Despite the shackling of prisoners and the Commando Order, the operational success of Operation Basalt seemed to have whet the British Army’s appetite to try something similar again. There had been proposals to land as many as 120 men on Sark, a force that might have been large enough to overwhelm the German garrison and at least temporarily take control of the island. The recapture of some or all of the Channel Islands had been on Churchill’s agenda since the day they fell to the Germans in June 1940.
For example, by 17 January 1943, just three months after Basalt, Operation Bunbury was proposed to retake Sark. In the case of Bunbury, which never took place, the aim was not merely to capture German prisoners. As the proposal read:
If as a result of our action against Sark, we are able to persuade the Germans to increase their Garrisons in the Cherbourg–Channel Islands area, we shall have succeeded in furthering what must surely be the strategic aim (if any) of our raiding Operations in the Channel (i.e.) to contain German forces and prevent their use on other fronts.1
It took the commandos more than a year to return to Sark. The third commando raid on Sark was code-named Operation Hardtack 7 and was timed to coincide with a raid on Jersey. It began on Christmas night, 25 December 1943, and had an inauspicious start.2
Like the previous raid in October 1942, Operation Hardtack 7 failed on the first attempt. Its commander, Lieutenant A.J. McGonigal, reported that their Motor Gun Boat (MGB) arrived just off Sark’s Derrible Point at 2345hrs, which was somewhat later than the Basalt raiders. McGonigal was trying a different route. His men, a mixture of British and French commandos, landed in a small craft known as a dory and climbed to the top of a ridge in just fifteen minutes. The ridge ‘consisted of a number of pimples connected by narrow ridges’, he explained. The commandos climbed up and down and it took them a full hour until they reached the last ridge connecting them to the mainland of Sark. But this ridge, which was just 9m long, was described by McGonigal as ‘a knife edge’ and ‘too sharp to provide a hand grip’. On each side was a sheer drop. McGonigal decided that it could not be crossed.
The commandos then attempted to bypass the ridge. They descended towards the beach somewhat and managed to cross over in a series of stages using toggle ropes. But when they made it across the ridge, they found ‘a sheer climb of about thirty feet to the mainland plateau was encountered and was found impossible to climb. Below this there was a sheer drop to the sea.’
By now it was 0200hrs and they’d been on Sark for more than two hours, still not having reached the main part of the island. McGonigal took the decision to withdraw, noting that ‘during the whole of this time, although the patrol made a certain amount of noise through loose stones falling over the edge, no signs of enemy sentries or patrols were seen’. An hour later, they were back on board their dory and paddled over to Derrible Bay. McGonigal and Sergeant Boccador decided to check out the beach area. McGonigal wrote that he:
… worked along the cliff edge to the beach moving slowly and carefully since Sergeant Boccador had reported to me that he had seen a sentry patrolling the cliff head over the bay. We eventually reached the end of the rocks. The beach was of shingle and was covered with flat slate-like stone. The sea came up to the cliff edge at this point and from what I could see of the bay, appeared to do so all the way round. There were no signs of mines or wire. I found a small box on the shingle beach which I brought back with me. In order to get at this I had to move for a distance of from five to six feet on the beach and encountered no mines.
McGonigal’s conclusion that no mines could be found would later have tragic consequences. But that night, he realised that scaling the cliffs of Sark again would not be feasible. Time was running out. At 0410hrs, Boccador and McGonigal returned to the dory and paddled out to the MGB, which took them back to England.
Like Operation Basalt, Hardtack 7 failed in its first attempt, and like Major Appleyard before him, Lieutenant McGonigal was keen for another go. He got his chance just two nights later. The same force returned to Sark with the same goal: to repeat Basalt’s success and capture another German prisoner.
Having decided that the routes he had reconnoitred on Christmas night were not going to get them on to the main part of the island, McGonigal took the decision to follow in the footsteps of Appleyard and go over the Hog’s Back. He and his men reported climbing a 60m sheer rock face and then another 30m slope with a shingle, slate and stone surface. They encountered a wire fence, which they cut, and then walked along the path on the Hog’s Back as the Basalt raiders had done nearly fifteen months earlier.
McGonigal reported later that he and his men were ‘continually searching for mines’ as they walked, though the Basalt raiders had encountered none. Eventually they came upon a path that was about 1.8m wide. On both sides of the path was a thick covering of gorse and then a very steep drop. Fearful of discovering mines on the path, they attempted to walk through the gorse, but McGonigal wrote, ‘We found that it was impossible to walk through this gorse without making considerable noise and we therefore continued along the path.’ This proved to be a fatal mistake.
McGonigal was in the lead, about 15m ahead of his men, feeling for mines, when suddenly two mines exploded behind the patrol. Two of his men, Corporal Bellamy and Private Dignac, were wounded. The first mine exploded less than 1m away from Bellamy, the last member of the patrol, who died within two minutes. The second mine was about 1.5m to the left of it, severely wounding Dignac.
They decided to move the two injured men out of the minefield. McGonigal was again in the lead, still feeling for mines as he walked, but after just a few steps, two more mines exploded, one to his side, and one in front of him. He was injured by the explosions. At this point, the only uninjured member of the patrol was Sergeant Boccador. Dignac was wounded yet again by these additional explosions and died.
McGonigal took the painful decision to leave the two bodies of Bellamy and Dignac where they lay and get back to the boat. But as he later reported, ‘No sooner had we started to move, however, than more mines went up all around us. I cannot say how many there were but at the time we had the impression of being under fire from a heavy-calibre machine gun.’ It turned out there was no machine gun; the commandos were under attack from German landmines that had been laid on the Hog’s Back following Operation Basalt.
In their rush to get back to safety, McGonigal and Boccador left behind a wireless set which had been hidden under a rock and which they were unable to find again, as well as their climbing rope. The explosions of the mines could be heard by many people on Sark that night. But the Germans took their time to respond. It was not until daylight that the Germans found the two bodies of Bellamy and Dignac. The bodies with their blackened faces were taken to one of the buildings near Le Manoir, the German Army’s headquarters on Sark. A German officer asked a young Sark girl to look at the faces of the dead commandos to see if they were in any way connected to Sark. They weren’t. The two men were then buried in the small military section of St Peter’s Church.
Operation Hardtack 7 had been an unmitigated disaster. Two commandos dead, no Germans captured and questions being asked about why the commandos eventually found themselves walking down a heavily mined path that had been used a year earlier by Appleyard and his men. Surely it had been obvious that the Germans were going to place mines there. But McGonigal’s after-battle assessment reads almost matter-of-fact:
(a) The first two mines that exploded were behind the patrol and, although we moved about continuously in advance of the two craters, no further mines were exploded. It would therefore appear that we had reached the edge of the minefield and had been unfortunate enough to explode perhaps the last two mines in the field. It is interesting to note that although Sergeant Boccador and myself were feeling our way very carefully, we felt no contact points nor saw any other signs of mines.
(b) All the injuries caused by the exploding mines were sustained by those members of the force who were either standing or kneeling. A person lying flat seemed to be immune from them.
(c) Despite these explosions, no signs of Germans were seen or heard.
(d) There is a mobile searchlight on the island. We saw it as were coming in on the MGB. From 2100 hours until 2140 hours it was turned on every ten minutes and appeared to come from the area of Le Creux Harbour. It was flashed from the cliff top on to the water – the length of beam was approximately 500 yards.
(e) The S-phones we found to be a complete failure.
(f) The felt soled boots were extremely good.
As with Operation Basalt, the British did not publicise the raid and the first reports came from the Germans. Even the first reports in British newspapers relied on German sources. For example, the Manchester Evening Chronicle ran the headline ‘Commandos Raid Sark, Nazis Say – “Second in three days”’. The article began:
Berlin radio stated to-day that ‘a second attempt within the last three days by British Commando forces to land on the Channel Island of Sark has failed. As the enemy neared the beach several detonations were heard and a large flash was observed,’ said the radio. ‘It can be assumed from this that the mines had done their work. A later check-up confirmed this, and a dead British soldier was found. The German forces did not need to go into action. … A Commando troop, consisting of British and Frenchmen, which attempted to approach our barbed wire entanglements was annihilated,’ it was stated.3
The Germans gloated. Operation Hardtack 7 had been a debacle. The official German statement read as follows:
The second attempt by the British within three days to land commandos on the Channel Island of Sark failed as did similar attempts. When the enemy approached the beaches several heavy explosions were heard and fires were seen, which allows the conclusion that the mines did their stuff. A later investigation confirmed this. One dead British soldier was found. German defences did not have to go into action.4
Germany’s allies were similarly pleased with the results. In another report from the German Telegraph Service, datelined Madrid, it read:
O’Crowey, the military correspondent of ‘Informaciones’, commenting on the situation, notes that in 42 months, the Anglo-Americans have twelve times attacked the Fortress of Europe. The most recent British landing attempt on the island of Sark – a miserable failure – once more confirmed the statements made by leading German personages that the Fortress of Europe is a sure bulwark.
This report was published on 2 January 1944, just five months before the landings at Normandy. As Winston G. Ramsey concluded:
Thus, with an end result worse than on any of the other six raids carried out on the Channel Islands during the Second World War, the last Commando expedition ended in disaster. Altogether, in three year’s operations, three Commandos had been killed, one wounded and another eight captured. On balance, therefore, the Commandos possibly won by a hair’s breadth but against that one must set the considerable reprisals carried out against the populations – many of whom abhorred the raids.5
After the war Dignac’s body was exhumed, but Bellamy’s remains are still to be found in Sark’s cemetery. His gravestone reads: ‘BELLAMY R – Mort pour La France, 28.12.43.’ After the debacle of Hardtack 7 there were no further commando raids on Sark or any of the other Channel Islands.
1 DEFE 2/141.
2 Most of this is the report by Lieutenant A.J. McGonigal, as cited in Ramsey, pp.165–167.
3 Evening Chronicle, 29 December 1943.
4 DEFE 2/241.
5 Ramsey, pp.165–167.