Commandos and Rangers of World War II
Page 32
In the town they could hear the battle developing, for the Germans had recovered for their initial surprise and as the 4th King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) began to land the German counter-barrage intensified, making impossible any further landings from across the river. The 5th KOSB were not able to get ashore until 1400 hours, by which time, with the help of rocket-firing Typhoon aircraft, some progress had been made. The commandos, mouseholing their way through buildings or swinging from gutters to reach upper rooms, fought their way street by street. One man, held by the legs, hung down from a roof and shot his way into an upper storey. Others took equal risks, and by the evening of 3 November (D + 2) the town was cleared, the 155 Brigade’s KOSB Battalions, a battalion of the Royal Scots, and support troops having fought their way into the town after passing through 4 Commando’s beachhead.
At Westkapelleon 1 November, the three Royal Marine Commandos planned to land over three beaches: Tare Red, an 800-yard (760m) stretch north of the gap; Tare White, the 380-yard gap; and Tare Green, near the dunes about 450 yards south of the gap and 350 yards long for use in the later build-up. In addition to the medical units attached to each Commando were a platoon of Royal Engineers for clearing mines.
The support squadron of craft moved in two groups to get inside the shallows as the first German shells fell around the marker MTBs at 0809 hours. A few minutes later the battleship HMS Warspite opened fire, and as the gun-ships closed the beach some German batteries, untouched by this heavier bombardment, took a toll among the light support craft. A flak craft (LCF 37) went up in a sheet of flame, a rocket craft (LCT(R)) was hit, and firing her salvoes off-target misled her opposite number in the northern column who fired short. These northern group rockets fortunately fell between the craft of 41 and 48(RM) Commandos. An LCT hospital craft hit a mine, and a second flakker caught fire, but the leading LCG(M)s drew a lot of shot and shell that might have been directed at the commandos’ craft. Both G(M)s beached although subsequently they were holed; one could not get off the beach and the other sank when it did so.
Four LCTs, carrying then Flail tanks for mine-clearing, eight AVREs for crossing obstacles, four armoured bulldozers, and eight Sherman tanks of 30th Armoured Brigade, were heading for the left of the gap where they were intended to help elements of ‘No.41(RM)’ clear the north dyke. The three Troops of this Commando, however, were in the wooden LCI(S) that 48(RM) Commando had found so costly at Normandy. The craft came in when there was sufficient water to cross the mud-flats, but the tide was not full, leaving some beach exposed below the high-water line at H-hour (0945). The sea was calm, but the intense anti-boat fire—two of the commando’s three LCIs were hit—delayed by half an hour the landing north of the gap. Once ashore the commandos were through the defences and had reached the outskirts of Westkapelle village in six minutes. The stones and cobbles of the dyke proved too slippery for the tracked vehicles, which had already taken some damage when an SGB—tank carrying a swing-girder bridge—was blasted on to a Flail while still aboard their LCT. The fascine bundles on some tanks were also set on fire during the run-in, and the crews of these special vehicles on two of the LCTs could get only one Flail up the dyke, despite valiant efforts to tow the others with a bulldozer. The third and fourth LCTs then took their tracked vehicles south of the gap before beaching. The second wave of 41(RM) Commando landed in the amphibious Buffaloes (LVTs) with tracks that enabled the landing vehicles to swim as well as climb. These LVTs carried them although the gap and up the landward side of the dyke, out of the flooded fields. As they came is sight of a tower, Sergeant Ferguson’s Flail tank put 11 75mm (3in) rounds into this observation post, and by 1115 hours the commandos had taken the village, where the two Dutch Troops covered the north flank.
On White Beach the first wave of 48(RM) Commando churned ashore in their Buffaloes, the amphibians’ Polsten 20mm guns firing as these LVTs swam the 50-yard gap from from their carrier LCTs to the shore before the tracks gripped firm ground and the first wave reached the dunes. Their Colonel, Jim Moulton, landed in his command Weasel, which he later described ‘as the way to land, dry shod, plenty of fire-power, very few casualties, and my wireless set with me’. He was one of the first ashore at 1010 hours, 20 minutes late. Dismounted from their LVTs, B Troop found that two low concrete pillboxes on the shoulder of the gap were wrecked and unoccupied; X Troop ‘panted up the dune on their way to the radar station’, which they found was also unoccupied but under small-arms fire. There was little small-arms fire on the beach, but shells burst among the craft and in the waters of the gap. The marines, consolidating their hold on the southern dyke and the sandhills running south of it, took battery W285 and Y Troop passed through to assault W13 to keep up the momentum of gunners were firing at the assault ships and the Troop had no support. Their attack failed, and Major D.R.W. de Stacpoole RM was killed. The Commando held half a mile of dunes, but had no support because the FOO and FOB’s Weasels had been sunk, the waves following in the first flights coming under heavy shelling and a landing craft sticking in one of the best landing-points for the LVTs. Heavy cratering around the dyke also made these vehicles difficult to manoeuvre. The Buffalo carrying ‘No.48(RM)’s’ Heavy Weapons Troop machine-guns was hit while still aboard its LCT, and although marines swam ashore with parts of these medium machine-guns, they found they had only two tripods and no barrels ashore. Other Buffaloes and Weasels moving along the dunes were hit by shells or exploded on mines as the spade-like cleats on the tracks dug through the sand. One or two LVTs might safely cross a mine, but after the covering of four feet (1 + m) of wind-carried sand had been scaped away, the third would blow it. These vehicles’ 100-gallon (455 litre) fuel tanks then burned fiercely, exploding the ammunition cargoes.
Landing plan 4 Commando Brigade and supporting units at Westkapelle (Walcheren), 1 November 1944.
The FOB, Captain Blunt RA, carried his 510-set forward on his own, his two naval telegraphists having been wounded, but only two LCG(L)s and an LCF from the close-support squadron were still in action—and they were almost out of ammunition. Three craft that had taken on W13’s guns were sunk 300 yards from the shore. However, the gunner officer kept in contact with the headquarters ship, and a couple of salvoes were ranged on the battery by the monitor HMS Roberts, her fire directed by Captain A.D. Davies RA, who came forward with his telegraphist.
Meanwhile, Jim Moulton gave his Commando in the dunes a breather to clean the wind-blown sand and salt from their automatic weapons and from the bolts of their rifles. About 1430 hours he walked back a few hundred yards to Brigade HQ in order to contact the gunners across the Scheldt, because the FOO’s radio to these guns was not working. By this time, Dan Flunder had been sent with A Troop out on to a spit of sand running into the floodwater where they could give covering fire for an attack on W13. However, the Colonel wanted heavier support, and as well as artillery bombardment he arranged a low-level air attack for 1600 hours, five minutes before the commandos would put in their assault.
Going forward again, Jim Moulton found the commandos’ positions had been heavily mortared—no one above the rank of corporal was unscathed in Z Troop and the Troop officer was believed killed. A junior officer, Brian Lindrea, was killed and two other officers were wounded. The FOB, Captain Davies, and his
Examples of loads by craft index references
numbers of men and vehicles:
Unit
N. 1*
No. 4
No. 8
No. 17
No. 20
No. 22
No. 31
41(RM) Cdo
50
47(RM) Cdo
101 5 LVT
4 Wls
48(RM) Cdo
68 3 LVT
3 Wls**
10(IA) Cdo
6
84 3 LVT
4 Wls
509 Fd Coy RE**
2 1 D7**
60 1 LVT
2 1 D7
1 sledge
<
br /> 510 Fd Coy RE
5
5
48 1 LVT
‘A’ Sqd
2 Flails
1st Lothians
15 1 Sherman
87 Sqd
1 D7
Aslt Rgmt RE
15 2 AVRE
4 Cdo Bde Tac HQ
57 5 LVT
3 Wls
4 Cdo Bde Sigs
1
25
2 Sec Beach Sigs RN
5
6
‘L’ RN Cdo
5
10
66 Unit FOB
3
72 Unit FOB
4
IO (IA) Cdo
6
FDS**
4 Cdo Bde B Ecgekib
9
HQ
144 Cov Pioneers
3
37(wutg Bde stores—200 tons)
11 Cdn Corps sigs
3
Tel 1 Cdn
ASSU**
3
191st Fd Rgmt RA
2
Aslt Rgmt RE****
15
20
30
25
*All assault forces landed in amphibians except the personnel in craft Nos. 1 to 3.
**Fd Coy Field Company; Wls -Weasels; D7 -type of armoured bulldozer; FDS -Field Dressing Station, also landed were Canadian medical units 17th Light Field Ambulance, 5th Field Transport Unit and 8th & 9th Field Surgical Units; Tel 1 Cdn ASSU—Technical party from Canadian Air Support Sigs Unit.
***Aslt Rgmt RE -LVT drivers from five sqds of 5th Assault Rgmt RE and detachments of 11th Royal Tank Rgmt.
telegraphist were belived killed, and the doctor was missing from his aid post, before the bombardment was stopped when a long-range burst from one of A Troop’s brens killed the German 81mm mortar crew. There were 30 minutes to the 1605 assault, and B Troop hurried forward to take over this job from Z Troop.
At 1545 hours the artillery ‘started an intense and heartening bombardment’, in the words of ‘No.48(RM)’s’ history. At 1600 came the cannon-firing Spitfires, each releasing a 500lb (227kg) bomb over the commandos’ heads, hitting the battery in well-aimed trajectories. The dunes shook. The thud-thud-thud of A Troop’s brens were joined by the delicate plot of X Troop’s 2-inch mortars firing smoke-bombs, first indicating the target and then screening B Troop’s assault. They ran forward over a minefield made harmless by drifting sand. Lieutenant P.H.Allbut RM came face to face with a German across the wire; both found their weapons were jammed with sand, and as the commando officer forced his way through the wire Sergeant Stringer shot the German. The Troop scrambled over the emplacements, finding one casement smashed by shells and bombs and all the crew killed, but as the commandos worked their way through the cratered sand and concrete, a 20mm fired in their direction from the far end of the battery. As it was getting dark by this time, and the Commando had collected 70 prisoners from their living-quarters below the dunes behind the battery, further advances were limited to a patrol by X Troop. After the excitement of the day, the commandos found they were cold and hungry on the open dunes. Moreover they had little ammunition, which, like their rations, had to be manhandled over the dunes, for most of the Buffaloes had been lost through shell-hits or mines and many Weasels had failed to survive in the strong current of the gap as the tide ebbed. The commandos made do with tins of self-heating soup, some chocolate, and sweets; ammunition was carried forward by men returning from the beach. They found the doctor’s body alongside that of his dead orderly where they had been binding the wounds of Captain Davies and his telegraphist who had also been killed. Captain R.G. Mackenzie, who commanded Z Troop, was found alive but he died without regaining consciousness.
On the north of the gap, 41(RM) Commando, having taken W15 battery, came under fire from W17 at Domburg, which was not silenced until early in the afternoon after hits from the battleship HMS Warspite and low-level air attacks. The third Commando—‘No.47(RM)’—was ashore by then after a confusion that put three of their LVT carrying LCTs north of the gap; many of their amphibians could not cross the gap until the tide ebbed and there was only a 30-yard gutter to swim. By the time they were assembled in the dunes south of the gap, they had lost 17 of their 20 Weasels and three of their 20 Buffaloes.
On D + 1 the Brigade developed their bridgeheads along the dykes and dunes, with 48(RM) Commando’s leading Troop, having found little opposition, being pushed along the dunes into Zouteland, where the monitor HMS Erebus had been firing before she lifted her aim on to W11 battery. One garrison of 150 surrendered and Colonel Phillips came through with 47(RM) Commando, not over-pleased that ‘No.48(RM)’ had taken several of his objectives, although he soon had stiff opposition to overcome at battery W11, which was still firing on ships and which repulsed the first assault.
Allied casualites in this operation were about 7,700 including two out of every five commando Troop officers and one in four of the support craft’s crews. The island was finally secured on 8 November (D7), when 4 Commando took the barracks between Domburg and Veere at Vrouwenpolder. As they made the last 50 yards of their advance, bayonets fixed and carried at the high port, two old and scruffy Germans appeared with a white flag from the barracks. A patrol (from 48(RM) Commando) which had also moved across the island was travelling in two LVTs when the second one hit a buried sea mine. Lieutenant W.H. England, a South African seconded to the marines, was killed along with 18 men, and nine others, including the Royal Engineer crew of this LVT, were wounded. Such incidents would probably cause as many commando and ranger casualties as were suffered in set-piece battles during the winter and spring of 1944-45 in Europe.
The operations of the commandos and rangers that winter are shown in Appendix 7, but in a typical example the 5th Rangers were going forward during October 1944 with the Sixth Cavalry Group of General Patton’s Third Army in a series of tank thrusts, supported by infantry, advancing from Diesen to Ludweiler. During these actions D Company broke in Ludweiler, but without artillery supported they were driven back 500 yards (450m) from the town. Next day the battalion’s F Company attacked Lauterbach, an action in which Pfc Leo Samboroski took his BAR down a forward slope to engage a strongpoint and ‘then realised the greatest danger came from an emplacement of the left’. He ran further forward, giving covering fire from eight full clips that enabled F Company to advance before he was killed. The company reached the first few houses on the outskirts of the town, where a Tiger tank brought one house down on a squad who shook themselves free of the rubble, while Corporal Andrew Speir fired his bazooka from an upper storey at the tank. He fired several times, although once knocked from his perch by the Tiger’s fire, but the tank did not retreat until rangers’ mortar fire drove back the German infantry supporting it. That night a Company infiltrated past the German machine-gun posts into the town, but the mud prevented the tanks of the 6th Cavalry and the 602nd’s tracked guns from moving forward, and without supporting fire no further advance was possible.
The unit histories in Appendix 7 tell a little of these many skirmishes and difficult raids as the Allies moved into Germany. There was a complex of rivers—the Mass (Meuse), the Rhine and its associated river the Waal—along which the British held positions facing north in the spring of 1945, while the Americans squeezed the Germans from the south-west banks of the Rhine. As were the 5th Rangers, the men of 3 Commando, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Komrower, were operating with the regular forces’ advance, two Troops being forward without much support as the ice on the Montforterbeek canal would not carry tanks and all the bridges had been blown. Their only prisoner repeatedly wished to die for his Führer and might have done so when two German tanks came up. These blasted the forward Section’s defended houses which were only 20 yards from the tanks’ guns, with a dust-chocking crash of bricks and roof rafters familiar to many rangers and commandos fighting in Europe. Holding a 2-inch mortar against his knee, T
rooper Clinton launched a smoke-bomb while others flung phosphorous grenades out of the windows, giving the Section cover while they rejoined the Troop. Tanks of the 8th Hussars moved across a bridge over a gulley later that afternoon, but the Germans, although often drawn from many units including Luftwaffe aircrews fighting as infantry, skilfully led. The tanks had to withdraw and 3 Commando spent an uncomfortable night in the snow-filled gulley as the engineers strove to replace the now-damaged bridge. Next morning. Nos.1 and 6 Troops went forward, riding on the Hussars’ tanks, to find the Germans had left the town. In all these tanks and infantry moves, the commandos and rangers would ride on the tanks until they reached a street of houses, thick cover, or other likely tank obstacles; then the infantry would dismount and probe forward, clearing any enemy waiting to ambush the tanks. In turn, the tanks would destroy concrete and other strongpoints that had held up the infantry’s advance. This was more often a movement forward in fits and starts than a headlong charge in pursuit of the enemy.