The History of No 2. Comando
The Operations 1941 - 1943
Norway - Vaagso
The frustrations of 1941 dragged on almost to the end. It had not been a good year from the offensive-action viewpoint of the men of No. 2 Commando. They had done nothing to speak of and were upset at being unemployed. However, the Vaagso raiding force announced the end to this inertia, commencing warfare on December 27th, 1941, landing on Maaloy Island and overrunning the place in less than ten minutes.
The Vaagso operation was a No. 3 Commando affair. Lt. Colonel John Durnford Slater took along all his boys numbering close to 500, all ranks, and No. 2 Commando got into business by providing two troops – about 127 men, all ranks – as part of the raiding force.
This author was not invited to this party. He was ‘miffed’, as were about 323 other members of 2 Commando from Lt. Colonel Newman on down who also had received no invitations. Inasmuch as these writings are supposed to be ‘as seen through the author’s eyes’, I cannot describe the raid happenings because I was not there.
The Vaagso operation was a No. 3 Commando affair. Lt. Colonel John Durnford Slater took along all his boys numbering close to 500, all ranks, and No. 2 Commando got into business by providing two troops – about 127 men, all ranks – as part of the raiding force.
This author was not invited to this party. He was ‘miffed’, as were about 323 other members of 2 Commando from Lt. Colonel Newman on down who also had received no invitations. Inasmuch as these writings are supposed to be ‘as seen through the author’s eyes’, I cannot describe the raid happenings because I was not there.
The History of No. 2 Commando will include their participation alongside No. 3 Commando in this successful raid. There had been 20 Commandos K.I.A. and 57 wounded, mostly No. 3 men. The author and the rest of the still-unemployed men settled down once again to the process known as ‘waiting your turn’.
Glomfjord
It was on a day in late July, 1942 that the author noted the absence from the ranks of his troop of Capt. Graeme Black, Pte. Eric Curtis and Rfmn. Cyril Abram. At the same time, men of other troops recorded that Capt. Joe Houghton, Sgt. Richard O’Brien, L/Sgt. Bill Chudley, Pte. Reg Makeham, Cpl. John Fairclough, T.S.M. Miller Smith and Pte. Fred Trigg had also vanished. No member of No. 2 Commando had any inkling as to the significance of these disappearances, but as usual, no questions were asked.
The author and everyone else in No. 2 had no news of this operation, or the fate of the men who participated in it until long after No. 2 Commando had been disbanded. Indeed, it was not until the proceedings of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials unfolded that they learned about the raid and the criminal imprisonment and execution of seven of our comrades in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Only Pt. Fred Trigg, Sgt. Dick O’Brien and Cpl. Jack Fairclough had evaded capture by escaping to Sweden. These three men had later returned to service in No. 2 Commando and Pte. Fred Trigg was later killed in Italy in 1944.
A splendid, accurate account of this operation is contained in the pages of the book ‘Mustketoon’, written by Stephen Schofield, first published in 1962. This author commends this book to others, considering it to be, in his opinion, the best-recorded account of any Commando operation to have been published.
The leader of the Glomfjord raid, Capt. Graeme Black, was from Dresden, Ontario, Canada. He was the only Canadian to serve in No. 2 Commando. Capt. Black had been twice wounded at Vaagso and received the M.C. for his gallantry in the field. He became the leader of the 10-men group from No. 2 who landed from a submarine and made their way to their objective – the large hydro-electric power station at Glomfjord. The destruction they caused was hugely out-of-proportion to the small number of men involved in the operation. During the attempted escape, Capt. Black and six others were captured and later executed.
In 2004 my Canadian wife, Janet, and I communicated Capt. Black’s story to the Royal Canadian Legion Branch President at Dresden, Ontario, thinking that on the upcoming November 11th Remembrance Day they would make known Capt. Black’s heroic deeds in his home town. It is to my everlasting disappointment that the Legion decided not to mark his courageous passing. He has never been forgotten by this author who first served with him at the age of 18 and who has always been honoured to have known him.
St. Nazaire
If any reader of this attempt to record the history of No. 2 Commando has gotten this far, he or she will have noted that the pride of place, on Page 1, has been given to the remembrance of the men of the Commando who died in the course of No. 2 Commando operations, including the men who did not return from St. Nazaire.
It now becomes a duty of this author to allow a similar pride of place in this account of St. Nazaire to the men of our brother Commando units who participated in the raid and remain alongside the fallen of No. 2 Commando.
It is with pride and a deep sense of comradeship that the author records those names: From No. 1 Commando, Sgt. Thomas Durrant, Cpl. Fred Llewellyn, and Pte. Edward Toblin; From No. 3 Commando, Lieut. Mark Woodcock, and Pte. John Boyce; From No. 4 Commando, Capt. Harold Pennington, L/Cpl. Robert Borgman, and Spr. Garnett Coulson; From No. 5 Commando, Lieut. Smalley, Lieut. Robert Burtinshaw, Sgt. Robert Beveridge, Sgt. William Ferguson, Sgt. George Ide, L/Sgt. Bertie Johnson, and L/Cpl. George Stokes; From No. 9 Commando, L/Sgt. Robert Jameson, Cpl. James Deans, L/Cpl. Leslie Burgess, L/Cpl. Ronald Duncan, and Pte. Joseph Sherton; From No. 12 Commando, Cpl. Arthur Blount, Cpl. Samuel Chetwynd, and Cpl. Harri Jones.
To the other members of our brother Commando units who also fought alongside No. 2 Commando and who suffered wounds or capture, the author, some sixty-five years after the fact, offers his belated, sincere thanks.
In the lovely town of Ayr in Scotland, during the early weeks of 1942, the No. 2 officers and men were engaged in their normal training routines centered around our seat of power which was Number Two, Wellington Square, our H.Q. Absent from that location was Lt. Col. Newman, the C.O. Our Charlie was off somewhere and was gone for quite extended periods of time. Sgt. Blattner observed to this author that he thought ‘it a bit weird!’ He noted that Mrs. Newman had been seen that day, so the Colonel was obviously not on leave, and concluded that maybe, just maybe, something might be coming up. Meanwhile, the second-in-command, Major Bill Copeland, continued to control the Commando giving no clues as to the reason for the absence of Charlie Newman. As it was, Bill Copeland did not know anything more than we did, although he continued to act on some rather unusual requests relayed from Charlie who was ‘somewhere’ down South.
At the usual morning ‘roll-calls’, however, we could not fail to notice that five or six places in more than one troop were now ‘gaps’ in the ranks. The missing men had been sent off to various parts of the country and, reaching such unspecified destinations, were doubtless puzzled as to why they were being instructed in the technical matters of dry-dock pumping equipment, power-hoist motors and general dock and maritime installations. However, security was tight and the boys obeyed the Commando Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not run thy mouth in idle rumours’.
All our wonderings ceased when Capt. Mike Barling, our medical officer, was joined by a second doctor, Capt. Dave Paton. We knew then that we were not being given two ‘M.O.s’ for nothing. Something was in the wind for sure! The same day well over half the Commando was given instructions to report with full kits, which were to be turned into the unit storage shed. Some of the men who were not so instructed did not like being left out of the proceedings, resenting the slight – especially the ‘old hands’ who muttered about seniority or something.
The old cross-channel ship ‘Princess Josephine Charlotte’ conveyed the lucky participants-to-be from Ayr to Falmouth. Everyone’s morale was sky-high, the food was good, duty-free cigarettes abounded, and all was right in the Commando world, as we knew we were at last on our way to somewhere to actually do something!
The boys of No. 2 soon resumed training following disembarking from the ‘P.J.C.’. Nothing very much was different from the usual regimen of long, forced marches in daylight and darkness, weapons drills, and the usual emphasis on maintaining top physical condition. On March 18th Lt. Col. Newman finally outlined the details of the forthcoming operation to the assembled Commando. Charlie gave a remarkably clear and concise presentation of the overall objective, together with detailed descriptions of what the various tasks groups were expected to perform. It was amazing how the Colonel had condensed the 80 page operational order that he had received down to an easily-understood situation talk. Charlie concluded his informative duties with a question: ‘What do you think of that?’ He was answered by a roar of approval that shook the closed room where we had been assembled.
The briefing that Charlie had conducted had not included the mention of the location of the objective, which resulted in ‘head-scratching’ from past geography lessons. Was it to be Cherboug? L’Orient? Brest? or, maybe, Le Havre? It was not until almost the eve of sailing on March 26th that the Commando knew that it had a one-night engagement booked for St. Nazaire.
If this author remembers correctly, it was on the minds of several of the men that many more officers were showing up at Falmouth. Indeed, there were 25 familiar faces of No. 2 Commando officers now present among us. As there were about 215 members of the Commando remaining in Ayr, and the total ‘table of organization’ was 26 officers – Who was minding the store? Someone suggested that the Padre was calling-the-role at the morning parades up there! Even Major Bill Copeland, who had been in charge at Ayr, arrived and smiled his usual greetings. The mystery of ‘so many officers’ deepened when someone pointed out that there also were 15 more officers – the ‘guest-workers’ from the other Commando units. We were now looking at a total of 40 officers! Mathematics was quickly brought into play! The equation of 220 Commando other ranks divided by 40 Commando officers revealed the astonishing ratio of 5.5 – One officer for every five and a half men!
This author still wonders why so many officers were among us in those days. A Commando officer always was the man who led from the front. He was the most eager of the eager-beavers, but also very difficult to replace and train to the level of Commando expertise required. It is thought, looking backwards to those days in March 1942, that quite possibly some of the officers who were there could easily have been substituted for by the experienced sergeants and corporals who had been left behind ‘crying in their beer’ in Ayr. However, all this was conjecture on the part of the Commando men. The force assembled was what it was, the dice had been rolled, and that was that.
On March 19th, Charlie told the men that Mountbatten, (Admiral Lord Louis), had informed him a few days previously that ‘We are writing you off!’ and that he was confident that the Commando force could get in and do the job, BUT ‘we cannot hold much hope of you getting out again’. Charlie also passed on Mountbatten’s comment to the men which was to the effect that ‘any man could volunteer out of the forthcoming operation should he wish to do so’. Charlie, however, had been wasting his time in passing on Lord Louis’ offer. Everyone stayed put, satisfied in their work, and of course, laboring under that strange delusion – their own immortality.
Time in Falmouth passed. On the evening of March 25th, the Commandos boarded their motor-launches and passed into the care of the Royal Navy. For security reasons, everyone was ‘ordered below’ and thus passed the night and the following morning somewhat grumpily, ‘below decks’. At 2:00 p.m., March 26th, the motor-launches, together with the other vessels in the little convoy, sailed out of Falmouth harbor and set a course for St. Nazaire. Our motor-launch was just like the other 15, thirteen of which were carrying Commandos. It had a wooden hull and wooden decks and carried some light anti-aircraft armament. On its deck, aft, there were two large steel drums containing petrol. One of the men pointed out sagely, ‘those things will set us all up in a fireball if anything hits them’, and Cpl. A.H. Smith, acting in the role of a ‘counter-sage’, observed that we would hardly be able to make the return trip without refueling. Thereafter, we looked at the 500 gallon tanks with something akin to affection.
The naval force with its Commando passengers sailed on, first in its daytime cruising formation, and then to the night alignment until just after 8:00 p.m. on March 27th, when the force maneuvered into attack order about seventy miles off St. Nazaire. The disposition of the Commandos was that the attack (sacrifice) destroyer, H.M.S. Campbeltown, had on board 80 Commandos. Charlie Newman and his Commando group were in the motor gun boat (also of wooden construction like the motor launches), and 185 Commandos were being carried in motor launches. This was the ‘order-of-battle’ as the force entered the estuary of the River Loire.
Up ahead of the ships something was happening that did not fit the plan which had included a sharp, diversionary bombing attack on certain areas of St. Nazaire. There was no mass of searchlights with their beams of light crisscrossing in the sky. None of the 88 mm and 40 mm guns were pouring streams of shells upwards. These absent things we noted with some concern. Other benefits of the air-raid would have been many German soldiers and sailors, not employed on the guns, seeking safety in air-raid shelters. As it happened, the desultory far-off bombing that had occurred, put the German defenders on a high alert and they were ready with their searchlights and A-A guns which they depressed to low-angle use. Amazingly enough to the men aboard the M.L.s we were not subject to hostile fire until 1:22 a.m., about eight minutes before the Campbeltown was scheduled to ram itself into the caisson of the Normandie dock at 1:30 a.m.
The battle that was joined at 1:22 a.m. would last about four hours on shore in St. Nazaire and just a little longer in the estuary of the River Loire. The most important objective of the operation, the immobilization of the Normandie dock, was completed some hours later at about 9:30 a.m., when the huge charge of explosive encased in the bows of H.M.S. Campbeltown, detonated, lifting the caisson from its base. In general, the demolition groups who had wrecked or blown-up the ancillary machinery which operated the caisson, were drawn from the men of the other Commandos. The protection groups for these guest-workers were, in the main, the men of No. 2 Commando, who also had supplied the troops forming the assault parties.
Apart from the Commandos who had disembarked from the Campbeltown, the other No. 2 troops attempting to land from the motor-launches experienced severe difficulties. Illuminated in the glare of searchlights, they were subjected to a virtual storm of gunfire from the German defenders on shore. Many of the launches with their navy crews and Commandos were destroyed. Few of the M.L.s managed to land their troops. Most were destroyed when their intrepid sailor crews did everything that they could to fulfill their tasks.
This author did not see this incident, but it is said that Colonel Charlie Newman, on arrival at the theoretical re-embarkation point with his group of survivors from the previous fighting, remarked that ‘there goes our transportation home!’ He was, of course, regarding the burning hulks of the M.L.s in the river when he made that appraisal. It follows that Charlie and friends then attempted to escape to the countryside beyond the confines of St. Nazaire by fighting their way through the old town. The attempt to prolong the fight and evade captivity failed as they ran out of ammunition and were slowed down by the increasing numbers of wounded in their midst. Only five men from the Commando force succeeded in eluding the cordon of German soldiers who had just about entirely sealed off the streets and exits from the town. Cpl. Wheeler, L/Cpl. Douglas, L/Cpl. Howarth, L/Cpl. Sims and Pte. Harding all, somehow, managed to trek all the way through France and Spain to Gibraltar, from whence they were repatriated back to Britain and No. 2 Commando.
It is pretty much fair to say that if a Commando landed at St. Nazaire he was either K.I.A. or made captive. Those survivors of the raid were almost exclusively from the men of the M.L.s in the River Loire who somehow survived their ordeal in what seemed at the time to be a ‘river on fire’. Of the Commandos who had entered the Estuary some seven hours previously, 64 had been K.I.A. and 156 were being led into captivity. Among these, now prisoners-of-war, were over 80 men who were wounded in action. The Royal Navy casualties were even higher, as twice as many sailors had participated in the raid as there were soldiers present. 105 Navy men were K.I.A. and 106 were taken prisoner. Of the 18 motor launches that had entered the river on the night of March 27-28, 1942, only four eventually made their battered and bruised way back to Falmouth. Overall, out of a total of 611 Commandos and sailors committed, 403 would not return.
The comrades of the Commandos, the sailors of the Royal Navy, more than upheld the highest traditions of the Senior Service. If across the passage of time this author could convey a message to the Navy’s illustrious Admiral Horatio Nelson, it would read something like: ‘At St. Nazaire your descendants also fought in wooden ships, and they had hearts of oak, brave and true.’
Some ‘aftermaths’ of St. Nazaire are recalled. Among these are, Capt. Mike Barling returning to Ayr to find himself as not only the unit’s Medical Officer, but also, the senior rank present in No. 2 Commando.
Pte. Fred Peachey was in hospital at Devonport trying to recover from a serious wound that he received in the River Loire. Did this later-to-be Sgt. Peachey have any premonition that this was only the first wound he was to suffer? Fred was to be wounded again at Salerno and, for the third time, at Lake Comacchio.
Lieut. Joe Houghton was not very far away from Fred in the same hospital. Joe had also been hit hard, but was to make a full – but painful – recovery. It is as well that this super officer did not know that in less than seven months hence he would be executed near Berlin by some thugs carrying out Hitler’s commando execution order.
L/Cpl. Ivor Bishop, who had just seen R.S.M. Alan Moss make heroic efforts to save fellow Commandos and lose his life as a result, could have no inkling that he, Ivor, would be promoted so fast that he would be the new No. 2 Commando R.S.M. in far-off Yugoslavia two years hence.
Then there was the time about a month of so after the raid. The author was returning to his billet in Ayr, and Mabel, his wonderful, kind landlady, rushed out to meet him, tears rolling down her face, proclaiming: ‘Wicky is safe! Wicky is safe!’ L/Sgt. Lionel Wickson, who had shared this billet with us prior to leaving for St. Nazaire, had notified her through the Red Cross that he was a P.O.W., alive and well.
It seems as though, in the aftermath, the people in seats-of-power thought that the work of the soldiers and sailors at St. Nazaire should be recognized by the award of the Victoria Cross to five men of the Commandos and Royal Navy. We were proud to see that our Charlie and the heroic Sgt. Tom Durrant, from No. 1 Commando, were among the men so honoured!
Somewhere, someone coined the phrase: ‘The Greatest Raid of All’, and since that time, those words have been used to describe the mainly No. 2 Commando operation at St. Nazaire. Whoever came up with that accolade? I don’t know who, but I certainly wish that he had not done so as it implies a sort of second-rate status to the many other actions that have been fought with equal bravery and losses in men by the other Commandos. This author has the opinion that no one Commando had any monopoly on efficiency, skills, or in the severity of the actions in which they fought. This author would have been proud to have served in any one of them!
Sicily
On July 22nd, 1943, No. 2 Commando arrived in Sicily. They had come from Gibraltar, calling at Algiers, Bone, Phillipville, Tunis and Valleta, in Malta, along the way. This author and ten others had been temporarily detached from the Commando a few months previously to attend to some S.S. Brigade unrelated business in North Africa. We rejoined the Commando on board ship in Valetta harbour and got acquainted with some new faces that had volunteered to join us from the Gibraltar garrison. Some of these ‘newly-minted’ Commandos come to mind. They had left their N.C.O.’s stripes on the ‘rock’ as an entry fee required to become ‘members’ - Pte. Bill Woolley, Pte. Des Rochford and Pte. Albert Myram who would win an M.M. for himself on the last day of fighting in Sicily.
The campaign in Sicily was not very noteworthy to 2 Commando. We resided in the dirty and mosquito-infested olive groves between Augusta and Catania and did nothing too much in the way of plying our trade until August 15th. Up until that date No. 3 Commando had done the ‘heavy-lifting’ in Sicily and Lt. Col. John Durnford- Slater was probably a most-satisfied commander. For some reason or other, at the same time, our Colonel Jack was not the most-contented of men.
No. 2 Commando came off the unemployed list on the night of August 15th, landing at Scaletta – a small coastal town well behind the supposed German lines, about 15 miles or so south of Messina. Our landing was a bit off the intended spot, but no matter, as we soon were engaged with the luckless tail-end of the German rearguard who were heading at top speed towards their evacuation point at Messina. The enemy vehicle drivers and their troop passengers didn’t have much of a chance and the fight was over in short order. The following morning it became apparent that several soldiers of the German rearguard had ‘holed-up’ in houses and other buildings in Scaletta. Some rather-bitter street fighting followed on the morning of August 16th, resulting in casualties on both sides. No. 2 lost Cpl. Bill Watt from Cumberland, age 25; Lieut. John Jeffreys from Essex, age 23; Sgt. Anthony Duffy from Liverpool, age 29; Gnr. Edward Cox from Blackpool, age 22; and Fus. Gerald Cheetham from London, age 24. They were buried alongside many more of their comrades from No. 3 Commando at Catania War Cemetery.
Following the conclusion of the fight at Scaletta, ‘Mad Jack’ and a few officers piled into a vehicle (the author cannot remember if it was a captured ‘Kubelwagen’ or an automobile). They headed for Messina at high speed brushing off other ‘eager-beavers’ who tried to join them. Arriving in Messina, Jack discovered, much to his chagrin, that the Americans had gotten there first during the previous night. Reflecting now on that day, it seems stupid to have put any value on who had entered Messina ahead of anyone else. The bragging rights really belonged to all the British, Canadian and American soldiers who rejoiced at being alive on that day the campaign in Sicily ended.
