CHAPTER 29

Beginning Without End

At the end of an all-embracing war in which a greater number of revolutionary methods had burgeoned than any other in history, it was a telling paradox that the initial concept of hit-and-run raiding, performed by small groups, remained inviolate. This provided proof that when Clarke, Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff gave impetus in the summer of 1940 to pin-prick attacks they were on the right lines in the context of a situation in which Britain had lost the initiative. It also showed that when the Chiefs of Staff repudiated small raids in favour of larger-scale ones, they postponed the moment when some form of initiative through attack could be resumed. Had it not been for the innovative and aggressive drive of Keyes, Roosevelt, Mountbatten, Donovan, Turner, Carlson and Laycock, it is extremely likely that conventionally educated politicians, sailors, soldiers and airmen would have been content to conform to past practices and allow the war to develop on classic lines, as the Germans, to a marked extent, actually did. And if that had been so, the contributions by such dashing and ingenious fighting men as Clarke, Courtney, Pinckney, Clogstoun-Willmott, Lovat, March-Phillipps, Appleyard, Edson, Kennedy and Boyd would have been relegated to the anonymous masses where they might have been suppressed without playing a constructive part through the superior, intellectual thuggery they were permitted to practice. And let it be remembered that a good University degree or the highest secondary school qualifications were by no means oddities among a company of men, several of whom read the Classics on their way to action.

This is not to claim that amphibious hit-and-run raids in themselves won the war or even possessed major significance. But it does suggest that an outstanding individual at any level in a military organization and in combat has a vital part to play in forcing a conclusion without resorting to massed slaughter. For if there is a single major lesson to be drawn from the sum total of amphibious raiding operations during World War II it is their comparatively low cost in lives set against results achieved, particularly if one includes within those achievements the enormous dividends accruing from the solution of the problems of major seaborne invasions upon which nearly all Allied campaigns were founded. Looking backwards to the cataclysmic days of 1940, the survivors of 1945, who had seen Combined Operations through from the beginning, must have been amazed by what had been done in the time. Who, among those who went ashore near Boulogne for the rag-bag Operation Collar in June 1940, could have envisaged the storm of repeated and successful visits to the same area in the Hardtack and Tarbrush sequence of raids in 1943 and 1944? What confidence could there have been in the infant Commandos in the autumn of 1940 when senior naval and army officers were sincerely doing all in their power to strangle them in the cot? How could anybody in those early days have imagined that, from the hotch-potch assembly of a few assault craft and transport aircraft, would emerge the armadas of purpose-built ships, craft and aeroplanes, along with their attendant support organizations, demanded with such foresight and verve by Keyes and the small Directorate of Combined Operations?

The fact is that from the enforced initiatives of 1940 there emerged fundamental changes in political and military systems and equipment which imposed a profound influence upon defence development in the war’s aftermath. The institution of DCO obliged individual Service Departments to function as members of a team along with the gradually enforced abandonment of their traditional go-it-alone habits. The imposition of joint and inter-Service planning and executive rules not only spread outwards to all levels of the British military machine, but were exported across the Atlantic to infect the Americans whose departmental fissions were even more pronounced and motivated by jealousies than those of Britain. Even if, by 1945, a perfect world of ideal harmony based upon unadulterated co-operation between allies and among the multitude of organizations and people had not been achieved, the habit of working together towards an agreed goal was implanted.

There is no better historical example of collaboration among allies on a vast scale than that of the Anglo-American alliance of World War II. Nor is it without significance that extensive cementing of that alliance at ground level was performed by the arbiters of raiding as they endeavoured to initiate offensive operations when the defensive was about all that seemed possible. Very likely the British enthusiasm for raiding was of importance in overcoming American reticence in that field. Of decisive importance is the likelihood that Churchill’s and Mountbatten’s prodding were essential in thrusting their allies towards the Commando idea and a willingness to adopt so rapidly the improved joint-Service systems. Indeed, it has to be asked if the war might not have been prolonged if this had not been so. But it is yet another example of the inspiring nature of American open-mindedness to innovation that they followed the Commando concept, and not only copied but produced, in enormous war-winning numbers, British-invented LSTs, LCTs and LCIs without which the major invasions would have been impossible. The point is that the widespread and diverse consultations and contacts inherent in combined collaboration set up systems of thought through which the participants reached sound solutions with mutual concurrence. As good an example as any of this give and take process was provided by the rationalization of different British and American approaches to beach assault methods. It was significant that the British, with their pronounced objections in 1941 to the American doctrine of daylight assault supported by overwhelming bombardment, could adapt this method a year later; and that the Americans, in their turn, came to appreciate and employ the British technique of stealthy landing by night.

It called for immense courage for men to embark upon courses which diverged so acutely from strongly-held doctrine and method. So it is proper to indicate those who were most influential in making the greatest changes. Churchill, despite the incontrovertible evidence of his doubts and vacillations concerning amphibious operations, comes at once to the top in seeking new ways, as does Roosevelt, despite his tendency, like Churchill, to innovate without due regard to feasibility. It must never be forgotten that it was often their task to compel conservative subordinates to take risks in order to make progress, and that striking sparks from the complacent was often essential to generate the initiative demanded. In these conditions, and inevitably in a world in which the publicist often reigns supreme, heroes assume dominant importance. On both sides of the Atlantic Mountbatten stands out uniquely as an undisputed leader. No other officer quite equalled him in achieving such breadth of influence on statesmen, admirals and generals. Not only was he at home in the corridors of power, he also had a motivation spurred by bitter and recent experience of being shot at in the most direct and intensive way. But while it is correct to credit him with bringing Combined Operations to the pitch that they reached worldwide, it is equally wrong to overlook the man who preceded him and set the stage.

Sir Roger Keyes warrants far greater praise than it has been his lot to receive, to off-set the damnation to which he has been consigned by his peers. His critics overlook the fact that the Americans regarded Keyes’s unique experience of amphibious raiding with the respect which was his due, and also forget that the foundations of the organization Mountbatten took over were laid by Keyes. From Keyes in the summer of 1940, before Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff diverted him on the track of the falsely conceived larger raids which were his downfall, came the driving force behind small raids as a preliminary to invasions. Urged on by him, too, was the wave of ideas leading to the development of commandos along professional lines, the creation of a parachute force, the raising of Small Boat raiders, the impulse to design and build an entirely new range of landing ships and craft, the investigation and development of gliders, helicopters, parachutist-carrying aircraft and beach-landing devices, and, withal, the techniques required to operate this paraphernalia once it had been built and delivered. Reshuffle DCO as Mountbatten did when he took over in 1941, he had to thank Keyes for providing something worth organizing, and subsequently appreciate that the difficulties he encountered were often best overcome by solutions similar to those employed by Keyes, even if in a more subtle manner.

Consider, finally, the highly publicized Donovan and the unfairly underrated Turner, to both of whom America and the Allies owe a greater debt than history has yet paid, because they were controversial and often exposed to public denigration out of context. Seen amid the testing circumstances of their day and with the jobs they were invited to perform, they were shining examples of strong leaders in the controversial Keyes mould. They were innovative and reasonably loyal to the demands of their superiors. They got things done and bruised sensitive people on the way to their goals at a moment in history when there simply was not the time available to tread delicately round every obstruction. The pursuit of popularity is not always the criterion of success, particularly in desperate times. Donovan trod on toes when he created in OSS a vast and radically new organization which was automatically pitted against strong vested interests, and still managed to include within it a substantial ‘commando’ type section, the OGs, which performed more amphibious hit-and-run raids than the entire US Marine Raiders and Army Ranger battalions combined. Turner, apart from leading major Amphibious Forces with stupendous effect in nearly all the US Navy’s Pacific invasion, has to his credit an innovation of which hardly anything is known to this day – the creation of the joint army, navy and Marine section to handle Amphibious Warfare at the centre, which was the closest any American department got to COHQ.

Regardless of immense courage and determination by individuals, it has to be repeated that it was large fleets and armies which won the war, not mosquito stings. On the other hand the fleets and armies would have been in greater difficulty without raiding forces and, one way or the other, would have been compelled, as Sixth US Army was, to raise something like them. The raiders’ closing balance sheet, to be acceptable, had to show a clear profit, but the main trouble in that sort of exercise lies in the fact that nearly all the assets are unquantifiable.

Opponents and supporters of raiding, in all its forms, naturally tended to adopt extreme positions of justification. The opponents listed inactivity and failures as proof of wasted effort, and reinforced that contention by pointing out that elite forces would have been put to better use in direct involvement with main forces on the principal battlefields. The supporters extolled the benefits of dramatic successes, linking their morale-lifting attributes with raiding’s inestimable value as distractors of enemy effort. As is common in such arguments, the truth probably lay somewhere midway. Raiding forces did deflect key personnel with vital leadership potential from the expanding citizen forces which accordingly suffered in their development and combat worthiness; they also consumed industrial resources which might have been put to better use. Equally there is no doubt that the activities and threat of raiding forces compelled the enemy to waste a disproportionate quantity of effort and material in countering them. At the time it was hardly possible to establish whether the effort was worthwhile, and this naturally induced doubts and uncertainty. Only after the war, and spread over a very long period, has enough been divulged to form a more precise judgement. Only recently has it been possible to understand with reasonable certainty the impact of raiding upon enemy commanders as they strove to cope with shadows gathering like a sinister cloud, and this is chiefly because the disclosure of how many secret plans and codes were snatched from the enemy during raids has been delayed. This information adds immeasurably to the profit side of the account.

Intangibles, such as the eternal interaction of one activity upon another, have also to be entered into the tally of strategic, tactical and technical benefits and expenses. Inescapably each raid, no matter its size, overlapped elsewhere and called for overheads. The creation of co-ordinating and intelligence-seeking joint-Service organizations on an unprecedented scale was all part of the profit and loss account in which had to be incorporated departments such as COHQ, SOE, OSS and the expanded offices of State set up to deal with Allied and inter-Service matters. Waste there undeniably was, but the revolution in a mutual co-operative spirit which spread outwards and in all directions was frequently justified by improved performances. Open-minded discussions in their clash with old-fashioned, set positions were often productive of new ideas of war-winning potential. The release of pent-up inventiveness, encouraged by Keyes, Mountbatten, Donovan and their like in the debate with Departmental Heads was the detonator of an explosion of enthusiastic, impetuous and patriotic youth who wanted to prove their manhood and get on with the war in an original manner. To those who believe that no nation worth its salt can survive unless its people are prepared to delve and sacrifice willingly for its welfare, the example set by the offspring of commandos – the Airborne Forces, SBS, Raiders, Rangers, SAS, OGs with their many off-shoots – will always be an inspiration underlining their belief that the power of the free individual is an essential ingredient to motivate supervisory bureaucratic organizations.

Yet, of necessity at the heart of all combined operations, lay the requirement for multi-purpose organizations to co-ordinate the activities of the long-established ministries and headquarters whose autocratic self-preservation was overdue for revision in order to keep pace with modern technology. Perhaps it was symbolic that, within the Anglo-American alliance, it was the example set by Britain’s COHQ which persuaded the Americans to leap-frog into the lead after the war. For too long the US had suffered from the ludicrous and wasteful rivalries afflicting the navy and army departments, and the move in 1947 to set up a central Department of Defense, to supervise them and the newly formed Air Force, came not a moment too soon as the threat of World War III loomed. So it is no credit to successive British governments that it took them another 15 years to form their own Ministry of Defence, although entirely logical that it should be the second Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Louis Mountbatten who, by a characteristic exercise of power, pushed them over the brink.

Finally, consider the relation of small-scale operations to those of vast dimensions, and accept for argument’s sake, that it was not until the Americans had attained a gigantic preponderance of material and trained men that they, like the British, felt compelled to invest in smaller scale raiding forces to attempt recapture of the initiative. That is a lesson none but the mightiest of powers should forget – that nations with restricted or attenuated military means cannot afford to ignore the importance of possessing a highly trained elite in preference to a semi- or completely incompetent conscripted mass. Then relate that argument to the results of innumerable campaigns and battles, fought since 1945 and watch which way the pointer swings. In sum, the achievements of those who waged hit-and-run raids was not the impact they made at the time so much as the ideas they promoted and the foundations they laid for future warfare.