On the other flank of the British and Canadian sector, the 1SS (Commando) Brigade held thir part of the line beyond the Orne. They had a quiet morning on Wednesday (D + 1), but in the afternoon two Troops of 3 Commando attempted to clear the Merville battery which had been reoccupied by Germans after the British Airborne had drawn back to the Orne line. After breaking into the bunkers, the commandos were driven out by some self-propelled guns and lost half their Troops’ strength, Major J.V.B. Pooley being killed by one of the last infantrymen in the battery. 45(RM) Commando attacked some villas beyond the gun positions on the outskirts of Franceville Plage, and might have been overwhelmed by counter-attacks but for the tenacity of C Troop enabling the Commando to form a tight perimeter near Merville. In the next few days the Germans were to make determined efforts to dislodge the Brigade from their positions, to which the high ground round Le Plein was the key. High ground, that is, in the geography of this coastal plain of the British sector, for nowhere else did the hills rise above a few hundred feet (100m) until the positions south of Gold beach around St Leger.
4 SS Brigade was to spend the next few days in the rear areas, although this was by no means a quiet time. On D + 5 (Sunday), ‘No.48(RM)’, down to 223 all ranks after D-day, recced the radar station at Douvres but were moved before they could do more than harass these heavily fortified positions. They were taken a week later by 41(RM) Commando who had invested the strong-points and, supported by artillery, were led on D + 11 by four flail tanks across the defences’ minefields. The Commando lost only one man but captured five German officers and 221 men in a warren of strong-points connected by underground passages.
Meanwhile, German attacks on 1 Brigade’s positions had forced them into a tighter perimeter, and although commando casualties had been less than expected on D-day, now that they were frequently under mortar fire, they began to take casualties. German probes, with flares lighting up the woods at night, and the close country that enabled both armies to hold positions in places a mere 30 yards apart, gave the men little rest. By Friday (D + 3) the commandos were red-eyed and tired, living in weapon pits that they defended with great skill, in the early days holding their fire so that their positions could not be located by any probing patrol: later, their fire caught strong counter-attacks when the Germans were unaware of the defence positions. ‘The strange thing was … as an attack was seen to be coming … the more cheerful the troops became’, and that night (D + 3/4) German attacks in company strength overran some marine slit-trenches. A marine appeared in 4 Commando’s positions calling ‘Jerry’s through’, and Pat Porteous—recovered from his wounds at Dieppe—led D Troop of ‘No.4’ to recover the lost ground. Rising together, the stormed across the positions occupied by the Germans and drove them out of the marines’ trenches, although there were two Germans for every commando. After this attack, D Troop—who had suffered many casualties around the Ouistreham tower four days earlier—were only 15 strong: two officers, the sergeant-major and 12 men.
Next morning, Saturday 10 June, men of 1 Brigade were nearly out on their feet, having had little sleep since reveille the previous Tuesday. Men, lying back for a moment, dropped off to sleep in the middle of a conversation, even though mortar bombs might be bursting around their slit-trenches. These came in more quickly around 0930 hours on 4 Commando’s front at Hauger, and half an hour later two Germans with a radio reconnoitred the effects of this bombardment. They were shot 20 yards in front of F Troop before they could get back to the German lines. Continuous mortar fire, growing in intensity fell around 4 Commando during the next five hours and was survived ‘well below ground’ by F Troop and others—as the Brigade-Major discovered when he came forward. He insisted the men should have a hot meal, but the Sergeant-Major explained they were not really hungry; moments later the Major himself had to jump for cover in a trench. Around 1700 hours an army Forward Officer Bombardment came into ‘No.4’s’ positions and ‘thought he could control the big guns of HMS Ramillies’. He ordered over his radio a shoot at the Germans massing on the edge of a wood opposite F Troop. The commandos waited. Suddenly the ground erupted in the middle of their positions, and the FOB was not given the opportunity for a second ranging shot from the battleship more than six miles away. The control of the counter-bombardment was then taken over by the Forward Observation Officer (FOO)—bombardment officers controlled naval gunfire, observation officers the army’s. The FOO had been landed with the Airborne two evenings earlier, receiving a slightly frosty reception from the Troop, afraid of another shortfall, but now he ranged the army guns on the Germans with 12 rounds breaking up their attack. The FOO then left, for 12 rounds were half his guns’ ration of ammunition for the day, whereas the German mortars could continue firing. The Brigade had lost many men, before a German attack came in that evening, yet the commandos hung on. Murdoch McDougall lay in an orchard under German machine-gun fire as he directed his two mortar men’s fire, and Sergeant-Major McVeigh fired the bren. Several other NCOs, having used all their grenades against 25 Germans trapped in a ditch, lay 10 yards from this patrol and threw back their stick-grenades, following these with tommmy-gun bursts, killing half the Germans and capturing the rest. The first waves of Germans approaching the commando lines faltered; they reformed, but then the attacks melted away.
A week after the landing, Lord Lovat was severely wounded when an attack on Breville was launched through 6 Commando’s positions. This village was at the base of the only German salient into the Brigade’s lines, and the previous day the Black Watch—in their first action in Normandy—had 200 casualties trying to take the village. On 12 June the 12th Parachute Battalion ‘sadly under strength’, 60 men of an Independent Parachute Company, and a squadron of tanks from the 13th-18th Hussars overran two German companies, securing the village by midnight and so ending the long series of attacks and counter-attacks around the village during that week. The 160 men of the Parachute Battalion had 142 casualties, and German losses were severe: the 858th Regiment had more than 400 casualties from a strength of 564 all ranks after this final day’s fighting for the village.
Derek Mills-Roberts took over 1 Brigade, although he had also been wounded in the Breville fighting, before the commandos could take up positions near the village overlooking the plain running inland to the south and east of Caen. 4 Brigade moved into the Orne line on 12 June, with 48(RM) Commando digging in at Sallenelles—a fashionable seaside resort village—at the coast end of the ridge with its eastward slopes running to the river Dive and the Orne marshes to the west. For the next two months the Brigades held these ridge positions, plagued by mosquitoes, short of kit—‘No.48(RM)’s’ big packs with greatcoats and a change of clothing was all they received after landing, supposedly for one week. They fed on composite pack rations as they had no cooks, but improvised meals—a patrol from 4 Commando used a cart to whisk a few sheep from a farm in no-man’s land—supplemented the monotony.
Night patrols, putting out pairs of snipers often in preference to daylight patrols, and with warning trip-wires flares in front of their lines were routine during the next two months. But two months in fox-holes always liable to mortar attack and making constant patrols wore down the commandos’ exuberance of the early days, and ‘the elastic spring of physical fitness’ was gone—in the view of one officer returning to 4 Commando after a spell in hospital.
When the breakout was made after Caen fell on 9 July (D + 33 days, not D-day when it was an optimistic objective), 1 Brigade made a night infiltration led by 4 Commando with fewer than 160 men of the 435 who had landed on D-day. Reinforcements were brought in—two officers and 30 marines joined ‘No.48(RM)’ on D + 3—but all Commandos were under-strength. The Brigade reached their objectives over a difficult route in Stygian darkness when it was impossible to see the man ahead’; going through thick hedges and woods as they crossed the bocage country, following the tape as they moved in single file. They reached and held a road junction and a bridge on high ground near Deauville
, east of the Dives, throughout 22 August 1944. Surprise was complete, many of the Brigade breakfasting off the German rations before fighting off four counter-attacks during the day. 4 Brigade the previous night had made a similar approach-march through thick woods, over fences, and along the beds of streams, following a parachute brigade to capture a hill near the village of Dozule seven and a half miles (12km) south-east of Deauville and three miles (4.8km) ahead of the main Allied positions. In this close country a map reference objective could turn out to be screened by trees, as the leading Troop of 48(RM) Commando found on one hill where they had no view of the enemy. Moving forward down the slope, they came under brisk fire in one of many sudden flurries between the Brigades and the retreating Germans.
Attached to the US 29 Infantry Division in the way many Special Force units would be deployed in the advance across Europe, the 5th Ranger Battalion often fought in difficult stretches of country that the armoured thrusts by-passed. At other times, rangers and commandos worked with a few tanks, for the amphibious part of their role was now matched by their ability to infiltrate enemy positions, a difficult task, but not perhaps as tricky when the enemy were retreating as it had been against prepared defences at Anzio.
On 4 September the British took Antwerp. This was, for some weeks, the northern tip of their salient from the general advance that had carried the Canadians and British 200 to 300 miles (300 to 480 km) from the beaches to face the Germans northward across the Scheldt, and had taken the American armies eastward almost to the borders of southern Germany. Further advances by any of these armies—the British Twenty-first Army Group with the American Twelfth Army on their right and to the south where they joined the US Sixth Army—depended on some drastic improvement in their lines of supply. The British and Canadians were using 12,000 tons of stores a day; and, despite their overland petrol pipeline, organised airlifts, and ability to keep things rolling, the American tanks were stopped too often for lack of fuel. In mid-September General Eisenhower stressed the importance of clearing the Scheldt, for Antwerp docks 40 miles (65km) up-river from the sea could not be used until the island of Walcheren in the estuary with its coastal batteries guarding the approaches, was overcome, and the river banks cleared of the enemy.
4 Commando Brigade’s landings on Walcheren, 1 November 1944. Defences—Batteries 1-22 with code letter W housed about 40 guns from 75mm (3in) to 220mm (8.6in) including captured French and British guns. Typical batteries were: W13-4 155mm in concrete casemates, 2 75mm in casemates and 3 20mm: W15–4 3.7in A-A ex-British guns in concrete casemates and 2 3in A-A ex-British guns in open emplacements; and W17- 4 220mm ex-French guns in concrete open emplacements.
The island was ringed by beach obstacles and had wire protected infantry defences for the heavy batteries. For example on the coast from Westapelle to Zouteland, a 3 miles (4.8km) stretch, were 5 mortar positions, 5 infantry pill-boxes and several m/c gun posts. Mortar positions are exampled at 154, 285 and 288. Minefields protected landward approaches to batteries and access routes across dunes—behind W18, behind beach west of W18 and 900yds inland from this beach, further west near 48(RM) Cdo’s landing, and on the road from the light-house, to name a few examples.
4 Commando replaced the 200 men of 46(RM) Commando in 4 Brigade, joining 41, 47 and 48(RM) Commandos training around Ostend in preparation for an assault on Walcheren. Meanwhile, the Canadians were becoming experts in amphibious operations as they cleared the flooded polders of the Breskens pocket, an area of coastal plain and reclaimed land. Under the protection of batteries across the estuary on Walcheren, the German 64 Infantry Division made a stubborn defence of these watery lands with their dykes and canals. The division had not been in action in Normandy, but their skill against the Canadian flame-throwing tanks and carriers, was massed Allied artillery, enabled the Germans to hold these defences until a seaward left-hook had outflanked the mile-wide isthmus to South Beveland, which was cleared of Germans. They would not now be able to interfere with the action on Walcheren, but efforts to cross the 1,200 yard (1.1km) causeway to Walcheren were blocked. Dead straight for its full length from South Beveland, this built-up strip of land was a mere 40 yards wide, the reed-growth flate either side giving no cover in the early winter cold when the Canadians put in a series of unnsuccessful assaults against the Walcheren positions around the causeway’s west end.
Both Walcheren and South Beveland are artificial islands recovered from the sea by the Dutch, Walcheren being a saucer’s rim of dunes and dykes circling the flat island below sea-level. Around the village of Westkapelle is one of the oldest and strongest sea defences in Holland, 200 to 250 feet wide, rising to 30 feet (10m) and running for three miles (4.8km) along Walcheren’s western rim. In 1944 the Germans had W15 battery north of the village, one of 30 coastal and field-gun positions on the island, protecting its approaches and the gap in the Westkapelle dyke made by an RAF raid on the night of 2-3 October. Later in October this gap had been widened by further bombarding gaps made west and east of Flushing and on the north coast effectively flooding the whole island west of the Flushing-Veere canal and a large part of the land to the south-east of this waterway. After this inundation, the landing was set for 1 November after further bombing of the batteries.
4 Commando would land at 0545 hours while it was still dark and Flusing and 41, 47 and 48(RM) Commando would land about 1000 hours around the gap in the dyke at Westkapelle. The marines were supported by 27 landing craft giving close fire support, including two LC Gun (Medium)s with 17-pounder anti-tank guns in two armoured turrets on each craft. The LCG(M)s would beach each side of the 380-yard (354m) gap while the other support craft came inshore with their 4-inch (100mm) guns, rockets, pom-pom 2-pounder, and 20mm to engage the batteries. One battleship and two monitors would provide heavier naval support. Air support was to include both heavy bombing and low-level attacks, but, to illustrate the complexities in the planning of such amphibious operations, the air strike requested by 4 Commando was misinterpreted by SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force). The commandos wanted four pin-point targets knocked out, minimising the risk to Dutch civilians. These selected targets, however, were covered by the planners in area bombing, a flattening of houses and streets over several blocks. Understandably, senior officers at SHAEF then asked why the army wanted the town of Flushing devastated? In the event, the overcast weather and fog on English airports limited the air attacks immediately before the landings, although RAF Mosquitoes dropped some 500lb (227kg) bombs in spite of the bad weather just before the Flushing landing. Artillery on the southern shore of the estuary also covered the assault at various stages.
4 Commando, with a Dutch Troop from ‘No.10’, were roused from their billets in the shells of houses near Breskens and at 0400 hours the first pair of LCAs slipped from the rickerty wooden jetty out into the river. Lieutenant Denny Rewcastle—known to wear a silk scarf in less ardous time—took his Section as the leading scouts for 4 Commando, and with them were a Tarbrush party, similar to those who found the Normandy beach obstacles the previous spring, plus the advanced party of Beach Commandos. These units (see Appendix 2) landed among the early waves in all major assaults and larger raids, marking the positions of the two or three berths where larger craft could safely nose into the shore. The Beach Party were in contact with the major landing crafts’ skippers by radio or loudhailer, and could adjust the sequence of landing from that planned if some change of priorities made, say, tanks more vital than bulldozers at a particular point in the build-up. They were also in touch with the salvage parties, whose bulldozers or other gear could clear a sunken minor craft from the shore or aid a larger one in backing out of her berth. Lieutenant Harry Hargreaves RNVR, who landed that night at Flushing, had controlled the beach for 4 Commando’s landings at Dieppe and elsewhere in the early years of the war, and now, 90 minutes before dawn, he took his Beach Party across the Scheldt.
At 0530 hours the artillery opened a 10-minute bombardment while the two
LCAs made for the beach near the mole. They identified the mole’s position by a windmill’s silhouette against the fires burning in the town. When the leading craft was caught on obstacles 30 yards out, the commandos swam ashore to a wooden jetty near the base of the mole. Scrambling up the wet stonework of a slipway in the sea wall, the leading couple of men forced a gap between two stakes, and just before 0545 hours they were on to the road which was covered with barbed wire. Behind them came two men laying the white tape the Commando would follow after this Section had cut a path through the wire. As the Beach Party’s craft passed the end of the mole a shot was fired, but soon the leading commandos had overrun a 75mm (3in) gun position, and Harry Hargreaves, standing in the LCA, was signalling in the next pair of craft. Already the engineers were clearing mines either side of the two berths in a garbage tip, although the sappers had to swim ashore with their detectors. Men in the following LCAs lay out in the river. ‘We felt like Aunt Sallies’ as the German 20mm red tracer whipped over their heads, but the Germans were firing high for their only point of aim on LCAs low in the water was the small bow wave, and this was almost non-existent when the craft moved slowly. By 0635 the last Troops were ashore.
The Commando fanned out to form a 600-yard (540m) perimeter around the landing-area, with No.4 Troop passing through this to attack the German barracks of fortified houses overlooking the river half a mile (.8km) west of the landing beach. The Troop were ordered to avoid opposition, and in 10 minutes had entered the old town, skirting a machine-gun position as two men were hit. Working their way down the streets between houses and shops, shaken by some shells falling short from Allied guns across the river, they came on the rear of the barracks. Nick Barrass, a tall, quiet-spoken ex-policeman, led his Section into a building and covered Sergeant Fraser’s climb up a sprial staircase. As the Lieutenant crouched near a window he was killed by a shot from a house across the street. Murdoch McDougal’s Section ran down an alleyway towards the barrack houses they were to clear, coming through a garage with its flimsy back door opening on to the blank wall of a bunker. In front of it were 15 or so Germans who reacted immediately; Murdoch McDougal called ‘back this way’ as he enlarged a hole in the thin garage wall. But a commando jumped into the doorway; feet firmly on the ground the stocky Private Donkin methodically swung his tommy-gun, firing left to right. His swing had reached the right-handed man in the group and he was still firing on the return swing when he was killed outright, shot through the throat by a man he had missed on the left when he began to spray bullets into the group. The Sergeant-Major shot this German before the Troop came back through the garage to find another way into the barrack houses. These they cleared in a running fight through the houses’ three storeys and the long under-ground passage linking them to the strong-points along the river front.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 31
