on the 4th Ranger’s right, the 7 Infantry Regiment on the left—put in their planned dawn attacks but were unable to break through. As the daylight became brighter these assaults, like those of the 4th Rangers, became costly in casualties. Bill Darby’s headquarters, forward with the 4th Battalion, was straddled by mortars and several men including Major Bill Martin, the executive or senior staff officer, were killed. An American tank attack down the road came to nothing when two tanks were lost on mines and others became bogged down in fields on either side of the road. The 4.2 inch (107mm) mortars could not fire accurately as their base-plates slewed in soft ground, whereas the German tanks and mortars moving against the isolated Rangers in the hills, were on firmer ground. In the morning mist, one of their tank columns coming from the direction of the beachhead was mistaken for an American force and had overrun several ranger positions before the 1st and 3rd repulsed it. The CO—Major Alvah Miller—of the 3rd Rangers was killed and Major Jack Dobson was seriously wounded leading the 1st Rangers.

  About midday German tanks overran these Rangers and Bill Darby received their last radio messages. Some fought on into the evening, but only two in five survived and were marched through Rome as prisoners. Bill Darby, his grief apparent, asked his staff for a few moments on his own, but in minutes he was re-forming what units were left, the 4th Battalion having taken 50 per cent casualties. Subsequent interrogation of German prisoners showed ‘our attack on Cisterna was expected … and a parachute regiment … moved to defensive positions south of the town’. Despite attacks from all sides, rangers had reached the railway station as early as 0800 hours before being captured.

  Although battalions could still be defeated by well-sited defences, the war by this winter of 1943-44 had become one of technology as much as of military tactics. The Kittyhawks called in at Termoli had weaponry that could stop a tank or at least some types of tank, although the mists around Cisterna had probably prevented any similar success aiding the Rangers. Control of Troops by radio had enabled 9 Commando’s colonel to smoothly change the battle plan on the Garigliano river, and the special forces were exploiting more unusual methods of warfare. Some of these are described in the Normandy landings of Chapter 11, and another is of particular interest for its attempts to combine the scientist’s analysis of a potential target for special forces and technology for the equipment they would need. Geoffrey Pyke, a scientist whose long face and pointed black beard appeared at many Combined Operations conferences, analysed European weather patterns and found a fourth element: snow. This covers 70 per cent of the continent’s land mass for more than four months of the year, and raiders with adequate vehicles could exploit this, destroying much of Norway’s and Italy’s hydro-electric power and the oilwells in Romania, forcing the Germans to defend normally inaccessible areas when these became potential raiding bases. The idea has much to commend it, but when the special snow vehicle, the Weasel, was developed it could be lifted only by the new Lancaster bombers and these had a priority for bomb loads; as yet the US C-54 was not in production. However, this carrier was built and used later not on snow, but despite its limited speed over water, in several amphibious landings and over swamps.

  The men for this special raiding outfit were not therefore dropped with their carriers but were the unique First Special Service Force, known as the North Americans. Recruited from Canadian and American woodsmen, lumberjacks, and explorers, they took many of their styles and titles from the North American Indian (see organisation and history Appendices 2 and 7). A highly mobile force with great fire-power, the North Americans although trained with carriers, were landed without their original complement of carriers in the Anzio beachhead on 1 February 1944. Their losses in previous actions had been heavy, but they had some of the most highly developed techniques for raiding in mixed forces of infantry and armour. The 68 officers and 1,165 men took up their positions on the right of the beachhead with a ratio of one man per 12 yards (11m) of their front along the Mussolini canal. The German plan, split into three phases, was to pinch out the British salient up the Albano road during the week 3-10 February, to drive back down this road to the sea between 16-20 February, and to attack on the Cisterna front, turning the canal defences by 2 March. The British on the left and the Americans in the centre took the brunt of these attacks and, although the British salient was punched back, the second and third German attacks were contained.

  Amphibious Weasel, the T15 prototype was modified as the M26 (M29 below). As the M28 several hundred were built with a better power-to-weight ratio and no propeller, relying on tracks for propulsion across water. The final design was a field-kit modification of the M29 carrier with bow and stern cells, a hinged rudder, and hinged side panels over the tracks controlling the flow of water to track blades of the M29C amphibian.

  For nearly four months, until 23 May, the North Americans were on the right-hand sector, and although they faced fewer sustained attacks than the British and Americans they were able to ease the pressure on other sectors by their active patrolling. They also showed great ingenuity in building up camouflaged breastwork defences where trenches could not be dug in wet ground. During the first two months, all major patrols were made at night from these defences, and even the small three-man daylight recces were a doubtful venture on the exposed ground in front of the North Americans. A considerable number of raids were made: ‘many officers and men making forty distinct patrols, with a few hardy souls, engaging in 75 patrols during the Force’s 100 days in the line. However, the casualty rate was high, and according to one report the Force’s ‘old bite had gone’, despite reinforcements from remnants of the 4th Rangers, among others, before the North Americans were relieved.

  A night patrol illustrates the technique and the fire-power of the North Americans and shows a little of the stress they were under in Anzio. Staff Sergeant Edwards, 4 Company 2 Regiment, with 12 men, was briefed by the battalion commander before 1400 hours, thus giving the Sergeant and the selected men time to have a look in daylight at the ground they would cover that night. On occasions patrol leaders were flown over their raiding areas, but usually they had to make what visual reconnaissance they could from the forward positions. The battalion made all the arrangements to pass them out and back through the lines, and the Sergeant would make a last check with headquarters before moving off, their faces so completely blackened with an oil pigment that the Germans reported ‘coloured troops … in close combat at the Mussolini canal’. For this particular raid, against a stone lock house, the patrol carried: a rucksack (RS) load of 21lb (9.5kg) blocks of explosive in handy packs; bazookas (2.37in) (see Appendix 3) designed for anti-tank fire but used by raiders for other purposes; two Johnston USMC light machine-guns; rifle grenades fired from a cup-discharger; the usual tommy-gun, rifles, and grenades. Sergeant Edwards, an American, had a runner with a walkie-talkie in contact with the outposts during the seven or more hours the fighting patrol was out. His six Americans and six Canadians went through the forward posts at 2200 hours, and moved in bright moon-light on a cloudless night along the track near the coast. When they were 100 yards from the stone lock house they were forced to ground under heavy machine-gun fire which they returned. Having hit the wall with their first shot, the Sergeant and the bazooka man worked close enough, under covering fire of the light machine-gun to get a rocket into the house through a window. As the patrol moved forward again they came into an uncharted minefield—not one in the intelligence reports—and a man was killed and two were wounded by anti-personnel mines. Unable to find a way through this minefield the Sergeant withdrew; the dead man was lashed to a plank and the wounded men were carried on a door over the four miles (6km) back to their own outposts. They had not, it seems, been close enough to place the RS charge, had nearly a 25 per cent casualty rate, and little more than an additional minefield to report. But they had wounded, if not killed several Germans and those left in the lock house would need reinf
orcements by the next night.

  Larger raids were mounted in platoon, company, and battalion strength, the force on average sending out three major raids a week. When the weather improved in April, raids were made with tanks brought forward before dawn, the noise of their movement drowned out by heavy shelling and aircraft flying overhead. Then, at first light, this armour—from the US 81st Reconnaissance Battalion and other American units—would go forward two to four miles (3-6km) with a Special Force foot patrol to capture prisoners, observe the enemy’s dispositions, and be back before his forces could take full counter-measures.

  In an offensive night patrol that February to ease the pressure on the British and the American sectors, Captain Adna H. Underhill led a raid in company strength. He took two platoons across 1,200 yards (1 + km) of flat terrain, moving forward behind an artillery barrage that allowed them to get into the outskirts of Sessuno. No more than 50 or 60 Germans defended this village, and as the braves—the original name for the North Americans’ soldiers—crossed the open ground they easily found the enemy’s machine-gun posts; they then moved inside the zone of enemy defensive fire, which did not come down until they were on the outskirts of the village. The reserve platoon followed the assault platoons and, with the company headquarters, stayed on the Allies’ side of the zone of Germans’ defensive fire which was coming down on a pre-ranged area between the village and the main Allied positions. They were in contact with their own artillery and mortars by a telephone landline which had been reeled out as the reserve platoon moved forward, this line providing a more certain and unmonitored link—despite breaks by shell-fire—than the radios they carried as a secondary communication network. It also helped the stretcher-bearers find their way back to the outpost on their own front, from which the raid was mounted, and although German troops might have tracked a patrol by following the wire, they never appear to have done so.

  Once in the village, Adna Underhill’s men cleared the houses, a job the special forces would do frequently now they were on the mainland of Europe. At Sessuno, the drill was not unlike the Vaagsö action more than two years earlier, but the bazooka was used rather than a mortar. A few rounds into a house, or more if it was stubbornly defended, and then fragmentation grenades (see Appendix 3) were tossed into the building by two men getting close to it as they were covered by fire from automatic weapons. The house-clearing party then dived through a door or window to clear a room at a time, sometimes mouseholing their way with explosives through the inside walls from one building to the next in the terrace of houses. Heavier support was also used at Sessuno, the artillery blasting each house before the clearing party attacked it, a difficult shoot in the dark when the gunners were probably firing initially on map-referenced targets of previously registered ranges, to the direction of the forward observation officer with the assault platoons. With this artillery help, the company’s 100 men held the village for four hours, fought off three counter-attacks, and retired under cover of another artillery barrage, having lost four men killed and eight wounded.

  After the Italian capitulation, an Allied occupation of Kos, Leros, and Samos was reversed in a few days when Germans recaptured these islands. Consequently, when operations began in the more northerly Adriatic during January 1944, the Allies knew they could not expect any easy victories. The broad pattern of events after 2 Commando reached Viz in January 1944 was the creation of a mixed force including regular army units and some anti-aircraft guns and 4-pounders in the 1,000-strong Force 133. Their job was to help the Yugoslav partisans hold the island, mostly bare stony hills and 18 miles (28km) long and eight miles (13km) wide. Only 18 miles across the water were German positions on Hvar island, and they were also on the coastal islands of Brac and Solta. The Germans there and on the mainland included the 118 Jäger Division of mountain troops, but Jack Churchill began raiding without delay. On 27 January he led three Troops of ‘No.2’, with 30 Americans of the Operations Group in an attack on the airport of Hvar, taking four prisoners whose interrogation, along with other intelligence, revealed the strength of the German positions. Jack Churchill then decided that bluff would have to fill gaps in his relatively small forces’ coverage of the many possible raiding targets supporting the partisans. Tom Churchill brought the Brigade HQ, along with ‘No.43(RM)’, to Viz late in February 1944, and ‘No.40(RM)’ joined them towards the end of May. The commandos had the help of destroyers, MTBs, and MGBs commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Morgan Giles RN, and a COPP for reconnaissance. A supernumerary extraordinary was also with them: the 72-year-old Admiral Sir Walter Cowan, who had contrived to be on the 1941 Bardia raid, and was later captured at Tobruk. Now, in 1944, his small but inexhaustible figure climbed with the commandos among the crags of this coast.

  The raiding policy succeeded for five months, but late in May German paras nearly captured Marshal Tito when they dropped near his Drvar headquarters in Central Bosnia and disrupted the partisan organisation. Tito asked his partisans on Viz to create a diversion, and a major raid was mounted by 6,000 men, including the Commando Brigade. The Germans had withdrawn their small garrisons from outlying islands, but had 1,200 men on Brac.

  Three separate raiding forces were to attack the island’s defences, and a fourth would take the observation post. The North Force and OP Force, named after their targets, landed on D-1 to lie up near their objectives. A few hours before the main landing on 2 June 1944, they were to cut off Supetar from Neresisce and eliminate the OP, hampering the battery’s fire on the assault ships. Both these groups—500 partisans in North Force and a company of the Highland Light Infantry with 20 partisans in the OP Force—got ashore and in position without being discovered. West Force consisting of 43(RM) Commando with the Heavy Weapons Troop, a rifle Troop of ‘No.40(RM)’, and 1,300 partisans, would come ashore over three beaches in the south-west of the island. Five miles to their east at Bol, the East Force of partisans would land with artillery to support the commandos—25-pounders of the 111th Regiment Royal Artillery and 75mm (3in) guns manned by partisans. Some of the 25-pounders would also support the East Force advance. Air support included rocket-firing Hurricanes over the island plus three US Air Force bomber raids on mainland targets.

  The North Force successfully cut the road south, but the Highlanders were unable to break through the OP’s minefield although they did prevent these German observers from directing the battery. This was attacked by RAF fighter-bombers at 0600 hours, on a bright clear morning, before ‘No.43(RM)’ and the partisans attacked it. The assault over open ground beyond the crags was repulsed because minefields prevented the raiders getting close to the enemy’s positions. East Force was more successful in taking Selca, and several guns, along with 100 prisoners, were captured; 130 Germans were killed. A joint attack from north and south planned for later that Friday, was not carried out as partisan casualties, probably, prevented them from providing the necessary men. However, they continued to engage the posts throughout the night.

  Commando operations in the Dodecanese and Greek islands, 1943/5.

  Examples of Raiding Forces Middle East operations by highly trained personnel—parachute canoeists and demolition experts—who were not regarded as expendable. Location numbers from 1 in north run to 11 in south:

  1943

  11. Rhodes—early Sept—Majors Lord Jellicoe and Dalby parachuted on to island despite anti-aircraft fire, but could not persuade Italians to resist German occupation although some Italians attempted an initial resistance.

  9. Simi—early Sept—Lt-Col (later Brig) Turnbull landed from captured Italian seaplane to negotiate surrender of nearby Rhodes, but Italians there handed over defences to the Germans.

  * Castelorizo—9 Sept—50 men of SBS occupied this small island as a base, after slight opposition from 300 Italians.

  7. Cos—mid-Sept—SBS prepared landing points for infantry but German counter thrust with paras and seaborne assaults on Sunday 3 Oct retook the island by 9 Oct.

  6. Leros—mid-Sept�
�LRDG prepared landing points for infantry, but a German counter thrust on 12 Nov recaptured the island in 4 days.

  3. Samos—mid-Sept—the Greek Sacred Squadron parachuted into the island but were driven off by larger German force. (The Sacred Squadron of Royalist officers was a revival of the Squadron killed to a man at Thebes resisting Spartans in 370 BC.)

  * Calymos—late Sept—base set up for island and anti-shipping raids, and for observation.

  1944

  10. Piscopi—9/13 Apr—10-man patrol landed by dory from ML, included Folbot team. The two canoeists were unable to get into Scala harbour, but the main force gathered intelligence after contacing the local Greeks and killed four Germans in an ambush.

  4. Mikonos (Lazaretto Bay)—22 Apr—recce patrol landed at night and next day attacked 8 Germans in fortified house in which the Germans made a stout resistance, until threats to fire the house led to their surrender and the capture of code books, documents and 6,000 gals of petrol. The fuel was distributed with food stocks to the islanders.

  3. Samos—May—40 Greeks of Sacred Regmt were probably betrayed, as they were ambushed but only 5 failed to escape eventually, most being picked up by RN at rendezvous during the three weeks after the raid.

  * Anti-shipping raids during this summer were made by raiders boarding caiques and when possible taking their prizes to Allied ports.