MAJOR JOHN RANDAL AND CAPTAIN TERRY “ZORRO” STONE circulated through the clumps of Dartmouth officer cadets, bluejackets, and Royal Marines as they cleaned rifles, sharpened bayonets, and made last-minute adjustments to their personal gear. The sounds and smells and sense of urgency were chillingly familiar. The Raiding Forces officers, by far the most experienced Special Operations veterans present, were strangely tense. In fact, though they did not show it, the two Commandos were highly keyed up, even more so than if they were slated to be going on the mission in a fighting role, not merely tagging along as noncombatant observers. It is one thing to go into battle; it is something else entirely to stand on the sidelines and watch others getting ready to.
The men of Operation Catapult looked upon the Raiding Forces officers moving reassuringly through their ranks as military stars; they were awed by the “Tomcat Raiders,” the daring commanders of the first parachute raid of the war, the “hands of steel from the sea that snatched” an unwary German general from his post. The famous Commandos, wearing their forest green berets and parachute wings on their chests, had the look of the fighting man’s professional, hard enough to cut glass.
The presence of Major Randal and Captain Stone was confidence building. The Royal Navy had gone to the trouble to bring in the best raiders in all England to ensure that nothing went wrong with tonight’s show. Everything was going to be all right. If they only knew. Neither Major Randal nor Captain Stone had the foggiest idea how to capture a warship.
Major John Randal made it a point to spend time with the Dartmouth officer students. Only senior cadets had been selected to take part in the night’s operation. That meant they would be commissioned sometime in the near future. The youngsters were mad keen.
“Any of you men have small boat experience, there’s openings for naval officers in Raiding Forces,” he said. “We’re looking for can-do operators.”
“How does one go about volunteering, sir?” inquired one of the Dartmouth instructors, a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve sub-lieutenant, eagerly. “I’m a yachtsman and would delight in the chance to get into the active war, if the offer is available to staff.”
“Contact Captain Lady Seaborn care of the Bradford Hotel, London,” Major Randal said, studying the young officer closely. “She’ll expedite the transfer.”
“Poaching, John?” Major Lawrence “Larry” Grand queried with a frown. “Best not get caught. The powers that be are sure to take umbrage. We would not want the admiral to maroon us from Catapult at this stage.”
“Hornblower requested permission to recruit Sea Rover Scouts to haul SOE’s stores of arms and demolitions across the Channel, Larry,” Major Randal said, “so you can set Europe ablaze.”
“Ooof,” Major Grand grimaced as if he had taken a punch to the solar plexus. “By all means, press-gang away, and good hunting! Scouts conducting clandestine maritime operations—can you be that desperate?”
“We have three boats, one officer, and four naval ratings. You do the math.”
Zero hour was 0430, just before first light.
Nearly everyone in the attacking force wore a tin hat, and the officers and petty officers each carried a Webley .455 revolver. In addition, every officer was armed with a single sheet of paper upon which were written the four French phrases deemed to be most appropriate for the night’s work, the last being “Levez vos mains”—“Raise your hands.”
“It may prove a bit tricky,” Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone pointed out, “during the heat of a high-speed, close-quarter boarding operation, conducted under cover of darkness, for one to whip out a paper, peruse the list, select the proper message, and read it in a foreign language to an armed opponent who may or may not be intent on ventilating you at the time.”
“Poor prior planning,” Major John Randal said, “produces poor results.”
Admiral Sir Martin Eric Dunbar-Nasmith had his own note that began, “The French nation has fought gallantly to a standstill” and ended “any resistance can only cause unnecessary bloodshed.” Again, how he was supposed to be able to see it well enough to read it, in French, during the period of Beginning Nautical Twilight was never clearly explained.
The Royal Marines and the Navy bluejackets moved into their assault position on the dock. Considering the incomplete state of their training, their lack of experience in working together, and a total absence of rehearsals, they carried off the movement from the assembly area to the line of departure as skillfully as if they performed that sort of complicated maneuver every day. The men were very stealthy. Over the ages, many a surreptitious military endeavor has been compromised by an accidentally discharged weapon or some other egregious violation of light or sound discipline that gave away the show. Not so tonight.
At the appointed time, Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith charged up the boarding plank followed by a host of heavily armed Royal Marines carrying Enfield rifles at the high port, with bayonets fixed, and demanded in no uncertain terms for the sentry on duty to summon the ship’s officer of the deck “RIGHT BLOODY NOW!”
The Paris’s watch officer pulling the duty happened to be making his rounds not far away. He repaired to the boarding gate to see what all the commotion was about and was presented with the short note. Since the French officer recognized Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith from a previous courtesy call on the ship’s commander, Admiral Jean Cayol, in happier times, he wasted no time hurrying to his admiral’s cabin to present the document to him.
The instant the duty officer departed, the Royal Marines and bluejackets stormed the Paris, taking a page right out of Raiding Forces’ “Rules of Raiding”—“It never hurts to cheat.”
The boarders were very quick and the Paris was secured without resistance. In fact, most of the ship’s complement was conveniently asleep in their hammocks when the British struck. Admiral Cayol was sitting up in his bunk wearing an expensive pair of monogrammed pale yellow Chinese silk pajamas—a gift from his mistress—when the ship’s watch officer arrived bearing the note.
Pacing back and forth outside Admiral Cayol’s cabin, Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith grew increasingly impatient waiting for a reply to his invitation to surrender peaceably. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he suddenly burst in on his pajama-clad counterpart, who was studying the five-paragraph letter. The French flag officer was visibly distressed.
“I could have ordered my ships scuttled,” Admiral Cayol lamented, “but that would have merely obstructed your harbor and been an inconvenience to your future operations against our former common enemy.”
Upon hearing that tepid response, the Commander in Chief of Western Approaches realized he had, exactly like his fictional hero Horatio Hornblower, actually captured a foreign battleship by boarding.
Major John Randal, Major Lawrence “Larry” Grand, and Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone had stepped on the main deck within seconds of the Marines and sailors piling aboard. They witnessed the extraordinary sight of more than six hundred of the French crew marching up under armed guard, filing off the ship onto the quay, and being herded into a convoy of waiting canvas-topped Bedford trucks. The boarding operation had gone down like clockwork. Militarily it was a thing of beauty.
But why had virtually the entire crew of the mighty French dreadnought been taken unawares snug in their rack asleep? It was passing strange. After all, there was a war on, even if the Frenchmen’s hearts were not in it anymore.
“I’d expect more men standing watch on a party boat,” commented Major Randal.