Appleyard checked that each man had the equipment he would need. Everyone synchronised their watches. The men had chosen their own weapons, carrying Sten guns, .45 Colt revolvers, and the famous Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife.
Someone had to quickly scale the cliff to see if there really was a German machine-gun position there, and Anders Lassen volunteered for the job. While he raced up towards the top, the other ten commandos followed more slowly. Normally, it might have been Appleyard in the lead, but his foot was still suffering from the injury he’d sustained in the successful raid on the Casquets Lighthouse just a few weeks before. ‘The ascent was very steep and difficult for the first 150ft, and made dangerous by shale and loose rock and the darkness,’ reported Appleyard, ‘but the gradient then eased and the route ended up steep gullies of seathrift and rock to the top of Hogs Back.’1 Stokes said it ‘was a very difficult climb that eased toward the top. What we thought might be a tough scramble was a full climb and really hard work.’2
It wasn’t until midnight that all the commandos reached the top. They were pleased to notice that their MTB, which could be seen quite clearly from the foot of the cliff, was invisible from the top against the darker background of the sea. Gunner Redborn reported that upon reaching the clifftop the men found ‘barbed wire entanglements. The stillness of the night was only broken by the cry of a seagull or when the wire was snapped with cutters. We fumbled around the whole time in the dark …’3 According to one report, upon reaching the top the commandos covered the barbed wire they found there with luminous paint in order to facilitate their return by the same route.4
Several accounts of the raid emphasise the silence on Sark, with the only sounds normally heard being the crashing of waves and the cries of seagulls. Even the cutting of barbed wire could have alerted attentive German patrols, had there been any such patrols in the area. Though Sark can be quite silent, the sounds of waves crashing against the shore and of the strong winds that often batter the island can be quite noisy. The commandos thought that every sound they were making as they toppled loose rock from the cliffs to the sea, or cut barbed wire, could be heard kilometres away. In fact this was almost certainly not the case.
Later on that night, as they smashed glass and broke down doors, they still managed to avoid being heard by the Germans. Because of Sark’s rich topography, with deep valleys in some parts, sound travels in strange ways. As one current local resident put it, in some parts of the island there are virtual ‘sound tunnels’ which allow voices to carry for enormous distances. The commandos benefitted from Sark’s unusual acoustics during their entire time on the island.
As the commandos assembled on top of the cliff, Lassen returned and reported back that he had found no defence post along the whole of the Hog’s Back. Lassen had gone about 100m inland after cutting through barbed wire. He’d found no signs of mines either. The commandos found the nineteenth-century cannon that aerial reconnaissance had reported as a possible German machine-gun nest. It was a relief to all that this was the case. ‘This was good news,’ wrote Stokes, ‘as we would either have had to deal with it quietly’ – no doubt using their special commando skills, especially with the knife – ‘or go around it’.
As they assembled at the clifftop, relieved to find no German machine-gun nest there, the men were startled when a seagull suddenly flew up and away calling. To their relief, it was just the one. Had there been more, the Germans might have noticed. They cut through a second line of barbed wire, when Lassen was surprised to see Captain Pinckney digging at something in the ground. He assumed Pinckney had found a mine. But when he stopped digging, Lassen saw him put a plant in his pocket. ‘Pinckney was crazy, everywhere he picked grass!!’ Lassen later wrote about the amateur botanist:5
Pinckney was a fanatical vegetarian. Pinckney cooked grass and plants together … it was important for soldiers he said, to like what nature gave you to eat. When he approached with a plant in his hand men ran away, afraid of being used as guinea pigs.6
Appleyard whispered that the commandos should move on. Lassen had the best night vision, so he was first in the column as they walked north along the path on the Hog’s Back. Appleyard warned them to all be careful as they approached their primary target, Petit Dixcart, situated in a little valley less than half a kilometre from the clifftop overlooking Pointe Château.
According to Appleyard’s father, ‘As Geoff reached the top of the cliff after a stiff climb, and cautiously peered over the edge, he was horrified to see the vague silhouettes of a number of German soldiers about fifty yards away.’ Appleyard:
… waited for some minutes in the hope that they would move on and then decided that here was an ideal opportunity to eliminate a complete German patrol and probably get a few prisoners as well. He therefore crawled stealthily towards the enemy and when he had shortened the range so that it was impossible for the men to miss, he prepared to give the order to fire. Then a doubt crossed his mind. None of the figures ahead of him had moved since he first saw them, nor had they made a sound. He decided to investigate and crawled nearer and nearer. Then to their amazement his men heard him chuckle, stand up and call them forward. They found him examining a row of perfectly dressed dummies used by the island garrison for target practice!7
In some reports of the raid, Petit Dixcart is referred to as the commandos’ ‘primary target’, though it’s not entirely clear why this would be the case. There is no evidence that the British had any agents on Sark, nor did aerial reconnaissance give much information about where the Germans were based. Petit Dixcart is a large private home with landscaped gardens today and was much the same in 1942. It is some distance from the centre of the island where the Germans had put their headquarters and Appleyard would have realised this from his earlier visits to Sark with his family. So why make it the primary target for the raid?
The answer is obvious as you walk down the path on the Hog’s Back leading from the seaside cliffs to the main part of the island. Petit Dixcart is quite simply the first sizeable building, or group of buildings, you will come across. It was not unreasonable to expect that the Germans would use a building of this size to house their troops, even if there was no prior intelligence of this. ‘The route inland was pretty rough going through really thick prickly gorse and bracken,’ wrote Stokes.
Although he made no mention of the dummies he mistook for a German patrol in his official report, Appleyard did admit that as the commandos moved along the ridge of the Hog’s Back they came up to ‘what was thought to be a Nissen hut and wireless mast’, which:
… were observed beside the ruins of an old mill. This was immediately attacked and it was discovered that the wireless mast was a flagpole and the supposed Nissen hut was the butts and targets of a range, the firing point of which was some 200 yds to the North.8
It is not entirely clear what Appleyard means by ‘attacked’ but presumably no one fired their weapons. The Germans were still completely unaware that any British soldiers had landed on Sark.
Appleyard led the way, with Pinckney bringing up the rear. Gunner Redborn was in the middle, walking with Anders Lassen, and he reported that they heard a German patrol coming. Lassen’s biographer, Frithjof Saelen, told the story of what happened next:
He at once lay down on the edge as did the others behind him. They could hear steps on the path. Suddenly six men came walking along. The Germans walked with their heads bent and heavy steps, four seemed as if they were sleepy. Must be a gang coming off duty he thought.
One of the soldiers swore terribly as he passed Anders, the others laughed. The leader stopped the group for a moment and said something in German. Anders caught the words ‘the Channel’ and ‘the British’. They were nearly caught but they now knew that the Germans were on watch. They had been very lucky, next time it might not be so good. They were more careful now. They slowed down their pace after this meeting.
After a while they lay down again, they had revolvers and Sten guns ready. One of the soldiers had heard something, they waited for a while, but nobody appeared. And so it went on slowly, every now and then they heard branches snap and stones kicked, and they were very tense, things grew in their imagination, and it was very difficult to see in the darkness. The one good thing was that it was equally hard for the Germans to spot them.
Apple did not trust the gang that had passed, they might go out to the line where the barbed wire was cut, he could only hope they might not see it in the dark. It was now time that they got into a house somewhere, they could see a few houses about 100 metres away. Apple sent two men along to reconnoitre, at last they signalled all clear and hidden by hedges and bushes they crept along. The houses were empty, it seemed as if they had been robbed, Anders went through all of them – you could never trust to chance with the Germans, but he found nobody. ‘There must be some reason,’ he thought, and picked up a few papers. ‘This house must belong to people who evacuated to England.’
Apple considered that explanation was reasonable, but there was no object in delaying there, they must get on. Without a sound they went across the small valley towards a house which stood all by itself in the middle of a lawn.9
An hour and fifteen minutes had already passed since they’d reached the top of the cliffs. Every minute now counted, as they needed to be off the island within a couple of hours in order to make a safe getaway under cover of darkness to England. And of course every minute they traipsed around in the gorse and bracken, the chances of being discovered by a German patrol rose.
1 DEFE 2/109.
2 Stokes (ebook), loc. 719.
3 Ramsey, p.149.
4 Marshall, p.26.
5 Saelen, p.2.
6 Saelen, p.1.
7 Appleyard, p.130.
8 DEFE 2/109.
9 Saelen, p.3.