CHAPTER 13
Biting
By coincidence 6 December, the day on which the Joint Commanders were appointed to lead operations Archery and Anklet, the war stood on the brink of one of its greatest convulsions. In Russia the Red Army took the world by surprise by launching a massive winter offensive in dreadful weather to throw the Germans back from the gates of Moscow and from their farthest penetrations into the Ukraine. While in the Far East the Japanese put the finishing touches to the preparations which, next day, would be revealed as ‘The Act of Iniquity’, the surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor which would propel the Americans from co-belligerence into formal war and provoke the Germans also to declare war against the US. If, in the ensuing cataclysmic weeks, everything looked like one enormous unmitigated disaster, in Washington and London the underlying aims of the leaders focused on seizing the initiative, regardless of how badly everything was going at the front. Anglo-American co-operation, which had been closing in comradeship since 1940, now flourished and burgeoned in meetings of decisive importance. Taking with him a strong team of experts, Winston Churchill joined Roosevelt and his upper hierarchy shortly before Christmas for the First Washington Conference, codenamed Arcadia, which were to set up the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee in a titanic struggle of the United Nations against the Berlin/Rome/Tokyo Axis.
Arcadia was even more than a momentous meeting of statesmen and Chiefs of Staff formulating the policy and strategy designed to bring down the Axis and, of vital importance, according priority to the destruction of Germany while allocating sufficient resources to check and, later, throw back the Japanese. It was a forum for joint consultations between Allied military men of which the ground-base issues concerned the amphibious warfare upon which almost every initiative had to be dependent. Hence the presence in Washington at the end of the year of a Combined Operations Mission to settle operational and technical plans, dealing with procedures and the acquisition of the staggering number and types of assault shipping and craft needed, was fundamental.
When the operational demands of the moment were clarified during the Arcadia Conference they had, when linked to Mountbatten’s dynamic energy, an electric effect. Bonded to a demand that, in support of Russia, whose ability to sustain resistance, regardless of her current offensive, was still in doubt, and as part of the strategy of the war, it was decided that, ‘a series of raids, becoming progressively greater in scale, should be undertaken’. Although Churchill was now in some part neutralized at home by the change of circumstances, and under better control by the Chiefs of Staff, largely through Brooke’s grim determination in imposing orthodoxy in matters strategic and tactical, Mountbatten had still to overcome the inertia inherent in divided control of raids between the naval and the army authorities and the reluctance of RAF leaders to co-operate fully. Yet by a relentless and disarming process of persuasion and coercion, within four months he was able to impose a system very similar to that which Keyes had fought for and failed. When, in May 1942, the new arrangement of ‘licences to raid’ had been settled, it had already been tried out and found workable in more than half a dozen operations. In outline, CCO would receive proposals from any source and prepare a plan, sell it to the Chiefs of Staff, allocate the required forces and generally assist during the preparatory phase. Execution would be with the approval of the naval and army Commanders-in-Chief concerned, but with the naval C-in-C, usually with CCO concurrence, making the final decision to sail or not to sail. But command and planning responsibilities changed at the water’s edge; there the army took over. But neither navy nor army would be responsible for air support which remained under RAF control at CCO’s request. The new system was doubly assured when, in March, Mountbatten was promoted to the joint ranks of Vice-Admiral, Lieutenant-General and Air Marshal and made Chief of Combined Operations (CCO), a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee ‘whenever major issues are in question’. This unique solution was designed to help cope with the unique problem of ensuring that the three Services behaved as a team on the eve of their being joined in action by a new and powerful American ally who held definite views and methods of his own. No longer would British admirals and generals rule their coastal domains like feudal barons. A stronger hand of Royal descent now laid a firm grip upon their watery battleground and imposed a more responsive system, made all the more reliable by Mountbatten’s insistence that there must be ‘no back-seat driving’. Although forbidden by Churchill to go on raids, and even once reproached by the Prime Minister ‘for trying out an early form of one-man submarine (the Welman), invented by SOE, by himself’, Mountbatten made sure that members of the Planning Section went on raids themselves ‘to gain experience and, by their presence, inspire confidence in those taking part’. This example was followed by Dr Dalton’s secretive people in SOE, with whom CCO shared much information, special material and gadgets.
1942 was to be the year of the hit-and-run raid, not only in Europe but also, to a lesser extent, in the Middle East. There the Combined Operations Organization set up in July 1940 was beginning to play its part and desert hit-and-run attacks by the Special Air Service (SAS) under Major Stirling (an ex-member of 8 Commando) had started in November 1941. But a transitional stage had arrived due to the dual, and sometimes conflicting, demands of ‘raids of progressively greater scale’ and ‘Second Front Now’. At times, as the calls for the latter grew stronger and more passionate, the dividing line between raid and invasion became extremely blurred. The frequency of raids, however, was inevitably low to begin with and the number of rejections or last-minute cancellations still high. But it was soon increasingly apparent, and not least to the Germans, that a steelier sense of purpose had been injected in the West.
January’s ‘raid of the month’ was Curlew, an attempt by four officers and 11 soldiers of 15th Battalion the Welch Regiment to land at St Laurent in Normandy in two Eurekas in search of information and ‘to gain experience’. This was a departure from previous small raids in that men of a wartime army infantry battalion were being used instead of Commandos. Run by V Corps in Southern Command it was one of the last raids mounted under the old system, although that had nothing to do with the conclusion. The report said that it was ‘from the military point of view … not a success’. It was not the fault of the raiders that there was a distinct absence of enemy, thus denying anything other than negative information. There was plenty of experience among the raiders; one of the three MGBs came to the rescue of a Eureka broached to in the surf; the troops spent an unmolested hour ashore, with perhaps a hint of implied criticism that they did not search too hard for trouble, and the navy did a fine job getting everybody off, albeit with the loss of three Tommy guns and a Naval Lewis gun.
February might have been a month of stupendous events and, in its closing stages, witnessed one of the classic raids of all time. The ‘stupendous’ could have come about as a result of Operation Audacity which, on the face of it, was simply another Norway venture, aimed this time at Alesund, but underneath harboured optimistic hopes that, this time, the German Navy might be lured to sea to give the Home Fleet the longed-for opportunity to engage it in battle.
Audacity was appropriately named when it is realized that, when conceived in December 1941, strong evidence from decrypts of German signals indicated that Hitler was taking a personal interest in reinforcing the Norwegian theatre for the dual purpose of guarding against the danger of a British invasion and attacking the convoys which sailed to Murmansk through Arctic waters. It looked even more audacious when the battleship Tirpitz arrived at Trondheim on 16 January. As conceived, the idea was to put some 2,000 troops ashore for ten hours, carried in seven LSIs and closely supported, as at Vaagso, by three cruisers, destroyers and smoke-laying aircraft, while bombers raided the German airfields, giving special attention to those where the latest FW 190 fighter was based, and the Home Fleet waited over the horizon. The arrival of Tirpitz chilled the planners and finally led to abandonment of the scheme in February as other more pressing operations came to the fore in a black period during which the Royal Navy suffered the loss of a great many battleships and cruisers in the Far East and the Mediterranean. As will be seen, the debate over Audacity was to have an impact on the considerations surrounding raiding throughout 1942. But in February the wind stood fair for small raids, and already Mountbatten was pressing ahead with irresistible vigour.
The first hint of Biting in CCO’s war diary is to be found on 29 December 1941, when, as a result of pressing inquiries by his new Intelligence Section, a desire of the scientists to possess a working model of the German ‘Würzburg’ radar equipment was made known through the Air Staff. Discovery of a Würzburg site on the cliff top near St Bruneval and the provision of some very good aerial photographs, plus detailed information from Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents in France about German troop dispositions in the neighbourhood, showed beyond doubt that here was an ideal target for a raid – but for a raid with a difference, involving practically every department in the business. The plan which evolved was a trail-blazer. Rejecting a frontal assault across a nearby beach because it was heavily guarded, it was decided to seize both the radar site and the coastal defences from the rear by a parachute drop, before bringing in a beach party by six LCAs, launched from an LSI. The rest of the naval force was to consist of two LCS, five MGBs and two destroyers. On 12 January the Airborne Division was informed and told to detail 120 officers and men who would be carried in 12 Whitleys. There was still a shortage of trained parachutists and Major J. D. Frost, the nominated Company OC from 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment, had hurriedly to complete his jumping course before taking part. Rushed parachute training of two more important members of the force had also to be undertaken – a Sudeten German on SOE’s strength, whose job was to shout misleading orders to the Germans, and Flight-Sergeant C. W. H. Cox of the RAF, who had never been in a ship or aeroplane before. SOE provided special stores and tools which might be needed to extract the radar set, but it was Cox, a radar mechanic, upon whom much depended. His job was to bring back the radar if possible, or at least gather sufficient information upon which counter-measures might be based. His job was made none the less hazardous when the army refused him permission to wear khaki, making him look rather conspicuous in his RAF blue.
The raid was planned to take place on 20 February and, like all acts which go fairly well in public, suffered various troubles before the night. There were hitches with communications, and then successive postponements due to bad weather. When, at last, perfect conditions existed on the night 27/28 February the parachutists landed easily in the snow, but incomplete. A platoon detailed to seize the enemy position overlooking the beaches came down 1½ miles from the drop zone (DZ) and faced a forced march over unknown country. Meanwhile Frost and the others stormed the house guarding the site as Cox and Lieutenant Vernon, RE, tackled the Würzburg. It was all very exciting, but made a lot easier for the assailants since the only sentry awake ‘was a newcomer who did not know where the alarm telephone was’. Nevertheless, the Germans reacted strongly and swiftly once they realized their peril, and Cox found himself under fire while the sappers dismantled the set and he coolly recorded all that he could see by torchlight inside the radar pit.
The retreat to the cliff top became more dangerous with every step Frost and his men took. And they might have been even more worried had they known that the naval force was at risk due to the nearby appearance of an enemy coastal convoy, and that, due to the as yet non-arrival of the beach assault party, the cliffs were still in enemy hands. All at once Flight-Sergeant Cox found himself a soldier:
We retired when the Army made us… On coming down the slope we were met by a hail of machine-gun fire from the opposite side of the cliff and we tried to dig ourselves in. Mr Vernon told me to take charge of the Sappers while he went back with the rearguard. We lay on the bank for about 15 minutes and then received a hail from the village that the beach defences had been taken.
They were stormed by elements of the ‘lost’ party which arrived in the nick of time, after a remarkable cross-country march, to put in a full-blooded assault led by Sergeant Sharp shouting the war cry of the Seaforth Highlanders, ‘Caber Feidh’.
We made our way down to the beach and found we had to wait. After about half an hour the Navy came [bringing with them thirty-two officers and men of the Royal Fusiliers and the South Wales Borderers] and we got the equipment aboard, with the wounded, and after the rearguard had time to make the beach … we pushed off. Slight enemy fire was directed against us from the cliff tops, but was soon silenced by Bren guns in the boats.
The British lost only two killed, a few wounded and six missing, all of whom had been left behind and survived; the Germans lost five killed, two wounded and five missing, of whom two were prisoners, one of them extremely valuable, since he was the radar operator and able to explain how to work it, while the other gave valuable information about conditions inside Germany.
Coming as it did on top of so many Allied disasters elsewhere in the world, and a mere fortnight after two German battle-cruisers and a cruiser had sailed, almost unchallenged, up the Channel, the success of Operation Biting gave a timely boost to morale. It would be pleasant to record that, this time, the Ministry of Information and the press complied with Mountbatten’s desire for good coverage. In fact there were all manner of slip-ups, umbrages taken and too much detail given when the use of an LSI to carry the LCAs to the attack was mentioned instead of being kept as a valuable secret of Combined Operations technique. But at least CCO succeeded in obtaining credit for everyone in Home Forces and not just the glamorous parachutists who, he knew, were likely to attract the lion’s share of publicity. And the RAF could now operate with greater assurance in the knowledge that the secrets of German radar defences were laid bare and could be baffled.