If you enjoyed this book, we recommend Will Fowler’s title on the successful assault on a gun battery by 4 Commando and the US Rangers, Operation Cauldron, which was part of the raid on Dieppe, Operation Jubilee. This is an exclusive extract from the book, which is available as an eBook from all online sellers.

 

Allies at Dieppe: 4 Commando and the US Rangers

By Will Fowler

 

CHAPTER 4: DEPARTURE

“A raid was launched in the early hours of today on the DIEPPE area of enemy-occupied FRANCE.”

Communiqué 0600 hours August 19, 1942

 

Though the men from No. 4 Commando who had been selected for Cauldron had a clear idea that they were to attack a gun battery and what their roles were within the operation, they did not know the location of the target. The training in Dorset had been described as a buildup for an exercise. Security remained a priority – the raiding party would have no identifying insignia, and it was axiomatic in this type of operation that no marked maps or orders would be carried. They were, however, tasked that following a successful attack they should gather as much intelligence as possible about the German position and the formation manning the battery.

Lovat recalled one security alarm during the training: “the arrival of six Free Frenchmen sent by Dudley Lister, who swaggered into Weymouth all covered with weapons and insignia. They had uses as interpreters, but first they were told to change into something less conspicuous.” The French Commandos were wearing the distinctive naval cap with its red pompon and beneath the Commando flash on their battledress blouses the national insignia of France. The three Frenchmen from No. 10 Commando attached to No. 4 all returned safely from the raid; however, those with No. 3 who were taken prisoner were reportedly shot when the Germans saw the words Commando and France on their uniforms. The French Commandos with No. 4 were to gather intelligence from the local population, a role that would be invaluable.

Concern about security even prompted Smith, the Intelligence Officer, to request that two Norwegian soldiers, normally based in London, should be temporarily posted to Weymouth and make sure they were seen with uniforms showing the Norway title on their shoulders. It was hoped this would spread the rumor that the Commando was destined for another Norwegian raid.

Despite the efforts at concealing the location of the objective, Private George Cook recalled, “One or two blokes looked at the map and worked out that we were going to Dieppe because of the sort of places we were practicing our landings at.”

Both Lovat and Mills-Roberts recall attending a security film about the Second Front that was presented to No. 4 Commando. It had as its major protagonists a “clean-cut youth with curly hair, who knew more than was good for him … walking out ‘all innocent-like’ with the wrong kind of girl.” She, it turned out, was a Nazi agent whose family were under pressure by the Gestapo, who had arrested them trafficking in Berlin’s black market. “Unless the daughter’s treachery pays dividends,” comments Lovat in March Past, “all have been earmarked for a Concentration Camp. And a good thing too!” In the film, she charms the secrets from the youth. To compound the youth’s crimes, an Air Ministry official mislays his briefcase in a restaurant (today it would be a laptop computer or USB memory stick). The final scene sees the battalion, including its brigadier, being mown down in terrain familiar to generations of British soldiers, the Long Valley training area in Aldershot.

“The brigadier looked like some antediluvian relic,” commented Mills-Roberts, “and tactically one felt his demise was perhaps well merited. He bore little resemblance to our own Brigadier, Bob Laycock of the Blues, whose youthful appearance and red tabs were the cynosure of all eyes in London.”

Security was, however, a serious priority for all ranks within the Commando. While the propaganda value of some of the dramatic press coverage of Commando operations was indisputable, it might also be a potential source of intelligence. “Those who talked to the press,” recalled Lovat, “got the sack.”

The Commanding Officer of No. 4 Commando felt that “The press did not help the Commando image with a presentation of reckless, devil-may-care fellows who acted in a slap-happy and generally irresponsible manner. The public lapped it up. Nothing could have been further from the actual truth. Unorthodox, yes; but there were no short cuts to eventual proficiency.” Donald Gilchrist, commenting on the press coverage, added, “There is a lot of nonsense talked about Commandos, as though they were six foot between the eyes or something, but in actual fact all they were was a bunch of highly trained blokes dedicated to the idea of getting fit and doing the job. They were not supermen. They were ordinary men who had been super-trained.”

However, the Commando was not averse to keeping a record of events and had its own unit photographer, the bespectacled Sergeant Geoffrey Langland, who was equipped with a German Leica camera captured on the Lofoten raid. It even had its own artist. After Operation Cauldron, Corporal Brian Mullen of the Intelligence Section would work up some of the grainy photographs taken by Langland into atmospheric charcoal and pastel sketches. Mullen would be killed on D-Day and a memorial plaque to this talented man can be seen on Pegasus Bridge, which today stands as the Airborne Museum Pegasus Bridge. Mullen was not only an accomplished, self-taught artist but also a shrewd businessman who had copies made of the sketches and sold them to the men of No. 4 Commando following the operation.

As with all rules there was one exception. It was the war correspondent A.B. Austin of the Daily Herald who would accompany the Commando and land on Orange Beach 1. Austin would file pool copy that was used in other newspapers and which would in turn form the basis of his book about the raid. Lovat would say of Austin that he “was a friend and physically up to the task… Later he was to get himself killed, poor fellow.” Mills-Roberts remembered him as “a fair, thickset fellow I had noticed earlier dressed as a subaltern officer … [he] asked questions and wanted factual information about our battle plan. He did not appear to be the type of reporter who would, at the end of an operation, feed the reading public with ‘What the curly-headed sergeant had for breakfast’ supplemented by a photograph of some halfwit with a parrot perched on his shoulder.”

Austin would not carry a rifle as a non-combatant correspondent; however, when the landing took place he worked as a runner, carrying messages between the cliff top and the beach to the Phantom Signals section and moving ammunition from the beach to the 3in mortar crew. “Even if you are not allowed to carry arms there is always plenty to do in a modern battle,” he would later explain to his readers.

For the larger Jubilee operation, the media coverage would be extensive, with journalists aboard the warships offshore and at the ports to conduct interviews when the troops returned. The Canadian Army public relations staff had requested that five US correspondents in the UK be invited to cover the operation. Among them was Quentin Reynolds of Collier’s magazine and Drew Middleton of Associated Press, while the Canadian angle would be covered by Ross Munro of Canadian Press, Fred Griffin of the Toronto Daily Star, and Wallace Reyburn of the weekly Montreal Standard. Only Austin would file for the British press, then known collectively as Fleet Street, as a pool contributor for ten national newspapers.

On Sunday, August 16 a dispatch rider delivered the top-secret maps of the target area to Lovat. He also received instructions to ring a London extension by a secure scrambler telephone at 1200 hours on Monday. He duly rang and was answered by Colonel Anthony Head, a staff officer, who explained to Lovat the elaborate security measures that were to be taken to move the Commando to Southampton docks, ready to board HMS Prince Albert that had already sailed from Weymouth.

The plan was for a very early departure on Tuesday morning, with No. 4 Commando traveling by truck from Weymouth to Ringwood. Here Lovat would make a call over an open line to Head to confirm the arrival of the troops. For security they would be referred to as “stores.” If the sea conditions in the Channel were favorable, he would be told, “Well, just as well, get them loaded.”

“Anyone who thought it possible to find and rouse up to two hundred men, in widely scattered billets during darkness, ought to have his head examined,” asserted Lovat. “Apart from waking every citizen or suspect agent in Weymouth, it showed small consideration for personnel unlikely to sleep for the next thirty-six hours.” The two men worked out a compromise. Troop leaders would be told the afternoon before that there would be an early start for a two-day exercise. The men were to parade on the waterfront in marching order with small packs at 0500 hours.

Lovat, on edge and angry, told Head that a dispatch rider should be at Ringwood Post Office in the New Forest as a backup in case enemy air attacks severed telephone links, “or if your place gets a direct hit, which is the best thing that could happen to it.”

In Weymouth, Gilchrist knew that the operation was on, and that it was not to be another exercise, when “quite suddenly, as I was hurrying towards the hotel where the officers were staying, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Three Commandos moved across my line of vision carrying something that glittered in the sunshine. Armfuls of British bayonets. Sheffield steel, guaranteed. This was it.”

In Portsmouth, Peter Scott had received orders for the operation on August 14. It was 60–70 typewritten pages with photographs and charts. “I sat far into the night trying to form a picture of our particular jobs in the Combined Plan.”

Trooper George Cook, interviewed by the Imperial War Museum, recalled that on August 17 at Weymouth, “We were told one night when we finished [training], ‘Settle up with your landladies, pay your bills, and be on parade,’ I think ‘at 6 o’clock in the morning.’”

Despite having had a hard day’s weapon training, every man paraded on time in the early morning. “One good soldier – who appeared with a bursting bladder as the clock struck the hour – relieved himself (and had his name taken) before the roll call ended. There were no defaulters,” remembered Lovat with satisfaction.

The trucks had arrived, but no officer from Transport Command to command the convoy. “Here he comes, sir,” Lovat recalled the drivers saying, “as an individual emerged from the shadows with a greatcoat collar turned up and a Woodbine dangling from his lip. “My nerves were frayed by this time,” admits Lovat. “It was too dark to identify the offender, but I took the cigarette away with a swipe that put the gentleman on the floor. ‘You step to the rear, my lad, and go into report for being late for parade.’”

At the Warnford transit camp. Mills-Roberts recalled that they ate an enormous lunch and he enjoyed a pint of beer. They departed at 1430 hours with the canvas side curtains of the trucks in place to conceal the soldiers on board. The IO Smith noted, “There were several other convoys entering Southampton about the same time as we did and none of these had their sidelines down.” Something was clearly happening and the streets were full of interested spectators as the convoys arrived.

Sergeant Szima had been given a note by the Ranger’s sergeant major from Major Darby that read, “I am Sergeant Szima 1st American Commandos, reporting to Lieutenant Colonel The Lord Lovat.” The Sergeant Major had added a postscript: “and don’t forget The Lord.” Szima recalled that the new US Army Special Forces formation had not yet received the title Ranger. Searching for Lovat on HMS Prince Albert, Szima encountered the second-in-command Major Mills-Roberts; however, because all ranks had removed insignia prior to the operation, he initially mistook the stocky Guards officer for a deckhand.

Szima was shown into Lovat’s quarters, but before he could complete his formal report, Lovat, burdened with the responsibility of Cauldron, interrupted him, shook his hand, and, to the surprise of Szima, the regular army NCO, greeted him with, “Glad to have you with us.” Thirty-six years would elapse before Szima would meet Lovat again at a reunion at Varengeville and this time he would have the satisfaction of completing his report.

The Rangers, like the Frenchmen from No. 10 Commando, were not strangers to the men of No. 4 Commando, having joined them for 18 days in the work-up training and exercises in Dorset.

John Price, one of the 3in mortar crew, recalled the arrival at Southampton.

“At long last we stopped and received the order to dismount. We were in Southampton Docks, and alongside was our ship the Prince Albert. We were aboard in no time, and within an hour were hard at work. There was ammo to be issued, weapons to be cleaned, LCAs to be loaded, and a hundred and one odd jobs to be done.”

The training was now behind them and on board HMS Prince Albert watches were synchronized by Lieutenant Commander Hugh Mulleneux. The orders for the operation had stated that all troops and support parties should have more than one watch in their group – Derek Mills-Roberts had one on each wrist.

Once they were on board, at 1730 hours the men were visited by the Commander of Combined Operations Lord Louis Mountbatten, who gave them a morale-boosting speech that began with “a couple of saucy jokes.” With a twinkle in his eye he said, “As you shouldn’t know but have probably guessed by now, there’s a party on tonight!”

Koons recalled, “He struck me as a grand guy and very full of fight; he made us all laugh and we were cheerful.” For Dunning the presence of Mountbatten on the ship was confirmation that this was not another exercise, but that the raid was on. “The die had been cast. Lord Louis left us in no doubt that we had a vital role and we must destroy the battery. He was confident that we would – and so were we… For every five men going ashore, there would be a fighter aircraft.”

Sergeant Hughie Lindley remembered the Admiral assuring them that the operation “was not the Second Front but a reconnaissance in depth.” Bill Portman recalled that Mountbatten said, “I don’t give a damn what Germans you kill or what you don’t … but don’t forget you have to get the guns.”

Austin, who had heard Mountbatten addressing Canadian troops earlier in the day, recalled that the speech was similar in some respects, but that he had prefixed this one with, “Four Commando’s task is most vital. If you don’t knock out that German howitzer battery near Varengeville, the whole Dieppe raid will go wrong. You have to do it even at the greatest possible risk.”

George Cook of F Troop had a rather jaundiced view of the speech: “Mountbatten gave us a lecture. He said he wished he was coming with us. Once we realized where we were going, I think 200 blokes thought, ‘I wish he was going instead of us.’ But, yes, a very nice talk and off he went; we cheered him and then we started priming grenades and drawing ammunition.”

As men found space to sleep on the ship, Dunning like many others went up on deck for a final view of the English shore. For Dunning, however, it was even more significant. Looking out over Southampton docks the 22-year-old Troop Sergeant Major reflected that the home of his widowed mother was only one and half miles away. “I took a long look in the direction of our house and home, took a deep breath, and rushed off to join the rest of C Troop on the Mess deck.”

Mills-Roberts regretted his lunch and pint when in the wardroom. “Tea and small brittle cakes were now placed before us,” he noted, adding that “the elderly steward had a cold eye which discouraged constructive criticism.” Austin remembered the evening meal as “lukewarm clear soup, pork chop, potatoes, peas, jam tart, sardine on toast,” for which he was later charged 1s 6d (10 cents or 7½p today).

At 1900 hours HMS Prince Albert cast off its mooring lines from Berth 103 in Southampton docks and got under way. The ships leaving Southampton were departing before the onset of the short but lovely summer night and so were elaborately disguised as a coastal convoy as a cover against detection by Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft.

To Mulleneux, the atmosphere on board the assault ship was “enthusiastic and electric.” Lovat, passing A.B. Austin, smiled and apologized like a perfect host: “Sorry we're in such a state of flux, but you see how it is. No doubt there’ll be lots to talk about on the way home.” Austin later observed Lovat as he “sat in the wardroom, rested for a minute or so, and then began to talk in his high-pitched, rather lazy voice. He seemed very casual, lolling back in the wardroom settee, but he was really drawing together all the loose threads he could find, tidying up the eleventh-hour odds and ends. He spoke to every officer in sight, flung sudden, searching questions at them in an airy, almost bantering way.”

Now the ships were underway. “We slipped at 2037,” recalled Peter Scott. “There was a great feeling of elation to be started at last: ‘We’re off, we’re off, we’re off.’ No. 9 slid so neatly and quickly into the adventure – followed so docilely behind the assault ships – past Fort Blockhouse and down the narrow channel to Spithead. We turned west there, along the Solent, to meet our group, which was coming from Southampton, and found the Prince Albert in the dusk. ‘Are you P.A.?’ we flashed and were told to take up our appointed station.”

HMS Prince Albert still had cabins from her days as a ferry and it was to one of these that Mills-Roberts retired for the overnight crossing. “I took off my jacket, boots, and socks and climbed into my bunk – the ordinary top bunk of a cross-Channel steamer. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to wind my watch, and after I had done this I went to sleep.”

Below deck the Commandos, Free French, and the four US Rangers were priming grenades; during training they had each carried five un-primed in their haversacks. As they sat in the late summer evening unscrewing the base plug of each grenade and carefully inserting the igniter assembly, the four Americans were silent, lost in their own thoughts.

“It was obvious that some of the gloss was missing,” recalled Szima. “One of us shouted some abuse at his Company Commander’s decision to order him on the raid as a way to trim the overage on the roster of Rangers trained at Achnacarry. Achnacarry allowed for a 10 percent overage for casualties while training.”

Watching the sun sink over the Channel, Alex Szima wondered if it would be his last. George Cook remembered it as “a beautiful evening sailing down the Solent and past the Isle of Wight.”

The Rangers, Frenchmen, and Phantom Signallers, who in Austin’s phrase were the “semi-detached members of the Commando force,” had an opportunity to study the model of the battery and adjoining terrain. The model was about the size of a tea tray, but in contrast to maps or aerial photographs was easier to assimilate, being three-dimensional and in color. Hunched over it, Austin heard one signaler say to his mate, “If we don’t pull off this job, it’s finish 4 Commando,” and he turned his thumbs down.

In that gladiatorial mood they landed on the enemy beach nine hours later.

On board HMS Grey Goose, Peter Scott tried to sleep in a deckchair on the bridge. “It was a clear starry night that moved gently round the foremast rigging. I lay wondering upon the outcome and thinking of many things past. The sea was calm but for the washes of the great convoy ahead.”

In his bunk Mills-Roberts awoke during the night and, hearing the reassuring thud of HMS Prince Albert’s engines as she made steady progress across the Channel, rolled over and fell asleep again. Szima resolved the problem of sleep by using one of the six £1 notes (each the equivalent of about $38 or £24 today) he had with him to buy an illegal pint bottle of Service Rum Dilute, or Pusser’s Rum, from a sailor on the ship. The seaman had saved the treacly spirits from his traditional Royal Navy daily rum tot. The powerful drinks were duly watered down and shared out between the Rangers.

The passage toward Dieppe by the 13 naval groups was made in darkness and only the sailors saw the moon in its first quarter disappear below the horizon at 2316 hours.

At 0115 hours Mills-Roberts was awakened by his batman, Lance-Corporal E.A. Smith, dressed, and went down to the wardroom for breakfast. “There I met the usual depressed breakfast crowd that one finds before the start of a day’s work. On the eve of a big race, or before any event of even minor magnitude, there is rarely a gladiatorial spirit at the breakfast table … most of those present were suffering from that uncertain feeling which is experienced by very nearly everyone about to come under starter’s orders, or on the point of proceeding to the wicket.”

The meal was mutton stew, which Mills-Roberts felt needed more salt, “but no one reached for it and most people ate in preoccupied silence.” As he left the table a steward presented him with his Mess bill for 13s 4d (about $25 or £16 today).

Austin remembered the morning meal clearly – was it breakfast or supper at 0145? The steward told the officers he thought it was supper; besides the stew the officers had bread, butter, marmalade, and coffee. “We sat round, eating the stew and swallowing unusually large spoonfuls of marmalade, in a kind of moody silence that had more to do with the hour than the coming fight. If Hitler could have looked in upon us then, he would probably have been greatly cheered by the seemingly low morale of British Commando officers.”

Lieutenant Donald Gilchrist, who would also land at Orange Beach 2, awoke, washed and dressed, and “told myself I would make a well-groomed corpse.” While Mills-Roberts remembered the preparation for battle on the Mess decks of HMS Prince Albert as having “a general air of quiet concentration,” to Gilchrist,

 

“[it] gave the impression of a Halloween party, not a major operation. Everywhere men were applying greasepaint to their faces. It varied in color. Some … resembled Red Indians.

A Sioux brave in khaki approached me: ‘You haven’t got your face blackened, sir. I’ll fix it for you.’

He smeared me with a greasy substance, the smell of which made me sick.

‘Where the hell did you get that?’ I demanded.

‘Right from the cook’s pan, sir,’ he grinned.”

  

Austin fared rather better. He “shared a burned cork with the doctor, because he had a tube of Vaseline for a foundation, perhaps as a faint memory of some university amateur theatricals. This,” he recalled, “made it almost impossible for me to recognize men I had hardly begun to know by sight with their faces clean.”

Not everyone endured these improvised camouflage paints. Dunning recalls that for the first time in the war, No. 4 Commando had been issued greasepaint camouflage in tubes of brown, ochre, and green.

Seven miles off the French coast the ship’s engines slowed to a stop and Lovat addressed the Commando:

 

“This is not the hour for a speech. None of us feel very strong at this hour of the morning. But I’d like to say this is the toughest job we’ve had, and I expect every man to contribute something special.

Those of you who are going into action for the first time, remember that noise always sounds worse than it is, and that if you’re hit in the dark it’s just bad luck.

I know you’ll come back in a blaze of glory. Remember that you represent the flower of the British Army.”

 

George Cook, who had celebrated his 21st birthday only two weeks before, remembered, “We were warned that casualties were expected to be heavy and that if a man got wounded he would be left behind.” It was a warning he would have cause to remember.

Lovat drew to a close by telling the Commandos that the German soldier was not at his best at night, and that therefore the Commando had an advantage since the first part of the operation, the landing, would take place just before dawn at 0430 hours, Before Morning Nautical Twilight or BMNT. He ended by saying that he wanted a little extra from each man on this occasion. The Commando dispersed and in a brief moment of quiet Lovat took his Second-in-Command aside and asked, “D’you think you’ll find your crack in the cliffs all right, Derek?”

“Yes, there’s no need to worry,” replied Mills-Roberts with a confidence that he later confessed did not reflect his real feelings.

Now the captain of the Prince Albert took over and his voice carried through the ship’s tannoy public address system: “Hear ye. Hear ye. This is your Captain speaking. The crew to action stations and commanders to their assault craft.” RSM Jumbo Morris followed with an equally typical Army command. “All right, you lot. Get cracking.”

At the signal to embark the men began a well-rehearsed procedure. However, as they filed through the ship to their boat stations, Mills-Roberts noted that, “even disciplined paragons of the barrack square are incapable of moving at a controlled and consistent speed along constricted corridors.”

Dunning recalls that the Commandos “went, almost automatically, in single file along those familiar gangways and up the stairs as we had done so many times during the past couple of weeks, out into the darkness and along the deck to our boat stations, there to clamber and struggle aboard the landing craft in complete and disciplined silence to our allotted seats.”

Austin, holding the belt of a Commando officer as he shuffled his way through the corridors of the now darkened HMS Prince Albert, heard “the full hoarse voice of a Commando trooper behind us [tell] his mate: ‘An’ don’t forget the other bastards is twice as scared as you.’ By now I had heard quite a few eve-of-battle speeches, but I think that this was the most compact and most comforting.”

The Channel was a flat calm as, with a low whine from the electric winches, the LCAs, some of which were heavily loaded, were lowered into the sea.

As at 0300 hours the craft moved away from HMS Prince Albert, the assault ship appeared as a vast dark silhouette. Before dawn she would move back across the Channel to be under Allied air cover. Once the LCAs were underway, the Commandos inflated their Mae Wests. After the early start, Mills-Roberts found himself dozing as the craft moved through the water.

Austin had fallen into a doze, but awoke with one arm, side, and leg dead with cramp. Looking around, “There was just enough light to show the dozing huddles of men all down the boat, with faint sounds, shiftings, and mutterings coming from them like a dark fowl house clucking itself awake in the early morning.”

Mulleneux in MGB 312 now had the responsibility of navigating the small convoy to Orange Beach 1 and 2. The LCAs were formed into two lines, with MGB 312 on the starboard beam and SGB 9 HMS Grey Goose astern of the flotilla. At a steady 7 knots they begun to approach the French coast. Twenty minutes into the journey they passed the darkened shapes of the landing ships HMS Beatrix and Invicta carrying the South Saskatchewan Regiment. The ships were close together and to Mulleneux “appeared to be in trouble, which was confirmed when three blasts were sounded on a siren, sparks were seen to fly, and an ominous scrunching sound heard.”

At 0340 hours the Commandos and sailors saw starshell and tracer fire on their port bow. It woke Mills-Roberts and one Commando muttered, “Some poor so-and-sos are copping it out there.” It was No. 3 Commando, whose fragile Eureka boats had encountered a German convoy moving along the coast. The firing lasted about half an hour and to Mulleneux “indicated that our landing was not opposed.” To Alex Szima, also dozing in the LCA, it seemed as if “the whole ocean lit up … so much that you could have read a newspaper.” Peter Scott recalled, “The starshell died and a tracer battle broke out, fierce white tinsel-like tracer being fired from the south and purposeful red tracer, much of it aimed too high, from the north.”

At 0350 hours Mulleneux sighted three darkened vessels on port bow passing from west to east. He guessed that they were probably part of a German convoy or its escort, because he could see the flashing signal of the lighthouse on the Pointe D’Ailly and concluded it was to allow the enemy ships to navigate safely along the coast. He “considered it prudent to evade rather than investigate more closely. The course of the flotilla was therefore altered fairly drastically to starboard in order to pass well clear and astern of the suspicious vessels.” The heavy responsibility made him feel “rather naked, whilst contemplating the extreme vulnerability of the flotilla of landing craft in spite of the presence of MGB 312, SGB 9, and the knowledge that our destroyers were operating to the westward.”

The lighthouse at Pointe D’Ailly flashed for about five minutes every quarter of an hour, the harbor lights of Dieppe were visible to port of the flotilla, and two miles off the coast Mulleneux was confident that he had navigated them to the point where they could divide for the final approach to the beaches. He transferred to the LCS and at 0430 hours the groups split.

In the darkness, Lovat shouted, “Good luck” across to Mills-Roberts.

LCAs 2, 4, and 6 escorted by MGB 312, skippered by Lieutenant A.R.H. Nye, RNVR, a veteran of an earlier No. 4 Commando raid, started their approach to Orange Beach 1, while LCAs 3, 5, 7, and 8 under Mulleneux, escorted by SGB 9, proceeded toward Orange Beach 2.

On board SGB 9 HMS Grey Goose, Peter Scott sniffed the air and detected “a warm wind blowing from the south, laden with the smell of hayfields.” Like Mulleneux he had seen the lighthouse earlier and thought, “The Germans have left their lighthouse burning to guide us. Then we are achieving surprise!”

To Mills-Roberts, as the beam from the lighthouse “swept across and over us … we felt like thieves in an alley when the policeman’s torch shines. It is extremely hard to pick out low-lying craft from the shore at night, and we reassured ourselves with this consoling thought.”

Aboard one of the landing craft approaching Orange Beach 2, George Cook was less sanguine. “The naval officer, a ‘one ringer’ [sub-lieutenant or, in naval slang ‘Snotty’], said ‘Oh, they’ve got all the harbor lights lit.’ I looked over the prow of the boat and you could see lights on in the harbor because this, I suppose, was where the [German] convoy was going. The lighthouse at Varengeville was flashing, so I thought, ’Cor blimey, all the lights on, everybody’s awake, we’re going to have a pretty bad welcome here.”

Destined for the same beach, the young Gilchrist looked across at a veteran Commando hunched in the LCA. “He wore spectacles with metal rims. A Tommy gun was cradled lovingly in his arms. Across the muzzle was a strip of adhesive tape to prevent water getting in when he splashed ashore.”

The LCA had slowed to half-speed and was moving silently toward the shore. “Is it going to be a dry landing?” wondered Gilchrist. “Is it going to be unopposed?”

It wasn’t.