THE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT ON THE SURCOUF WAS SLOW GETTING off the mark.
On board the French submarine, the radio operator was monitoring the channels designated on the duty watch list. Suddenly, a priority incoming message from naval headquarters in Bordeaux, located in the French unoccupied zone, arrived. The signal was marked “officer only,” which meant the radio operator could take it down and record it, but because the message was in code, he did not have any idea what it said.
When the signal arrived, the boat’s officer of the deck was in the wardroom drinking coffee. On being summoned, he hurried down to the cramped radio cabin with the key to the safe, opened it, and pulled out the relevant codebook. Decoding the message, he discovered to his distress that the Surcouf was to be scuttled immediately.
The duty officer dashed off to inform the submarine’s skipper, Capitaine de corvette Paul Martine, of the news, shouting, “The British are coming” like a latter-day Paul Revere. But it was too late; a sixty-man boarding party, half Royal Marines and half sailors from the British submarine Thames under the command of Commander Denis “Lofty” Sprague, had already come calling.
At the United States Cavalry School, Major John Randal had been taught never to use the word assume. The old horse soldier NCOs instructing at Ft. Riley gleefully liked to point out that any officer who ever used the word, or even so much as thought it when planning a mission or doing anything else of a military nature, would “make an ass out of you and me”—not a good thing. Unfortunately Commander Denis “Lofty” Sprague had never attended the U.S. Cavalry School.
The Thames’s skipper’s attack plan was based on the assumption that the four hatches on the French submarine’s deck would be open for circulation, allowing the boarding party to swarm down all four more or less at once. They were not. Capitaine Paul Martine had ordered three of the four deck hatches battened down to make it easier to secure the Surcouf in the event they had to put to sea in a hurry. The only hatch not locked shut was the one nearest the submarine’s bow. It was left open to allow the two sentries stationed on deck easy access to get back inside fast if they ever needed to for any reason.
On board the Surcouf, the officers and crew were fully aware there was a war on. Capitaine Martine was also aware that their former ally, the British, might one day decide to commandeer their boat in order to prevent the submarine from falling into German hands. He did not intend to allow that to happen if he could prevent it, and he made his feelings known to the crew. The honor of France was at stake.
The two sentries on deck were thoroughly briefed on their night’s assignment. Especially, they knew what was expected of them in the event they sighted any unusual activity in the harbor; they had been ordered to be particularly alert to the possibility of British sailors making an effort to board. Since the only way to reach the Surcouf from dockside was across the Paris, one sentry was stationed at the foot of the gangplank that ran down from the monster-sized dreadnought that towered over the submarine. His instructions were to give early warning of any sign of trouble on board the Paris. He would, in essence, be the canary in the coal mine.
The other sentry, the petty officer, carried out a roving patrol along the length of the Surcouf, occasionally climbing up onto the top of the conning tower to visually check to see if there was any sign of a waterborne force moving toward the submarine. Each of the French sailors was armed with a big 8-millimeter Lebel service revolver buckled around his waist.
Despite the vigilant sentries on watch, the boarders from the sea side arrived unannounced in three motor launches. They had been lying flat between the thwarts, hoping that in the faint pink light of Beginning Nautical Twilight all that could be seen were the MLs’ coxswains manning their tillers. The boarding party was totally exposed in the open boats, but somehow against all odds, the boarders achieved the element of surprise—the gold standard of all raiding operations.
The first man to swing aboard the Surcouf was Lieutenant Francis Talbot of the Thames. His crew of bluejackets got on deck rapidly without firing a shot and silently captured the sentry by the plank. (He had, reasonably enough, had his eye fixated on the Paris as instructed, not the starboard side where the MLs came in.) The petty officer on roving patrol also failed to detect the motor launch’s approach, but he proved too fast for the raiding party and avoided capture. Lieutenant Talbot watched helplessly as the French sailor ran along the casing forward, hammering on the hull by the conning tower with the steel butt of his pistol to sound the alarm. Like a rabbit diving into his burrow, the sentry scurried down the fore hatch, which was slammed shut after him and battened down.
Now the Surcouf was completely buttoned up. The British sailors and Royal Marines were locked out. Few things on planet Earth have ever been built more watertight than a submarine. Commander Sprague’s plan to attack down all four hatches and put a quick end to any resistance was clearly not going to happen. What to do?
Lieutenant Talbot was a bold young submarine officer who did not wring his hands or get all weepy when things did not go according to plan. Having him lead the boarding party was the Royal Navy equivalent of the Raiding Force rule, “Right man, right job.” He immediately scrambled up the Surcouf conning tower ladder to investigate, but when he reached the top, he discovered that the conning tower hatch was also locked shut.
He noticed, however, that the catches on the hatch looked remarkably similar to the ones on the Thames. And, in an emergency, those could be opened from the outside by rescue divers. By any definition of the word, the situation clearly constituted an official wartime emergency. Lieutenant Talbot coolly popped the hatch and led his men inside. Commander Sprague followed a few minutes later.
Down below, the duty officer, clutching the scuttle order, reached the command post where the periscope was located. The CP was the submarine’s equivalent of a surface ship’s bridge. There he encountered one of the deck sentries, the petty officer who should not have been inside.
“Armed Englishmen,” the petty officer reported breathlessly, “have landed on the Surcouf, sir.”
“Secure the hatch,” the officer of the deck ordered unnecessarily. “Sound General Quarters!” he shouted and turned back to go warn his captain.
Things on the Surcouf rapidly became confused. When Capitaine Martine, in receipt of the scuttle order, arrived in the command post to carry out his instructions, he encountered Commander Sprague and his merry men already inside taking over the boat. British sailors were trying with varying degrees of success to herd the French matelots up onto the main deck. Some of the crew were sleepy and others surly; none were being overly cooperative. The engine room artificers defiantly refused to budge.
Commander Sprague ordered all the French officers to muster in the wardroom located on the deck immediately below the command post. Once in the wardroom, the French officers and a number of sailors lined up on one side of the long gray-linoleum-topped dining table that took up most of the room. The British invaders lined up on the other side of the table in a face-off.
The wardroom had a number of private officer quarters built off it, screened by canvas curtains. Though the largest room on the sub, with everyone crowded in, it was a tight fit. Congregating there proved to be a mistake.
Commander Sprague produced a note, which he read aloud, purporting to be from Admiral Jean Cayol urging the Surcouf crew to “rally to the Free French cause and to continue to fight against the common enemy until victory was achieved.” Capitaine Martine did not believe a word of it. He knew full well that his admiral openly despised de Gaulle. He asked to be allowed to go to the Paris to confer with his boss. Permission was granted, and the French submarine commander immediately departed under armed escort to attempt to clarify the situation.
The rest of the French and the British remained in the wardroom standing on opposite sides of the table. The four hatches were now open, but despite that fresh air the submarine was a hot sticky place. The tension in the room was like a pressure cooker. Everyone was very uncomfortable. The Frenchmen were clearly indignant, bordering on combative. This was not how the operation was supposed to go. Boarding was intended to be a rapid takedown, not end up in a Mexican standoff.
One of the French lieutenants realized the British were not going to allow Capitaine Martine back on the ship. Acting on his own recognizance he discretely passed a note to an electrician’s mate, ordering him to proceed to the engine room, throw the switches to cause a blackout, and tell the crew to wreck as much of the Surcouf’s machinery as they could. The French sailor made an excuse about going to the head and left the room to carry out his orders.
He didn’t notice, however, that he was followed by one of Lieutenant Talbot’s petty officers armed with a large wooden mallet and a suspicious nature. When the French sailor threw the power switches, shutting off the lights, the British petty officer struck the French sailor with a meaty thwack and turned the electricity back on.
Meanwhile, in the brief period the wardroom was pitch black, the submarine’s surgeon slipped into his sleeping room and retrieved a small .25-caliber Model 28 Armes automatic, which he slipped into his pants pocket.
When the lights came back up, Commander Sprague saw the French surgeon as he tried to surreptitiously step back out of his cabin. The Thames skipper reacted by immediately throwing a red-hot temper tantrum, screaming in rage that he had been betrayed. The commander immediately ordered all the Surcouf officers off the boat.
The French submarine’s executive officer, the senior man now present, defiantly refused, saying, “The crew of the Surcouf will only take orders from our own captain, when he returns!” Then to everyone’s astonishment, he stepped out of the wardroom into his adjoining cabin, retrieved an 8-millimeter Lebel service revolver, buckled it on, and stepped back out into the wardroom.
“I have my orders,” announced a clearly frustrated Commander Sprague in schoolboy French, and he pulled out his Webley .455 for the first time. “If you people don’t file off the boat immediately I shall kill you!”
Commander Sprague made this threat based on a second assumption, namely, that, as on British ships of war, only the duty officers and certain sentries were armed at any given time and at all other times individual weapons were secured in a central arms locker. Not so. Nearly all the French officers present were carrying private-purchase pocket pistols or had them in their cabins, and in most cases the weapons were loaded.
Then the Thames skipper did something really stupid. He turned to one of his sailors and, incredibly—still speaking in French—ordered, “Shoot that man.”
He should not have done that.
The Royal Navy sailor had no idea what his captain had said, but the French officers did. One of them pulled out a MAB .32 semiautomatic pistol and began firing.
He shot Commander Sprague, the lieutenant standing to his right, and the two sailors standing to his left. All four went down. Commander Sprague squeezed off a harmless round from his sidearm into the steel deck as he fell, but the others were too stunned to open fire. Hearing the shots, a Royal Navy chief petty officer leaned down the stairwell from the command post, his Webley .455 in hand, and shot the French shooter, knocking him off his feet with a single round that shattered the shooter’s arm and ratcheted into his chest.
The French gunman, bleeding profusely, managed nonetheless to remove his empty magazine and reload as he struggled to regain his feet. Commander Sprague was down, dying, as was the lieutenant who was shot through the liver and had somehow fallen into a chair. The two British seamen were wounded, but less seriously. Now all the Frenchmen in the wardroom had their weapons out, but no one else was firing. There was no need to. None of the British personnel was capable of fighting.
The Surcouf ship’s surgeon ducked back behind the canvas curtains of his cabin, pulling his own handgun, the .25 Armes, from his pocket as he went. His bunkmate was sitting on the lower bunk tearing up a technical manual; he was ready to burn it in a trash receptacle, if need be, to avoid its capture. He looked up so see what was happening.
Two British sailors who had arrived upon hearing the shooting followed the doctor into the compartment: the first one was armed with a Short Model Lee-Enfield .303-caliber rifle with saw-toothed bayonet affixed, and the other carried a Webley .455. The surgeon emptied his weapon into the leading seaman, hitting him eight times in rapid succession at virtual contact range. All eight tiny little .25 bullets completely penetrated his body and struck the Webley-toting sailor behind him around the head and shoulders.
Hard hit, the leading British seaman nevertheless continued moving forward in the on-guard attack position. He veered off to run his bayonet through the startled officer who had been sitting on the bunk tearing up the technical manual. The hard-charging bluejacket succumbed to the barrage of pistol shots without letting go his death grip on the rifle.
Amazingly, the other British sailor suffered only superficial wounds, but he had a lot of them. He was out of the fight.