Commandos and Rangers of World War II

by James D. Ladd

  5. Paros—13/5 May—Capt Andy Lassen with 18 men made five coordinated attacks—a German officer was captured in his billet; a wireless post destroyed; but the three other targets could not be reached and the raiders were forced to withdraw.

  2. Khios—June—a landing by 40 British and Greek raiders reached Khios harbour overland after crossing the hills, the cable installations were destroyed paralysing the inter-island telephone system, 13 caiques were sunk and a boat building yard destroyed. The raiders had no casualties although 184 German garrisoned the harbour.

  6. Leros—17 June—successful anti-shipping raid by RMBPD damaged two destroyers and two other ships. The repairs to the destroyers took three months, enabling raiders to move more freely around the islands and in greater numbers for any one landing.

  8. Nisiro—July—Caique No.6, ‘a small blue tub’, landed a party who gathered intelligence on 90 Axis troops’ dispositions, food supplies, morale, shipping and reprisals after earlier raids. They evaded the German counter-espionage patrols and were helped by a local town mayor.

  9. Simi—13/4 July—224 raiders captured the local garrison and stripped defences in the first of a series of major raids, evacuating the island after distributing food.

  2. Khios (or Chios)—28 Sept—a permanent raiding HQ established.

  3. Samos—4 Oct—24 Greeks landed and were followed by Brig Turnbull with only 25 more raiders, but in a typical bluff he had used before on the islands: the local garrison were persuaded that a large force had landed. Some 1,200 prisoners were taken without the raiders suffering any casualties.

  1. Lemnos—16 Oct—an advance party of 75 raiders landed and with the help of bribes (gold sovereigns being a quieter persuader than force on occasions) reached the garrison port. Here they caused many casualties to Germans trying to escape by boat.

  1945

  11. Rhodes—1/2 May—180 raiders destroyed German camps and defences in a 6-hour raid. The next weeks the 10,000-strong garrison surrendered along with other Germans in the area.

  *Note: locations not shown on map.

  Early on Saturday (D + 1), reinforcements were brought in with three Troops of Pops Manners’ 40(RM) Commando, 300 partisans, and two more 25-pounders. Jack Churchill, known throughout the islands as Colonel Jack, had made a long reconnaissance before deciding that both Royal Marine Commandos should assault Hill 622, which was in part separated by the hill formations from the other positions. Points 542 and 648 north and south of the commando attack would be harassed by partisans, the attack going in at dusk. Artillery fire just before the assault would switch from 622 to the points being harassed by partisans. Once 622 was taken, the way into the whole defence system would be open but for Commando colonels, as for many other senior officers in the field, the best laid plans could founder on a chance mistake in a wireless message—one reason for the North Americans’ use of telephone lines.

  The orders for the commando attack went out by radio that Saturday on Brac, but for some unexplained reason they were received by the commando signallers as though ‘No.43(RM)’ alone would make the attack from the start line at 1930 hours. They got two Troops on the top of Point 622 by 2150 but were driven off, losing six officers and 60 men. The radio message of this failure, although probably sent, was never received by Colonel Jack. Earlier, Captain E.R. Wakefield, the Brigade GIII staff officer, whose responsibilities included distributing orders, was misled by his guide, and did not reach 40(RM) Commando with Colonel Jack until 15 minutes after the attack should have started. With their objective’s sharp features visible in the moonlight. Colonel Manners and Jack Churchill advanced in a different direction from ‘No.43(RM)’ across a wide shallow valley. Here they found B Troop of 43(RM) Commando who reported a mine field. Pressing forward, a fresh 10 rounds in each magazine, Y Troop of 40(RM) Commando came up the hill, bayonets fixed in a charge ‘as if they were at Achnacarry’—the training depot; Jack Churchill was in the van playing his bagpipes. B Troop (from ‘43’) attacked on the right. The Troops reached the summit and waited for the rest of ‘No.43(RM)’. The enemy’s fire was heavy, provoked no doubt by Jack Churchill’s two green Very lights signalling success, he did not know 43(RM) Commando were back in the valley. In this barrage of fire, Pops Manners was wounded, the signaller failed to raise the other Commando on his set even though he shifted his position for better reception, and soon there were only six men alive on the hill, including the wounded. A mortar bomb killed Captain Wakefield and two marines, and added to Pops Manners’s wounds. Almost immediately 20 Germans appeared, following in behind this fire, but were driven off by Colonel Jack’s revolver shots. In the waning moonlight he played ‘Will ye no come back again?’ but 43(RM) Commando were too far away to hear this piped call over the German bombardment echoing round the crags. The tune was not repeated as a flurry of grenades knocked out Jack Churchill. Two further attacks by ‘No.43(RM)’ failed to restore the position.

  Brac Island—partisan and Commando operations, 1-3 June 1944 (D-day here 2 June).

  No.43(RM) were regrouped but could not dislodge the Germans. Pops Manners died next morning while a prisoner of the Germans; Jack Churchill was flown to Germany, and despite a gallant watch by Royal Navy MGBs inside Supetar harbour all that night, the commando prisoners were taken off the island. Next day, 50 men of 2 Commando formed a fighting rearguard as the rest of the Brigade having lost 143 men, re-embarked, leaving 15 commandos on the island to look for survivors.

  Although the raid had been a tactical failure it achieved its strategic aim: the Germans reinforced Brac. After Major Edward Fynn succeeded Jack Churchill, Tito visited Viz and addressed 2 Commando, thanking them for their help to his people. Nevertheless, relationships between the allies were difficult, for the partisans resented the commandos’ view of themselves as better-trained soldiers, and there were misunderstandings over the need for the meticulous planning that the Brigade put into any raid. For the rest of the summer, commando standing patrols of about 30 men were put on various islands, and some further raids were made. In July, Edward Fynn landed in Albania near Himara with 700 men—2 Commando, plus elements of the Special Raiding Squadron, medical teams and a few other specialists. The Raider Support Regiment with batteries of mountain and other guns supported the commandos (see also Appendix 2). Brief details of their actions over the next few months are shown in the unit histories in Appendix 7.

  Although there are arguments for saying that any well-trained regiments might have performed these raiding roles on land, there is little doubt that the special nature of amphibious raiding needed more specialised training than could be given to every regular unit, a point considered in the final chapter. However, in many senses the Special Forces were the epitome of good regiments, for many of these units were represented in the ranks of the Commandos and Ranger Battalions. They had also developed, by 1945, an ability to discipline their independent actions in a way that made them invaluable elements in divisions and sometimes in army set-piece battles. Moving ahead of the chronological development of their story, the attack by 2 (Commando) Brigade on the right flank of the British Eighth Army in the complex of lagoons and canals where the river Reno and Lack Comacchio run by the sea at the east end of the Po valley, illustrates this.

  Ronnie Tod had taken over the Brigade, and for six weeks in the early spring of 1945 they were in the line to gain experience of the Germans’ fighting techniques. These men of Field-Marshal Kesselring’s armies had put up a year’s stubborn resistance before falling back to a line along the Po valley. At the extreme left of this line they held a spit of land separating Lake Comacchio, a shallow lagoon, from the Adriatic. Along this spit were a series of strong-points manned mostly by Turkomans, Russians from Soviet Asia Minor, stiffened with a fusilier battalion of the 42 Jäger Division—1,200 men in all.

  The 2 Commando Brigade—renamed as were all brigades from Special Service because its abbreviated SS had infamous German associations—were to attack these positions with
four enveloping drives.

  Their boats had to be heaved even further out than their 1,000 yards (.9km) start line before there was sufficient water to use the outboard, and others ran into shallows, the commandos slipping and sweating to get them over a mile (1.6km) of glutinous mud. 2 and 9 Commandos became intermingled in these hours of unpleasant exertion—stronger words were used at the time—before the boats were back in deeper water, by which time there were not many hours of darkness left. But Ronnie Tod decided there was no point in deferring the attack, for the conditions would not change and the guns were neutralising the enemy strongpoints. Shouted orders passed this decision across the water from one boat to the next. 2 Commando then lashed their storm boats in groups of four, with four lines of 9-man assault boats behind each group as the LVTs were bogged down. All four outboards had to be started together in each group for there were no clutch controls and once going each raft of storm boats surged forward. Crossing the expanse of lake, some rafts reached the COPPists’ markers, although other boats spread across the waters unable to get many shore bearings because the surroundings were featurelessly flat.

  Some rafts reached the Argine dyke as ‘No.40(RM)’s attack went in. This feint worked. No enemy countered 2 Commando, probably because they were at his back door and all defences pointed seaward or to the south. Getting over the dyke at 0447 hours, No.1 Troop, the Heavy Weapons Troop, and HQ sections dragged the heavy storm boats through a gap and transhipped their stores and ammunition to some assault boats, before paddling them 600 yards (540m) to the start line for the final assault on the bridges. They had 200 yards more of slime to struggle through, but this most difficult of approaches caught the enemy unawares. Using their lifebuoy portable flame-throwers (see Appendix 3) to flame a strongpoint, the Troops established a bridgehead were a third Troop joined them.

  Lake Comacchio operation by 2 Commando Brigade, 1 April 1945.

  Artillery fire against the southern base of the spit was so heavy that the smoke mingled with the mist, giving 9 Commando some cover as they came ashore to find a mixture of ‘soft yielding fluid which could engulf a man completely, and a glutinous mud’. Struggling through this they reached Isaiah strongpoint (the biblical names of key points are shown on the above diagram). 43(RM) Commando captured Joshua on the strip of land between the sea and the river, and crossed the river against some opposition as they launched their assault boats before establishing a bridgehead on the north bank. 2 Commando advanced down the narrow enbankment above the inundated fields to take Peter bridge, but Amos was blown. Some of the ‘lost’ Troops from 2 Commando joined those of ‘No.9’ to take Ezra and Leciticus on the western side of the spit.

  Next afternoon—2 April—the Brigade advanced north, supported by tanks brought across the repaired Amos bridge. 2 Commando was on the left, and on the right ‘No.43(RM)’ moved steadily forward, skirting a large minefield before driving some enemy rearguards from houses in Scaglioca. Beyond this small town was bare ground stretching to the enemy defences of the Valetta canal. C Troop was pinned down as they led the advance across these open spaces, but Corporal Tom Hunter managed to reach a dyke from where he took on three Spandaus. Firing his bren from the hip, he ran 200 yards, driving these gunners from their positions in some houses. They took up new positions while he continued to fire at them, and now they were supported by six Spandaus in positions on the canal bank. However, although he was lying on an exposed mound of rubble, Tom Hunter’s fire enabled C Troop to extricate themselves before he was killed outright, his self-sacrifice in saving the Troop being recognised by the award of the VC. The Brigade consolidated their positions that night 400 yards (360m) south of the Valetta canal and were relieved on the night of 4 April.

  Four islands on lake Comacchio were captured by Special Boat Section patrols during the following week, and about midnight on 8 April Major Anders (Andy) Lassen led three patrols on a diversion raid from one of these islands—Caldirolo. The aim was to create an impression of large forces moving against Comacchio through a landing on the embankment road some 3,000 yards (2.7km) from the town, and after rowing across the lake—the gentle breeze rustling the reeds to cover the approach—two patrols landed. They were challenged when they had gone 500 yards (.5km) and answering in Italian that they were fishermen, Fred Green was called forward by two men in an outpost. He stepped into the middle of the 15-foot (3m) ribbon of road and shots were fired, the commandos taking cover over the edge of the embankment a few feet above the flood waters. Andy Lassen worked his way to a strongpoint behind the listening post where they were challenged, throwing a couple of grenades they cleared the four machine gunners from this pillbox but were under fire from further along the road. Little was known of the layout of these defences as there had been no time for adequate reconnaissance, but the raiders could make out at least two more strong points and a firing position away to the left of the road. These kept up a steady fire while Andy Lassen led the men to clear a second machine gun position and on towards a third. They had taken a couple of Russians prisoner and when someone shouted ‘Kamerad’ Andy Lassen moved to the entrance of the third post. He was fatally wounded in a burst of fire. His last words to Sergeant-Major Leslie Stephenson were ‘Steve … try and get the others out’.

  Andy Lassen had raided across the Channel in 1942, in the Mediterranean in 1944 and the range of SBS experiences could be encapsulated in his war service. This brave Dane was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions near Comacchio as he had thrown three grenades despite his wounds, enabling his men to get clear of the road. His body was found there next day by Italian partisans. Three other raiders were killed and one seriously wounded, but after they got back to Caldirolo the survivors were later told that the Germans had reinforced the town’s defences after the raid. This redeployment contributed to the Allied break-through further west on the Italian front in the following week.

  These operations in Italy and the Balkans give some measure of the Special Forces’ military skills and high standards of leadership, achieved initially through the enthusiasm of volunteers and honed to a fighting efficiency by rigorous training; training that taught them not only the fundamentals of light infantry tactics, but also—for some—the use of highly specialised equipment like the midget submarines the COPPists used in north-west Europe.

  THE UNITED KINGDOM HOME FRONT, 1943 TO 1944

  The year 1942 has been a watershed of Allied fortunes: the Americans landed on Guadalcanal; the desert army won the battle of El Alamein and the Allies landed in North Africa; the Russians had encircled the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad where they would surrender the following February. These victories and a lessening of the German air raids—52,000 civilians had been killed and 63,000 severely injured in these bombings—gave the British a glimpse of final triumph, and spurred on their total effort that had mobilised civilian and service forces alike, with rationing of food and clothing, direction of labour for men and women sent to essential jobs, and factory production controlled by the Government.

  The British had survived the first three years of the war through their Royal Air Force’s victories in 1940, because the waters of the English Channel were an historic moat against invasion, through the support of the Commonwealth and supplies from America, and as a result of the British determination not to be beaten—the spirit of the people. They made welcome any Allies, providing, for example, nearly a third of all the supplies required by American forces in Europe, except those in Italy, and by May 1944 some one and a half million Americans had crossed the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. The British also supplied and maintained Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Frenchmen, Norwegians, Poles, Czechs, Dutch, and Belgians as well as smaller numbers of Danes, Free Hungarians, and other allies.

  In this great camp that was Britian of 1943 and 1944, commandos and rangers lived and loved as others did in the uncertainties of wartime—some married their wartime sweethearts, some found reason not to mention they would be gone by tomorrow�
�s tide; only very few traded on their glory, despite the hero-worship of most civilians and some jealousy from regular formations.

  CHAPTER 10

  Reorganisation and

  Strategy

  The corner-stones of the Special Forces’ success were a high standard of selection and meticulous training. Some indication of the qualities sought in volunteers were given in a circular sent by MO9 to British regiments in June 1940:

  ‘ … able to swim, immune from sea and air sickness, able to drive motor vehicles … with courage, physical endurance, initiative and resource, activity (being active), marksmanship, self-reliance, and an aggressive spirit towards the war … and must become expert in military use of scouting … to stalk … to report everything taking place … to move across any type of country by day or night, silently and unseen … and to live off the country for considerable periods.’

  There are many stories, several no doubt apocryphal, about the selection of commandos and rangers who volunteered. Some were interviewed naked to satisfy an interviewer that they had the right physique and ‘moral and mental attitudes for a commando’. One 1940s rumour—true or false the story enhanced the commando legend—put a bowl of eggs on the interviewer’s table and describes his displeasure if the volunteer had snitched not more than one by the end of the 10 minutes of questions. Typically these were about the volunteer’s interests in sports, in playing musical instruments (with beach survey instruments in mind), and his sex life. Was he a Boy Scout? This last was not a question of comparative morals, but Scouts had many qualities as practised observers with a knowledge of field craft that was more important than muscle in Special Forces’ work. Some Ranger volunteers were asked ‘Have you ever killed a man?’ which gave at least one of them some moments thought about the role of the new outfit. Did he think he could ‘stick a knife in a man … and twist it?’ Although the mere thought of using a knife repelled him, he answered that he thought he could do so in battle. Within a year he had done so. For him, like many Americans of German, Italian, or Japanese descent, there were added personal doubts—could he kill one of his father’s people? The answer was in the comradeship of a Ranger unit that proved stronger than more distant blood relationships.