The Lost Band of Brothers (37 page)

It took twenty minutes to scramble hand-over-hand to the top. Crawling low over the crest of the cliff to avoid being skylined, they paused to catch their breath. About 100 yards ahead Kemp could see a line of telegraph poles indicating the track that led inland from the semaphore station. They moved swiftly across open ground to the track and estimated they were now no more than 150 yards from the barbed wire and the guard-house. Peter Kemp was just congratulating himself upon the absence of mines or booby-traps when he saw Capt. Rooney examining two small notice-boards, both of which faced inland. Each warned simply: ‘
Achtung! Minen
.’ Peter Kemp did not speak German. But then, he didn’t need to. Nothing had gone off on the way up to the track so Kemp and Rooney reasoned it was probably just bluff. After a further recce of the defences Capt. Rooney returned to confirm there was a double belt of barbed wire which blocked the path and the entrance to both semaphore station and guard-house and that the area was patrolled by two wide-awake sentries. The best plan, thought Peter Kemp, was to skirt off to the left and approach the target away from the sentries’ patrol line. A hurried, whispered consultation and Peter Kemp led the way off the track into the darkness:

We did not get very far. I had only gone a few yards, crouching low and straining my eyes to watch the ground at every step, when I all but trod on a mine. It was laid, with very little attempt at concealment, under a small mound of turf. Abandoning our hopes that the notices might be a bluff, we returned to the path. A frontal attack was the only solution.
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They decided to stalk the sentries, get as close as possible, shoot them with the silent Sten and then rush the wire. Killing the sentries with knives as originally intended was now out of the question: both were on the far side of the wire. Splitting into three groups, Kemp’s raiders inched forward on their bellies to within ten paces of the two sentries: ‘The night was uncannily still, the very slightest sound being audible … the sentries were very much on the alert, pausing frequently in their talk to listen. Almost every word they said could be heard distinctly.’
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One was young, the other appeared more elderly. Both were wearing army greatcoats and carried rifles with bayonets and each had a stick grenade tucked into their leather waist belts. The men from SSRF lay stock-still, pale, uncamouflaged faces averted, hoping the two sentries would move away. They didn’t. The minutes must have dragged like hours:

For a full fifteen minutes we lay there, listening to the lazy drawl of their conversation, punctuated all too frequently by periods of silence when they would peer towards us and listen. The nervous strain inside me grew almost intolerable, sometimes bordering on panic when I thought of the peril of our situation; we must carry on now, for I could never turn my party back under the noses of this watchful pair … I remember thinking how good the earth and grass smelt as I pressed my face close to the ground. Overhead a lone aircraft beat a leisurely way up the coast; from the direction of Paimpol came the distant sound of a dog barking.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rooney make a slight movement. Then I heard a distinct metallic click as he unscrewed the top of his No 6 grenade. The sentries heard it, too. They stopped their conversation and one gave a sharp exclamation. I sensed rather than saw Rooney’s arm go up, and braced myself for what I knew was coming. There was a clatter as one of the sentries drew back the bolt of his rifle, then everything was obliterated in a vivid flash as a tremendous explosion shattered the silence of the night. The blast hit me like a blow on the head. From the sentries came the most terrible sounds I can ever remember. From one of them came a low, pitiful moaning; from the other, bewildered screams of agony and terror, an incoherent jumble of sobs and prayers, in which I could distinguish only the words ‘
Nicht gut!
Nicht gut!
’ endlessly repeated. Even in those seconds as I leapt to action I felt a shock of horror that those soft, lazy, drawling voices which had floated to us across the quiet night air could have been turned, literally in a flash, to such inhuman screams of pain and fear.
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They stormed forward across the mangled wire. A small, yelping dog erupted from the guard-house and scampered away into the darkness. The guard-house itself was empty. The two sentries lay sprawled on the ground, their uniforms terribly burnt by the grenade. One was silent with his hands over his face. The other kept calling out to his mother and his God. Both were swiftly dispatched by a burst of close-range tommy-gun fire.

Kemp and his men raced forward towards the semaphore station. As Kemp joined Rooney a German loomed up suddenly out of the darkness firing rapidly with a small automatic pistol. His shots missed. Rooney and Kemp replied with their heavy .45s and the man dropped to his knees, still firing valiantly before he too was finished off with another burst of tommy-gun fire from Sergeant Barry. Up ahead in the semaphore station a door was suddenly thrown open. Silhouetted clearly against the light inside stood a German at the top of a flight of stairs, sub-machine-gun in hand. He presented a perfect target and paid for that folly with his life. He dropped to two bursts from the silenced Sten and fell forward onto his face. Trying to rise, he too was finished off with a burst of tommy-gun fire from Corporal Howells.

All surprise gone, the Germans inside the semaphore station now began to return fire in earnest from windows and the – now unlit – open doorway. Peter Kemp remembered afterwards:

The garrison was clearly stronger than we had expected. If we stormed the building we should have to cross the open courtyard under heavy fire with a grave risk of casualties … We had killed four Germans for certain without loss to ourselves. I decided to disengage now, before I had the added difficulty of carrying wounded through the minefield and down the cliffs.
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Like Appleyard and his men on Sark before him at the conclusion of Operation
Basalt
, Capt. Kemp and his men now raced back along the path to the top of the cliffs where Sergeant Nicholson was waiting stoically behind the Bren to cover their withdrawal:

As we hurried through the minefield I was in a sweat of terror lest we should have a casualty here at the last moment: I do not know how we could have carried a wounded man down those cliffs to the boat. In fact, we were lucky, but the descent was dangerous enough as we slid and fell blindly in the gorse-covered gullies leading down to the beach. I was greatly relieved that there were no signs of pursuit from above, although the semaphore station was in an uproar and we could still hear the sound of small-arms fire when we arrived on the beach.
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There, miraculously, the Dory was afloat, held off the rocks on a falling tide by Sergeant Brian Reynolds who had spent two hours waist-deep in icy water. Now they discovered two men were missing as the Germans on the cliff-top put up a Verey light which bathed the bay, the cliffs and the raiders themselves in the vivid glow of a magnesium flare. As the last of the flare faded the two men scrambled aboard the Dory. It was time to go. Paddling hard out to sea, the Dory began making its way out towards MTB 344 and safety; 200, 300 yards off-shore and Operation
Aquatint
began to repeat itself. ‘Another Verey light went up from the signal station, lighting up the tense, sweating faces of my companions as though in the glare of footlights. This time, I thought, they’re bound to see us and I waited, almost resigned now, for the hiss and splash of bullets.’
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Miraculously, none came. Darkness returned. They made the RV with the torpedo boat, clambered aboard and settled down as best they could for the long, wet and uncomfortable voyage home:

Rooney and I sat huddled miserably in a pool of water on the bottom of the Dory, under the flimsy protection of a tarpaulin. I was feeling the reaction from the excitement of the last few hours. Although relieved that I had brought our party back intact I could feel no elation at our small success. Instead, I could not rid my ears of the terrible screams that had come from the mangled, wounded sentries.
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It was a memory – and a sound – that would haunt Peter Kemp for years.

At 0820 next day, an hour after dawn on a wet, grey, raw morning,
The Little Pisser
came alongside the quay at Dartmouth. Waiting for them were the SSRF Commanding Officer, Lt Col Bill Stirling, together with Darby, the unit’s Intelligence Officer and a squad of field security police ready to escort away for interrogation the prisoners that had not been captured.

Operation
Fahrenheit
had been a qualified success. It had killed a few Germans and suffered no casualties to its own force. But its minor success, devoid of any strategic significance, would do nothing, unsurprisingly, to persuade SSRF’s small army – and navy – of critics that shocking the enemy, as Bill Stirling put it, would ever be sufficient justification for an expanded policy of small scale raiding when weighed against the disruption such raids might cause to those monthly ‘mail run’ operations organised by Commander Frank Slocum and SIS in support of Gilbert Renault’s Confrérie de Notre Dame (CND). That argument would persist and gather strength even as March-Phillipps’ brain-child took on new commandos and expanded into those four newly requisitioned manor-houses that were to be the new troop bases scattered along the coast of the West Country.

Limping ashore from MTB 344 after Operation
Farhenheit
, Appleyard was soon heading home, north to Yorkshire, for a little well-deserved leave.

He had left Linton-on-Wharfe at the outbreak of war determined to do his very best, haunted above all by the fear of letting down the men under his command. He returned home now as something of a local hero. One evening after his return to a joyous family reunion there was a meeting in Wetherby Town Hall at which Herbert Hayes, Graham’s father, made a presentation to him on behalf of the Wetherby and Linton Services Welfare Committee. The presentation was to mark the award to Geoffrey, the local lad made good, of two Military Crosses. The Committee had raised a subscription and purchased a silver salver. It was given to him by the father of his childhood friend, now posted Missing.
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On it was inscribed:

Presented to Major J G Appleyard, MC, by the people of Weatherby and Linton in grateful recognition of bravery and services in the World War in defence of those good and lovely things that go to make life worth living.

Appleyard was profoundly moved. In reply he told his audience that he would value the gift for the rest of his life. A number of others should be standing there on the platform instead of himself, he said, among whom was Graham Hayes, one of his greatest friends and a man he had known for the past fifteen years. They had served together in the same unit, under the same commanding officer, a man whom both would follow into any situation with the utmost confidence. Killed recently in action, he too was an officer who stood for all the things the Nation was fighting for.

†††

Far to the south in Dorset, that fight was still going on. On 15 November 1942 a party of two officers from SSRF and an officer and seven other ranks from No 12 Commando under Capt. Ogden-Smith set out on Operation
Batman
in MTB 344. Sailing from Portland at 2145, on a smooth sea with very slight swell, light winds and with a sky completely overcast, their mission was to recce La Sabine, near Omonville, on the north-west corner of the Cherbourg peninsula and take prisoners. Poor visibility close inshore – it was less than half a mile in coastal fog on the other side – made it difficult to identify the correct beach for landing and, after moonset at 0050 made it darker still, time was wasted establishing their exact position. When they did, it was to discover they were on the wrong side of the north-western tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula. They estimated it would take too long now to work their way round the coast to the correct landing point. This, coupled with a rising northerly wind which would have placed them on a dead lee shore in a sea that was getting choppier by the minute, resulted in Operation
Batman
being abandoned.
The Little Pisser
swung round and headed for home. She arrived without incident at Portland at 0520.
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Cancellation, postponement, even the abandoning of a carefully planned mission, often took more cool, considered courage than a headstrong decision to bash on regardless. It was a view endorsed ten days later by Colonel A. Head in a Most Secret memorandum sent to No 62 Commando on behalf of the Chief of Combined Operations, who evidently felt the need to remind Stirling’s raiders of their mission brief. Reading that memo today one is struck by the possibility that, since it stated what by then must have been patently obvious, the real purpose of S.R. 865/42 lay masked in asserting Item 3:

The following points about operations carried out by No 62 Commando should be borne in mind:

1.  
Object of Raids.

The chief object of these raids is to kill or capture Germans without suffering casualties and, if possible, without the enemy knowing the means by which their losses were sustained. Therefore, if the approach to the landing place goes wrong, or the alarm is likely to have been given in any way, the Force Commander should not proceed with an operation which is likely to result in considerable loses to his own Force, or which will involve an attack against an enemy who is prepared.

If initial surprise is lost it will usually be wrong to proceed with the landing.

2.  
Identification

The value of identification must be borne in mind and stressed to all ranks taking part in such raids. Shoulder straps, buttons, tunics, documents, equipment, etc., removed from dead Germans should be brought back whenever possible. One prisoner is worth about ten dead Germans.

3.  
Binding Of Prisoners

Until orders to the contrary are received, prisoners will, on no account, be bound.
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