Raiders (11 page)

While Durnford-Slater and Young pondered their next move, the wider battle raged outside.
Several formations of Heinkel 111 bombers, working in details of two or three, appeared overhead and tried their luck against the naval force.
One was shot down and the rest were driven off by ferocious AA fire having dropped their bombs wide.
Shortly afterwards, the Ragsundo gun battery, which had remained silent for three and a half hours and was thought to have been knocked out, suddenly returned to life and caught the
Kenya
off guard.
All morning the largest warship in the force and the communications hub of the operation had fired the odd salvo at the battery, partly to check its guns’ range but also to warn off the emplacement from attempting another attack on the force.
It came as a shock when, just after one o’clock, a perfect shot from eight miles away punched a large hole in the side of the cruiser about ten feet above the waterline.
Another round struck the armour belt and a near miss close to the port torpedo tubes slightly wounded one rating.
Kenya
immediately responded with a furious, sustained barrage that silenced the emplacement once and for all.
At exactly the same time, more German aircraft had appeared overhead and the air was filled with puffs of smoke from the AA guns of
Kenya
and the four destroyers.
The squadron of Beaufighters, circling
the scene, helped to chase them away.
On the ground, the demolition teams added to the din as one building after another along the waterfront was blown to pieces.
Six Blenheims from 110 Squadron, based at Lossiemouth, had meanwhile arrived over the Norwegian coast to the south, with the aim of attacking enemy shipping and drawing Luftwaffe fighters away from Vaagso.
Spotting a convoy, four of them dived to attack, but were immediately set upon by Me109s.
None of them returned to Scotland.

Meanwhile, the sniper hampering the progress of Young’s men was spotted in the top window of an adjacent building.
On the signal, a dozen British guns opened up as one and the enemy marksman slumped forward over the windowsill.
The Commandos were able to move on .
.
.
or so they thought.
The struggle for control of the town was by no means over.
No sooner had they eliminated one source of heavy fire, when another started up, this time from a red wooden warehouse fifty yards ahead of them.
One end of the building was a stable and the men could hear the horses stamping their hooves and whinnying with fear.
Wide, open space lay between raider and defender.
There was not so much as a solitary lamppost for cover to protect their advance.
If the assault was not to peter out, the Commandos had no option but to run the gauntlet against accurate and heavy German fire.

The problem was solved by Lieutenant Denis O’Flaherty and the men of Group 1’s 2nd Troop.
They had been the very first troops ashore and silenced the gun battery at Halnoesvik on the southern tip of the island in a series of sharp skirmishes.
Carrying
two injuries and almost demented with fury, O’Flaherty had had enough of German stubbornness for one day.
The young firebrand burst forward and dashed through the main entrance followed by a trooper.
Instinctively, Captain Young followed them into the gloomy interior.
They were met by a wall of fire and the first two men were cut down instantly.
A bullet shattered O’Flaherty’s jaw, holing the plate of his mouth and taking out an eye.
Young fired into the darkness and withdrew.
Perhaps sympathetic to the badly wounded officer, or too busy concentrating on the threat outside, the two Germans inside made no attempt to stop the wounded Britons as they dragged themselves out into the open.
As the casualties were led away to the aid post close to the landing site, Young and his men set about devising a plan to flush out the Germans hindering their progress.
Storming the building with a frontal assault was not an experience Young thought wise to repeat.
He had a better idea: they would firebomb the building.

He ordered a contingent of men to work their way around to the stable end of the warehouse and lead out the horses.
As the last of the animals cantered away, no doubt to find a quieter corner of town, the troop sergeant threw a bucket of petrol through a window and followed it with a grenade.
A dull thud shook the wooden frame and moments later the building was engulfed by an inferno.
The fleeing Germans were scythed down in a burst of Bren gunfire.
With progress being made elsewhere in the town, the enemy gun boats and batteries silenced, the balance of the battle had tipped decisively in the raiders’ favour.

Young’s men pressed on to the northern end of the town, clearing out the pockets of resistance in small groups rushing from one building to the next.
Durnford-Slater gave orders to seal off the town against enemy reinforcements arriving from the north so that the demolition teams were able to finish off the last of the factories and wharfs.
The sun had long since begun its descent behind the mountainous interior of the island.
Time was running out to complete all the tasks.
Armed only with a pistol, the commanding officer had been a highly visible presence throughout the day’s action, directing operations across town and providing a boost to morale for his embattled men.
He was lucky not to have joined the mounting casualty list.
The last of several close shaves occurred as the final explosives were being laid and he was making his way up to the front line to oversee the final stages.
As he walked past a doorway, accompanied by a handful of minders and messengers, a stick grenade was lobbed at their feet.
The grenade exploded almost immediately, severely wounding two of his men, but the Lieutenant-Colonel was able to get to his feet with nothing worse than a few abrasions and some ringing in his ears.

Unwelcome though it was, the quality and courage of the German resistance, which continued until the last man had re-embarked, impressed the raiding force.
No doubt Durnford-Slater’s thoughts were sought by Admiral Burrough and Brigadier Haydon for their official report of the raid which summed up the action in the town.
‘It must be emphasised that the opposition in South Vaagso was severe in degree and skilful in quality,’
the report reads.
‘It appears from the interrogation of prisoners that the garrison had been fortuitously augmented by a detachment who had been moved into the town for Christmas but, however that may be, there is no doubt that the fighting spirit, marksmanship and efficiency of the enemy in this area was of a high order.’

At 1230 Durnford-Slater contacted the Force HQ on the bridge of HMS
Kenya
to inform them that resistance was nearly overcome and that final demolitions were in progress.
The landing craft were making their way to and from the stony shore at the southern end of the town, ferrying dozens of wounded men and German and Quisling prisoners as well as a large contingent of locals.
Among them were elderly men and women and mothers with babies and small children, but mainly they were young volunteers, who had been gathering all day by the landing site, eager to join the Norwegian Free Forces based in the UK.
At 1250 hours, the commanders ordered full re-embarkation and the last of the Commandos, covering their withdrawal, started making their way back to the landing site.
Young’s men held the area but there was no opposition on the ground now.

The Heinkel bombers that had recently appeared overhead the fjord tried their luck against the ships, but were beaten off each time by RAF fighters and some fierce fire from the Navy gunners.
Against a backdrop of raging fires and billowing clouds of smoke, faces bloodied and blackened, uniforms torn, the men filed through the devastated town, with the evidence of a bloody day’s work all about them.
Dead Germans littered the ground,
ruined buildings smoked and steamed, charred timber and debris choked the shoreline.
Some of the buildings were still burning so hot that the men had to divert from the main street and walk along the foot of the hill.
In his war memoir, Young recalled the grisly scenes of their withdrawal to the landing craft: ‘As I went I counted the enemy dead.
I saw about 15 lying in the open, but of course most of their casualties had been inside buildings .
.
.
As we passed the German headquarters, the Ulvesund Hotel, I took an epaulette with yellow piping from one of the casualties.
Here the dead lay thicker, some of them horribly burned.’

Young and his men were gathering up stocks of mortar bombs they had left earlier when a breathless messenger appeared to inform them that the last demolition was about to take place – the largest of a day that had already seen some massive explosions.
They had three minutes to find cover from the moment that the sapper laying the fuses emerged from the ‘Firda’ factory and blew his whistle.
The men were lying down close to the shore when a deafening blast filled the air and shook the ground.
A mountain of black smoke rose quickly into the darkening sky and debris crashed over the town, splashing into the water before what was left of the structure collapsed in on itself.

With all his troops safely re-embarked, Durnford-Slater strode aboard the last landing craft at 1408, just as the sun began slipping over the horizon of the North Sea.
Twenty-five minutes later all the craft had been hoisted and the force began its withdrawal.
Behind them, plumes of dark smoke climbed as high as the snow-peaked hills above the once sleepy fishing community
and pockets of orange flame burnt bright against the snow-covered slopes.
The destroyers formed a protective screen for the assault craft, and
Kenya
, the last to leave the fjord, stopped briefly to fire fifteen rounds of 6-inch shells, at point-blank range, into the beached
Anhalt,
leaving her burning severely.
It was almost completely dark by the time the naval force were clear of the fjord, out in the open sea, and the landing craft were raised out of the water and the men climbed wearily out onto the decks.
As they did so, a formation of Heinkel bombers swept out of the gloom, but the gunners of all five warships were on high alert and beat them off with an intense barrage of flak.
Streaks of tracer and bright bursts of explosive lit up the dark winter sky.
The bombs came up short, the formation split and the Heinkels disappeared over the mountains.
Their crews were wise enough not to return for a second attempt.

As the force made smoke for Scapa, aboard the two troopships surgeons and orderlies (assisted by the ships’ cooks, still at their action stations) tended to the seventy-one wounded men, including a number of Germans.
Intelligence officers went straight to work interrogating the prisoners, most of whom had been locked in the toilets of the two ships.
News of the raid’s outcome was signalled to the respective High Commands of Germany and Britain, prompting very different reactions.
In London, there was jubilation; in Berlin fury and incredulity.
Details of the raid were made public and were headline news in papers throughout Britain and the Commonwealth.
After two and a half years of almost unrelenting setbacks, here finally was
some good news.
The message was clear: Britain’s fightback against Nazi Germany had begun in earnest.

As the exhausted Commandos sat in the lower decks smoking their cigarettes and reflecting on the day’s furious events and the loss of their comrades, little could they have known that they were now the trailblazers of a new and very potent form of warfare – one that in a few years’ time, on a much larger scale, would eventually decide the outcome of Europe’s most savage conflict on the beaches of northern France.
Nor could they have known that the first raid of its kind would go down as one of the great
coup de main
operations of that war.

The force entered Scapa Flow almost exactly twenty-four hours after they had cleared Vaagsfjord and, as a hospital ship came alongside and took on the seriously wounded, Durnford-Slater went below to address his men.
After congratulating them, he issued a warning: maintain the highest standards of discipline and fitness on leave or go back to your regular units.
‘Have all the fun that’s going – drinking, gambling, chasing the girls and so on – if it appeals to you,’ he said.
‘But if these things interfere with your work they must be put aside .
.
.
You must always behave and look like super soldiers.
If you cannot then there is no place for you in Number 3 Commando.’

One hundred and two prisoners were captured in the raid, comprising seven officers, ninety-one ratings and other ranks (forty Army, fifteen Navy and thirty-six merchant seamen) and four Norwegian Quislings.
In addition seventy-seven Norwegian
volunteers were embarked.
It is estimated that at least 150 Germans were killed in South Vaagso and Maaloy in the course of the operation.
The cost for 3 Commando was seventeen officers and men killed or died of wounds, and fifty-four wounded.
Navy casualties included two fatalities and six wounded.
The Norwegians lost one man, Linge, plus two wounded.
The RAF suffered the heaviest casualties, losing thirty-one men and eleven aircraft: two Hampdens, two Beaufighters and seven Blenheims.