T HE ANTELOPE HOTEL in Poole was an Elizabethan coaching inn that served a decent array of ales and, considering it was wartime, a reasonable selection of food. Its proprietor, Arthur ‘Pop’ Baker, had wisely stocked up on supplies in the months before the outbreak of war. Now, in the second summer of conflict, he still had luxuries in his cellar.
Colin Gubbins arrived at the hotel just after 10.30 a.m. on 10 August 1941, having made an early start from London. The news that morning had been as grim as ever. Just seven weeks after Hitler’s spectacular invasion of the Soviet Union, his forces had reached within striking distance of Leningrad. Further south, in Ukraine, two entire Soviet armies had just been crushed, with the capture of 100,000 prisoners. Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, the Red Army’s most senior battlefield commander, found the situation so desperate that he issued a call for outright guerrilla warfare. ‘Join guerrilla detachments, attack behind the lines and destroy German convoys and supply columns,’ he said. ‘Wreak merciless, complete and continuous vengeance on the enemy.’ 1 They were sentiments that could have been uttered by Gubbins.
Gubbins had travelled down to Poole in order to bid farewell to a pioneering mission destined for tropical waters. Gus March-Phillipps and his team were about to set sail on the biggest adventure of their lives.
From the outset, Gubbins had conceived of his private strike force as one that could conduct coastal raids, amphibious sabotage missions and hit-and-run attacks on Nazi bases. Such operations required a vessel, one that would arouse no suspicions when under sail. March-Phillipps had found just the craft at anchor in Brixham harbour. Maid Honour was a fifty-five-ton local trawler ideally suited to such missions. Her hull was wooden, rendering her immune to magnetic mines, and her dark brown sails meant that she was almost invisible at night. She looked like what she was: an unremarkable fishing vessel.
March-Phillipps now ‘pulled off a feat that only he could have got away with’. He requisitioned the vessel from its owner and then, once it was done, telegrammed Gubbins and asked for the necessary authority. Gubbins was no stranger to breaking rules, but he was nevertheless impressed at the panache with which March-Phillipps had overstepped the mark. According to one of the team, he immediately sanctioned March-Phillipps’s actions and ‘won the everlasting gratitude of the crew by backing us up through thick and thin’. 2
Once the Maid Honour was acquired, Gubbins enlisted the services of Millis Jefferis and Cecil Clarke to help transform her from fishing ketch to special operations’ vessel. Although she continued to look like any other trawler in the harbour, she was equipped with weaponry designed to catch rather more than fish. Her plywood deckhouse concealed a formidable arsenal that included a Vickers Mark two-pounder gun, four Bren light machine guns, four tommy guns and a stockpile of hand grenades. She was also well stocked with specialist detonators supplied by the Firs, along with a large supply of plastic explosive. More importantly, she carried four spigot mortars designed by Jefferis and perfected for use at sea by Clarke.
The Maid Honour ’s inaugural combat mission had been planned some four weeks earlier, when Gubbins invited March-Phillipps to luncheon in London. His team was to head from Poole to equatorial West Africa, where they were to ‘undertake subversive operations on both sea and land’. In particular, they were to target Admiral Dönitz’s U-boats that were prowling the coast of West Africa and had sunk no fewer than twenty-seven Allied merchant ships over the previous months. The U-boats had been spotted lurking in the muddy creeks and mangrove swamps of Vichy-controlled territory there: this was where they came to refuel and re-victual. This, too, was where they were most vulnerable to attack. March-Phillipps declared that if he so much as sighted one, he would ‘blow a hole in her with the spigot mortar’. 3
Gubbins warned March-Phillipps that hunting U-boats was merely ‘a general direction’ 4 as to what his men were to do. It was quite possible – indeed probable – that their mission would change. Flexibility, as he was always reminding them, was the key to everything.
The Maid Honour was fully kitted out by the time Gubbins paid his lunchtime visit to Poole. He was joined at the waterfront by Cecil Clarke, who had travelled down from Brickendonbury Manor in order to watch the first test firing of the spigot mortars at sea. His workload had increased dramatically since taking up the reins at Brickendonbury, with more than a hundred agents from a dozen countries currently undergoing training. But the adapted spigot mortar remained his special project and he was so keen to film the test firing on his hand-held camera that he took the time to travel down to Poole.
The firing took place in Poole harbour and revealed that the spigot was every bit as powerful on sea as it was on land. One of March-Phillipps’s team, Graham Hayes, was seated on the deck of the Maid Honour calmly smoking his pipe when the firing took place. There was a flash, a roar and, for Hayes at least, an unwelcome surprise. The force of the blast lifted him clean off the deck and hurled him into the water, from which he emerged, concussed and bedraggled, minus his pipe, shorts and pants. March-Phillipps’s men were astonished by the spigot’s power. Not many weapons could relieve a man of his underwear.
The firing was followed by a farewell luncheon at the Antelope Hotel, with Gubbins seated at the head of the table like a much loved warlord presiding over a band of gangsters. The Antelope’s proprietor, Pop, lived up to his nickname by producing a few bottles of champagne from his well-stocked cellar. When the last of the desserts were finished, the men wandered down to the harbour and boarded the Maid Honour . Gubbins betrayed his Scottish sentimentalism by pinning a lucky sprig of white heather to the foremast. Anders ‘the Viking’ Lassen felt they would need more than luck to keep them alive. ‘He’s mad, our commander,’ he confided to one of his fellow team members. ‘We are doomed.’ 5
The voyage to West Africa was remarkably trouble-free, despite gale-force winds and big seas. The route took them across the Bay of Biscay, past Madeira and west of the Canary Islands before heading for Freetown in Sierra Leone. They might easily have been spotted by U-boats or even German planes, yet their only problems came when the Maid Honour ’s engine seized up with rust. One of the team, ‘Buzz’ Perkins, stripped it down and repaired it.
Anders Lassen supplemented their meagre rations by means of an old nautical trick. He pierced a tin can, placed pieces of carbide-laced bait inside and then tossed it into the water. Swallowed by one of the many sharks that tailed the vessel, the can exploded when the carbide mixed with the acid contents of the fish’s stomach. The next few hours were spent pulling floating chunks of shark meat from the water.
After a six-week voyage and having covered more than 3,000 miles, the Maid Honour arrived in tropical Freetown on 20 September. The men now awaited precise orders from Gubbins. They felt as if they were on vacation rather than at war. ‘Really, this camp is for us a sort of holiday,’ 6 wrote Geoffrey Appleyard as he struggled up from his sun-lounger and undertook another bout of spear-fishing.
Colin Gubbins had already hinted that the focus of their mission might change. This was indeed the case, for within weeks of the Maid Honour arriving in tropical West Africa, he received intelligence of a most alarming nature. His informant was Louis Franck, whom he had sent to Lagos – capital of the British colony of Nigeria – almost a year earlier. Operating under the codename ‘W’, Franck’s task was to keep a sharp eye on the Vichy French territories on this stretch of African coastline and report on anything untoward taking place.
In order to undertake this work efficiently, Franck had built his own network of spies and informers whose tentacles reached right across the tropics. One of them was Victor Laversuch, W4, a Spanish-speaking operator based in Lagos. Another was Richard Lippett, or agent W25. And there were many more, all of whom operated under codenames.
It was from one of these informers, Colin Michie, that there came startling intelligence. Michie was the British Vice-Consul on Fernando Po, a steaming hothouse of an island that lay some twenty-five miles off the West African coast. It was a soporific place dominated by its pyramid-shaped volcano and tangled mantle of tropical rainforest. When the explorer, Sir Richard Burton, had come here half a century earlier, he described it as ‘the abomination of desolation’. 7 Most of its inhabitants lived in the diminutive port of Santa Isabel, a colonial Spanish backwater with its cluster of whitewashed houses and a horseshoe volcanic bay. Here, at a far remove from the world, the war seemed impossibly remote. Yet in this very bay – warned Michie – there lurked a vessel that spelled grave danger for Allied shipping.
The Duchessa d’Aosta was a large Italian liner that had dropped anchor more than a year earlier, claiming shelter in the neutral, Spanish-controlled port. Michie had reasons to doubt this claim. He knew that the Spanish governor of Fernando Po, Captain Victor Sanchez-Diez, was by no means neutral. He was ‘violently pro-Nazi’ 8 and would do anything to help the Axis powers in their fight against the Allies.
More alarming, the Duchessa d’Aosta ’s radio had not been blocked by Captain Sanchez-Diez, as it should have been. Michie had been informed that she was a listening vessel, tasked with supplying the Abwehr with precise details of Allied shipping movements. This information was being sent to a German fishing company in Las Palmas, from whence it was being forwarded to Berlin.
This was a grave matter indeed and it was made even more worrying by the fact that the Duchessa d’Aosta had recently been joined by two German ships, the Likomba and Burundi . The three captains had become close drinking companions, carousing long and hard at the Casino Terrace Restaurant. They made for a dangerous and unholy trio. Scores of Allied vessels, and thousands of lives, were being put at risk by the presence of these enemy vessels in Santa Isabel.
Gubbins thought long and hard about how to combat this threat. His Lagos-based agent, Louis Franck, warned that Captain Sanchez-Diez had greatly increased the strength of the local garrison, with sentries at the harbour mouth and an efficient Guardia Colonial. ‘Action,’ he said, ‘was almost impossible.’ 9
Almost. But not entirely. Gubbins’s most obvious course of action would have been to use March-Phillipps’s team to sabotage all three vessels. Equipped with collapsible canoes and Cecil Clarke’s limpet mines, they could have sunk them without too much difficulty. But such an operation carried huge risks, for it was certain to provoke outrage in Franco’s pro-German Spain. Worse still, it might tip Spain into the war as a pro-Axis combatant. This would be a disaster, especially for all the British Crown Colonies in West Africa: Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, British Cameroon and others.
There was one other option, one that was infinitely more appealing to Gubbins’s mischievous mind. He had often spoken of his desire ‘to strike the enemy and disappear completely, leaving no trace’. 10 Now, he began planning a piratical raid of the sort not seen since the days of Sir Francis Drake’s attacks on the Spanish Main. Only on this occasion, instead of singeing the Spanish beard, he intended to leave no mark whatsoever.
The plan was for March-Phillipps and his men to perform one of the greatest nautical conjuring tricks in history, causing the three enemy vessels in Santa Isabel to vanish into thin air. It was a trick that would require neither a magician nor even a magic wand; rather, it would need guile, pluck and a tiny quantity of plastic explosive.
Having determined his course of action, Gubbins ordered his West African network into action. Louis Franck was to use every intelligence tentacle at his disposal as he planned a mission that was given the codename Operation Postmaster.
Franck’s first port of call was Colin Michie, who had originally warned of the danger posed by the Duchessa d’Aosta . Michie did much of the intelligence groundwork and even talked a local pilot into giving him an aerial tour of the island, enabling him to take reconnaissance photographs of the three vessels in the harbour. This showed their precise positions and their alignment with the shore. Michie also managed to acquire highly revealing photographs of the Spanish governor, naked, cavorting with his equally naked African mistress. He conspired to get these shown to the governor, who was so concerned about being exposed to blackmail that he offered to relax the tight surveillance on the tiny British community on Fernando Po. Michie graciously accepted.
Soon after Gubbins received the aerial photographs, he was supplied with even better intelligence. In the previous March he had hired the services of Leonard Guise, or W10, a talented servant of the Nigerian colonial government. Now, Guise lived up to his name by landing in Fernando Po in the guise of a diplomatic courier. He was able to undertake a highly precise reconnaissance, right down to the strength of the Duchessa d’Aosta ’s mooring chains.
While he was on the island, Guise enlisted the services of the local English chaplain, the Reverend Markham, whose devotion to God came second only to his devotion to country. In heavy disguise, he managed to slip aboard the Italian liner during a party and discovered that the crew were extremely lax in their approach to security. They were also shockingly debauched. ‘At least four have been sent to Spain sick,’ wrote Reverend Markham, ‘and a large number suffer from venereal disease.’ 11
The gathering of intelligence took time, but by Christmas Gubbins had his mission fully planned and March-Phillipps knew exactly what was expected. The final task was to inform Sir George Giffard, the army’s commander-in-chief in West Africa. His permission was needed for an operation due to take place on his patch.
Giffard was appalled when he learned of the intended piratical mission. He vociferously refused permission to allow Gubbins to send his men to Fernando Po, regarding them as little better than a band of wayward hooligans. ‘They are not round pegs in round holes,’ he said.
Giffard’s hostility was seconded by the Royal Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic, Vice-Admiral Algernon Willis. He described Gubbins’s mission as ‘unnecessarily provocative’ and sent a telegram to London that arrived a few minutes after midnight on Christmas morning. It was a present that Gubbins could have done without. He and Giffard had ‘suspended operations’ 12 on the grounds that they were too underhand. Operation Postmaster was over before it had even begun.
Gus March-Phillipps and his men were blissfully unaware of the hostility to their mission. They spent Christmas up-country in Nigeria, at an enchanting lodge called Olokomeji, the former holiday home of the colonial governor, Sir Bernard Bourdillon. Here, far from prying eyes, they let rip with their machine guns and blew clearings in the jungle with plastic explosive. March-Phillipps’s second-in-command, Geoffrey Appleyard, thought it the best Christmas ever. All around there were ‘luscious fruits which we picked straight from the forest trees – oranges, grapefruit, coconuts and tangerine as big as grapefruit, no pips and full of juice’.
Sir George Giffard and Vice-Admiral Willis continued to block Operation Postmaster until they learned that Gubbins had succeeded in winning the backing of the Foreign Office and Admiralty. Now, reluctantly, they agreed to support it. ‘I tell you frankly, I do not like the scheme,’ said Giffard, ‘and I never shall like it.’
March-Phillipps had taken two decisions during his Christmas break. First, the Maid Honour was not suitable for the mission ahead. He needed powerful tugs, not a Brixham trawler. To this end, he approached Governor Bourdillon, who graciously offered two craft, Vulcan and Nuneaton .
March-Phillipps’s second decision was to hire more men, for he was concerned about being outgunned by the Italians and Germans in Santa Isabel. Once again, Governor Bourdillon offered to help. March-Phillipps was allowed to choose as many men as he wished from the Nigerian Colonial Service.
He picked seventeen tough, military-trained individuals with a keen hunger for action. When Gubbins’s agent, Leonard Guise, met them, he was impressed. ‘As choice a collection of thugs as Nigeria can ever have seen.’ 13
On 10 January the mission was given the green light. On the same day, March-Phillipps received a telegram from Gubbins: ‘Good hunting. Am confident you will exercise utmost care to ensure success and obviate repercussions.’ 14
March-Phillipps telegrammed back: ‘Will do our best.’ 15
He meant it.
At a few minutes before dawn on Sunday, 11 January the Vulcan and Nuneaton slipped unnoticed out of Lagos harbour on the four-day voyage to Fernando Po. As they crossed the bar, the swell of the open sea pitched the tugs from wave to trough, causing intense seasickness. It was like setting sail in a floating bottle. No one complained, aware that ‘the wrath of Gus would have descended upon them like an avalanche.’ 16 The breeze was as damp as a face-flannel and the tropical sun was soon burning with such intensity that sweat dripped from the brow at the slightest exertion.
March-Phillipps intended to use every hour of the voyage for additional training in target practice and marine assault. It was particularly important that his newly recruited ‘thugs’ familiarize themselves with the weaponry. When night fell after the first day at sea, the crew of the Nuneaton lowered their Folbot canoes into the water and undertook a practice raid on the Vulcan . ‘Highly successful,’ noted March-Phillipps. ‘The Folbots approaching within a few yards without being seen.’ 17 It was vitally important for everyone to be a master of their appointed role.
There was still much to be done. The men cleaned their weapons, sharpened their fighting knives and practised firing their Bren and tommy guns. ‘When possible, intimidate,’ said March-Phillipps. ‘If not, use force. Speed is essential.’ 18
As a tropical dawn cut through the sky on 14 January, a faint emerald smudge was discernible on the horizon. A few hours later, it began sharpening into focus and the men caught their first glimpse of Santa Isabel’s pyramid-shaped peak, its tangled upper slopes enveloped in a soupy mist. The warm mist also hung low over the water, a blessing for March-Phillips and his adventurers: it rendered their two vessels invisible to even the sharpest-eyed lookout on Fernando Po.
A cold lunch was served that noon, because the galley areas were being used to boil and mould the plastic explosive. In the afternoon, tommy guns, torches and pistols were issued to each of the men, along with truncheons designed for silent killing: twelve-inch metal bolts encased in sheaths of rubber.
The men spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for dusk, when their mission would begin in earnest. Their greatest concern was the troubled state of the Nuneaton ’s engines. They had already faltered on several occasions since they’d been at sea. If this happened in Santa Isabel harbour, the men would be sitting ducks.
The mist lifted with the approach of evening and with it came an improvement in the weather. At 10 p.m. both tugs lay some four miles offshore and the town lights of Santa Isabel twinkled on the water like specks of phosphorescence. March-Phillipps kept glancing anxiously at his watch, counting down the minutes. Soon it was 11.15 p.m., time for the engines to be fired.
The vessels quickly closed on the lighthouse of Cap Formoso, which was to give them a steer on Santa Isabel harbour. Their raid was timed for just after 23.30 hours and March-Phillipps was a stickler for punctuality.
The Nuneaton was the leading vessel, but she was creeping towards the harbour mouth at an agonizingly slow speed. March-Phillipps, who always stuttered when stressed, called through the darkness: ‘Will you get a b-b-bl-bloody move on or g-g-get out. I’m coming in.’
It was only now, just as they prepared to enter the harbour, that March-Phillipps realized he had made a disastrous mistake in the planning. The island generator was always switched off at 11.30 p.m., extinguishing the harbour lights, which was exactly when he was intending to strike. He had assumed Fernando Po kept the same time as Nigeria. It didn’t. The island was on Spanish time, one hour behind Lagos, which meant they had arrived an hour too early.
He was so fired by adrenalin that he wanted to press on regardless, even though it meant risking a firefight in the well-lit harbour. This would have been insane and it earned him a stern reprimand from Leonard Guise, who had joined the mission in Lagos. ‘Gus himself struck me as completely intrepid, almost to the point of overdoing it, because this was not really a military operation. It was a burglar’s operation, and burglars don’t go in shooting.’ He convinced him to linger for an hour, until the lights went out.
After a tense wait, the island’s generator finally snapped off, plunging the town into darkness. ‘Very dramatically the blackout arrived,’ recalled Guise, ‘and what had been a well-illuminated display became utter darkness.’ 19 He felt vindicated. Only a few faint lights remained: the flashing buoys, a pier light and a bulb on the foreshore of the Duchessa d’Aosta . In the night sky, there was not even a whisker of moonlight.
The Vulcan and Nuneaton crept into the harbour with stealth, unseen by anyone. The Duchessa d’Aosta was visible as a dark gleam, with two lit portholes suggesting that there were people on board. The Likomba and Burundi lay in darkness, their bulky hulls wallowing low in the water. The men prepared themselves in absolute silence, aware that even whispers carry noisily on a nocturnal breeze. It was time for them to perform a conjuring trick unlike any other.
The Casino Terrace Restaurant in Santa Isabel was unusually busy that evening. A dinner had been arranged for twenty-five people, including Captain Umberto Valle of the Duchessa d’Aosta and eight of his officers. Also present was Captain Specht of the Likomba . As far as the two captains were concerned, the dinner had been arranged by Abelino Zorilla, a well-connected local fixer. His services were often used to arrange evenings such as this one. They had no idea that Zorilla was actually working for Richard Lippett, one of Colin Gubbins’s locally based agents in Santa Isabel. Lippett had paid Zorilla to arrange the casino dinner, aware that it would provide exactly the distraction March-Phillipps needed to pull off his heist.
Zorilla was more than happy to help, for he was deeply opposed to fascism and also disliked the presence of Germans on his island home. Now, he excelled himself in preparing a dinner the two captains would never forget. His attention to detail was particularly impressive. His seating plan for the Casino Restaurant ensured that all the officers had their backs to the windows that overlooked the harbour. He also made sure that the alcohol flowed in unusually abundant quantities. And he supplied the restaurant with Tilley Paraffin lamps, so that the party need not be disrupted when the town’s generator was switched off at 11.30 p.m.
On the evening scheduled for Operation Postmaster, Richard Lippett sauntered down to the Casino Terrace Restaurant in company with the town’s Spanish bank manager. Here, they had a few drinks. When Lippett settled his bill at around 9 p.m., he feigned innocence and asked the manageress about the dinner party upstairs. She said she knew only that it had been booked in advance and that an unusually large quantity of alcohol had been bought. Lippett smiled inwardly: Zorilla’s dinner was going according to plan.
Lippett next wandered down to the harbour and was pleased to see that the Colonial Guard had no inkling of what was set to take place that night. ‘There were no preparations of any kind, in fact several of the sentries were sleeping.’ 20
He looked up at the evening sky and noted with satisfaction that it was punctuated with flashes of lightning and there was the occasional drum-roll of thunder. With luck, the thunder would mask the sound of the explosions to come.
Gus March-Phillipps’s two tugs, Vulcan and Nuneaton , were inside the harbour within minutes of the main town lights snapping off. The Nuneaton came to a stop some ninety metres from the harbour-mouth to enable the Folbot canoes to be lowered. The Vulcan , meanwhile, nudged slowly towards the Duchessa . The tugmaster, Mr Coker, managed to align the port side of the vessel with the starboard side of the Duchessa . Although a few lights were still shining from the portholes, no one had noticed their approach.
As soon as the two vessels were in contact, March-Phillipps and five of his team leaped aboard, their movements covered by the Bren guns on the Vulcan ’s bridge. The Vulcan recoiled slightly as she nudged the Duchessa and had to be inched forward again to allow another six men to board. A third manoeuvre enabled the last of March-Phillipps’s team to clamber on to the ship. There was ‘no resistance worthy of the name’, or so March-Phillipps later wrote in his report. 21 In fact, the only casualty occurred when one of the men tripped over a pig that was waddling around on deck.
Securing the vessel proved easier than expected. Lassen ‘the Viking’ lashed a rope to one of the Duchessa ’s bollards and then threw the other end to his comrade Robin Duff. ‘Pull, Robin! Pull like fuck!’ 22
March-Phillipps and ‘Haggis’ Taylor had meanwhile reached the bridge, ‘knife in one hand and pistol in the other’. 23 They found it deserted. The rest of the team headed below decks and took prisoner all the Italians who had not been invited to the Casino Restaurant. A few tried to resist, but March-Phillipps’s men were ready with their truncheons, or ‘persuaders’, as they called them. One ‘had to take his persuader and play a quick arpeggio on their heads’. 24 It quickly persuaded the resisters to surrender.
The only surprise of the night came when the boarding party kicked down one of the locked doors and found a woman stewardess, Gilda Turch, cowering inside the cabin. When confronted by a band of distinctly ungentlemanly commandos, with truncheons and blackened faces, she fainted.
While March-Phillipps secured the bridge, Geoffrey Appleyard was laying explosives on the ship’s cables. This was the crucial moment of the entire operation, when it would either succeed or fail. None of the men could be sure that the plastic explosive would sever the heavy metal hawsers.
When the charges detonated, they did so with massive explosive force. Leonard Guise described it as ‘a titanic roar and a flash that lit the whole island’. 25 Even so, one of the chains failed to be cut by the charge and Appleyard had to lay a second charge on a very short fuse. There was another flash as the last cable was broken. Further explosions cut the chains that were securing the Likomba and Burundi to the harbour wall.
The Duchessa had by now been roped to the helm of the Vulcan. As the tug’s propellers started churning the water, her skipper, Mr Coker, performed a deft nautical manoeuvre. He ‘gave the Duchessa two slews, one to starboard, one to port, like drawing a cork out of a bottle’. 26 Appleyard watched transfixed as ‘the huge liner lurched and began to slide forward.’ He leaped on board just in time. The Duchessa , ‘without the slightest hesitation, and at the speed of at least three knots, went straight between the three buoys to the open sea’. 27
Moments later, the Nuneaton was also heading out to sea with both the Likomba and Burundi in tow. In less than a minute, March-Phillipps’s two vessels, together with their towed prizes, had been swallowed by the night.
All hell had broken out on shore. The series of explosions had echoed throughout Santa Isabel and caused absolute panic. Bugles sounded the alarm and people were running through the town screaming, ‘Alerto! Alerto! ’ Most townsfolk thought that the harbour was under attack from raiding aircraft. ‘Immediately after the detonations were heard, the anti-aircraft guns went into action and blazed into the sky.’
No one realized that the harbour, still blacked out and moonless, had come under attack from the sea. Local Spaniards dashed across to the Guardia Colonial to arm themselves with rifles. The guard’s captain was also seen running towards the building shouting, ‘Que pasa? [What’s happened?]’ 28
In the Casino Terrace Restaurant, the explosions and anti-aircraft fire had caused confusion rather than panic. Most of the men were so drunk they could scarcely walk. Some had taken themselves off to the local brothel, only to find their dalliances disturbed by the mayhem outside. Now, all of them staggered down to the harbour only to find their ships were missing. Blurry-eyed and still dazed by the heady fumes of cognac, they rubbed their eyes and looked again. They were not deceived: the ships had gone.
The ensuing uproar was witnessed by the British consul, Peter Lake, and his new deputy, Vice-Consul Godden. They overheard peals of laughter coming from both local Africans and Spaniards as they realized what had happened. Altogether less amused was Captain Specht of the Likomba , who, at around 1.30 a.m., marched over to the British Consulate and burst through the unlocked front door. ‘Where is my ship?’ he screamed.
‘He was very drunk and quarrelsome,’ wrote Consul Lake, who promptly ordered him out of the building. ‘In reply, he struck me in the face.’ 29
Vice-Consul Godden was more attuned to the fine arts of diplomacy than late night pub brawls, but on this occasion he proved himself a master of the left hook. He ‘rushed to the affray and put some heavy North of Scotland stuff on Specht, and literally knocking the s—t out of him’. When Specht realized that Godden was about to shoot him, ‘he collapsed in a heap, split his pants and emptied his bowels on the floor.’ Godden called for his steward, who handed the soiled and ‘dilapidated Specht over to the police’. 30
By the following morning, the news of the stolen ships had spread far and wide. When Richard Lippett went to the badminton courts in order to play a game with his Spanish friend, Senõra Montilla, he found the place surrounded by soldiers. They told him what he had known for hours: that three ships had been seized from the harbour and spirited away. Senõra Montilla said to him: ‘Well done, the English are very smart.’ Lippett replied: ‘No, the English would never do such a thing like that, especially in a Spanish port.’ Senõra Montilla smiled. ‘Just wait and see,’ she said.
Consul Peter Lake was delighted to discover that no one had been able to pin the blame on the British. ‘The following day was full of rumours,’ he recalled. ‘Free French, Vichy, USA, British and even anti-Falange Spanish pirates were all equally possible culprits.’ He added that the sheer bravado of the perpetrators was causing a sensation. ‘Admiration and amusement for the way in which the job was performed and timed was shown openly by many Spaniards.’ 31
The German shipping agent Heinrich Luhr contended that it was such a masterful operation that only the Germans themselves could have pulled it off. If so, he felt sure that each man would be awarded the Iron Cross. But the discovery of Free French caps floating in the harbour – a little parting gift from March-Phillipps – suggested that it had perhaps been a Gaullist operation.
March-Phillips had conducted a textbook cutting-out operation, one that had left absolutely no trace. The hours that followed the seizure of the ships were not without their difficulties. The Nuneaton had scarcely left the harbour, towing the Likomba and Burundi , when the stolen vessels began smashing into each other. The Nuneaton was forced to cut her engines while the Burundi was secured at the end of a longer rope. But this soon frayed, prompting a dazzling display of acrobatics from Anders Lassen. Using skills learned from Sykes and Fairbairn, he performed a tightrope walk along the line that joined the Nuneaton to the Burundi . ‘With a heaving line tied around his waist, he swarmed across the fraying tow rope.’ 32 Several times he was flung into the air and was lucky to regain his balance. But he eventually made it to the Burundi and attached a new rope to the ship.
The Duchessa d’Aosta had been placed under the command of Geoffrey Appleyard and a skeleton crew, who were so delighted with their prize ship – and their Italian prisoners now locked below decks – that they hoisted a skull and crossbones from the mainmast. March-Phillipps exploded when he saw it fluttering in the dawn breeze. ‘We all got a rocket and we were told we weren’t to fly the Jolly Roger,’ recalled Leonard Guise. ‘He was a great stickler for etiquette, old Gus.’ 33
The Duchessa d’Aosta had been theoretically untouchable while she lay at anchor at Santa Isabel, for she was sheltering in a neutral harbour under the protection of international law. But now that she was out on the high seas, albeit unwillingly, she was fair game for any Allied vessel that happened to chance upon her. And this is where the second part of March-Phillipps’s mission came into play. It had been previously agreed that the HMS Violet would intercept the Duchessa d’Aosta while she was at sea. She would then be seized and impounded as an enemy vessel. If all went to plan, the Italians would have been worsted for the second time in just a few hours.
The HMS Violet was late for her rendezvous with March-Phillipps’s flotilla, not closing with them until the afternoon of 20 January. But her lateness made no difference to the outcome. Soon after being captured, at just after 6 p.m., all six ships sailed into Lagos harbour, where March-Phillipps and his men were given a hero’s welcome.
‘We had a tremendous reception,’ said one of the men. 34 They were met by His Excellency Governor Sir Bernard Bourdillon, who stood at the end of his private landing stage cheering wildly, whisky and soda in hand.
A more surprising welcome came from General Giffard. He had done everything he could to scupper the mission, but now that it was a success he was keen to claim the credit. ‘[He] came down and looked upon us as his chaps, having pulled off a successful operation.’ 35
As March-Phillipps surveyed the cheering crowds, he felt deep pride in his men. They had worked ‘almost without sleep for a whole week, under difficult and dangerous conditions, with the utmost cheerfulness and disregard for themselves’. 36
News of the mission’s success was rapidly sent to Colin Gubbins, setting it out in bold terms. ‘Casualties, our party, absolutely nil. Casualties enemy, nil, except a few sore heads. Prisoners, German, nil; Italians, men, 27, women, 1, natives, 1.’
Gubbins immediately sent a telegram back to Lagos. ‘Best congratulations to all concerned on complete success of a well-thought out, carefully planned and neatly executed operation.’
As congratulatory telegrams arrived from the Foreign Office and even the Cabinet, General George Giffard saw fit to compose his own, somewhat embarrassed message, addressing it to one of the principal agents involved in the planning. ‘For reasons which I was unable to explain to you, I felt I had to oppose our project,’ he said. ‘It does not lessen my admiration for skilled [word missing], daring and success with which you have succeeded.’ He added his ‘hearty congratulations, and hope in the event of similar projects in future, circumstances may permit me to assist and not oppose’. 37
There remained one outstanding issue that had to be tackled head-on. It was imperative that the Spanish should never discover that a British raiding party had flagrantly breached their neutrality by cutting out three vessels. March-Phillipps’s first task on arriving at Lagos was to silence the Italian prisoners. To this end, all those aboard the Duchessa d’Aosta were marched to an internment camp situated deep in the jungle, more than 150 miles inland from Lagos. They were to languish there for the rest of the war.
The next thing was to propagate a series of lies that would mask what had taken place. Hugh Dalton began this process with a message to Churchill. ‘There is reason to suppose that the Spanish authorities are aware that a large tug of unknown nationality entered the harbour and took the vessels out; but that is probably all they know.’ He said that March-Phillipps had covered his tracks with such skill that ‘we do not believe they will be able to prove that the tug was British, and the greatest precautions have been taken to see that no information leaks out at Lagos.’ 38
Britain’s first official response came within hours of the operation having taken place: it was a masterpiece of dissimulation. A communiqué was issued at midnight on 19 January spelling out the British position. ‘The British Admiralty considers it necessary to state that no British or Allied ship was in the vicinity’ of Fernando Po. It added that German accusations of British involvement were of such a serious nature that the British commander-in-chief in West Africa had dispatched reconnaissance vessels from Lagos in order to search for the real culprits.
In Spain itself, there was outrage at what had taken place. Although there was no proof that the British had conducted the operation, the pro-Nazi Foreign Minister, Serrano Suner, pointed the finger of blame squarely at Britain. Long before March-Phillipps’s vessels reached Lagos, he was calling the cutting-out operation an ‘intolerable attack on our sovereignty’. He added that ‘no Spaniard can fail to be roused by this act of piracy committed in defiance of every right and within waters under our jurisdiction.’ 39
The Nazi press was no less indignant, with the Völkischer Beobachter openly accusing the British of undertaking an illegal and outlandish act of piracy.
The British consul in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare, rose majestically above the fray, expressing deep disappointment that the Spanish government ‘should so readily have assumed that His Majesty’s Government were concerned with any events which may have taken place in Santa Isabel or on the Duchessa d’Aosta ’. He reiterated that the British government was ‘in no way responsible for what happened prior to the capture of the enemy vessels on the high seas’. 40
This, like all the other British communiqués, was completely untrue. After two years of war, the British government and its servants were finally learning to behave like cads.