Commandos and Rangers of World War II

by James D. Ladd

  The training and planning for such raids entailed close cooperation with the Royal Navy’s coastal forces and some of their difficulties are made clear in a report of February 1943. The smaller MTBs could get within half a mile (800m) of enemy coasts but MTB 344 after almost six months raiding service began a four-week refit in January. The larger Class C MGBs could be seen on enemy radar scans and their slower speed meant they must be used in pairs for mutual protection off well defended coasts, precluding them altogether from the western side of the Cherbourg peninsula. When motorised dories were introduced the problems of bringing coastal forces craft inshore, the report suggests, ‘is not so important’ but the oared dories were not satisfactory in strong tides unless near the shore when launched.

  Other means of landing reconnaissance parties were being developed and by the autumn of 1943 COPPs were training at Rothesay in Scotland on X-craft, the 52-foot (16m) midget submarines. Three COPPists, the submarine’s skipper and his First Lieutenant made up a crew which was one more than the designed complement, even further overcrowding the cramped working-spaces. The craft had been modified, which extra navigation equipment replacing the control gear for the explosive devices normally dropped from these tiny submarines while under an enemy vessel.

  In their confined quarters among the mass of wires, navigation and buoyancy controls, COPPists were always conscious of their breathing when the craft submerged, and they suffered from lack of oxygen on a long dive, despite the air purifiers extracting carbon-dioxide. This lack of oxygen led to hallucinations—a man might try to open a hatch before the craft had surfaced—and too much carbon-dioxide produced headaches, intensifying the difficulty in writing up recce notes or calculating a beach incline from the chinagraphed figures on a slate. All round ‘everything was moist in an X-craft’, for the condensation in such small, unventilated spaces made blankets dank and clammy, as were the change of clothes pulled on after a fitful sleep. Biscuits went soggy and bread became a damp sponge. What cooking was done came from the glue-pot-like little boiler with its electrically heated walls and an electric kettle.

  Welman midget craft.

  Note: launched by derrick from transport or floated off Welman submarine-freighter, the operator could set by eye the direction of his target ship on the gyro direction indicator. After diving below this enemy, he adjusted the trim and allowed high pressure air into buoyancy tanks, forcing the charge up and against the enemy hull where it was held by magnets. The charge was later exploded by time fuse, or if the ship moved, or should divers attempt to remove the charge. The heavy drop keep was detached in an emergency allowing the Wellman to surface even if partially filled with water. (For brief specifications see Appendix 4.)

  Another craft, the Welman one-man submersible cylinder, was used like the navy’s mini-subs and charioteer human torpedoes to place charges under enemy ships. All three types of craft had been in one flotilla, the 12th Submarine Flotilla, since 23 February 1943 with their headquarters at Rothesay, where, in 1944, a number of men from the Special Boat Section and several Norwegians trained in the use of Welman craft. These craft, launched from transports or their small freighter submarines, were used at Bergen, where two were lost. (See Appendix 4).

  The difficulties in changing into rubberised suits in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small sub, a job that could take more than an hour, and the fear of going underwater for long periods made some COPPists prefer the LC, Navigation (LCN) for their reconnaissances. These crafts’ engines might be heard ashore, but as many boats were patrolling the French coasts by this stage of the war and as there were some fishing boats out on many nights, Don Amer for one did not consider the LCN’s noise much handicap when he came back to the United Kingdom with No.6 COPP. No.5 COPP had also returned from the Mediterranean, and they joined No.1 COPP in the reconnaissance of the beaches for the Normandy invasion.

  Brigadier Williams, chief intelligence officer of the Twenty-First Army Group, showed Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott a map of the Bay of Seine, and among the questions needing urgent answers was whether the original Roman peat workings on these shores were now impassable mud. Urgent or not, there were more stringent restraints than ever before on visits to potential invasion areas, for there were a vast series of deceptions—bombings all along the French coasts; General Patton’s mythical 12-division army comprised of only a radio signals network broadcasting messages of implied plans for landings in the Pas de Calais—that would mislead the Germans over Allied intentions. As part of these deceptions, and to gain additional intelligence after Forfar Force was disbanded in November 1943, seven raids were mounted by Layforce II commanded by Major Peter Laycock, Bob Laycock’s brother. The force included Frenchman of Nos.1 and 8 Troops from 10 Commando, who provided dory parties that also had British coxswains and signallers.

  The Layforce II raids were made on Christmas Day 1943 and the following festive nights at the turn of the year. Mâitre (Warrant-Officer) Wallernad, with three French and two British commandos, landed near Gravelines on the French coast, their dory capsizing as they landed. The two Britons baled it out and paddled back to the MTB, but the engine would not start and the MTB had to move inshore to help the dory’s return to the beach. Mâitre Wallerand, a good swimmer as well as an intellectual, swam out towards the dory, which was again filling with water, but he was drowned. The others ashore made their escape but the two Britons in the dory were captured.

  Lance-Corporal Felix Crispin acted as guide for a small commando party landing without incident that same Christmas night near St Valery. Lieutenant J. Pinelli had his party spent four hours trying to find a way up the cliffs at Etretat. On 26 December, Boxing Night, Lieutenant F. Vourch landed at Quineville near what would be the American beaches, returning with samples of wire, soil, and notes on a hitherto unknown obstacle: element-C. Two Anglo-French raids were made to the Channel Islands, adding to the intelligence on their defences. Three Frenchmen were killed in these island raids, one in a burst of fire as the dory left Jersey and two by Schu mines while reconnoitring Sark in a hurry to complete their survey before daylight.

  The key survey’s however, were left to the COPPists, and as the intelligence on the peat workings, among other items, was urgent they landed in the first dark period in January (1944) when the tides were not suitable for X-craft as the Calvados reef would be exposed. Two LCNs from No.2 COPP were towed by MGBs to the edge of the enemy’s radar screen on the night of 31 December—1 January. The weather was so bad that both the swimmers—Major L. (Scottie) Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith—and the LCN crews had a rough passage not helped by one or two unseamanlike mishaps. They saw in the New Year buffetted by wind and rain that nonetheless helped cover their landing when the LCN of Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott came within 200 yards (about 180m) of the beach of La Rivière and the swimmers went ashore. Their new style suits protected them from the worst of the buffeting, nevertheless they had a rough time but managed to swim back to the LCN with their load or rock samples. The lighthouse beam swept over the LCNs as they lay 500 yards (450m) out waiting for the rendezvous time, their G-set worked intermittently, and the echo-sounder on the swimmer’s LCN had packed up. Nevertheless, they retrieved an anchor and the swimmers who had been ashore. They brought back sand and other samples and found the peat workings had turned to hard rock. However, the LCNs’ troubles were not over, and in rough weather and inky blackness they became separated before eventually finding their MGBs. Where they had landed, X-20 would lie the following summer as a marker for the invasion on 6 June—at the centre of the British landings.

  On the night of 17-18 January a party from No.1 COPP returned to the Bay of Seine. This recce, made from X-20, began near Les Moulins and lasted three days with nightly landings and periscope reccs from near the shore, often in a flat, calm sea. Behind Les Moulins on a hill was the village of St Laurent-sur-Mer, near which the American Mulberry harbour—built in the United Kingdom to British designs—would be towed and positioned a few
days after the June landings.

  Further raids were made by Layforce II late in January and early in February (see Appendix 7). On 24-25 February, four Frenchmen, led by Charles Trepel, went ashore as Schweningen in Holland. The watching dory crew saw flames and heard shouting after some time, but later there was no one on the beach, and in 1945 the raiders’ bodies were found buried near the landing-point—four had died of exposure and one had drowned. The German defences were alert and Major-General F.W. de Guingand, Chief of Staff to the Twenty-first Army Group wrote in January 1944 that the more he thought about the problem, the more he came to the conclusion that a policy of raiding anywhere on the Belgian-French coast was wrong. He went on to explain that the raids were unnecessary because Allied information was very complete and they had the COPPs’ reconnaissances. If raids were not made on the Bay of Seine beaches, the Germans would draw the correct conclusions should raids continue elsewhere.

  Some raids had to continue, however, for the French raid in February had shown there were elements-C, and a series of underwater explosions were seen when Allied bombs fell near the shore in one bombing raid. Therefore, in succession to Layforce II, a new group of Tarbrush parties was formed from X Troop of 10 Commando with some sappers. They made four landings—Bray Dunes, Les Hemmes, Quend Plage, and Onival—north of the planned invasion beaches. Each party of eight went inshore by dory and then landed from inflatables, the MTB making a hydrophone search of the sea before launching the dory to check no other craft were in the area. At Bray Dunes, while the dinghy was within 100 yards of a man who had flashed a torch and lit a cigarette, Lieutenant Groom, Sergeant Moffat, and a signalman made a search for the element-C and took pictures with an infrared camera of the beach obstacles. Here, and elsewhere, they found nine-foot (3m) beach stakes of rough poles some 14 inches (35cm) in diameter with waterproofed Teller mines attached to some posts. They came offshore by following their tracer tape along the beach to the inflatable, and towing this off to the dory by a codline linking the two boats. Despite the MTBs’ QF and echo-sounder being defunct, they were met at the rendezvous.

  The Tarbrush party landing the same night at Les Hemmes brought back information on similar obstacles, and after a difficult rendezvous were picked up at 0410 hours. Their return was eventful, with one MTB firing on their own craft, which highlights the difficulty of night identification when running at 35 knots (65kmph). The party at Quend Plage had a smoother run, and after the dory went inshore at 2358 hours she was back at 0241, the MTBs hydrophone picking up the underwater noise of the dory’s prop five minutes after she was sighted.

  Beach survey for Normandy landings in COPP reconnaissance January 1944. Major Scott-Bowden and Sgt Ogden-Smith, swimmers from COPP No. 1 crawled up beach taking sand samples every 50yds at least. A German crossed the line at X but did not see it as meat-skewers held it to the sand at regular intervals. The US Army analysed these samples to check if beach suitable for tanks, etc.

  The men of X Troop’s false identities cannot be unravelled even 35 years after they were originally devised, and the names—such as Lane, Brown, and Hamilton—used in these pages are those appearing in official reports of the time. The landing of Lieutenant G. Lane (The Buffs) on 15-16 May—six weeks before D-day in Normandy—was off target because the MTB’s rader pulses ‘all disappeared’ when she reached her dropping zone on a land(!) surveyor’s taut wire ‘streamed from the East Bullock buoy’. They returned two nights later and went ashore in the correct spot near Onival, Staff-Sergeant E. Bluff and Corporal King staying near the dinghy after their initial search and noting the obstacles stretching in lines along the shore. Lieutenant Lane and Lieutenant Woodridge went off between these landes to search for element-C and the NCOs saw a red flash about 300 yards away. As it died away they heard a German challenge shouted, followed by a scream ‘as if somebody was being knifed’. Then came the sound of three single shots. The signaller’s message radioed from the dory reporting the activity was possibly heard by the German intercepters for star shells began falling around the boat. The NCOs had moved some 40 yards inland, but staying opposite their dinghy, when a patrol appeared and laid four canister-flares between the grounded dinghy and the dory. They appear to have missed the inflatable, for these flares made more smoke than light. Were they trying to cut off the men ashore from the sight of the dory? Whatever the intention a second patrol—8 to 10 men—then approached the two raiders, fired a couple of Very lights and let off two shots. The sergeant was about to fire back with his pistol, but at the corporal’s suggestion they withdrew quietly for it was past 0300 hours which was when the officers were due back. The flares had died down as they swam out, leaving the dinghy for their officers. The Sergeant had to drop his mine-detector but he was beyond the low-tide level so it would not be seen next day.

  Beach obstacles, the Germans also used Goliath ‘Beetle’ 5-foot tanks with two electric motors remotely controlled: the Mk 1 by cable, the Mk 2 by radio each carrying 150lb (68kg) of explosive. The Mk 2s were used at Anzio with little or no effect and the Mk 1s found at Normandy were disarmed by LCOCUs before the Goliaths could be exploded alongside incoming craft.

  On the MTB, Captain Bryan Hilton-Jones, the commander of X Troop, decided to make a search of the beach, but as dawn was coming up there were only a few minutes for this. No one was seen on the beach. Lane, a Hungarian, and Woodridge had found the dinghy, after seeing two German patrols fire on each other—no doubt the reason for the Germans’ later reluctance to fire on the raiding NCOs. They dropped the tell-tale camera and reconnaissance gear over the side and were searching for the dory when a German patrol boat captured them. Lane was taken from prison for an interview with General Rommel and other senior commanders before going back to the PoW camp, where he met Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Newman, a prisoner since the St Nazaire raid.

  There is no reason to think the Germans expected the Allies to land in Normandy, and for several days after 6 June they believed the invasion might only be a feint with the main assault coming through the Pas de Calais, The COPPists’ X-craft arrived off the beaches on Sunday 4 June. After a day submerged because bad weather delayed the invasion, each crew set up their shaded top-mast light above the box radar beacon. The landing craft appeared out of the greyness of sea and sky, the wind drowning their engine noise but not the shriek of rockets from an LCT(R) winging shorewards to clear a path on the beach. The pre-landing bombardment had begun shortly before 0530 on the British beaches and 0600 on the American. The skipper of X-20 was washed over the side in these manoeuvres, having unlashed himself from the air vent, and was rescued by the outstretched hand of Lieutenant-Commander Clerk, the COPPs’ commander. He had taken over in May when Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott was invalided out of assault pilotage. (See history Appendix 7 for other COPP activities on D-day.) The Americans had turned down the offer of COPPist markers but their ships were led in by the Engineer Special Brigades’ scout boats.

  Beach-clearance parties had trained with Landing Craft Obstruction Clearance Units of navy frogmen and the crews of Assault Vehicles Royal Engineers to provide a way ashore for assault waves crossing the beach defences. In 1943 there had been some confusion as to the responsibilities for clearing obstacles between the high and low water lines, leaving a strip of beach that might be in a few feet (1m) of water with no one having direct responsibility for clearing mines and obstacles. However, by May 1944, a coordinated scheme was worked out, with Royal Engineer Companies and clearance parties trained to work alongside each other: the navy swimmers clearing underwater obstacles, the sappers clearing obstacles not covered by water. The last practice-landing of one army engineer company showed that the sappers were trying to carry more weight than each man could possibly have around him when setting demolition charges. Therefore the personal kit, blankets, hand trailer loaded with spare explosives, slings to tow obstacles, gap markers, and rum ration of each 12-man Section were put in a folding canvas boat. This was towed ashore by the assault vehicle c
arrying the Section as it swam to the beach for its own crew’s task of flailing a path through mines or whatever. (See Appendix 2 for organisation of beach parties and LCOCUs.) The sappers of the clearing party each carried a webbing haversack eight 3lb (1.4kg) packets of explosive, a haversack of igniter sets, their personal weapons, and ammunition. The 12 Sections of one Beach Clearing Company were to land in Normandy from the six LCTs carrying the assault vehicles, with two Sections on each craft.

  The days of rehearsal, recces, planning, and training were over. Each man—commando and soldiers alike—had been shown a model of his part of the beach; every assault soldier knew exactly where he was to land and his individual part in the invasion’s opening hours.

  NORMANDY TO VICTORY IN EUROPE, JUNE 1944 TO MAY 1945.

  A 50-mile (80km) stretch of coast along the Bay of Seine was chosen for the 6 June 1944 Normandy landings. These beaches were sheltered, the defences only 18 per cent complete compared with 80 per cent in the Pas de Calais, there were sites for airstrips and existing airfields near Caen. The whole area was within fighter range of UK airbases. Yet there were no German concentrations near enough to mount a major counter-attack.

  The Allies needed only one large port, because they brought in two floating harbours (‘Mulberries’) and Cherbourg was less than 25 miles (40km) from landings. The US First Army landed on the right to take this port, the British Second Army on the left (east) landing to secure airfields and protect the American flank.