INTRODUCTION

The majority of the campaigns conducted by the Western Allies during World War II were, at their start, Combined or Joint Service operations. In the aftermath of that war many books – some fact, some fiction – described individual battles with a plethora of detail concerning acts of individual gallantry by the men of special organizations. The name Commando, which had stimulated popular imagination and raised the hopes of the hard-pressed British people in the desperate days of 1940, had by then gained world-wide acceptance as symbolic of elitism among fearless and ruthless fighting men. And yet, among the Official Histories published on both sides of the Atlantic, not a single one describing the work of the Combined Operations Organizations was commissioned. Instead the story was deliberately merged with Campaign Histories. As a result, the numerous minor hit-and-run operations which featured in all theatres of war were either totally omitted or reduced to a footnote, treatment which, in terms of history, was both an injustice and an obfuscation. For no matter how lightly separate raids may have weighed in the scales of a total war, or how localized the impact on friend or foe of pinprick skirmishes, the accumulated effect of raiding was important – at times vital. By the same token, the omission from most histories of the intensive but frequently abortive attempts to launch all manner of raids has left behind an impression of irrational inactivity in the prosecution of the war, which was quite untrue and demands explanation.

It is also often forgotten that the causes of shortcomings in the publication of recent history are often the result not only of the demand to protect national security, but also the need to avoid defamation of living individuals. Much that should be revealed in the interests of clarity and of history has to be suppressed; and the primary losers are those among the generation who made that history, who are denied a full understanding of what it was about. Of course the rules which, to all intents and purposes, banned examination of official records of World War I, let alone World War II, had largely been relaxed by 1973 on both sides of the Atlantic, and the more recent publication of the British Official History of Intelligence has performed another important service. Meanwhile the death of many of those concerned minimizes the risk of libel actions against historian or publisher.

Documents about the intrigues, vacillations, misunderstandings, prejudices and political as well as military confrontations which were the daily chores of Combined Operations Headquarters and the bedevilment of even the smallest operation are available to demonstrate why it was that many hitherto inexplicable dramas occurred. Repeatedly it is the negative aspects which are the most revealing. Certainly, in the context of amphibious hit-and-run raiding, the unpublicized stories of the raids which did not take place often throw more light on the causes of hesitations and apparent contradictions than do current explanations of those which did.

At the root of rejections or cancellations of planned raiding operations is to be found the underlying weaknesses of the Allied position: the doubts of leaders at all levels; faults in training and equipment; inadequacies of technique; the corrosive ramifications of departmental jealousies and competition; and the restrictions upon uninhibited combat imposed by politico-humanitarian principles. Consider, for example, the inhibitions placed upon even the smallest attempt to carry the war to the enemy and steal the initiative by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. His ingrained memories of Gallipoli in 1915, with its heavy loss of life on fire-swept beaches, as well as his dread of inflicting avoidable hardship upon friendly people in enemy-held territory, made him chop and change his mind. Note the concern of President Roosevelt and the American Chiefs of Staff that a plethora of minor diversionary operations would militate against a concentrated war-winning effort. Bear in mind the legitimate objections of the Intelligence Services to any operations which might interfere with their vital function of gathering information. Add to these the worries of admirals, loaded with the burden of winning the war at sea, upon which everything depended and to which all else gave pride of place. Finally do not forget the weather’s depredations, nor those of enemy resistance, either of which could halt an action after all the preliminaries had been settled.

History calls for a definitive account of Allied Combined Operations in World War II. Practical publishing and the tyranny of space make this unlikely. The best that can be done is to fill gaps amid the existing books and bring to notice material which has hitherto been locked away. In this book I concentrate on the field of the smaller raids, set against the background of their causation, in the hope also of highlighting the contribution of forgotten top-grade people who, for a variety of reasons, have been misjudged or whose acts of courage and sacrifice have been overshadowed by the glare of a few highly publicized celebrities. Just as it is time to record smaller operations in greater detail, in addition to those at St Bruneval, St Nazaire and Dieppe, so it is right to pay tribute to the work of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes alongside that of Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Colonel W. J. Donovan and Rear Admiral R. K. Turner. Similarly it is desirable to mention not only the famous – the Lovats, Stirlings and Carlsons – but to expand upon the lesser known Appleyards, Pinckneys, Berncastles, Edsons, Boyds and Kennedys of raiding fame, and to link their courage and determination with that of the sailors who took them to their rendezvous with destiny. And when the telling of the story can be contemporary, in the fighting men’s own words, that is better than projections of distant hindsight.

I have focused my research on the archives held by the Public Record Office, London, the Library of the Ministry of Defence and the various National Archives of the United States Navy and Army in Washington, DC. I have also consulted the Imperial War Museum, London, the Royal Marines Museum, Southsea, and the US Marine Corps Center, Washington. As a deliberate policy, however, in my endeavour to use mainly contemporary records, I have interviewed few survivors and have been wary of post-war written memoirs. Old men tend to forget, prejudice can intrude, politics do enter into the subject and high literary merit sometimes conceals a wealth of error. In any case I have a preference for the ‘flat’ action account rather than the highly embroidered narrative. I am, however, indebted to Captain G. A. French, RN, for providing me, in discussions, with invaluable insight into Allied and Joint Service Planning during the formative period 1940 to 1942; to Colonel P. A. Porteous VC and Captain P. Gardner VC for anecdotes, guidance and assistance; and to several landladies and barmaids whose recollections of fighting men at play and in repose were valuable in understanding atmosphere and the under-pinning of morale. To all those institutions and contributors who have helped, I wish to pay full acknowledgement and give heartfelt thanks for making their documents and memories available. I would recommend to anybody who is sufficiently enthused by my discoveries (British and American) to visit the Public Record Office at Kew, London, and study in detail, as I have done with the unfailing help of the staff there, the superb (and far from over-weeded) collection of documents relating to Combined Operations in Europe and the Pacific and Far East. They are to be found scattered throughout CAB, ADM, AIR and WO Records but concentrated to a remarkable extent under DEFE 2, to which I have made the most frequent reference in assembling this book. And among these, none are more rewarding than the 36 thick files of the COHQ War Diary which show how power in the hands of dynamic innovators can compel innovation against even the stiffest reactionaries. For, in the final analysis, the events described here are the products of a relatively small number of very determined and intelligent men who knew how to get their way, be it in London, Washington or against the declared enemy on several hundred different beaches, in every theatre of war.

Finally I wish to express my indebtedness to Chester Read, who drew the maps; to Felicity Northover, who read my scrawl and typed the manuscript; and to Bill Woodhouse, who read and criticized the draft with his usual thoroughness and critical good sense.

Kenneth Macksey

1990