Chapter Fifteen

A Misfortune of War April 1943

On the night of the 12/13 April 1943 Hitch, as Senior Officer, took a unit of four motor gunboats to sea as close escort to motor launches of the Fifty-First Flotilla who were minelaying off the Dutch coast. Hitch was in MGB 112, whose Commanding Officer was Derek Sidebottom. In company were MGB 75 under Boffin Campbell, 111 under John Mathias, and 74 under Rodney Sykes. The lay was to be off Noordwijk and the MGBs and MLs reached their position at 0237 on the morning of the 13th. While the MLs were laying mines, a green light was observed to the north-east. As soon as the lay was completed the MGBs parted company, leaving the MLs to return home.

The Eighth Flotilla unit moved quietly at eight knots, well within the speed at which their engines were silenced, and they used their RDF to search for the origin of the light they had seen. At 0311 they picked up a contact at 2,000 yards, ten cables, and when they were within three cables they could see two trawlers on their port beam, signalling to one another with a blue light. At this point RDF contact was lost but with a modest increase of speed to ten knots, followed by stopping to use the hydrophone, they picked the vessels up again bearing south-west, detecting reciprocating engines. At 0346 they started up for the attack, increasing speed to twelve knots, still just within the silent range for those boats not yet converted to underwater exhausts. The RDF picked up the contacts again at five cables and they were sighted at three cables, steering to the south doing about eight knots. Hitch could now see that the contact was in fact one trawler and another smaller vessel, probably a gun coaster. He slowly closed the range to half a cable, the enemy still being unaware of the motor gunboats’ presence. This was achieved by manoeuvring the boats until they were in a position to approach up wind, thus effecting complete surprise. Hitch then ordered an increase in speed to twenty knots and all the gunboats opened fire, including 112’s Blacker Bombard, a spigot mortar firing a heavy projectile capable of severely damaging a ship the size of a steel trawler, carried on the bows of the boats but seldom used. They had never previously hit an enemy vessel with one, but on this occasion it was seen to register a hit. Hitch ordered a turn away so that the effect of both the gunfire and the mortar strike could be observed. At this time the trawler was seen to be on fire and there was an internal explosion, but observation of the target was difficult owing to the quantity of star shell put up by the engaged enemy and by enemy patrols to the south of it. Another boat reported firing two-pounder pom-pom shells into the trawler after the first red glow of fire was observed within her and seeing flames spouting high as the projectiles struck home. No doubt had Hitch not been killed, the MGBs would have gone into the attack again to finish her off.

Both Hitch and Derek Sidebottom saw the engine room hatch of the trawler lift off as the result of some internal blast, emitting a vivid flash of light and an audible explosion. Hitch said in excited tones ‘My God! She’s in flames all over. We’ve pulled it off …’ At that moment a twenty millimetre Oerlikon shell hit the bridge of MGB 112, killing Hitch and seriously wounding Derek Sidebottom, his first lieutenant, one Midshipman Okey, and Wing Commander Theodore Edwards, RAFVR, a friend of Hitch who was out that night to observe how MGBs operated.

There are different views as to precisely how this carnage was achieved by so small a shell. Sydney Dobson, who was in 111 that night, thought that Hitch must have stepped down from the canopy where he normally stood when going into action, holding on to the mast. How else could the shell have killed him and wounded three others down in the dustbin? Boffin Campbell also held that view. However, Jimmy Shadbolt, also in 111, thinks that the shell may have hit the mast and exploded, sending a shower of splinters into the dustbin but killing Hitch who was still standing on the canopy right beside the mast.

Derek Sidebottom lay fainting the dustbin with his arm, shattered at the elbow, almost hanging off. However he was able to give general directions to Theodore Edwards, who remained on his feet in spite of the shell splinters he had also suffered and it was Edwards who took 112 out of action towards the rendezvous point where MGBs 111 and 75 could come alongside. 74 appears to have failed to find the rendezvous. There was a fourth naval officer on board, a Fleet Air Arm pilot being given a rest from flying, also confusingly called Edwards, who had been operating the Blacker Bombard. Sandy Edwards took command once he realized what had happened on the bridge.

At the rendezvous Boffin Campbell in 75 picked up his megaphone and shouted ‘Hitch, can you hear me?’ Sandy Edwards replied ‘I’m afraid Hitch has been killed’. Boffin remembered a stunned silence and then the noise, picked up by the intercom which was still on, of his telegraphist blubbing into the microphone.

John Mathias sent Jimmy Shadbolt across to 112 to see what he could do to help. Shadbolt found Hitch laid out in the narrow corridor leading aft from the dustbin, covered by a blanket. At first sight he thought he was merely unconscious and felt his pulse before he was sure that he was dead. Although killed cleanly and immediately by a shell splinter in his chest, he was evidently not deeply disfigured. He then gave morphine to Derek Sidebottom, who was sitting on an ammunition chest. Shadbolt asked Mathias whether he could take 112 back to Felixstowe but was told to return and navigate MGB 111. Boffin Campbell, now Senior Officer, subsequently recorded that he sent 112 back to Beehive at top speed under Sandy Edwards’ command to get Sidebottom to hospital as rapidly as possible. However Sydney Dobson has a clear memory of Sidebottom being helped over to 111 where he made him as comfortable as his shattered arm allowed.

In MGB 75 Boffin seemed to be in a trance. Cameron Gough, his first lieutenant, remembers him standing in the corner of the dustbin aloof and apparently unaware of what was going on around him until well into the return passage. 75 made a slower passage than 112 because 75’s centre engine would not start, it having been unused for the last hour as it was unsilenced. Cameron was navigating and in the thick weather quite uncertain of his starting point after all the manoeuvring involved in stalking the trawler. He had to pray that he would find a buoy he recognized when they approached the east coast. In the event they found a merchant ship at anchor just beyond the convoy route and got directions from her.

As 112 came into the old Felixstowe harbour where the MTBs and MGBs berthed, they were amazed to see every man and woman on the base lining the dockside and surrounding the steps where they came alongside. Most of the Wrens were in floods of tears. Peter Dickens remembers that moment when Hitch’s body was brought ashore.

I cannot define what I felt as I saluted his body carried up the steps at the dock entrance; there was no shock because I knew what had happened to be inevitable, but sadness at the loss of someone so out-standing was poignant and very deep, so deep that I quite forgot the selfish picture I had at first formed of my own corpse being carried up those same steps. Remember Hichens. A perfect, gentle, indomitable knight in very truth.

The news of Hitch’s death had been broadcast as an uncoded message during the return passage of the MGBs and it was soon percolating throughout Coastal Forces. In some cases there was disbelief. Hitch was invulnerable. Len Reynolds, sitting in the wardroom of his brand new Fairmile D Boat, 658, in Milford Haven, waiting to make a passage to the Mediterranean and his own gallant participation in Coastal Forces’ battle for the control of that sea, remembers the stunned silence when they heard the news. His Commanding Officer, Tommy Ladner, had of course been in the Eighth Flotilla and had just returned from long leave in Canada.

At one of these parties someone switched on the radio. The war in Africa was holding our attention closely, and there was a pause in the conversation as the news began. The hubbub rose again as interest fell away, until Tommy Ladner suddenly snarled “Quiet!” The voice of the announcer seemed to be personally addressing us rather than a vast unseen audience, and there was that sort of breathless tense silence in the wardroom which was rare – and the more memorable for being so.

‘The following communiqué was issued by the Admiralty today: On each of the last two nights Coastal Forces have had short sharp engagements with enemy patrol craft close to the Dutch coast. As a result of these engagements considerable damage has been caused to the enemy and many casualties must have been inflicted on their personnel.

During the course of last night’s engagement it is regretted that Lieutenant Commander Robert Peverell Hichens, DSO, DSC, RNVR was killed. The other casualties sustained during these two nights were two officers and two ratings wounded. Next of kin have been informed.

All our ships returned safely to harbour.

Tommy sat looking at his glass, his mind back in the summer of 1942 when he had followed Hichens night after night as a CO in the famous Eighth MGB Flotilla. I myself had never met him, but I knew well his amazing story of leadership and determination which had done more to give Coastal Forces their reputation as the Navy’s most constant striking force at this time than any other single factor.

Peter Scott, halfway back across the Channel, also listened to the news on the BBC:

… when the shattering announcement came over the air that Hitch had been killed in action off the Dutch coast, Robert Hichens, my old friend of fourteen-foot dinghy days, the family solicitor, who had won more decorations than anyone else in Coastal Forces, had been struck and killed instantly by a stray shell right at the end of a successful battle, I remember that we stopped, as was our wont, to compare positions at the entrance to the swept channel through the minefield and at the same time pass the news to the other boats. There was a shocked incredulity in their tone as they answered. Surely there must be some mistake they seemed to say. Others can be killed in action but not Hitch.

I remember how he had taken me to sea on my first visit to HMS Beehive, the Coastal Forces base at Felixstowe, a year before; how we had met only a week or two before in London to plan a new assault on the Admiralty in order to get our policies on heavier armament through; how I had heard that he would very shortly be asked to take on a training job at HMS Bee at Weymouth as a rest from operations, and how I had greatly doubted if he would accept it. For me it was a cheerless, empty night.

I did not attend my father’s funeral. My brother and I were taken on a picnic by Nancy Campbell, Boffin’s wife. My Aunt Loveday came up from Devon and she and my mother endured a church packed both with senior naval officers, from the Commander-in-Chief Nore downwards, together with as many boats’ crews as could be spared. He was buried in Felixstowe churchyard, one of a long line of young men brought back from those fierce clashes at night on the far side of the North Sea.

Nore Command, in its report to the Admiralty dated 25 April ended with a final paragraph:

The loss of Lieutenant-Commander Hichens is deeply regretted by all in the Nore Command and especially by the officers and men of Coastal Forces, whom he had inspired by his gallantry, skill and devotion to duty. It was at his express wish that he had not been withdrawn from the Command of the Flotilla which he had led in so many gallant actions. It was indeed a misfortune of war that he was killed by what appeared to be a stray shell.

At the end of April Peter Scott was asked to make a broadcast on the BBC about Coastal Forces. I have the original script which he sent to my mother on the 21 April, asking for her permission. He summarized Hitch’s career in Coastal Forces and indeed their competition in International Fourteens before the war. It ended:

The officers and men who fight these battles will not forget Robert Hichens. He left a rich legacy, the fruits of his energy in the develop-ment of the boats, and the fruits of his experience in the way that they should be handled and fought, and then that other thing, that example of courage that makes people think as they go into action: ‘This would have been a mere nothing to Hitch.’

For the action on the 12/13 April Derek Sidebottom was awarded a bar to his DSC and Hitch received his third Mention in Dispatches. Behind this slightly odd final award lies a strange story.

David James, after returning from the prisoner-of-war camp from which he had escaped within a year of being taken prisoner, met Tommy Kerr again who told him that he had put up Hitch for the Victoria Cross after the action on the 27/28 February 1943 when David had been captured. Before sending in the recommendation, he had told Hitch of his intention. Hitch had demurred, saying that he felt on reflection that he had endangered both his boats and their crews in trying to save comrades and friends in the water, and that on balance it had not been the right decision and therefore he did not think it was appropriate that a recommendation for the VC should go in. Respecting his strongly held view, Kerr took no further action until after Hitch’s death. In David James’s words:

Six weeks later, after his death, Commander Kerr did make the rec-ommendation, which the Admiralty rejected on the grounds that Hitch himself had given. One may perhaps be surprised at the attitude of mind which refused to give the highest award posthumously to one who had fought so bravely and brilliantly, but surely there could be no [better] proof of Hitch’s remarkable character than that he himself should have tried to stop the recommendation on conscientious grounds.

It has not proved possible to follow all of the paper trail from Tommy Kerr to the Admiralty’s Honours and Awards Committee. However, one document has been retrieved, a letter from Commander-in-Chief Nore, Admiral Lyon, to the Secretary of the Admiralty Honours and Awards Branch.

10th May 1943

The attached recommendations for immediate awards are forwarded for favourable consideration.

The Flag Officer in Charge Harwich has stated in respect of the late Temporary Lieutenant-Commander Hichens: ‘I consider that his rescue attempt on the 27th/28th February 1943 was one of the bravest actions of his career. He risked the safety of several valuable ships and men in order to pick up a few of his friends from the water. In his Commanding Officer’s opinion, and incidentally in his own opinion, he was wrong to do this, and he did not expect his name to be forwarded.

In view of these facts and the subsequent action in which he lost his life, I consider he is entitled to a high posthumous award.’

And I fully concur in this opinion.

Behind the slightly convoluted language is the statement that both Rear Admiral Rogers and Admiral Lyon thought that the VC should be awarded, in spite of the charge that Hitch had been rash in stopping two MGBs to pick men out of the water in the presence of the enemy, thus hazarding both ships and crews. Evidently someone more senior in the Admiralty took a different view. It should not be the policy of any navy to hold out the prospect of the most coveted of awards to those who hazard their ships without weighing the odds of success and the importance of that success. Yet, prejudiced though I may be, I believe that David James’s judgement is correct and that the Honours and Awards Committee should have accepted the recommendation of Kerr, Rogers and Lyon to award the VC. The only award which can be made posthumously other than the VC is the Mention in Dispatches. Its award in this case, I believe, confirms that it was indeed the VC that was under consideration.

A final quotation from David James is appropriate. In his epilogue to the uncensored version of We Fought Them in Gunboats, his final paragraph reads:

He went as he would have wanted – cleanly and without fuss, at the very zenith of his powers and fame. Who can doubt that his life’s work had been completed and that in intensity and quality his brief life of thirty-four years had seen more achievement and had been of more eternal value than those of most of us who lived twice as long. The blood of an earlier generation of Cornishmen ran in his veins; like Drake at Cadiz he had singed the enemy’s beard in the mouth of their own harbours and played his part in defending England’s shores.

Perhaps Hitch, had he lived, would have taken a grim satisfaction in a letter, written from the Admiralty on the 3 July 1943, referring to the Flag-Officer-in-Charge Harwich’s submission:

Seventy-one-foot-six MGBs are to be fitted with two eighteen inch torpedo tubes and the Beehive designed twin Oerlikon mounting will replace the power twin Oerlikon. Retrospective fitting will be carried out as and when possible.

Did it take Hitch’s death finally to stir the technical departments of the Admiralty into accepting the repeated recommendations of those who fought at sea?