CHAPTER 4

Men, Weapons and Craft

Eight weeks after Clarke had put forward his scheme and ten days after Keyes took over as DCO, there were 750 men in the Independent Companies and 500 Commandos, in addition to the crews of Garnons-Williams’s diverse flotilla of small craft. Already, apart from the change in raiding policy effected by Keyes and Churchill, the nature and style of the land element of Combined Operations was changing. For while the principle of volunteering for this special force remained inviolable, the method of recruiting had been altered and the qualifications tightened up. The formal organization was in course of preparation by a War Office which insisted upon traditional methods. Within a few months the Commandos would be officially called Special Service troops – a term which, in its abbreviated form of SS, sounded far too like that of the German SS. Yet the men rejoiced in their own, self-assumed title of ‘Suicide Squads’. The initial insistence that officers and men must be physically fit, ready trained and proficient swimmers remained in force, but could not be relaxed although extra emphasis was being placed upon good character. Being an individualist and a volunteer were not necessarily sufficient reasons for acceptance. Each man had to become part of a team and it was with that in mind that Commanding Officers, when appointed, were given powers to select their own officers who, in turn, chose their own subordinates.

‘This is how I got into it,’ wrote 2nd Lieutenant J. G. Appleyard:

 

(Gus) March-Phillipps was selected by Col. Lister as ‘B’ Troop Leader. He was told he could have a free hand in picking two volunteer subalterns from the whole of the Southern Command [about 30 volunteered] for his two section leaders… Each section has 23 men and so the whole strength of the Troop is 50 men… We have about 200 ‘volunteers’ from which to pick the 47 for our troop. Everything depends on the men we choose. We ourselves select the men and have the right to take from this list of volunteers any we like… On parade and on a job there must be rigid discipline. Off parade there will be a great fellowship. At all times there must be absolute trust and confidence. There will be no punishments – a man is either IN or OUT… There will be no paper work, no administrative work. No billeting problems, no feeding problems as we feed and billet ourselves. Every man gets 6/8 a day above his normal pay for this purpose, every officer gets 13/4 a day extra.

 

All of which sounded splendid when written in the euphoria of his joining on 1 August 1940, and before the snags had been discovered. Obviously somebody had to do the administration. Those in opposition had closed ranks against the Commandos, and they included many influential people, among them Sir John Dill, the CIGS, Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, the General Officer C-in-C (GOC-in-C) Home Forces, and the COs of most regiments, whose men, by order, could not be denied the opportunity to volunteer for the Commandos if they chose to do so. At the root of the objections to the Commando idea lay reasoned fears that the army’s discipline would be undermined and that units would lose their best men upon whom they depended on for future leaders. Without denying the need for a few special ‘shock’ troops, Brooke, for example, thought they should be restricted to a single company in each division. With their pride injured, COs naturally insisted that their particular units could do anything Commandos could do, provided they were given the same priorities which already were being granted to Keyes’ corps d’elite; but they overlooked the fact that, among the recalled reservists and newly recruited conscripts filling their ranks, many were by no means genuine volunteers and therefore lacked the spark of hearty aggression. But later in the war a shortage of leaders did afflict the infantry.

By 27 September all the Independent Companies had been absorbed by the Commandos which now numbered ten, with a total strength of some 8,000 men, including 500 potential parachutists, of whom only 100, as yet, were learning how to jump. They came from almost every Corps and Regiment in the British Army and already included a few Royal Marines and Americans. Besides these, there was 10(IA) Commando, consisting of one French Troop, one Dutch, three Belgian, one Norwegian, one Polish, one Yugoslav and one troop of ‘enemy aliens’, such as Sudeten Germans. And while efforts were being made from on high either to have them disbanded, brought into line with regular forces or at least deprived of the special lodging allowance, the Commando units themselves were acquiring that electric spirit which, of necessity, set them apart from those who did not have to practice amphibious warfare. The deliberately acquired habits of independent thought worked marvels in inculcating reliability allied to flexibility of execution when in action.

 

It soon became the rule, when any movement of the Commando was necessary, to dismiss the men at one place at, say, six in the evening, with orders to be on parade at six in the morning the next day at some other place, often many miles distant. How they reached it was their own affair, providing they did so. By this practice a Commando soldier might travel sixty, seventy, or even a hundred miles in twelve hours; and the number who failed to reach the new rendezvous was infinitesimal.

 

To which it could be added that the number who were absent without leave or who deserted was also well below the average for the army as a whole.

Of the men who offered themselves for a type of service which was far more exacting than that in normal units, about 25 per cent failed the medical examination. Others could not keep up the pace of training. The rule about swimmers was not rigidly enforced since ‘it was found that to refuse them would lead to the rejection of too large a number of men otherwise fit to be Commandos’. They simply had to learn as quickly as possible. Lieutenant Pip Gardner, RTR (who was later to win a VC after he had been returned to his own Regiment because trained tank men were badly needed in tanks), recalled being paraded on the end of Weymouth pier:

 

Somebody shouted, ‘Alright! Everybody jump in the sea.’ So we did and then had to rescue the four who had claimed they could swim and who, quite obviously, could not.

 

Appleyard recalled the general pattern of a training day for the Commandos:

 

Today’s programme has been typical… Reveille 6:30, training run 7 (about a mile) followed by PT, breakfast 8, parade 9, inspection, route march 8–10 miles (with arms, in battledress, belts, etc.) at fast pace, including cross-country work, map-reading, compass work, moving through cover etc. Lunch 1, swimming parade 2:30 for 1½ hours swimming, running, exercising etc. Tea at 4:40. Lecture by M-P [OC] for three-quarters of an hour at 5. Free for the evening at 6… Later on, of course, there will be weapon training, range practice, cross-country runs, hare and hounds, treasure hunts, mock operations, night operations, etc.

 

Living in civilian billets did, of course, add to the attractions of being a Commando. Undeniably there was competition among Commandos to find themselves the best accommodation and a genuine desire among many landladies to have Commandos in preference to other soldiers. The testimonies speak for themselves.

Commandos:

 

At no time during my service with the Commandos can I truthfully say that I have lived in a rotten billet. Indeed, on the contrary I have friends all over the country from Brighton to Beddgelert from Seaford to Scarborough, from Dover to Dumfries.

Billets in some places were just second homes.

  

Landladies and Barmaids, who soon got used to having rifles on the hatstand in the hall and grenades lining the sideboard:

 

I was at that time a barmaid at the Queen’s Hotel off the Weymouth Station and a building next door was taken over by squads of different regiments – the Kosbies, the Suffolks and another I can’t remember. Then there appeared a mob of slap-happy and wild men who turned out to be quite a smashing mob. They called themselves the SS Squad, Suicide Squad. A lot of training was done locally but once, I remember, they all trooped into the bar and said they had to get to Cornwall (Land’s End). No money, no food, no transport. Beg, borrow or steal and had to be back by Saturday. They left on Monday. They were back by Friday night very excited but on their knees, all shouting, ‘We’ve done it’ – and were they glad of their beer.

 

I loved to see the boys wash and shave and get ready for parade and then put their hands up the chimney and black their faces with a sooty hand! Their favourite dinner was toad-in-the hole, mash and a tin of baked beans mixed with a tin of tomatoes. One, Stan, spent his honeymoon at our house and the lads soldered several bells and things under the bed-springs for the First Night and we had a helluva job to get them all off. They put the mattress on the floor that night. Mum was WVS and had to look after the neighbours in air raids and the lads were really helpful when they were there. They used to go to Lulworth Cove and do their cliff climbing.

 

Ours were Army Commandos, one Irish, one a Londoner, each wearing different hats and badges. Their standards of cleanliness were immaculate – in dress and in their rooms. They were always armed and they never left anything behind. They would go off in the morning and would come back looking dishevelled and tired. They would sometimes ask for sandwiches the night before – which was not always easy what with the rationing. Usually spam or something like that. They walked to and from work. They were very careful about security: when some girls asked them about their work nothing came out.

 

Security was, of course, of overriding importance. For example, ‘A separate uniform was mooted (in 1940) but was rejected as men might be sent back to their units to rest after a raid and it was not desired to draw too much attention to them.’ But there were other reasons for denying any form of special dress, as became clear in a War Office letter to DCO in June 1941:

 

The [Army] Council regrets that they are unable to agree that a special head-dress is either necessary or desirable for SS Units. All the men in Commandos come from units which, on average, have over 100 years’ tradition behind them, and the Council feels sure that these men, so far as their personal inclinations are concerned, would certainly rather carry the badge and insignia of their own regiment than a newly-invented head-dress which appears to savour somewhat of an accoutrement of the Blackshirts.

When the Commandos are actually engaged in operations the question of a uniform head-dress does not arise, as a steel helmet of a uniform pattern is already available. On the other hand, when the SS Troops are not in fighting kit, there would appear to be a considerable advantage from the security point of view in allowing the men to wear the head-dresses of their own regiments, and thus render it difficult for enemy agents or others to estimate what a particular detachment is really likely to consist of.

 

The CIGS’s antipathy to Commandos was unrelenting. In September 1940, he made a determined attempt to cancel the Lodging Allowance and thus do away with the privilege of living independently of barracks and camps. Keyes played the politician and successfully held out by dealing direct with the Secretary of State for War. In a letter to Eden he pointed out the triviality of the CIGS’s complaints about misuse of the Allowance, saying that to remove LA would be regarded as a breach of faith and that probably the existing system was less expensive than the normal arrangements.

The War Office’s attitude to weapons was also sometimes akin to its feelings about dress. Although there was general agreement over the use of the standard rifle, Bren light machine-gun, pistol and No. 36 grenade, and rejection of the bow and arrow (despite its silence of operation and the effective use of one in the hands of an expert at Dunkirk in May), the selection of close-combat weapons was more debatable. For while the carrying of a fighting knife was considered sensible (and also useful for preparing food), and the sub-machine gun was frowned on by many soldiers of the old school. In 1938 the Birmingham Small Arms Company pressed the War Office for an order to manufacture the Thompson sub-machine gun for which it had acquired a seven years’ option from the USA. They let the option lapse upon receipt of a pompous letter saying that ‘the British Army saw no need to equip itself with gangster weapons’. As a result, panic measures had to be adopted in 1940 to acquire a few of these reliable, if somewhat heavy, .45 guns with their excellent stopping power at close range.

The problem of acquiring suitable men and weapons for the Commandos was, however, nothing compared to the difficulty of finding and training the sailors and airmen who would carry them to war and the craft in which they would travel. There were too few ships, boats and aeroplanes with which to fight, let alone use for training purposes, and the reason for this could be laid squarely at the door of those who, before the war, had paid little more than lip-service to future amphibious operations. For example, almost every proposal to build mechanized landing craft was stopped by lack of funds or lack of interest.

An exercise held in 1938 at Slapton Sands showed how out-dated British methods and facilities were at a time when the Japanese had already demonstrated, in an opposed landing against the Chinese at Tientsin, a technique involving many landing craft transported to the beach area in a 10,000-ton landing-craft carrier, the entire operation supported by air power and warships. At Slapton the troops paddled ashore at night in rowing boats launched from destroyers – a technique no further advanced than that used at Gallipoli in 1915. As a summary of a paper dated 30 June 1939, put it:

 

The problems left to us in 1918, which had been only successfully solved in respect of a relatively small raid on Zeebrugge, had scarcely been touched. We had no means of putting an army ashore in face of opposition and the technical problems of a greater rate of build-up than the enemy scarcely received any attention at all.

 

It was therefore unrealistic, almost ludicrous, when Churchill wrote to Keyes on 25 July 1940:

 

I am hoping that you will shortly present me in outline … with three or four proposals for medium-sized action (i.e., between five and ten thousand) of the kind which I mentioned to you verbally. I certainly thought we should be acting in September and October.

 

For there were available no personnel ships, no tank-carrying ships, just four Mechanized Landing Craft (MLC), each capable of only 7½ knots and of taking a 14-ton tank, 16 small Assault Landing Craft (ALC), six motor boats, four punts (for use from submarines) and 13 horse boats. As for suitable aircraft to lift the 100 parachutists under training and the 400 standing by, only a few unsuitable Whitley bombers were to be had at once and the War Office refused to allow these to be used until remedial measures were taken after two fatal accidents in July and early August.

Ambitious plans were afoot at Churchill and Keyes’ urging to convert five fast ships of between 10,000 and 3,000 tons as personnel carriers; to convert two train ferries and four Turkish horse ferries to carry tanks; and to build a fleet of Tank Landing Craft, each of which could take three 40-ton tanks at 10 knots, and many assault landing craft of which a quantity were to be bought from the US. But the ship-building industry could not complete plans and set up production overnight, and, in any case, the demands on the shipyards for warships and merchant ships to replace losses, let alone to increase strength, were insatiable. No priority was given to landing craft. But at least there was then a will within the Admiralty to get things moving, and fewer serious instances of obstruction occurred there than elsewhere. According to Keyes, in a letter to Major-General Sir Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s chief staff officer at the Ministry of Defence, it was not the same in the other two Service Ministries. On 27 August, listing the difficulties raised by the War Office and the Air Ministry to thwart his attempts to raise and train paratroops, he wrote:

 

The truth of the matter is, the Army has raised some irregular troops, but has not equipped them yet, and the War Office never lose an opportunity of expressing their disapproval of ‘shock troops’ in principle.

The Navy is trying to train these irregular troops and Regular Brigades, but though we have been at war for a year, it has failed to provide the ships and landing craft to prosecute amphibious warfare. It is not easy to get on with the war. I haven’t bothered the Prime Minister again, as there is really nothing he can do, unless he starts afresh and gets two or three ardent offensive spirits – free from everlasting Committees – to help him do so.

 

Depressing though it sounded (as it most certainly was at the height of the Battle of Britain with invasion expected at any moment), the months of August and September did witness a most remarkable laying of foundations for the future. Meetings sponsored by MO9 and DCO discussed ideas and placed demands for development of a host of devices and techniques. The War Diary of Combined Operations abounds with ideas and the drive to put them into action. At one meeting the Director of Armoured Fighting Vehicles (Major-General V.V. Pope) laid down specifications and plans for tanks which waded and tanks which swam, ways and means of getting tanks ashore through minefields, and tanks which flew or could be carried in gliders. At another meeting, the problems of the means to transport men and equipment by air were considered. MO9 stated on 2 August:

 

If airborne raids are to be carried out, operational transport will be required to lift 1,500 men…

The immediate requirement … is the provision of aircraft for training parachutists. The Whitley [with its hole-on-the-floor exit] is now generally accepted as unsuitable … both from a psychological and an operational point of view. It is agreed that for operations a door exit is required.

A final need is for some machinery and technical establishment to develop Army air transport requirements. There is a pressing need for some progress in the problems of transporting troops, guns and AFVs by air and in landing – and sometimes evacuating – them on various surfaces by means of parachute, gliders, helicopters and normal aircraft etc.

At which point it is worth interjecting that the British were as yet unaware that the Germans had used gliders operationally in the taking of Fort Eban Emael, in Belgium, on 10 May; and that the door exit for parachutists was already leading to an imminent decision to request procurement of the latest American Douglas DC3 airliner as the most suitable for the task – the machine which would become famous as the Dakota.

This was the ideas and paper war. The real war would not wait, and Winston Churchill, for all that he was now fully aware of British inadequacy for the prosecution of amphibious operations, searched eagerly for means to prove that the lion could still roar. He soon found several bold approaches for doing so and ‘setting the Staff to work’. But the medium raids policy introduced fundamental problems that Churchill cannot possibly have foreseen – and these, to a large extent, were counter-productive and would be damaging to almost everybody connected with Combined Operations in the autumn of 1940.