After The Battle 146 - Polish Soe School At Audley End

4 6

THE SECRET POLISH SOE SCHOOL AT AUDLEY END

9

770306

154097

£4.25

Number 146

NUMBER 146

LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range: Motorbooks, 13/15 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4AN Telephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539 United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution: Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues: Renniks Publications Pty Limited Unit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019 Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355 E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.renniks.com Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions: Vanwell Publishing Ltd., PO Box 2131, 1 Northrup Crescent, St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7S2 Telephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760 Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136 E-mail: [email protected] New Zealand Distribution: Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486, Royal Oak, Auckland 1030, New Zealand Telephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817 E-mail: [email protected] United States Distribution and Subscriptions: RZM Imports Inc, 880 Canal St., Stamford, CT 06902 Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rzm.com Italian Distribution: Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 Parma Telephone: ++390521 29 27 33. Fax: ++390521 29 03 87 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.tuttostoria.it Dutch Language Edition: SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188, 6860 AD Oosterbeek Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: [email protected]

CONTENTS 2 14 20 24 30

Front Cover: Audley End House: then a secret training base used by the Special Operations Executive and now a stately home managed by English Heritage. Centre Pages: The sheltered dry dock on the western side of the Bassin Napoléon III in Cherbourg. Covered with a concrete roof by the Germans, it was used as an S-Boat pen. (Jean Paul Pallud) Inset: An S-Boat, probably S24, moored in the covered dock. (ECPAD, DAM629 L22) Back Cover: A German traffic policeman on duty at the approach to Cherbourg military port. The equestrian statue of Napoléon I by Armand Le Véel was unveiled in August 1858 to celebrate the inauguration of the Bassin Napoléon III. (ECPAD DAA 3035 L01) Inset: The statue remains on Place Napoléon. (Jean Paul Pallud) Acknowledgements: For his expert help with the Audley End story, the Editor would like to thank David List. He is also very grateful to the French Marine Nationale, particularly to Vice Amiral Philippe Périssé, the Préfet Maritime, and the Direction des Constructions Navales (DCNS), particularly to Bruno Richebé, the Director Cherbourg, for allowing Jean Paul Pallud to visit their installations. He also warmly thanks Marie Thérèse, Catherine, Jacques and Yannick Berton and La Cité de la Mer, Colin Partridge, Luc Malchair and Jean Jacques Moulins. Photo Credits: BA — Bundesarchiv; ECPAD — Médiathèque de la Défense, Fort d’Ivry; SPP — Studium Polski Podziemnej (Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust), London; TNA — The National Archives, Kew; USNA — US National Archives.

2

Above: Audley End’s assault course included a rope crossing over the River Cam near the Stables Bridge. Here a trainee tackles the obstacle, with the manor house in the background. Below: No ropes over the river today, only ducks and swans in the water.

ATB

POLISH SOE SCHOOL AT AUDLEY END IT HAPPENED HERE The Death of an Earl REMEMBRANCE A Tribute to Grandmother Lela Carayannis INVESTIGATION ‘Mincemeat’ Revisited FRANCE Cherbourg Naval Base 1940-44

SPP

© Copyright After the Battle 2009 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November.

SPP

From June 1941 to October 1944, Audley End House in Essex served as a secret training school for agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Known initially as Special Training School 61 (STS 61), it was first used as a holding station for agents of various country sections and as SOE’s main parachute container packing base. However, its chief role came in May 1942 when it was redesignated STS 43 and became the main training centre for agent candidates of SOE’s Polish Country

Section. Run and maintained, like all SOE establishments, under British supervision, but with courses given under Polish direction and with Polish instructors, STS 43 delivered a total of 578 trained agents, 344 of whom actually went on missions into occupied Poland. They were known by the Poles as Cichociemni (the Silent and Unseen). Here a group of Polish trainees disembarks at the front entrance to Audley End House. On the far right is British Corporal Peter Howe of the RASC.

POLISH SOE SCHOOL AT AUDLEY END The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was set up in July 1940 to encourage, organise and facilitate subversion, sabotage and irregular warfare behind enemy lines. Between 1940 and 1945, SOE sent out some 3,000 agents to Nazi-occupied countries; about twice this

By Karel Margry number — some 6,800 men and women (of whom only 480 were British) — passed through SOE’s special training schools.

ATB

Audley End House, near Saffron Walden in Essex, is one of the finest Jacobean mansions in England. Located on the site of a 12th-century Benedictine Abbey, it was built by Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk and Lord Chancellor under King James I, in 1603-14. Conceived primarily for entertaining the King, it was originally much larger, more on the scale of a royal palace, but over the next century was gradually demolished and reduced, losing about one-third of its size. In 1762, Sir John Griffin, later the first Baron Braybrooke, introduced sweeping changes, commissioning architect Robert Adam to design a new grand hall and reception rooms on the ground floor, and landscape architect Capability Brown to redesign the parkland in his renowned naturalistic style dotted with mock-classical monuments. The grounds of the estate are divided by the River Cam, which is crossed by several ornate bridges, and a main road, the B1383, which follows the route of an old Roman road. During the Second World War, Audley End House was requisitioned for the war effort and in due course became a secret training school for agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), notably for agents of SOE’s Polish Country Section. Known as Special Training School (STS) 43, Audley End was just one of many SOE special facilities across the country, the total number reaching some 64, each one of them having different purposes or serving different national sections at different times.

The outer appearance of the house has seen no change since the war. Nikita Tepli, a student from Poland, assumes the stance of the RASC soldier in front of the lorry. 3

AUDLEY END

TIPTOFT MANOR

ORDNANCE SURVEY SHEET 154, 1:50,000

Audley End lies just west of Saffron Walden in Essex. We have also indicated Tiptoft Manor, used by the STS 43 trainees for practicing ‘safe house’ techniques. Overall training of agents and special operators was in the hands of SOE’s training directorate, known internally as MT Section, originally under direct command of the organisation’s Director of Training and Operations, Brigadier Colin Gubbins, but from September 1941 under a separate subdirector, Lieutenant-Colonel James Munn. Based at Room 98, Horse Guards, Whitehall, in London, the innocuously named Headquarters, Special Training Schools (HQ STS) controlled a number of selection, training and holding establishments, usually based on requisitioned manor houses, and numbered between 1 and 64. (In parallel with these schools with Arabic numerals, SOE also had a number of specialist stations designated by Roman numerals (ranging between VII and XVII). Some of these had been created by Section ‘D’, the independent clandestine operations section of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), before SOE was formed and handed over to them on amalgamation. These included Stations IX at The Frythe in Welwyn Garden City and XVII at Brickendonbury near Hertford, dealing with weapons and devices, and Station XII at Aston House near Stevenage, developing signals equipment. Station VIII at Whaddon Hall and Station X at Bletchley Park provided signals and codes facilities for both SIS and SOE until SOE gained its own signals organisation. SOE later created its own Station VIII, dealing with research and development and located at Queen Mary Reservoir, Ashford, and another Station X, handling small arms. Stations XIV and XVII would later become ‘normal’ SOE schools, their Roman number then being changed to Arabic.) The Polish Section of SOE was formed in late 1940 under Captain (later Brigadier) Harold Perkins, who spoke Polish and had owned an engineering works in Poland before the war. SOE’s Polish counter-parts were the Oddzial II (Bureau II, General Staff Intelligence) and Oddzial VI (Bureau VI, homeland Operations) of the Sztabu Naczelnego Wodza (Commander-in-Chief’s Staff) of General Wladislaw Sikorski, the Polish premier and commander-in-chief. Fiercely patriotic and intent on keeping their independence, the Poles right from the beginning strove, and succeeded, to keep selection and training of agents, and planning and control of clandestine operations in their homeland, in their own hands. Like the Czechs, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and the Free French, the Poles took care of their own agent recruit4

ment (SOE’s own recruitment was limited to selecting French-speaking British nationals for their F Section). The call for volunteers was addressed to the Polish Army, Air Force and Navy, both in Britain and in the Middle East and later Italy. Officers of the Polish Bureau VI travelled to army divisions and recruited directly on the spot. The call brought in a total of 2,413 applications by 1943, among them 15 women. Of these, only 578 would manage to finish the agent training programme and pass all the exams. However, unlike the other national sections (whose agents were mostly trained by British instructors), the Poles also acquired autonomy in training. As early as the end of 1940 the principle was established that Polish officers would carry out part, at least, of the instruction of their nationals. In 1943 the Poles gained overall responsibility for the training undertaken in the British-maintained establishments, albeit still subject to light British supervision. Their agents, known as Cichociemni (the Silent and Unseen), as soon as they touched Polish soil, chopped from the operational control of SOE and changed to that of the Armia Krajowa (AK — Polish underground home army). Polish personnel chose their own conspiratorial pseudonyms or cryptonyms for use in training and operations. For operational security these cryptonyms, and the real names behind them, were only fully known to the Polish General Staff in London and Poland and were only declared to the British as and when needed to resolve administrative or other problems. Established experts in cryptography, the Poles were also the only nation allowed to keep using their own radio codes and even continue to do so in the run-up to D-Day, when all other nations had to submit their outgoing messages to SHAEF censorship. Besides the Polish Section there existed within SOE also a section known as ‘EU/P’ (indicating European Poles), under Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Ronald Hazell, which covered Polish minorities outside Poland, such as those living in the coal-mining and industrial areas around Lille in northern France. It had four special training schools of its own and sent 28 agents to France before D-Day, seven of whom lost their lives. EU/P agents operated in France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Germany and the Soviet Union. Training of SOE agents was generally divided into four stages. The first was at socalled Preliminary Schools, centres where the capacity and character of students could

be assessed without taking them very far into the secrets of the organisation. Then followed the Paramilitary School, which gave a commando-style training, which could include training in parachuting or small boat landings; next came the Finishing School, which would teach and refine the methods of subversive warfare and would hold the agents until required for operations; and finally each Country Section would have a flat in London which it could use for the final briefing and dispatch of agents. The Polish candidates generally followed this same training route albeit, in their particular case, with minor adaptations here and there. The Poles’ first preliminary training in 1940 was at the Military Intelligence Wing (MI Wing) of the Special Training Centre (STC) at Inverlochy Castle, two miles north of Fort William, below the rugged Nevis Range in the Scottish Highlands. The centre was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Stockwell, the Wing’s senior instructor was British Major David Stacey and the explosive attack instructor was the Polish Staff Engineer Captain Antoni Strawinski. The first course, of standard Polish conspiratorial platoon strength, was started in September 1940. The trainees, mostly junior officers sent here from Colonel Stanislaw Sosabowski’s Free Polish 4th Rifle Brigade, at this stage did not know that they were being selected for work as saboteur agents, although they were instructed to keep secrecy about all work done on the course. The curriculum included mine-laying and sabotage, weapons training in a limited variety of Allied and enemy fire-arms (pistols, rifles, anti-tank rifles, sub-machine guns, machine guns, hand- and rifle grenades, mortars), close-quarter fighting, physical training (including football, boxing and climbs of the Ben Nevis massif), map reading, radio sets, English language and communications procedure, and lectures on the German Army and other enemy organisations. The course placed a heavy emphasis on practical training: armament, demolitions and field craft took up a total of 90 hours compared to only four hours on enemy organisation. The Poles threw themselves into the early clandestine training with keen enthusiasm and the course at Inverlochy was hailed as a great success. (The system of Preliminary Schools as a ‘first sieve’ did not last, being replaced in June 1943 by a Students Assessment Board (SAB), with an establishment at Winterfold House, Cranleigh in Surrey (STS 7), where candidates were submitted to a battery of psychological and practical tests.) SOE’s paramilitary course was held in the rugged West Highlands of Scotland. Recruits were based in one of ten paramilitary schools, known as STS 21 to 25c, clustered around Arisaig, Morar and Mallaig near the spectacular Loch Morar in Inverness-shire. Polish candidates initially went to a school at Loch Ailort in Wester Ross but most of the Poles went to STS 25a at Garramor House (between Arisaig and Morar), where a total of 208 completed their training. The commando-type course involved learning to live off the land (this stage was known to the Poles as the ‘Root Course’), PT (physical training), cross-country runs and close-quarter fighting. The paramilitary course was followed by the parachute course, which divided into two stages, initial and advanced. Agents of other nations received their initial training at STS 51a (Dunham House at Dunham Massey near Manchester) or 51b (Fulshaw Hall at Wilmslow) but, mainly for ease of language, Polish candidates received theirs at the Centrum Wyszkolenia Spadochonowego (CWS), the Polish Parachute Brigade training centre at Largo House, in Upper Largo, Fife, which had a 75-foot parachute training tower at the Lundin Links nearby. This was followed by the second stage of training at the British

ATB

ATB

Left: The view towards Audley End House from the Stables Bridge. Note the concrete blocks on either side of the span, erected as anchors for an anti-tank cable barrier. Similar blocks were put in front of the Adam Bridge (also known as the Stone Bridge) and Fly Bridge. The manhole covers in the roadside gave, and still give, access to a concrete detonation chamber inserted below the road. The Adam Bridge, named after its designer Robert Adam, had two such chambers at either end

ducing counterfeit documents and occasionally occupation currency for agents of all country sections.) In late April 1942 the Polish training programme was reorganised and moved from Briggens to Audley End House, the official transfer occurring on May 1. The main reason for the move was that Briggens was proving too small for the increasing number of candidates taken into agent training by the Polish Section. Together with the Polish instructional staff, a large slice of the British logistics support personnel at Briggens, including the cooks and orderly room staff, were transferred as well, reinforcing the staff already present at Audley End. Briggens then became a training school for SOE’s EU/P (European Poles) Section, which was much smaller and required less space and facilities. By the time the Poles arrived, Audley End had already seen several changes brought about by the war and served a variety of purposes. Even before the Army requisitioned it in April 1941, the estate had witnessed a number of war-related transformations. In the autumn of 1940, with the threat of enemy invasion seemingly acute, several home defence works were constructed in its grounds. These were part of the so-called General Headquarters Line, Britain’s third

line of anti-invasion defences (see After the Battle Nos. 14 and 116). In order to prevent an enemy crossing of the River Cam, Royal Engineers put anti-tank obstacles in front of the estate’s Adam Bridge, Stables Bridge and Fly Bridge and constructed detonation chambers below the Adam and Tea House Bridges. A concrete pillbox was built in the West Park on the east bank and, so as to improve its field of fire, a number of trees and shrubs in the Elysium Garden were cut down. The war affected the estate in other ways too. In the early phase of the Blitz, a group of refugees from London stayed for a short while in the service wing. To alleviate the food shortage, the kitchen garden was turned over to more-intensive production, and the East Park and the lawns to the west of the Cam were ploughed up and crops planted for the war effort. Before it came under the aegis of the Special Operations Executive in June 1941, Audley End was utilised by a variety of Army units. Early on, a Rifle Brigade battalion was stationed in tents in the East Park, between the Temple of Concord and Saffron Walden. A Royal Artillery unit was camped at Sparrow’s End, between Saffron Walden and Thaxted, its base being Audley End House.

ATB

RUBY HARRIS

Central Landing School at RAF Ringway (today Manchester Airport) with parachute jumps being made from balloons and actual aircraft over Tatton Park. The CLE had opened on June 21, 1940, and in November it took the first group of Polish jumpers. Once agent candidates had completed the paramilitary and parachute courses, they went to one of the finishing schools to be honed in the art of clandestine and subversive warfare. The principal ones were a group of 11 schools — known as STS 31 to 37b — all located around Beaulieu in the New Forest, teaching various specialist skills, and serving all national sections. However, each national section was in due course and in addition assigned one or more training schools of their own, where they could accommodate, train and hold their own agents. In early January 1941, the first Polish finishing school was opened at STS 38 at Briggens, Lord Aldenham’s 17th-century house outside Roydon in Essex. The British commandant here was Lieutenant-Colonel Ivor Evans and the Polish commandant Captain Franciszek Koprowski. The clandestine warfare course here was run twice and completed by a handful of trainees: 12 on the first and 15 on the second. (Briggens, as Station XIV, was also SOE’s main forgery base, pro-

and the bridge on the main road behind the Tea House Bridge in the Elysium Garden had one too. Right: A concrete pillbox was built near the Adam Bridge, on the border of the West Park, to defend the west bank of the River Cam. In order to improve its field of fire, a number of trees and shrubs in the Elysium Garden were cut down. These defences were all part of Britain’s GHQ Line constructed in 1940-41 to contain an expected German invasion.

Left: British soldiers on exercise near the Adam Bridge in 1944. Kneeling on right is Captain Albert McGowan, Audley End’s Adjutant and Quartermaster, and standing up is Corporal Emanuel ‘Bill’ Harris. A PT instructor, he was responsible for keeping the soldiers of the British contingent in good fitness.

Very good at wrestling and close-quarter fighting, he also assisted Lieutenant Alfons Mackowiak, one of the Polish instructors, with the physical training part of the Underground Warfare course. Right: Editor-in-Chief Winston Ramsey stands in for Corporal Harris 65 years later. 5

ENGLISH HERITAGE

Group photograph of the British contingent at STS 43 taken in the Parterre Garden in 1944. Second row (L-R): Corporal Bill Harris, Corporal Peter Howe (assistant clerk), Sergeant Alan Watts (chief clerk), Captain McGowan, Lieutenant-Colonel Angus Kennedy (who, as a Major, had been the first commander of Audley End House when it was renamed STS 43 and became the Polish training school in April 1942, and later that same year became overall commander of all Polish SOE training and holding stations), CQMS Spicer, Corporal J. Cottiss and two unidentified men. Third row: Driver Alfred Fensome (third from left), Driver Lionel Henman (fourth from left) and Corporal Shepherd (far right). Fourth row: Private Shearing (third from left), Private Horace Sidell (third from right) and Private Phillips (second from right).

6

station for the parachute containers that were used to drop supplies with the agents. Its designation at this time was Station 61, otherwise known as ‘Farewell House’ from its function as the agent despatching station, and the British commander during this period was Major John Petherick, later succeeded by Major Archibald Rose. In April 1942, container packing operations moved to Gaynes Hall, which then became the new ‘Farewell House’ and also took the designation Station 61, and it was only then, and with the arrival of the Poles in May, that Audley End was designated STS 43. At the same time, there was also a change in commanders, Major Angus Kennedy taking over from Major Rose as the British commandant (with the rank of lieutenantcolonel) and Major Józef Hartman taking over from Captain Koprowski as the Polish Kierovnik or Controller of the Cichociemni training centre. When Kennedy was appointed to overall command of all Polish SOE training establishments and holding sta-

ATB

Henry Neville, the 7th Lord Braybrooke, died in March 1941, aged 85. Within a fortnight of his death, two civil servants from Cambridge arrived on the estate and gave Lady Dorothy notice that she should be out of the house within a week, as it was required by the Army. (Her two sons, Richard and Robert, both students at Cambridge, had already been called up, her daughter Catharine was still at home but would later join the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) Corps — and be herself posted to SOE Station 61, then at Gaynes Hall, near St Neots, Huntingdonshire.) The family was very surprised as they had previously, during the time of Dunkirk, offered the house to the government as a casualty clearing station, which had been declined on the grounds that it was quite unsuitable for a hospital, having only two lavatories and no electricity, so the requisitioning and its timing so soon after Lord Braybrooke’s death came as an unpleasant shock. Through a solicitor friend, Lady Dorothy was able to secure a proper notice, an appropriate contract with the Ministry of Works and time to arrange for the valuable furniture and paintings to be carefully stored in the Picture Gallery on the first floor and in the chapel, and for panelling and paintings that could not be moved to be boarded up. However, the family were out by the end of June and installed in the Old Rectory at Heydon. Still, within a few weeks, the latter property was requisitioned by the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and they had to move again, this time into another family home in Littlebury. In June 1941, Audley End House was taken over by SOE but it did not immediately become the Polish training school, nor was it immediately designated STS 43. Its first use was as a holding station for agents from various national sections, including Belgian, Danish and possibly Dutch. There appears to have been only one Danish mission from Audley End, that of agents Carl Johan Bruhn and Mogens Hammer in Operation ‘Chilblain’ on the night of December 27/28, 1941. From October 1941 to April 1942 Audley End was also used as SOE’s main packing

tions in August 1942, he was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Roper-Caldbeck, who remained the British commandant until the end in 1944. By necessity, STS 43 retained a fair complement of British manpower, 47 British servicemen and women being stationed there. The men, drawn from all over the British Army by special War Office arrangements and coming from the local county regiments and the technical corps such as the RASC and the RE, served as guards, orderlies, drivers and despatch riders. The FANY personnel served as secretaries, drivers, interpreters, cooks and in general looked after the SOE agents. The FANYs were led by Mrs Grierson, affectionately known as ‘Auntie G’. The entire British complement was supervised by several company sergeantmajors, among them CSM Bradley, CSM Kelly, and Sergeant-Major Dobbs. An important position was held by the Adjutant and Quartermaster, the man in charge of supplies and transport, but STS 43 made a rather unhappy start with these: the first two went to jail, one for stealing rations, the other for dipping into the mess funds. However, the third appointee, Captain Albert McGowan, proved an able administrator and stayed until the end . (He was also the first man to start shooting at the ducks on the river, a practice that was later latched on to by others.) Even though the Neville family itself had been evicted from the main house, various servants and estate workers remained at Audley End, continuing their normal housekeeping and maintenance duties. These included Mr Kitteridge, the housekeeper and butler, and Ethel Spicer, the dairy maid and game processor. The British soldiers and the Poles at Audley End did not mix much, either militarily or socially. Major Hartman spoke virtually no English and most communication was channelled through particular people, mainly Count Stanislaw Grocholski, the SOE liaison officer in the Polish Bureau VI, who underwent training at STS 43 (but never parachuted into Poland as it was considered that his great height made him far too conspicuous for a secret mission as well as difficult to despatch from an aircraft) and stayed on as the main interpreter. However, some of the Polish instructors and trainees spoke very good English and a few of the officers even had British batmen. On a lower level, there was good banter and a few friendships struck up between the two groups. The Poles enjoyed the company of the FANYs and were very proud that nothing untoward was ever reported in their contacts with them.

The rear facade of Audley End House forms a timeless backdrop.

ATB

SPP

Left: The British and Polish commandants at STS 43, Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Roper-Caldbeck and Major Józef Hartman. Born in 1906, Roper-Caldbeck was commissioned into the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders in 1926, served with the Shanghai Defence Force for a time and was later seconded to the Nigeria Regiment. Called up from Army Reserve in August 1938, he joined SOE in August 1941, serving as commandant of STS 103 (‘Camp X’ at Whitby near Oshawa, Lake Ontario, Canada) from December 1941 to August 1942 before coming to Audley End. Born in 1898, Hartman was a well-known military figure in Poland, having been adjutant of President Ignacy Being a secret establishment, the site was off limits to the general public. There was a permanent guard at Abbey Lane gate and police guarded the Lion Gate. To uphold internal secrecy, there were strict security rules. All Army personnel and civilians living on site had to sign the Official Secrets Act. Various parts of the house and grounds were out of bounds to various people. Polish instructors were only allowed into the areas where they themselves conducted courses. British soldiers were allowed to walk only along the corridors and to enter only the rooms allocated to them. However, Polish instructors were relatively free to enter and leave the grounds and go into Saffron Walden. A few of the Polish officers married local women and went to live off site. The trainees were not allowed into Saffron Walden at all during their six-month course. The British personnel often had to go off site to have baths, being trucked to the public baths in Cambridge, because of the scant washing facilities in the house. During its time as an SOE school, the various rooms of Audley End House found altogether new usages. Of the areas on the ground floor, the Great Hall was used as a lecture room, later as dining hall for Polish officers. The Museum Room, Butler’s Pantry and Butler’s Bedroom were used as mess rooms for Polish NCOs and other ranks; Room 17, next to the Museum Room, as mess for British other ranks. The Bucket Hall was a guard room and the Adam Library was the British commandant’s bedroom. On the first floor, the guest rooms at both ends were allocated to the British and Polish commanding officers and Lady Braybrooke’s Sitting Room became an officers’ anteroom (also used to issue graduated agents with

Moscicki before the war (1934-39). Seen by many Poles as the ‘Father of the Cichociemni’, he had himself completed the agent’s course at STS 38 at Briggens manor house, near Roydon, before assuming the post of Polish commandant, continuing in the same position at STS 43. His official Polish designation was Kierovnik – Controller of the training centre. Standing behind on the right is Major Jan Lipinski, the school’s Briefing instructor (who would die at Audley End House from a heart attack in April 1944). Right: Nikita Tepli and his sister Helen standing in the footsteps of Roper-Caldbeck and Hartman near the front entrance.

their forged documents). The rest of this floor was off limits, being used to store the Braybrookes’ possessions. SOE lectures, training and other courses were all located on the second floor, which also had the bedrooms for the Polish instructors and sleeping quarters for the Polish trainees. Room 8 was the principal lecturing room. Of the old servant’s bedrooms on this floor, Nos. 10, 11 and 12 became British sleeping quarters, No. 13 the CO’s office, No. 14 the Quartermaster’s office, No. 16 the administration room and the Old Nursery an orderly room. One room was used for making documents that the agents would need in Poland and the North Turret Room for tailoring authentic Polish clothing. Guns and ready-use ammunition for the STS guard were stored in the Old Muniment Room; weapons used for SOE training in the narrow room leading to the wine cellar below the Butler’s Pantry and at the top of the stairs by the chapel; and demolition stores, explosives and devices were stored in the stables and at hidden locations in the grounds. The carriage building opposite the stables was used as a garage and for instructional purposes — arms practice and bombmaking — and for container packing. (Even though main packing operations had moved to Gaynes Hall in April 1942, containers for Poland continued to be packed at Audley End until 1944.) The outbuildings and service wing behind the box and yew hedge were turned into clothing and food stores, another tailor’s room and a shoemaker’s workshop, while part of it also served as extra sleeping accommodation for the British soldiers. The public lavatories in the open courtyard were used as ‘wash up’ and ablution showers.

For outdoor recreation purposes, a football field was created in the West Park; a volleyball ground in the Parterre Garden, where there was also a tennis courts; and a cricket pitch on the cow lawn in front of the house. Like at all SOE schools, all syllabuses of training were in the first place prepared by SOE’s central training directorate but many refinements occurred after suggestions from the school’s Polish commandant or instructors, or because of information received from occupied Poland. There was no set order and contents to the courses, as they varied to fit the need of each group of men, depending on what their role was to be on occupied soil. Planning to organise a national uprising, the AK in Poland was in need of three kinds of agents: the first, and largest, group were the organisers — officers that could assume a position of command and specialists in reconnaissance, sabotage, communications, forgery and staff work; the second group were the couriers — political emissaries from the government-in-exile to the underground ministries and AK districts in Poland; the third were the instructors — specialists to teach the various AK groups in the use of weapons and armed combat. Nearly all the instructors at STS 43 were Polish and instruction was usually in Polish, but sometimes British instructors were temporarily detached to the school for special courses. For example, Sergeant-Major John Oughton, instructor at Beaulieu, visited STS 43 to teach resistance to interrogation techniques. The majority of the Polish instructors underwent agent training themselves, some later being dropped to fight with the AK as instructors. In November 1942 Captain Józef Zabielski, freshly returned from Poland after having been dropped in SOE’s first mission 7

Training instructors and other officers at STS 43. L-R: Lieutenant Mieczyslaw Rózanski (forged handwriting and false documents); Captain Maksymilian Kruczala (booby traps and explosives); Lieutenant Eugeniusz Janczyszyn (creating false biographies and espionage); Lieutenant Jerzy Zubrzycki (Liaison Officer for The Polish Bureau VI and jump instructor); Lieutenant Aleksander Ihnatowicz (weapons training); Major Hartman (Polish CO); Lieutenant Jan Kazimierski (completed agent training with Hartman but never went on a mission); Lieutenant Antoni Pospieszalski (Morse and radio communications and German language), and Lieutenant Stefan Piotrowski. to the country in February 1941 (and having been awarded the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest decoration for valour, for it), was appointed, at British urging, the Chief Instructor at the school. An idea of the wide range of the curriculum given at STS 43 can be gleaned from a list of instructors (officers and other ranks) and their specialities: 2nd Lieutenant Alfred Wisniewski: microdot photography, invisible printing and false identity. Lieutenant Leonard Lysz: invisible ink and photography. 2nd Lieutenant Albin Bratek: false documents. Lieutenant Mieczyslaw Rózanski: forged handwriting and false documents. Lieutenant Klemens Gajdowski: intelligence photography. Lieutenant Z. Budyn: driving, shooting and lock-picking. Lieutenant Witold Dabkowski: partisan sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Lieutenant Eugeniusz Janczyszyn: tradecraft (expert on creating ‘legends’ (false biographies) for agents and espionage). Lieutenant Tadeusz Starzynski: tradecraft (expert on creating ‘legends’ and German affairs). Lieutenant Antoni Pospieszalski: communications (Morse and voice radio) and German language. Lieutenant Tadeusz Sapalski: communications (Morse and voice radio) and German affairs. Lieutenant Aleksander Ihnatowicz: weapons training (night firing and all types of firearms and grenades). Lieutenant Alfons Mackowiak: weapons training (instinctive and reaction shooting (pistols, rifles, machine guns), physical education and Ammunition Safety Officer. Captain Mieczyslaw Jaculewicz: sabotage and night air-drop reception. 2nd Lieutenant Jerzy Zubrzycki: jump instructor and Liaison Officer for Bureau VI. Right: Men in German uniforms were used as part of the combat training. This picture, taken by the assault course in the Elysium Garden and looking rather staged, illustrates a specific part of closecombat training. In the background is Lieutenant Pospieszalski, the communications and German language instructor. 8

2nd Lieutenant Miroslaw Kryszczukajtis: explosive attack and demolitions. Captain Maksymilian Kruczala: explosive attack (booby traps, mine traps and uses of heavy explosives). Lieutenant Jerzy Lemme: battle craft, tradecraft and German language. Captain (later Major) Adam Mackus: tradecraft and tactics. Lieutenant Leon Wujek: tradecraft and offensive counter-intelligence. Lieutenant Felicjan Wykrota: master cobbler and tailor. The other ranks on the Polish staff provided additional specialities and duties: Private Kaz Bilewicz: workshop, stores and motorcycles. Corporal Julian Czarnecki: tailor for special clothing. Cadet Corporal Zenon Jankowski: explosive attack (booby traps and land mines). Warrant Officer Wlad Krajewski: office and library.

The school’s two main courses were the Clandestine (Underground) Warfare course and the Briefing course. The second could only be undertaken after the first one had been completed successfully. Typically, 30 to 40 candidates (the usual strength of a clandestine platoon of five-man cells) were allotted to each course. The Underground Warfare course, led by Major Mackus, lasted four to eight weeks and was split between basic, specialist, topping-up and practical. The curriculum included such topics as physical training, field or battle craft, close-quarter combat, weapon training, explosives and demolitions, communications, memory training, report writing, map reading and sketching, intelligence collation, sabotage, combined operations, political and general, advanced technical training and driving or riding. In practical terms this meant lessons in, for example, firing from the hip, ju-jitsu, karate, knife-fighting, assassination, robbery, picking locks, breaking into houses, setting and disarming booby traps, sabotaging trains and industrial buildings, laying and lifting mines and quick evasion in different types of vehicle. The specialist part could be forgery, microfilming and microphotography, coding, Morse and radio transmission, repairing vehicles, etc. As a general rule an agent was required to become an expert in two specialities. As part of the PT programme, Lieutenant Mackowiak set up an assault course in the wooded area north-west of the house towards the Elysium Garden. This included two lengths of rope strung between two trees near the Stables Bridge for trainees to cross the river. The bridges in the estate grounds were used for simulating mine-laying. An old Valentine tank placed in the Elysium Garden was used in anti-tank weapon training and a Halifax bomber fuselage, set up beyond the stables, for keeping up parachute-jumping exit drill, training in the

SPP

SPP

Warrant Officer Wlad Krzanicki: office and library. Cadet Corporal Boh Kurkowski: chief of tradecraft science and technical interpreter. Sergeant Bronislaw Lesiuk: administration. Warrant Officer Adam Opolski: chief of administration. Private Bern Swoboda: in charge of uniforms store and German language expert. Warrant Officer Gabriel Zajac: lock-picking and driving foreign transport.

SPP

Students under instruction during the Briefing course in what is most likely Room 8 on the second floor, the school’s principal lecturing room. Note the red and white armband of the AK worn by the trainee second from right in the front row. In the far corner stands a Type H parachute container for air-dropping weapons and stores. A Polish invention, as an alternative to

approaching a safe refuge, exchanging passwords with the owner, and plan and execute a mission from it. There were a few accidents, some with fatal consequences. One trainee blew his hand apart with an explosive device during a night exercise. Another man set off a piece of explosive in the stables, causing a grievous stomach wound. One agent was badly injured in the leg when, on the way to the airfield to embark on a mission to Poland, an explosive went off in his pocket. Other people died in non-training-related accidents. One trainee fell out of the back of a truck after a bath trip to Cambridge and a few drinks in town, and was killed. Captain Lemme, the close-quarter fighting and German language instructor, was killed on October 27, 1943, when he ran his motorbike into a parked lorry during a map-reading exercise in thick fog near Littlebury. Major Jan Lipinski, the Briefing instructor, died from a heart attack on April 12, 1944. Trainees regularly left Audley End to take

part in special courses at other SOE stations, specialised in a particular craft, such as STS 3 (Stodham Park near Liss in Hampshire), specialised in mines, grenades and the use of enemy weapons; STS 17 (Brickendonbury) for industrial sabotage; STS 37a (Warren House, Beaulieu) for microphotography; the Reception Committee School, first at STS 40 (Howbury Hall near Renhold, Bedfordshire), later at Station 61 (Gaynes Hall), where agents were trained in the use of the ‘Rebecca/Eureka’ homing beacon and the ‘S’ phone transceiver for ground-to-air communication. Agents selected as radio operator could go to any of several wireless and coding schools set up in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire — STS 52 at Thame Park, Thame; STS 53 at Grendon Hall, Grendon Underwood, or STS 54 at Fawley Court, Henley-on-Thames — or to the Poles’ own Wireless Training Centre at St Margaret’s School in Polmont, near Stirling in Scotland, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Wiktor Bernacki. Candidates also went to special Polish

SPP

SPP

‘Rebecca/Eureka’ radar homing equipment or practising aircraft demolition. As part of their training programme, candidates were given the most fantastic of tasks, such as attacking the nearby railway station, auxiliary RAF airfield or post office or infiltrating unseen into an electrical power plant. Local police were warned that something was afoot, but without giving too much detail. If the candidate was caught, and could not account for himself satisfactorily, he was dismissed and RTU — returned to unit. Nocturnal raids like these sometimes ended in uproar and exchange of shots with the police or Home Guard, even leading to casualties. In two cases these were fatal. Sometimes, Home Guard and police participated in SOE exercises, guarding objects that the trainees were then to target for sabotage or looking out for ‘enemy’ agents who were then to make their way back to the school unseen. Tiptoft Manor, in Sewards End, near Audley End was used as a ‘safe house’ where agents could practice

the British one-piece metal Type B and Type C containers, it consisted of five metal drums, each with a carrying handle, fastened one above the other by a pair of long metal rods, which also held the end pieces – one to deaden the shock of landing, the other containing the parachute and the container’s end of the static line.

Left: A Gammon bomb exploding against the Valentine tank that was set up in the Elysium Garden for use in anti-tank weapon training. Right: Forging documents at STS 43. Although SOE had a special facility for creating false documents at Station XIV at Briggens, outside Roydon in Essex, producing counterfeit papers

and money for agents of all country sections, some of the documents needed by the Polish agents were prepared at Audley End itself, notably by the school’s forgery instructors Lieutenants Alfred Wisniewski, Albin Bratek and Mieczyslaw Rózanski. Their studio was in a room on the second floor. 9

SPP

General Wladislaw Sikorski, the Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile and Commander-in-Chief of Polish Forces, is met by Major Hartman during his visit to STS 43 on August 28, 1942. Lined up behind are the Cichociemni students and instructors. Wieronski. The course lasted four to six weeks. Every aspect of rural and provincial life under Nazi rule had to be known as well as the bureaucratic structure, uniforms and equipment of political, military and civil organisations, including the SS, Gestapo, Abwehr and ordinary German police. The course included mock interrogations and techniques to detect ‘stool pigeons’ and hidden microphones. The second part of the Briefing course, creating a ‘legend’, was taught by Lieutenant Janczyszyn and Lieutenant Starzynski. This involved concocting an alias identity and background in Poland, preparing alibis for every seemingly harmless activity, and learning these cover stories inside out. It also required a minimum training in the trade that agents were supposed to have according to their ‘legend’. Whenever possible, these were drawn from the agent’s job experience in pre-war civilian life. In this phase the agents also received the forged documents needed on their mission, some of which might be prepared for them by Lieutenants Wisniewski, Bratek and Rózanski. In all, 578 agents completed the Briefing course. Those that had finished the full training programme satisfactorily were now ready to go on a mission. As a final act, they took the Oath of Allegiance of the Armia Krajowa, adopted an AK pseudonym and then

departed to one of the Polish holding stations, there to await their call for a mission. (However, this was not always the case, as many agents left Audley End straight for their departure airfields, first RAF Newmarket Heath, then RAF Straddishall and later RAF Tempsford.) The Poles utilised four SOE establishments as holding stations: STS 18 at Frogmore Hall in Watton-at-Stone and STS 19 at Garderner’s End in Stevenage — both in Hertfordshire north of London; and STS 20A and 20B, both at Pollard’s Park in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, just west of London. Frogmore Hall, which could hold about 16 agents at one time, was taken over by the Poles in the spring of 1942 and remained their dispatch station until the end of the Polish flights from England. At the holding stations the men were separated into teams of between three and six and received their equipment. Owing to the scarcity of air operations to Poland or due to bad weather, the agents sometimes stayed in the holding stations as long as three months. They usually tried to keep fit and maintain their arms, sabotage and radio skills, but sometimes the rather luxurious and leisurely life at the country homes led them to become lazy, necessitating those in charge to enforce a more-rigorous drill and discipline. The day before their flight, each team

SPP

ATB

courses at Army training centres outside SOE proper. These could be given by Polish instructors or by British instructors but organised especially for the Poles. These included the Polish Intelligence Officer course at Kensington Park Road, London, and later in Glasgow, completed by 73 trainees; the Polish course in armour and anti-tank weaponry at Catterick Camp, completed by 43; the British-led course on German tanks at Egham in Surrey, completed by 43; the Polish motor and communications course in Dundee, passed through by 94 persons in 1941-42; or the street-fighting course in the bombed-out ruins of Battersea in South London, completed by 58. In addition to Audley End, the Poles made frequent use of another SOE station, STS 46 at Chicheley Hall, near Bletchley in Buckinghamshire. Used by both Czechs and Poles, it handled the detail of equipping the Polish agents and provided them with clothing, boots, hats and all items of personal equipment. SOE did part of the tailoring work but only under Polish direction. Candidates also travelled to Chicheley Hall for pistol shooting practice at the rifle range there. At the end of their Underground Warfare period, a report was written on each trainee (usually drawn up by Major Hartman, the Polish Kierovnik, and counter-signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Kennedy, the senior British officer responsible for overseeing the Polish training establishments) listing his qualifications, specialities and military background, evaluating his character, physical and mental condition and suitability for the job, and giving recommendations for use in the field. If for some reason a candidate proved unsatisfactory or unsuitable, he or she could still be removed from the programme. They would then be sent to the ‘Inter-Services Research Bureau Workshops’ (ISRB being a cover name for SOE) at Inverlair Lodge near Glen Spean in Inverness-shire — known as ‘The Cooler’ — there to spend time until their knowledge of SOE was out of date, and then be RTU — nominally to their former unit but in practice just to some other moresuitable unit. On average, only every fourth candidate successfully completed the full training expected of them. The Briefing, or Dispatch, course was the final polishing stage of training. This involved being informed of the conditions in occupied Poland at the time, and concocting individual cover stories, or ‘legends’. It was initially taught by Captain Jan Górski, who was replaced by Major Jan Lipinski after Górski parachuted into Poland on March 14/15, 1943. When Lipinski died from a heart attack on April 12, 1944, he was replaced by Captain Czeslaw Stronczak. After him came Antoni Wejtko and then Colonel Marian

Left: Sikorski’s successor as Commander-in-Chief, LieutenantGeneral Kazimierz Sosnkowski, talks to Polish trainees during a visit to STS 43. He succeeded Sikorski after the latter was 10

killed in an aircraft crash at Gibraltar on July 4, 1943 (see After the Battle No. 20). Right: The inspection took place in the Parterre Garden at the rear of the building.

Audley End is now a Grade II* listed building under the auspices English Heritage. The large number of historic houses requisitioned by SOE gave rise to the post-war cognomen: the Stately ‘Omes of England’.

Hartman and Klimecki in front of the house. Standing behind are Captain M. Utnik and Lieutenant J. Podoski.

SPP

ATB

SPP

ATB

SPP

The President of the Polish Republic-in-Exile, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, and General Tadeusz Klimecki, the Chief-of-Staff at the Polish GHQ in London, arrive at Audley End, being greeted here by Lieutenant-Colonel Roper-Caldbeck and Major Hartman.

received a final briefing from the Polish Bureau VI, being told its destination, safe house address and contact addresses, as well as passwords and any special instructions. They countersigned for money belts and post, the team leader and deputy leader received lists of equipment to be taken by the aircraft, and the whole team signed the document ordering the flight. For the Poles, the very first of these dispatch sessions took place in a London flat, the next ones at STS 17, Brickendonbury, and all later ones at STS 18, Frogmore Hall. Polish SOE agents were the very first of the Allied agents to parachute into their own country, this being on the night of February 15/16, 1941, when three men — Air Force Major Stanislaw Krzymowski (‘Kostka’), Captain Józef Zabielski (‘Zbik’) and Bombardier Czeslaw Raczkowski (‘Wlodek’) — and 800lb of stores were dropped by a specially modified Whitley V from No. 419 Flight some 80 miles from the Polish border, destined for the Krakow region. Later missions to Poland were flown by Nos. 138 and 161 (Special Duty) Squadrons, which sprang from this first SD Flight, and, from October 1943, also by the newly created No. 1586 (Polish) Special Duty Flight. The operational season was limited from the autumn to late spring, missions being suspended in summertime when darkness

Playing volleyball in the Parterre Garden at the rear of the house.

The area is now bedecked with flowers, plants and shrubs. 11

ENGLISH HERITAGE

War. There was a marked predominance of Indian Army officers in SOE’s training scheme, noted in all the agent accounts of training. Below: The Lion Gate, dating from 1616 and remodelled in 1786, is the estate’s main entrance. It lies along Audley End Road, a side lane of the B1383 main road.

ATB

Above: Audley End’s British contingent posing for another group photograph, this time outside the Lion Gate entrance, on May 15, 1944. Captain McGowan is seated on the far left with Lieutenant-Colonel Kennedy behind him. Kennedy, a Gordons officer, had been a Gurkha Rifles officer during the Great

12

ATB

ENGLISH HERITAGE

Left: The funeral procession for Major Jan Lipinski, the school’s Briefing instructor, who died from a heart attack on April 12, 1944. They are passing the chapel in Saffron Walden Cemetery. L-R: Private Spiers, Corporal ‘Jock’, Privates Shep-

tember 9, 1943. Out of the total of 344, 112 lost their lives. Audley End House was derequisitioned in 1945. Due to the cost of maintenance, the Neville family decided not to resume living in the house and offered it to the state. In 1948, the property (less the contents of the house) was bought for the nation for £30,000 though the National Land Fund. It was put into care of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, the Department of the Environment from 1974, and the Historic Monuments Commission and English Heritage since 1984. In 1983, a memorial urn was unveiled in the West Park by Colonel Sir Peter Wilkinson, during the war a senior operations director in SOE, in memory of the 112 Polish agents who lost their lives. Station 43. Audley End House and SOE’s Polish Section by Ian Valentine, which gives many more details and personal stories, is available as hardcover (ISBN: 0750937084) or paperback (ISBN 075094255X) through bookshops or directly from Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GLS 2BU. Phone: 01453 731114. Fax: 01453 731117. E-mail: [email protected]. Price: £25.99 (hardback), £8.99 ( paperback).

ATB

UK continued but on a much-reduced scale. The last mission despatched to Poland from England was on the night of December 26/27, 1944, when six agents were dropped. After that, SOE operations from Britain were discontinued altogether and shifted completely to southern Italy. STS 43 at Audley End had already been closed down on October 29. LieutenantColonel Roper-Caldbeck and the Polish instructors moved to the Mediterranean, most of them going to the new Polish training school at Ostuni, between Monopoli and Brindisi — set up by Colonel Leopold Okulicki and known to the Poles as Base 10 and to SOE as ME 46 (Military Establishment 46) — while others went to Force 139 headquarters. The final SOE mission carried out from Italy was Operation ‘Freston’ — a five-man multi-national team under LieutenantColonel Duane Hudson sent out as a British Military Mission to assess the military situation in Poland after the breakdown of the Warsaw Uprising. It was dropped on the night of December 26/27, the same night as the last mission from Britain. In total, between February 1941 and December 1944, 316 SOE agents and 28 couriers went into Poland by air. Among them was one female agent, Elzbieta Zawacka, who jumped as a courier on Sep-

ATB

ATB

was too short for the long sorties to Poland. Moreover, many flights had to be cancelled due to bad weather. In the 1941-42 season, 45 men and a meagre 2½ tons of stores were dropped. In the 1942-43 period, 119 agents and 23 tons of supplies were flown in, but the following season, 1943-44, started with bad losses, seven aircraft being lost in 31 sorties during September-October. This caused the RAF to call a pause and insist that SOE operations to Poland be moved to bases in North Africa or Italy, which would provide safer and shorter flying routes to central Europe. By January 1944, SOE had set up an advanced HQ at Monopoli, between Bari and Brindisi, in liberated southern Italy. Known as Force 139 (code-name ‘Torment’) and commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Threlfall, it was responsible for special operations to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Flights from Bari and Brindisi airfields began in January 1944 and by July 114 agents and some 219 tons of stores had been dropped into Poland from there. During the Warsaw Uprising, August 1 to October 2, air operations concentrated on dropping supplies to the beleaguered insurgents rather than agents, the valiant aircrews again suffering crippling losses (see After the Battle No. 143). Throughout this time, operations in the

herd, Hampson, White, Wallbank, Headland, Scott, Barnes, Mudie, Blackmur, Johnson, Goodwin, Pluckrose, Trusswell, Hagens and Sidell and CQMS Spicer. Right: The scene is timeless — only the soldiers have marched into history.

Major Lipinski’s grave. Forty-eight years old and a Captain when he died, he was promoted to Major posthumously.

The grave of combat and language instructor Captain Jerzy Lemme, killed in a motorbike accident on October 27, 1943.

Memorial urn in the West Park commemorating the 112 Cichociemni who lost their lives during the war. 13

THE DEATH OF AN EARL ceeded to the 300-year-old earldom on the death of his father, who was killed in action in Mesopotamia in 1917. As a young man he attended Radley School. During his spare time there he learned welding and plumbing and other engineering-related skills. Soon after leaving school he travelled the globe and when he returned to the UK he joined the Scots Guards. However, in 1927 he had to resign his commission because of rheumatic fever. He then spent some time out in Australia working on a sheep farm. On his return to Britain in the early ‘thirties he joined Edinburgh University. There he studied scientific methods for farming on a large scale and obtained a Bachelor’s degree with honours in pharmacology. He was still unfit for military duty when war broke out but Dr H. J. Gough, Director of Scientific Research with the Ministry of Supply, gave him a job in France as Howard was fluent in the language (helped by the fact he had a French governess as a child).

By Chris Ransted With the fall of France, the Earl commandeered the SS Broompark and brought back to the UK a number of prominent French scientists, as well as thousands of pounds worth of industrial diamonds, and the only known supply of ‘heavy water’ from the plant at Telemark in Norway. Soon after this Dr Gough received a report of an unexploded bomb at Deptford West Power Station. The Earl heard about it and asked to go and take a look at it with a view to removing it safely. This was the start of his involvement in bomb disposal. He was subsequently put in charge of an experimental unit and was supplied with a lorry, equipment and a team of people to help him. These included a civilian driver, Fred Hards, who had been working for Hay’s Wharf Carriage Co. Ltd from 1920 (the same company from which the

KENNETH HARE-SCOTT

Charles Henry George Howard, the 20th Earl of Suffolk and 13th Earl of Berkshire, was considered by many to be somewhat of an eccentric. Described in wartime literature as a ‘colourful figure’, from his appearance no one could have imagined that he was actually a scientific expert in matters relating to bomb disposal. His style of dress could at times be quite outlandish – riding boots, plus-fours, stripy sweater, a white flying helmet and a cigarette in a long holder. He was known to wear a pair of revolvers (affectionately named ‘Oscar’ and ‘Genevieve’) in hidden shoulder holsters. His squad were made aware of these one day as they were crossing fields and ditches on their way to work on an unexploded bomb. The Earl turned to his men and asked if they wanted a cup of tea. When they said yes, he pulled out the guns and fired into the air. Within five minutes a large Bentley drove over the hill-top and out stepped the chauffeur with a flask of hot tea! This quirky behaviour, together with his unusual appearance, belied the fact he was actually a very intelligent, not to mention, brave man. Charles Howard was only 11 when he suc-

KENNETH HARE-SCOTT

KENNETH HARE-SCOTT

Before the First World War, Dr Herbert Gough (left) worked in the engineering department of the National Physical Laboratory and in 1914 joined the signals unit of the Royal Engineers. Rising to the rank of Captain, he was mentioned in despatches twice and awarded the MBE (Military) in 1919. His expertise in the study of metal fatigue led him to be appointed Director of Scientific Research at the War Office in 1938. His wide-ranging responsibilities included the Radar Research Centre at Malvern, the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down, and the rocket research station at Aberporth, having also a personal interest in unexploded bomb disposal. One of his contemporaries was Charles Howard (right), the 20th Earl of Suffolk and 13th Earl of Berkshire, who had a penchant for engineering research as well. Being fluent in French, Dr Gough sent him to France as a liaison officer charged with rescuing rare machine tools, industrial diamonds and supplies of ‘heavy water’, together with some 50 French scientists. The Earl also had an interest in UXBs and on his return to the UK, Dr Gough put him in charge of an experimental bomb disposal unit.

Left: The Earl’s enthusiastic secretary was Miss Eileen Morden who accompanied him on the French mission and now assisted him with report and note-taking with the bomb disposal unit. 14

Right: As this was a civilian organisation, a vehicle was obtained from the Hay’s Wharf Carriage Company and kitted out with equipment and tools required for the job in hand.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Lord Suffolk’s team of RE sappers enjoy a cuppa, courtesy of the YMCA.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

lorry was on hire) who would help with the setting up and monitoring of equipment. The team also included Eileen Morden. She had been employed as a clerk in an office of a motor sales firm in the city and had been engaged to an RAF pilot. When he was posted to the Far East she took a job at the Ministry of Supply and found herself working with the Earl and was involved with his work in France before assisting his bomb disposal research, taking notes and preparing reports. Other members of the unit were ‘borrowed’ Royal Engineers from No. 719 General Construction Company attached to No. 2 Bomb Disposal Company. They were Lieutenant Richard Godsmark, Corporal Francis Baxter, Driver R. F. Nicholls, Driver Patrick Travers and Sappers George Routham, Reginald Dutson, Carlo Laposta, John Hardy, Bert Gillett and W. Fulwell. All the members of the team worked in close proximity to bombs and their lives were constantly at risk. The Earl’s unit experimented with various methods for rendering bombs safe, some of which involved burning out explosives; using plastic explosives or acid to open up bomb cases; bodily trepanning of complete fuze pockets, and firing at fuzes in order to disable them. They worked on bombs all over the country and with all three services, but frequently the actual experimentation took place in the London ‘bomb cemeteries’ — open spaces such as Richmond Park and Erith (also known as Belvedere) marshes. It was during April 1941 that a chain of events started that led ultimately to the death of the Earl and most of his team. It began when Major Geoffrey Yates, the OC of No. 25 Bomb Disposal Company, Royal Engineers, instructed Captain Kenneth Privett, the second in command, to refrain from dumping any more bombs at the Erith marshes bomb cemetery. This was due to the fact that the area was to be ploughed following complaints by local residents regarding damage done from detonating bombs there. On May 6 Captain George Bainbridge visited the marshes and instructed 2nd Lieutenant Norman Sprankling of No. 25 Bomb Disposal Company, and Lance-Corporal King, to take all the defused bombs held there to Richmond Park but to leave behind any bombs still containing fuzes, of which there were a few. (It was policy to avoid transporting fuzed bombs after an accident on October 10, 1940, when a bomb being carried through central London exploded killing a number of people.) Particular reference was made to a 250kg bomb fitted with a No. 17 clockwork time-delay fuze and a Type 50 anti-handling fuze that had been lying at the marshes site since October 1940. Someone had apparently chalked ‘Old faithful’ on the

remains of some of their charges. Right: Another experiment at rendering UXBs safe. The van is visible in the background.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Left: Fred Hards drove the van and is seen here on the left with the Earl at the Richmond Park ‘bomb cemetery’ with the

Parachute mines were initially designed as anti-ship devices but were found to have a devastating effect when dropped on land. Here, the Earl and Fred Hards inspect the impact damage to a Luftmine B. The LMB, 8ft 8ins long, weighed in at 1,000kg and was termed by the Admiralty a ‘Type C’ mine. 15

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

rusty casing, due to it having remained on the marshes for such a long time. When it was originally to be destroyed, the crater in which it would have been put was full of water, and to blow it up outside the crater would have caused blast damage to surrounding properties. It had not been possible to sterilise the bomb by steaming the contents because the nearby ditch contained water too dirty for use with the small-capacity boiler available. However, by May 1941 the area had dried out so it was decided that another crater should be created by blowing up two or three 50kg bombs and then putting this 250kg in that to detonate it. The defused bombs were subsequently transported to Richmond on May 7-8, and it was on the 8th that Lance-Corporal King had a conversation with the Earl and Corporal Baxter, one of his team, in which King mentioned the fuzed 250kg still at Erith. Clockwork time-delay fuzes were desperately required for the formulation of a ‘Render Safe Procedure’ (RSP) and examples for this research were in very short supply at that period, so the Earl went to Erith on the 10th to inspect the bomb. Returning again on the 12th, at 1 p.m. he phoned No. 25 Bomb Disposal Company HQ stating that the bomb had started ticking and could a magnetic clock-stopper and stethoscope be sent over to him as a matter of urgency. Staff Sergeant Jim Atkins along with Lance-Corporal Brownrigg and Sergeant Cole took the equipment from their HQ at Westbury Lodge in Wythfield Road, Eltham, arriving at the marshes around 2.45 p.m. Driver Dave Sharratt followed in another vehicle carrying the hefty batteries needed for the clock-stopper. At the site Atkins took the stethoscope and jumped in their lorry with the Earl and Fred Hards, and drove over to where the bomb lay. Shortly afterwards Sharratt in his truck and another lorry carrying the Earl’s working party were called up to the bomb. According to Sapper Liposta, the Earl proceeded to remove the base plate of the bomb (usually hidden under the fins which would no doubt have been ripped off during its landing), obviously with the intention of gaining access to the explosives which could then be steamed out. The magnetic clockstopper and a stethoscope had already been attached to the bomb at this point, with Staff Sergeant Atkins listening through headphones. The Earl then told Liposta and

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Right: This plan, drawn by Sapper L. H. Bond of No. 25 Bomb Disposal Company based at Eltham in South London, shows the aftermath of the explosion on May 12, 1941 which killed the Earl, Eileen Morden, Fred Hands and five other members of his team.

16

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

When researching this story, Chris Ransted photographed these houses in Norman Road, Erith, which look out across the marshes. ‘There is a petition held at the National Archives in London’, writes Chris, ‘signed by the wartime owners of houses between Nos. 116 to 144, wanting “bomb disposal work” to cease there due to damage done to their property. Since the war a dual carriageway and a small industrial park has been built on the marsh roughly where I believe the Earl and his team would have been killed.’

CHRIS RANSTED

CHRIS RANSTED

another sapper to start filling the water tank for the steam generator from the nearby ditch. As they were doing so the bomb exploded! Sergeant Cole and Lance-Corporal Brownrigg, who had been sitting in a utility vehicle some 400 yards away rushed to the scene. The Earl’s lorry was ablaze and a number of people were obviously very badly injured. Sergeant Cole was unable to find the Earl, Staff Sergeant Atkins, Driver Sharratt, Fred Hards or Sapper Hardy — they had been right near the bomb at the moment it went off. Eileen Morden was in a bad way and one man (thought to be Sapper Reg Dutson) died within a few minutes of Cole’s arrival. Cole helped as best he could and took casualties to Erith Cottage Hospital. Brownrigg also helped, travelling in an ambulance with a number of other injured, including Miss Morden, who passed away before they reached the hospital. Bertie Gillett succumbed to his wounds in the early hours of the following morning. Of the others, Routham had wounds to his left arm and side and a puncture wound to his face; Fulwell had a shattered right arm; Nicholls injuries to his throat and face; Travers had deep wounds to his buttocks, and Baxter needed to have an operation for serious abdominal injuries. Liposta was in shock but was still able to tell his CO what had happened.

CHRIS RANSTED

The scene of the explosion on Erith marshes with the crater in the foreground.

Left: ‘This photo was taken about the minimum safe distance from those houses to let off a bomb (they run right to left some way beyond the modern industrial buildings pictured), so the work I believe could have been done somewhere in this area. The heavy lorries carrying bombs and equipment probably would not have driven too far into the wet marshes from the nearest road. I have found on a 1909 map that there was a small road or track that led a short distance on to the marshes

from Norman Road where the industrial units now stand and perhaps the old metal “lifting gantry” (seen on the left) is related to this as it appears to pre-date the modern development.’ Right: ‘The view from a little further away where the modern dual carriageway now runs. Norman Road (running left to right) and the industrial estate are behind the pylons. I am sure somewhere within the scope of this photo is the spot where the accident took place.’ 17

18

CHRIS RANSTED

CHRIS RANSTED

Eileen’s funeral was held on May 19 at the Municipal Borough Cemetery in Brook Street, Erith, officiated by the Reverend D. J. Morey. Evidence of the esteem with which the Earl’s unit was held was illustrated by the large number of mourners present apart from her brother Mr W. R. Morden and brother-in-law Mr F. J. Brand. Others included Miss M. Nichols; Mr Baxter, the ARP Controller; Incident Officers and heads of the Civil Defence Services; Auxiliary Fire Service; wardens; stretcher parties; ambulance personnel; and members from First Aid Posts and the British Red Cross Society. The Ministry of Supply were represented by Dr Gough; Mr J. Gray, the Senior Experimental Officer; Mr J. Barnes, the personal clerk to Director; Mrs I. R. Cobb; Captain C. N. Phillips representing Major-General G. B. O. Taylor; Lieutenant P. R. Godsmark, Liaison Officer; and Miss H. Springham, Miss M. Mott, and Mrs Chapman of the Mechanised Transport Corps. Eileen was buried with other war dead in Section I (unfortunately her name is misspelt on the gravestone right). Fred Hards was buried in the same cemetery in Grave 18216 in Section S12 (top left). Staff Sergeant James Atkins was buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery (Plot 5, Row G, Grave 4) and Sapper Reginald Dutson in Grave 5. Sapper Bertie Gillett was taken home to Stratford-onAvon and laid to rest in Grave 4123 in the local cemetery; Sapper John Hardy to Walsall Wood Church Cemetery (Grave 5 in Row 3 of Section L), and Driver David Sharratt to York Cemetery (Grave 21584).

CHRIS RANSTED

On July 18, 1941, Lord Suffolk was posthumously awarded the George Cross, and Fred Hards and Eileen Morden were commended for brave conduct. (All three were known in the bomb disposal fraternity as the ‘Holy Trinity’.) In his memory, the Earl’s wife, Lady Mimi (the former Margaret Leiter, sister of Lady Curzon and daughter of the American businessman Levi Leiter), had a magnificent stained-glass window installed in their local church at Charlton, Wiltshire. The full design includes the ship on which he went to Australia and the one he sailed back from France. Above: This detail from the window shows a bomb disposal scene. Right: After his remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in north London, the Earl of Suffolk’s ashes were interred in the churchyard.

CHRIS RANSTED

Some remains of those killed were collected. Picked up at the scene was a cigarette case that had belonged to the Earl, given to him by his team that bore their signatures, such was the respect they had for him. The feeling was mutual, for when in January 1941 there was talk of his men reverting to their original roles in the Construction Company, the Earl wrote to the authorities in praise of them: ‘These men, while they have been at my disposal, have proved themselves excellent and intelligent workers. They have shown a real love for and enthusiasm in their work. They have been most eager to learn and very quick in the uptake. Moreover, insofar as their personal characters are concerned I cannot wish for a more pleasant squad of men to work with.’ As a result of their efforts, Charles Howard was subsequently awarded a posthumous George Cross and Fred Hards and Eileen Morden were commended. In 1947 a window in the church of St John the Baptist at Charlton (the Earl’s family home was at Charlton Park, Wiltshire), was dedicated to his memory by the Bishop of Bristol. It was installed through the efforts of the Earl’s wife, the actress Mimi Crawford. 19

GEORGE PARARAS-CARAYANNIS

GEORGE PARARAS-CARAYANNIS

Then and now. George Pararas-Carayannis is the adopted grandson of Lela Carayannis (below) who during the war led the largest resistance organisation in Greece. Left: George is pictured outside the family home at No. 1 Limnou Street in Athens. Right: After the war George became one of the world’s leading authorities on Tsunamis and the earthquakes which trigger them.

He retired as Director of the International Tsunami Information Centre of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Today the street has been renamed Lela Carayannis (Karayiannis in Greek). A plaque on the front door reads: ‘This house was lived in and used as her headquarters by the heroine of the oppression. Lela Carayannis ‘Bouboulina’ killed on 8-9-1944.’

A TRIBUTE TO GRANDMOTHER LELA CARAYANNIS On September 8, 1944, on the outskirts of Athens, Greece, the hush of the morning dawn was broken by the harsh rattle of German machine guns. This was a familiar sound in the foothills of Dafni, near the concentration camp of Chaidari, as German execution squads routinely carried out their orders. Many of the occupants of the camp were Greek patriots, and on this particular Friday it was the turn of a grandmother, Lela Carayannis, to be executed. She was the leader of the Greek resistance/intelligence organisation known as ‘Bouboulina’ and she was shot along with 71 of her followers and co-workers. Death for Lela was a form of freedom and probably a welcome release for her mortal body which, for three solid days, had been subjected to cruel torture by her SS interrogators. One by one her fingernails had been forcibly removed and wounds inflicted on her body with razor blades, the cuts being salted for maximum pain. Witnesses observing from the hills above Dafni reported that just before the execution the group of prisoners, led by Lela Carayannis, began to sing and that Lela led them in the Zallogos, a symbolic Greek dance of defiance in choosing death rather than loss of freedom or submission to the enemy. This had been the song and dance of the women and children of Messolongi in the War of Independence from the Turks (1821-29) when, one by one, they jumped off the cliff at Messolongi, choosing death rather than capture by the Turks. Following the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, it was in the first few days of the occupation of the country that Lela Carayannis had begun forming her organisation. It started with efforts to help those Allied soldiers left behind after the evacuation. Lela came to their rescue setting up temporary safe havens. Soon more and more Commonwealth soldiers were brought in by Greek patriots combing the countryside. The rescue operations quickly grew and became more demanding and more daring. Lela’s initial efforts were to provide care and refuge for hundreds of Allied and Greek soldiers and airmen trapped in the country. She organised safe houses where the wounded could be treated and prepared for escape over the mountains to rejoin their units. She helped their escape by using fishing boats which moved the men from island to island, coming ever-closer to the Allied bases in the Middle East. Quickly Lela’s resistance organ20

isation grew in numbers as more and more Greek patriots answered the call to duty.

By George Pararas-Carayannis

Lela’s organisation was named after Laskarina Bouboulina, the Greek heroine in the country’s War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821-29. She was shot dead in a family argument in May 1825.

The Italians invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, followed by German forces which opened a front in the Balkans on April 6, 1941. Above: This parade was held in front of the Memorial to the Greek Unknown Soldier. Below: The memorial is located by the Parliament building on Syntagma Square in Athens. Lela managed to operate successfully for three years until a member of her group was apprehended and, under brutal interrogation, betrayed her. She was arrested in the Red Cross Hospital in the city.

Left: She was taken to the Gestapo headquarters located in Merlin Street where she was subjected to horrendous torture to reveal the names of the other members of her organisation but her interrogators failed to break her indomitable spirit.

ATB

ATB

Lela Carayannis was a woman with remarkable self-control, nerves of steel and an iron will. She also possessed admirable organisational skills. Her leadership qualities were recognised and she inspired the respect of everyone around her. Within a very short period she managed to set up a team of more than 150 Greeks from all walks of life whom she could trust and who were willing to join the resistance. She formed them into intelligence units and later into assault teams to fight the invader. Her organisation was given the code-name ‘Bouboulina’ after her own great-grandmother, the Greek heroine in the war of independence over 100 years earlier. The latter collected men to fight with her against the enemies, and raised the Greek flag on board her largest ship, the Agamemnon to begin a naval blockage against the Turks, losing her eldest son in the action which culminated — after her death — in the battle of Navarino in 1827 — the last major battle fought between wooden sailing ships.

Centre: Today No. 6 Merlin Street in central Athens has been replaced with a modern department store yet one of the original cell doors has been put on display by the entrance as a reminder of the horrors of former days (right). 21

Lela, together with several members of her family, was taken to the concentration camp at Chaidari (left). This was the largest and most notorious camp in Greece, becoming known as the ‘Bastille of Greece’, and was established in 1943 on the grounds of a Greek army barracks. It has been established that during the following year over 20,000 people passed through its doors, the Jews en-route for extermination at Auschwitz, the others for using as forced-labour in Germany. It is believed that over 2,000 of the inmates were executed. Above: Today photography is banned in the whole area but this Google image has permitted us to circle Block 15. In the months following the German occupation, Lela expanded her activities to cover every aspect of effective resistance and intelligence. She managed to plant members of her team in many German offices, including the local Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe commands, and in the German and Italian high commands. Not only did she have Greek patriots helping her but she even managed to recruit agents from the enemy’s own ranks: disgruntled anti-Nazi German officers; Italian anti-fascists; and Germans who had married Greek women. In the end she was receiving information on German army and ship movements, on enemy fortifications, and on movements of supplies and personnel. This intelligence was, in turn, wired or forwarded to the Allied headquarters in the Middle East. Unfortunately, after working undercover for nigh-on three years, a member of her organisation was caught and interrogated. This led the Germans to Lela and on July 11, 1944, she was arrested at the Red Cross Hospital where she had been taken after she became ill. On August 14, in the office of the Gestapo interrogator Fritz Bäke (traced and allegedly eliminated by the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, after the war had ended), Lela was brought face to face with her assistant who had been tortured and broken by the German interrogators. For three days Lela was tortured cruelly by her captors but they were unable to get a word out of her. Frustrated and humiliated by Lela’s courage and strength of character, Bäke finally gave up. He closed the file on the ‘Organisation Bouboulina’ with the words: ‘Lela Carayannis, the most dangerous spy in the Balkans’. On September 8, 1944, Lela and 71 of her followers were executed in what is now the Diomideios Garden — the Botanical Garden in the grounds of the University of Athens. Right: The local municipiality renamed Vas. Georgiou Street to Agoniston Stratopedou Chaidariou (Chaidari Camp Fighters Street) which was the road that many fighters walked down to their execution. 22

Above: For many years Chaidari remained neglected, all visits being forbidden as it lay within a military base and today only Block 15 survives, formerly used for the solitary confinement of its prisoners.

Shortly thereafter, Lela and four of her children — her sons Byron (my stepfather) and Nelson and two of her daughters, Ioanna and Electra — were transferred to the concentration camp at Chaidari where they were subjected to horrific torture and abuse. In the early hours of that fateful

morning of September 8, 1944, before Lela and 71 of her followers were machinegunned to death, Lela’s children and some of her co-workers held in another part of the camp, destined for execution the following day, managed to escape with the help of an anti-Nazi German. They went into hiding

George — then eight years old — remembers searching with his mother for Lela’s body. After the war, the Greek government had her remains exhumed and reburied in this tomb in the First Cemetery of Athens.

GEORGE PARARAS-CARAYANNIS

MUNICIPALITY OF CHAIDARI

In 1982 the first memorial ceremony took place in front of the camp entrance and later it became possible to gather in front of Block 15 which is now a listed monument.

in Athens and did not learn of their mother’s execution until several days later. Such was the fate of Lela Carayannis, a simple housewife forced by circumstances to rise to martyrdom, in defence of her country. After the war Lela was awarded the highest medals for valour, and members of the Allied forces whose lives Lela had touched and saved, wrote and expressed their gratitude and appreciation. Lela Carayannis’ heroic actions and ultimate sacrifice are remembered every year in Greece on the anniversary of her execution. Her old house in Limnou Street still stands among the high rises, and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Buildings. The street has been renamed Lela Carayannis Street and her marble statue can be seen in a small square near the Athens Museum. There, every year on September 8, Government officials and citizens gather to hold a memorial service paying tribute to her and remembering the fallen patriots of the Bouboulina. The dramatic circumstances how war converted a simple housewife and mother of seven children into a resistance fighter of legendary proportions has led Lela Carayannis to become a national symbol in Greece. Today her example of heroism and altruism teaches and inspires younger generations of Greeks about the value of freedom and human dignity.

23

In October 2009, the official history of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 published by Allen Lane, London) confirmed once and for all the A play Mincemeat, by Adrian Jackson and Farhana Sheikh, directed by Adrian Jackson, was put on for a month in London over June and July 2009. This adhered closely to the story of Glyndwr Michael as told in declassified UK National Archives files, but with a twist, being gradually revealed in reverse. There were other novel features to the production — the company Cardboard Citizens was composed of former and presently homeless people, and the production was in a semiderelict Shoreditch factory/warehouse. The warehouse setting was unusual, and instead of the audience remaining fixed and the scene changing in front of them as in a normal theatre, in this ‘promenade’ production the audience moved from fixed scene to fixed scene, room by room; many did not realise they eventually ended up in the initial room! The basic premise was striking — Major Martin arrives at the Pearly Gates, but St Peter (portrayed as a Spanish harpie!) can’t find ‘William Martin’ in her ledger, and unless she can find his name he can’t get in — so he is given a chance to discover his correct name by being sent back down to earth with a (Chaplinesque) angelic guide. He starts by discovering all Montagu’s forgeries, so he concludes he is an officer and heroic secret agent with a beautiful fiancé; but in time-slips engineered by the angel he gradually peels back the layers of his false identity (including having a conversation with Glyndwr on the mortuary slab), until finally at the denouement he comes down to homeless ‘Mad Taff’ who committed suicide. He and the angel exit into the heavenly light to the final eulogy from Chaplin’s Great Dictator. It was excellently done. There were also two supplementary oneoff ‘Inquests’ into the supposed controversy of the identity of the corpse, and the morality of using a corpse in such a manner. I took part in the first defending Glyndwr against John and Noreen Steele with their candidate John Melville of HMS Dasher, in front of an audience of about 50 people. Having marshalled my thoughts and evidence for this, it seemed opportune to add this follow-up to my previous articles in After the Battle No. 54, published in 1986, No. 94 (1996), and the follow-ups in Nos. 100 (page 62), 107 (page 15) and 124 (page 50). Three months earlier, Roger Morgan, who was the first person to discover the true identity of ‘Major Martin’ in 1996, argued his case in the play Mincemeat produced by the Cardboard Citizens Company. 24

identity of the ‘Man Who Never Was’, the corpse floated ashore in Spain in 1943, as being that of Glyndwr Michael and also stated that he had died from rat poisoning.

‘MINCEMEAT’ REVISITED Glyndwr Michael turned out to be considerably different than the corpse described by Ewen Montagu in The Man Who Never Was (TMWNW), and many people have found this hard to accept. Glyndwr died of phosphorus rat poison, rather than pneumonia, and was born in humble circumstances. Critics have claimed that even naked a member of the under-class could never be mistaken for one of the upper-class (the stigmata of the underclass) and that phosphorus poisoning could never be mistaken for drowning. They also doubt that a corpse kept refrigerated for a long time could be mistaken for a freshly dead one. This has led to scepticism being expressed on the web and in print, and other candidates being proposed, principally

By Roger J. Morgan a drowned sailor from HMS Dasher, an aircraft carrier that sank in the Clyde estuary as Operation ‘Mincemeat’ was being implemented; the scenario proposed is of a substitution at the last moment. Apart from the fact that the Ministry of Defence have confirmed the identity in 1998, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission added the name to the headstone (illustrated in issue 145), I hope to prove here why Glyndwr is correct and also to expand on some other interesting aspects of ‘Mincemeat’ which have subsequently come to light — principally what was the Big Secret?

TNA

TNA

Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu’s memo to Colonel John Bevan, the Head of Deception of the London Controlling Section.

THE CAUSE OF DEATH, DETECTING IT, AND THE FRESHNESS OF THE BODY Montagu in his LCS official account writes: ‘Glyndwr Michael . . He had committed suicide . . . by taking phosphorus poison in the form of rat poison . . .’ and in his 1945 summary of the above for the Naval Intelligence Division war history says ‘Glyndwr Michael . . . he had taken phosphorus rat poison, which was unlikely to reveal itself to post-mortem examination, except possibly by faint traces in the liver.’

So Montagu claimed after the operation that the corpse used was Glyndwr Michael and that he died of phosphorus poisoning. Montagu wrote a very important memo to Colonel John Bevan, Controller of Deception, a month after ‘Mincemeat’ entered the water which I reproduce, as it confirms that the corpse was Glyndwr, and answers the doubts as to the use of a poisoning victim (see above). So ‘Mincemeat’ died of an undetectably small dose of phosphorus and was therefore Glyndwr. Moreover far from wanting a ‘fresh’ body, they were relying on it being decomposed to destroy evidence. Further, in 1950, after the publication by Duff Cooper of Operation Heartbreak (in which the corpse is called ‘Maryngton’), it was analysed preparatory to a possible prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. The new Head of Deception drew up the comparison table for the Joint Intelligence

Committee reproduced here (see below). ‘Lunatic’ has been crossed out in the draft, but his first thought was that ‘Mincemeat’ was a lunatic; clearly, five years after Montagu had left, the new Head of Deception believed ‘Mincemeat’ was Glyndwr. The intention was that the decomposition of the body when recovered should simulate eight days in the water, by which time the internal organs, including the lungs and liver, would be mush and incapable of showing any characteristic signs. Actually Jewell, the captain of Seraph, the submarine that delivered ‘Mincemeat’, reported that decomposition had been much worse than expected: ‘The face was heavily tanned and the whole of the lower half from the eyes down covered with mould. The skin had started to break away on the nose and cheek bones. The body was very high.’ Any faint jaundice would be completely masked by the decomposition. An eyewit-

TNA

CONSPIRACY? If the anti-Glyndwr faction is right then the consequence is that there was and is a campaign to falsify the official records now in the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum. Glyndwr’s name occurs in two separate documents in 1943 and 1945, and he is referred to in unmistakable terms in two others in 1943 and 1950, whilst there are numerous opportunities to mention the use of another corpse in other documents 19431953. Montagu in his London Controlling Section [LCS] official account of ‘Mincemeat’, compiled after the facts in 1943 and revised in 1945, is meticulous in pasting in overlapping amendment flaps, sometimes amendments to amendments, arrived at by consultation with his colleagues in 1945 to get the account accurate — it is inconceivable he would not have included a Dasher substitution if it had occurred. As I hope to show, the ‘Mincemeat’ and Dasher secrets were actually not that big — the idea of a huge and continuing conspiracy is preposterous. I know some people find it disappointing, but ‘Mincemeat’ was an anonymous nobody — as he had to be. First I am setting out to address the general objections to Glyndwr that have been raised.

When Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper was published in 1950, John Drew, the Director of ‘Forward Plans’ (the organisation set up in 1948 as a successor to Colonel Bevan’s wartime department), prepared this table comparing what was said in the book with the actuality. 25

ness to the body on the beach described one side of the face as blackened, as if from an explosion; clearly this is the decomposition described by Jewell. The supporters of the Dasher scenario also claim the opportunity to use a fresher body would have been irresistible. A Dasher victim would anyway have been refrigerated for three weeks; Glyndwr was refrigerated for 11 weeks; I doubt there would be much difference between the two as the damage occurs on initial freezing. Moreover, when the XX Committee was informed that a suitable body had been obtained on February 4, 1943, they minuted that ‘it must be used within three months, or so’. Glyndwr was used two weeks inside this ‘or so’ limit. THE STIGMATA OF THE UNDERCLASS The belief that Glyndwr was a ‘tramp’ derives from me. I used the word during the media frenzy after the revelation of the name, and it was taken up by the Press — the picture presented being of a down-and-out ‘wino’ living on the street. Having now seen more documentation, and talked to relatives, I have revised my opinion. There is no evidence he was an alcoholic, and his relatives deny it. In the Hackney mortuary register there is the entry ‘Lunatic’ against Glyndwr. The coroner believes this means ‘Certified’, and St Pancras Infirmary where he died had a Lunacy Unit. This combines well with Montagu’s description in his LSC Report which describes him as ‘a labourer, of no fixed abode. He had committed suicide, whilst temporarily insane, at a common lodging house’, and in TMWNW he writes that ‘he had not been very physically fit for some time before his death’. I now think that Glyndwr was resident in a mental hospital before his death — does it seem probable that a 34-year-old man could survive clandestinely on the streets of London in wartime? He was probably a labourer in an ARP Heavy Rescue Squad suffering from Blitz post-traumatic stress syndrome. Once one substitutes the pauper lunatic for the tramp scenario then he was probably well fed and had dental work done; he may have only been in the common lodging house one day. Montagu in his first draft of the manuscript of TMWNW makes clear he was aware of the problem of the stigmata of the underclass and how rare a body that didn’t show them would be, and he evidently thought that Glyndwr didn’t show them. THE SECRETS OF HMS DASHER BY JOHN AND NOREEN STEELE Now to consider the Steeles’ hypothesis. HMS Dasher was an aircraft carrier, converted by the Americans from a merchant vessel. On March 27, 1943, whilst in the Firth of Clyde, she exploded and sank in eight minutes with the loss of 379 lives from a crew of 528 — the second largest loss of life in home waters in WWII (see After the Battle No. 83). In accordance with normal practice in ‘friendly fire’ incidents and accidents, the survivors, bereaved and witnesses were instructed to say nothing and there was no publicity or official notices. After funerals for the 22 identified corpses, the remainder were anonymously interred without informing the relatives in unmarked graves. A Board of Enquiry three days later concluded that the cause was a vapour explosion in the aviation petrol storage caused by a cigarette. The secrecy surrounding the sinking of HMS Dasher attracted the attention of local history enthusiasts John and Noreen Steele. They published their research as The Secrets of HMS Dasher in 1995, in which they proposed that there was more to it than the above simple account. The late Colin Gibbon, who was the first to voice scepticism about Glyndwr Michael, then adopted the Dasher tragedy as the source for a fresher, 26

drowned corpse, which he named as Able Seaman Tom Martin. What brought Dasher to his attention was the coincidence that Seraph had sailed around the top of Scotland from Blyth on the East Coast, to arrive in the Firth of Clyde two weeks after Dasher exploded; he also couldn’t see why Montagu had had to drive the length of England with the canister. The Steeles adopted this theory to explain the Dasher secrecy, but with a different candidate, Able Seaman John Melville, one of the identified who had had a funeral in Ardrossan cemetery, and published in subsequent editions an extra chapter titled ‘The Secret of The Man Who Never Was’ with a sticker on the cover proclaiming: REVEALED! The Man Who Never Was. On the strength of this the Navy flew John Melville’s daughter out to Cyprus to take part in a wreath-casting ceremony from the deck of the present HMS Dasher on October 8, 2004. This and the Steeles’ book achieved considerable publicity in the national press as ‘the truth at last’. THE DASHER ‘SECRET’ It was standard practice only to admit publicly to things the Germans knew already and to conceal anything which would damage morale. The sinking of an aircraft carrier with such a large loss of life, and the unseemly game of blame played out with the Americans, would have been very damaging. Relatives were never told of the results of the Board of Enquiry and no casualty total was ever released’ Only as the war was ending is there a column in The Times of May 18, 1945 headed: ‘The publication of certain losses to His Majesty’s ships has been withheld in cases where there was reason to believe that the enemy was unaware of the facts. There is no longer any reason to withhold this information. With regret the following ships have been lost in addition to those already announced.’ There followed a list of about 165 ships names with Dasher near the top — so there were another 164 ships, no doubt with similar tales of secrecy and anguish, which had been withheld from the public. The Board of Enquiry results surfaced in the normal way under the 30-year rule in the Public Record Office in 1973 as ADM1/15072. So the Dasher ‘secret’ was nothing special — the secrecy was completely normal.

Montagu and Seraph’s journeys to the Clyde.

THE VOYAGE ROUND SCOTLAND AND THE LONG DRIVE Now to come to the specific ‘Mincemeat’ points raised by the Steeles. Seraph’s log shows that she got to Blyth from the Mediterranean via the West Coast with a stop at Holy Loch, and then over the top of Scotland — the same route she then took in reverse in April 1943 — I strongly suspect it was the normal route. After nine weeks in dock her crew were in need of ‘working up’. The book The Ship With Two Captains by Terence Robertson, published in 1957, makes clear that Holy Loch had a ‘Severe Training Course’ where submarines and convoy destroyers practiced war games together. Montagu makes clear both in TMWNW and the files, that Seraph had to postpone her scheduled sailing until there would be no moon off Huelva, and so it was decided that she should occupy these spare ten days working up on the voyage to, and then training in, Holy Loch. ‘It was decided by Captain Raw to postpone the date of sailing of the submarine for approximately a week to the 19th April, using this period for normal final training of the crew. This would enable the operation to be carried out with a waning moon in a reasonably dark period (approximately 28th-29th April).’ Seraph’s log shows she spent eight days practicing attacks, embarking and disembarking commandos, and gunnery practice. So she went to Holy Loch by a usual route, for a good reason at a date determined by the moon. It was just a coincidence Dasher had exploded there two weeks before. As we have seen the Flag Officer Submarines was only prepared to postpone Seraph’s existing orders, not divert her, and Montagu clearly felt that it was easier and more secret to do it themselves — much simpler to make it one overnight drive ‘in the family’. THE FUNERALS Sixteen of the 22 identified dead were scheduled to be buried at Ardrossan cemetery. The father of one, John McFarlaine, requested a burial at Greenock (26 miles away) and was initially refused but after threatening to go to the press his request was granted. Four other relatives then requested burials elsewhere, of which three were granted — Paisley (24 miles away), Newton Mearns (24 miles) and Frizington, Cumbria (143 miles). One request was refused, John Melville, Galashiels (97 miles away), so he was buried in Ardrossan in a sealed coffin. The Steeles find this suspicious — their scenario is that after receiving the TMWNW’s ‘discrete enquiries in Service medical circles’ (which was invented by the vetters, see later) John McFarlaine was offered to Montagu, but after they had to give in to his father’s threats John Melville was offered as a replacement. Presumably a weighted coffin (or possibly Glyndwr) would have been buried in Ardrossan (wouldn’t it have been easier to use one of those whose relatives didn’t object or one of the unidentified corpses?). The obvious explanation of the sealed coffin is that what was inside was extremely unpleasant — the insistence on not letting the coffin out of Naval custody then follows; or perhaps they ran out of money — presumably the Navy was paying for the coffins to be transported home as it is significant that all the three short journeys were authorised. Perhaps they could only afford one long journey and McFarlaine just had the bad luck to be considered last, or the Frizington family may have been personal friends of the burial officer. So John Melville was available 21 days before Seraph sailed. Montagu would then have had to gain possession of the body and dress it. However Glyndwr was unusually

tall, Montagu relates how the uniform and trench coat were modified by Gieves using Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondley for fittings, as fortuitously he and ‘Mincemeat’ had the same build. (Mrs Cholmondley confirmed in The Daily Telegraph that ‘Charles was 6’ 4” and took size 11 shoes’.) If they had substituted another body, they would have had to get a new uniform, greatcoat, shoes and other clothes, and gone through the fitting procedure again. A new ID card would have had to be forged, with a new photograph (the card/photograph was embossed with a seal which would be impossible to match up) and they could hardly ask a relative of a Dasher victim for a photograph (Montagu describes the extreme difficulty of photographing a corpse so that it looked lifelike). All this would have to have been done with the facilities at their disposal in London. I hold this is simply too short a timescale to substitute one body for another; they were irrevocably committed to Glyndwr. THE BIG SECRET Montagu claimed that he couldn’t reveal the name of the corpse used because he had only been given permission by its relatives on condition the name was never revealed — his ‘Binding Oath of Eternal Secrecy’ — and that the relatives were dead so there was no one to release him from it. When pressed on this point, some thought he became more annoyed than the situation warranted. Mrs Cholmondley has also castigated me for my lack of ‘respect and honour’ in breaking ‘a solemn trust’. However there never was such a promise. The subterfuge was required of Montagu by the vetters of his TMWNW manuscript in order to conceal the true origin of the body, which was that no relatives had been found, let alone asked permission. Having lied so publicly, Montagu clearly felt even 40 years on that he could never admit it — hence his irritation at being forced to repeat the lie. The truth is contained in the successive drafts of the manuscript of TMWNW as it underwent vetting, and the memos between the vetters. The first undated version of the manuscript is very different from the final published account. After describing the provision of a body by Bentley Purchase he says ‘the most careful possible enquiries, made even more carefully than usual in view of our proposals, failed to reveal any relatives’. This then is the truth — no ‘lengthy and discrete enquiries in Service medical circles’, no ‘Officer from an old Service family’ — no Binding Oath of Eternal Secrecy — but simply ‘Doing a Burke and Hare’. The Minister of Defence gave Montagu permission to publish subject to vetting in 1951. In fact, Montagu refrained from publishing for two years; only when Ian Colvin was about to publish his book The Unkown Courier did the Joint Intelligence Committee urge him to publish to spike Colvin: ‘Montagu’s controlled version, in which delicate points could be modified’ . . . ‘Information in your possession about the conduct of Operation “Mincemeat” may now be regarded as declassified subject to the retention as TOP SECRET of any information on . . . the true means by which the corpse was obtained and any details from which the man’s real identity could be inferred.’ . . . ‘The draft contains certain amendments which I have made and in particular you will see that there is no reference whatsoever to . . . the real source of the corpse. By making him an anonymous officer of one of the Services we avoid a great many difficulties. We also made the officer an only son and killed off his parents so that there is nobody to whom enquiries can be directed.’ When Colvin submitted his manuscript for vetting: ‘There is the scarcely-veiled suggestion that the corpse was not a hospital casu-

alty in military service, and the same thought is to be found elsewhere in the book . . . he might very well learn the truth of what up to the present he only suspects.’ Finally, there is the testimony of Montagu himself. He wrote to the vetters: ‘As a result of having read [Colvin’s] The Unknown Courier . . . . in the Foreword . . . . I want to mention the maintenance of the secret of Major Martin’s identity here in case Colvin ever ferrets it out and accuses me of deceiving the public.’ Thus in the ‘Author’s Note’ at the beginning of TMWNW he says: ‘I have also, of course, maintained the secrecy of “Major Martin’s” identity.’ So this ‘Note’ is actually saying that the public must realise that his Binding Oath of Eternal Secrecy was devised to keep secret the name of the corpse, and if the name was

ever to be discovered (and thus the fact that actually there was no Oath) and Montagu was accused of lying, he could point to this paragraph and say ‘But I told you it was a lie’. Glyndwr’s family often wondered after the war what had become of him; they deny absolutely that Montagu contacted them and asked permission. This then was the 40-year Big Secret — not for any high reasons of State, like Enigma, but merely to avoid causing embarrassment first to the government and then to Montagu. So there were NO big secrets in either case — Dasher was kept secret for completely standard reasons like hundreds of other losses, and ‘Mincemeat’ was kept secret to avoid embarrassment; Seraph went to Holy Loch for a good reason; and any connection between Dasher and ‘Mincemeat’ is a coincidence.

And lastly a bit of light relief — a puzzle. I have an ID card distributed to the public at the showing of the film in 1955. Under ‘OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENTS’ it says: ‘This is the key to the secret of “THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS”’ The use of the word ‘key’ is slightly curious — it implies a cipher. Under ‘General Conditions of Issue’ there is quite a large block of text. This reads rather stiltedly in places, which again suggests that it might have been contorted to convey a message (such as using every 10th letter). The only substantial difference I can see between the real card and this one is that the actual number was 148228 and this one is 148242 — a difference of 14; this is very curious. All in all I think something fishy is going on. 27

ECPAD MARINE 153-1906

CHERBOURG NAVAL BASE 1940-44

30

The huge central mole, a magnificent feat of engineering bearing in mind the resources of the period, was finally completed in 1853. In the military harbour on the western shore of the bay, the Avant-Port was finished in 1813 and the Charles X Basin (290 x 220 metres and 18 metres deep) in 1829. A second basin, the Napoléon III (420 x 200 metres and 18 metres deep), was ready by 1858 when the successful realisation of the Cherbourg military port was celebrated in the presence of Queen Victoria. The first Atlantic liner entered the new harbour in 1869.

By Jean Paul Pallud Three forts were built on the central mole and the roadstead was completed by the construction of two breakwaters running out from the mainland at Querqueville in the west and Tourlaville in the east, these being completed by 1895. The huge works were finally completed by the addition of the Petite Rade (inner harbour) with two inner breakwaters running out from the mainland, the Jetée du Homet (1914) and the Jetée des Flamands (1922).

ATB

Cherbourg lies at the northern extremity of the Cotentin peninsula and has been a strategic possession since earliest times. The peninsula was first conquered by the Roman Quintus Titurius Sabinus in 56 BC, and Cherbourg is believed to occupy the site of the Roman camp of Coriallum which they later built on the western bank of the River Divette, the name ‘Cherbourg’ being regarded as a corruption of Caesaris Burgus (Caesar’s Borough). Having suffered from raids by Saxons and Danes, in 933 Cherbourg was attached, as was the whole of the Cotentin peninsula, to the Duchy of Normandy. Duke Richard III developed the town’s fortifications and William the Conqueror provided it with a hospital and a church. The town was taken in 1204 by King Philippe Auguste of France and suffered further raids in the latter part of the 13th century, though the castle was never taken. During the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), Cherbourg was lost and recovered six times. Captured by the English in 1418 after a four months’ siege, the town was finally recovered by Charles VII of France in 1450. In the late 17th century, a start was made under Louis XIV to construct a military harbour at Cherbourg but the real creation of the port dates from 1738 when two jetties, a lock and a wet basin were built for both naval and commercial purposes. Shortly afterwards however, in 1758, these works were destroyed when an English expedition sent by William Pitt ravaged the town and burnt the shipping. Reconstruction was not completed until 1789 when an important decision was taken at the request of King Louis XVI that the strategic military port for the defence of the Channel coast was to be at Cherbourg. The plan was to build a harbour for 80 warships but the most difficult part was the construction of a huge breakwater — the Digue Centrale — nearly four kilometres long. Work came to a halt at the end of the 18th century but was resumed by Napoléon I only to be stopped again between 1813 and 1832. It was left to Louis Philippe, and particularly to Napoléon III, to complete the construction.

Offering important repair facilities and large armament warehouses, Cherbourg was the major support harbour for the French Navy in the Channel sector. It was also the base of several squadrons of the naval air arm: two torpedo bomber squadrons with a total of 21 Latécoère 298 floatplanes, one bomber squadron with 12 Loire-Nieuport 411s, and two reconnaissance squadrons with a total of 16 floatplanes were stationed there. Top: Latécoère 298 torpedo bombers being put to sea at the Chantereyne Naval Air Base in March 1940. Above: The large crane was blown up by the Germans as they wrecked the dock installations in June 1944 and, though this section of the harbour still belongs to the French Navy today and is consequently fenced off, strictly speaking it is no longer a military area, being used as the port for recreational sailing by naval personnel.

The Cherbourg military harbour, looking westwards, with the Avant-Port [1] and the Charles X [2] and Napoléon III [3] basins. Europe’s largest naval manufacturer, the French Direction des Constructions Navales (DCNS) uses the latest state-of-the-art technology to produce a range of vessels for the Navy, including nuclear-powered submarines (SSBN, Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear, and SSN, Fleet Submarine Nuclear), nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, diesel-electric submarines and frigates. Manufacturing is carried out at various shipyards, including Brest, Toulon, Lorient and Cherbourg [4], the latter being the yard for the construction of submarines. Cherbourg’s submarine heritage goes back to the launch of the Morse in 1899 since when over 100 submarines have been built at Cherbourg. The DCNS produced six SSBNs of the first generation (now all de-commissioned), followed by the three submarines of the latest type currently in service with the French Navy. The fourth SSBN, Le Terrible, was due to enter service in 2010.

3

2 1

ECPAD MARINE 54-520

ECPAD MARINE 54-515

4

In April 1912, after leaving Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York, the Titanic briefly put into Cherbourg to embark 274 passengers, among them American multi-millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim, Mr and Mrs John Jacob Astor, owner of the Waldorf Astoria, and Mrs Margaret Brown, better known as ‘Molly’ Brown. At dusk on April 10, the Titanic set sail westwards for its first and final voyage. During the First World War, Cherbourg was an important port for both the British and American forces. After the war a liner mole was built beside a deep-water basin, the Darse Transatlantique. Cherbourg soon became the main transatlantic passenger port of France, and regular calls were made by French liners and those of the Cunard White Star, Norddeutscher Lloyd, Hamburg America, Royal Mail and Canadian Pacific lines. Travellers to and from Europe and America passing through Cherbourg neared 200,000 in 1927 although numbers declined during the years of depression to 80,000 in 1936. The Gare Maritime (port railway station) on the mole was completed in 1933, and by 1937 the Quai de France was able to berth the world’s largest liners.

torpedoes. It comprised eight galleries, four on each side of the main tunnel. These photos were taken in November 1939.

ATB

Dug under the Roule mountain between 1933 and 1938, this underground complex served as workshops and storage for

The Marine Nationale (French Navy) very agreeably allowed Jean Paul into its installations, including this tunnel which today houses Navy transmission equipment. 31

ATB

USNA

32

From the top of the Fort du Roule, which stands on a hill commanding Cherbourg and its harbour, Rommel contemplates his victory.

ATB

THE FALL OF CHERBOURG, JUNE 1940 In September 1939, Britain and France believed that Italy would soon join forces with Germany. The Royal Navy and French Navy therefore shared between them the theatres of operation, the French taking over the task of protecting shipping in the Bay of Biscay and the western Mediterranean. French naval forces were based in two main areas: Brest on the Atlantic coast, and Toulon and Oran in the Mediterranean. The English Channel was primarily the responsibility of the Royal Navy and Amiral Charles Abrial, the commander of the French Naval forces in the North, whose HQ was at Dunkirk, had only small forces at his disposal. However, Cherbourg was the major support harbour in the sector with important repair facilities, naval armament warehouses and supply depots. Following the outstanding success of Hitler’s offensive in the West, with the Netherlands and Belgium conquered and three French and one British armies wiped out in three weeks, German troops entered Paris on June 14. Three days later, Generalmajor Erwin Rommel’s 7. Panzer-Division was approaching Cherbourg, its SchützenRegiment 6 in the lead. During the night of June 17/18, Admiral François Darlan, the Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy, ordered a general evacuation of Cherbourg and all other harbours on the Atlantic coast. Of the ships in Cherbourg harbour, the two old battleships of the 3ème Division de Ligne, the Courbet and Paris, both departed for Portsmouth on the 19th. The Courbet had taken part in the defence of the port, while the Paris was defending Le Havre where she was damaged by a bomb on June 11. Even though four of the ten destroyers in the port were under repair, all managed to set sail as did the four submarines being refitted. Four other submarines in various stages of construction in the Arsenal, including the most advanced, the Roland Morillot, all had to be scuttled. As he approached Cherbourg on the afternoon of June 18, Rommel saw ‘several antiaircraft balloons hanging in the sky over the port’. It was not long before the forts began to shell the German columns and ‘everyone dived for cover’, as Rommel noted in his diary. Artillery was hastily deployed on both sides of the road and Rommel ordered ‘the heaviest barrage he could on the heights around Cherbourg and, above all, on the port installations’. A Flak battery was brought to bear and soon ‘the rapid fire of the 37mm guns was also tearing into Cherbourg and the enemy hastily hauled down his balloons’. Rommel: ‘The situation, which had appeared to be going so well, took a sudden turn against us shortly before 4 p.m., when,

This photo from Rommel’s private album was taken in the centre of Querqueville, at the junction where Rue Gambetta becomes Rue de la Paix (behind the photographer). (For another photo showing this same scene, but looking in the opposite direction, see Blitzkrieg in the West Then and Now, page 514.)

USNA

Right: Generalmajor Erwin Rommel’s 7. Panzer-Division captured Cherbourg on June 19, 1940. As his troops were cleaning up, Rommel went to the Fort Querqueville to see for himself the result of the shelling he had directed on to it. ‘I was surprised to see how little damage our shell-fire had caused’, he noted.

The French Navy also allowed Jean Paul access to the same hilltop, today fenced-off and crowned by numerous antennas. The old wall, having shown signs of cracks, was dug out all along its length for checking and repair.

USNA MARINE NATIONALE

At the Préfecture Maritime (Naval Headquarters), Rommel found his officers assembled in the courtyard, facing the senior officers of the French garrison. He addressed the French officers: ‘I take note of the fact that the fortress has surrendered and wish to express my pleasure that the surrender has taken place without bloodshed among the civilian population.’

The Préfecture Maritime has moved to other offices and the old building is now the private residence of the Préfet Maritime. The yard cannot be seen from the street, Rue des Bastions, but the Marine Nationale provided this nice comparison.

ATB

BA 101II-MW-0928-21A, HASERT

within a few minutes of each other, many of Cherbourg’s forts opened a tremendous barrage with guns of all sizes, including superheavies, into the area which we were holding and through which we had made our advance. British warships also joined in with heavy naval guns. The positions occupied by the artillery battalion and anti-aircraft battery came in for particularly heavy attention and casualties soon began to mount. My command post, too, was so seriously threatened that we found it advisable to shift out into the open country along a hedge 500 metres to the west, where, although overlooked by the enemy, we were far better off than in the buildings with heavy shells falling all around.’ The shelling of the forts lasted about an hour. Rommel’s second infantry regiment – Schützen-Regiment 7 – and his Panzer-Regiment 25 then arrived, followed by the whole of the division’s light artillery and Flak batteries. In failing daylight, Rommel then ventured to a point from where he could see the naval harbour, about 2,000 metres away, which was empty except for a few small boats. ‘The enemy forts around us were silent and it was soon completely dark’, he wrote. ‘Our position was now so strong that we were certain of being able to force the enemy to capitulate next day.’ About midday on June 19, as his artillery was firing ‘on anything moving’ in the naval dockyard, Rommel sent two civilian representatives — a Deputy of the Chamber in Paris and the Cherbourg Prefect of Police — back into the town to make urgent representations and obtain an immediate surrender from whoever was in command of the city. He gave them a deadline of 1.15 p.m. to return. ‘At 1.15 p.m. the answer still had not arrived, and so dive-bombers, punctual to the minute, swooped down and released their bombs on the sea forts, scoring a direct hit on the Fort Central. The artillery also opened fire. I went back as quickly as possible to the Redoute des Couplets to watch the effect of our fire from that excellent observation point. A storm of shells now descended on the naval dockyard, and flames were soon shooting up from its extensive arsenals and sheds. Tremendous clouds of smoke showed the existence of major conflagrations. Meanwhile, the infantry regiments had been given orders to occupy the town during this bombardment. When the whole naval dockyard was concealed under a pall of flame and smoke, I had the fire switched to Fort Querqueville in order to bring the garrison there to an early surrender.

A 20mm Flak gun set up by the dock gate giving access to the Bassin du Commerce, the commercial wet dock. In the background stands the Gare Maritime (port railway station), designed to berth the world’s largest liners and laid out so as to provide a quick passage from ship to train. This photo was taken by PK photographer Paul Hasert of Kriegsmarine Propaganda-Kompanie West.

Looking northwards across the Avant-Port. The view remains remarkably unchanged, with the dock gate and the Pont Tournant (swing bridge) on the right and the Quai de Caligny, the western side of the Avant-Port, on the left. The superb Art Deco buildings of the Gare Maritime, seen at rear, badly damaged by German demolitions in June 1944, were reconstructed after the war but the 70-metre-high Campanile tower is gone forever. 33

ATB ATB

ECPAD DAM 515 L02

ECPAD DAM 515 L05

Left: The French Navy successfully evacuated all its ships before German troops reached them and the latter failed to capture a single usable vessel. In the summer of 1940 a German photographer took a series of photos in the ruined submarine shipyards in the Arsenal. The complex comprised four parallel building slips on the southern side of the Avant-Port. From east to west these were Docks Nos. 1 and 2, then came the Forme Cachin, a dry dock, then Docks Nos. 3 and 4. Here a German sailor inspects the ruins left by the French demolitions. Above: The DCNS was kind enough to allow Jean Paul to visit its shipyard at Cherbourg, though taking photos in the secured areas, like the Forme Cachin where the SSBN Le Terrible had just been launched, was understandably not permitted. This is the west side of the former Dock No. 4.

Four submarines still under construction at Cherbourg in 1940 were too far from completion even to be towed away and all were scuttled where they lay by the French. Roland Morillot (76 per cent completed) and La Praya (43 per cent) were both blown up in Dock No. 4, seen here, and La Martinique (20 per cent) and La Réunion (keel being laid down) scuttled in Dock No. 3. 34

The slipway of Dock No. 4 was filled in after the launch of the nuclear fleet submarine Améthyste in 1988 to enable a modern workshop to be built on the site. As a gantry on the left-hand side of the building presented a much better vantage point giving a clearer view, Jean Paul chose to take his comparison from this angle.

ATB

ECPAD DAM 626 L06

Left: Following the armistice, the Kriegsmarine took over the French coastline and in August 1940 Marinegruppenkommando West installed its headquarters in Paris, with Generaladmiral Alfred Saalwächter at its head. Here Saalwächter is greeted at the Château of Tourlaville by Kapitän zur See Max Fink,

rations. I require that NCOs shall be instructed to take charge of the men. Officers will assemble in the Préfecture Maritime. They will be permitted their batmen. All weapons will be unloaded and stacked in an orderly manner in the forts.” ‘The formal surrender was fixed to take place at 5 p.m. in the Préfecture Maritime. After the French delegates had declared their agreement with the conditions, and given their assurance that they would be carried out, I gave orders for the cease-fire and then drove off with my Gefechtsstaffel (mobile combat headquarters) to Cherbourg. ‘In the Préfecture Maritime, the staff of the fortress had already transmitted the surrender conditions to all establishments. As

there was over an hour to wait until the official ceremony, I drove through Cherbourg with Major Otto Heidkämper (the 7. PanzerDivision’s Chief-of-Staff) to inspect the town and port. We visited first the British port area and the harbour railway station. In their haste to get their ships away, the British had left all their vehicles standing in the extensive harbour area and hundreds of lorries were parked there and in the adjacent quarter of the town. The material was practically new and most of the lorries intact. ‘We now found our way to the seaplane base, which had not been touched by the bombardment, and then returned to the Préfecture, where we found the commanding officers of the 7. Panzer-Division assembled

ATB

ECPAD DAM 626 L11

‘During this bombardment, of which I had an excellent view from my command post, a number of French naval officers appeared in the Redoute des Couplets to negotiate the surrender of the fortress . . . The negotiations for the surrender went ahead fairly quickly. The French spokesman, a captain, who was apparently invested with some powers, asked for our terms in writing. I accordingly dictated the following: “I have taken cognisance of the fact that the fortress of Cherbourg is prepared to surrender, and have given orders for an immediate cease-fire. I require the garrison of each fort to hoist a white flag as a sign of surrender and then to march off along the road from Cherbourg to Les Pieux. Personal kit may be carried, including essential

Seekommandant Normandie, and Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm Vogel, commanding Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260, during a visit to Cherbourg in August 1941. Right: The château is today owned by the city of Cherbourg and access to the yard is usually open to the public.

Left: Saalwächter taking leave after the meeting. Replaced by Admiral Wilhelm Marschall in September 1942, Saalwächter resigned from active service. Arrested by the Soviets in June 1945, he was convicted for alleged but completely unfounded

war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal and executed by a firingsquad in Moscow the following December. After the demise of the Soviet Union, he was exonerated by a Russian court in 1994. Right: Yannick Berton stands in for the Kriegsmarine guard. 35

ECPAD 519 L26

In the original plans of Operation ‘Seelöwe’ — the German invasion of Britain — Cherbourg was earmarked as the base for the left wing, due to land in the Weymouth sector, and troops underwent sea-assault training in the area. No original captions have survived for this series of photos, so it was quite a challenge to track down the training area at Landemer, 12 kilometres west of Cherbourg. ‘Meanwhile, we discovered that the commandant of Cherbourg [this could refer to Vice-Amiral Jules Le Bigot, the Préfet Maritime of the 1ère Région (prefect of the Cherbourg naval district); Contre-Amiral Jean Le Bonzec, commander of the port’s Arsenal; or to Capitaine de Vaisseau Auguste Guérin, commander of the Cherbourg defence sector] was not there, nor, what was worse, the senior officer of the station, the admiral commanding the French Channel Fleet [Amiral Abrial had re-estab-

ATB

ECPAD 519 L25

on one side of the courtyard and the officers of the Cherbourg garrison, including the commandants of the various forts, on the other. After a quick exchange of salutes with my officers, I addressed the senior French officer, through the interpreter, in roughly the following terms: “As commander of the German troops at Cherbourg, I take note of the fact that the fortress has surrendered and wish to express my pleasure that the surrender has taken place without bloodshed among the civilian population”.

lished his headquarters at Cherbourg after the evacuation of Dunkirk]. Accordingly, the division’s liaison officer, Hauptmann von Platen, was sent off to fetch the gentlemen from their headquarters, which was housed in a château heavily protected by anti-tank guns and barricades. When they arrived I had the interpreter repeat to them the words I had already addressed to the French Chiefof-Staff. Amiral Abrial said that the surrender of the fortress had taken place without his agreement, to which I replied that I took note of his statement. This concluded the capitulation of Cherbourg.’ The French Navy’s concerted effort to evacuate every ship had been a great success and 80 per cent, amounting to 95 per cent of the tonnage, had successfully escaped to Britain or North Africa. The few remaining vessels were either scuttled or blown up and the Germans failed to capture a single usable vessel. The largest ship to be destroyed was the destroyer Cyclone, blown up at Brest where she was undergoing repairs. The armistice was signed on June 22, effectively dividing France into two parts, twothirds being occupied by German forces and the remainder south of a ‘Demarcation Line’ to be under the control of a French government in Vichy. Germany now controlled the coastline of the Continent from the polar circle to the Spanish border. On July 16 Hitler issued his Directive No. 16 covering ‘preparations for a landing operation against England’. Cherbourg was earmarked for one of the assault fleets for Operation ‘Seelöwe’ (see After the Battle No. 69) and the II. Armeekorps was to assemble in the Cotentin peninsula to embark at the port and land in the Weymouth sector. However, faced with problems, particularly the lack of shipping, the planned assault front was narrowed in September, the western beach being now east of Portsmouth, between Worthing and Brighton. Consequently, the left-wing fleet from Cherbourg was cancelled.

Another shot of the amphibious training. The ‘Seelöwe’ planners were soon forced to scale down the assault front and the left thrust from Cherbourg was cancelled in September. Right: Looking eastwards from the ‘custom’ track running along the coastline 36

towards the viewing point just west of Landemer. The belvedere on top of the cliff was later demolished by the Germans who then built firing posts and embrasures in its basement. These still remain visible today by the side of the Landemer road.

ECPAD DAM 627 L16

ECPAD DAM 627 L24

Old picture postcards enabled Jean Paul to identify this spot as being on the Quai Duquesne in the Avant-Port, with the Quai du Magasin Général in the background.

ECPAD DAM 629 L23

THE KRIEGSMARINE TAKES OVER In August 1940, the Marinegruppenkommando West (Kriegsmarine High Command in the West) transferred its headquarters from Sengwarden near Wilhelmshaven to Paris where they established themselves in the former French Navy Ministry in the Place de la Concorde. The command abandoned its control over operations in the North Sea to concentrate on France and Belgium, finally dividing its new fief into three large sectors: to the north-west, the Befehlshaber Kanalküste (Commander Channel Coast) covered the zone between Blankenberge and Saint-Malo; to the west, the Befehlshaber Atlantikküste (Commander Atlantic Coast) spread from Saint-Malo (excluded) down to Spain, while the Befehlshaber Südküste (Commander South Coast) controlled the Mediterranean zone between Italy and Spain. Each of these sectors, with an Admiral at its head, had several naval defence commanders covering a smaller zone. The Kanalküste sector was further subdivided into four Seekommandanten (Seeko): Seeko Pas de Calais covering Belgium down to the River Somme (HQ at Wimille); Seeko Seine-Somme from the

harbour. The two buildings which can be seen in the background of the photo (left) mark the front of Docks No. 1 and No. 2 (see page 34).

ATB

More photos taken during Admiral Saalwächter’s visit to Cherbourg in August 1941. Here he addresses a selected party of Kriegsmarine officers and men on a quay in the military

Minesweeper R38 — featuring the ace of clubs emblem of the 3. Räumboots-Flottille — manoeuvres in the Bassin Napoléon III. Räumboote (R-Boats) were minesweepers with a displacement of 100 to 150 tons and used for coastal convoy protection,

coastal minesweeping, minelaying and rescue of aircrews. Because of the presence of decommissioned nuclear submarines in this basin, Jean Paul was not allowed to match up this photo. 37

ATB

ECPAD DAM 524 L 16

The crane on the quayside was removed several years ago although the rails on which it moved can still be seen. In the background lies the Digue Centrale, the central mole to the port, with the Fort Central situated on the left and the Fort de l’Est on the right.

Above: Z10 Hans Lody, Z14 Friedrich Ihn and Z6 Theodor Riegel moored further along the Quai de France with the tanker Brösen tied alongside. All of Type 1934 A (except Z20 which was a Type 1936) these destroyers had a full-load displacement of about 3,100 tons (3,400 tons for Z20) and were armed with five 127mm guns, four 37mm and six 20mm Flak guns and eight 53cm torpedo tubes. Note the movable ship-to-train access galleries of the Gare Maritime. Right: The wartime photo was taken from the top of the station’s Campanile tower, blown up in 1944, so Jean Paul had to make do with the much-lower perch. The former station building today houses La Cité de la Mer, a complex dedicated to the deep sea and its conquest. Its many exhibits include the Abyssal Aquarium, the deepest in Europe, and Le Redoutable, exSSBN of the French Navy, currently the largest nuclear submarine open to the public in the world (see: www.citedelamer.com). 38

ATB

ECPAD DAM 524 L 24

Five destroyers departed from Wilhelmshaven on September 9, 1940, and arrived at Cherbourg two days later. Here two of them, which appear to be Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt and Z20 Karl Galster, can be seen moored at the end of the Quai de France, the western side of the Darse Transatlantique.

ECPAD DAM 517 L19

alongside the Quai de Normandie. In the foreground lies the Brösen. Beyond, a Dornier Do 18 flying boat prepares to land in the harbour off to the left.

The large and mostly unchanged building of the Construction Mécanique de Normandie (CMN) at right rear forms a link with the past. Traffic in Cherbourg harbour is now much less than in the glorious days of the Atlantic liners but cruise ships

still make regular calls to the Quai de France. In 2009 there were 24 scheduled visits, a third of them by the Cunard Line, including four by the Queen Mary 2 and four by the Queen Victoria.

Left: Another shot of the Darse Transatlantique with two T-Boats, T8 and T5, moored along the Quai de France on the left and three more, T11, T7 and T6, moored along the Quai de Normandie on the right. The two larger ships further down the latter quay are the minelayers Schiff 23 and Cobra. Schiff 23 was soon to be converted into an armed merchant cruiser, renamed the Stier, and would end up scuttling herself after

damage sustained when sinking the Liberty ship Stephen Hopkins in September 1942. Right: With no vantage point available at the right place to take a comparison, Jean Paul decided to stand on top of the Gare Maritime. The Quai de Normandie is now used to berth the regular ferry ships arriving from Poole and Portsmouth in Britain and Rosslare in Ireland, with up to seven arrivals daily.

ATB

ECPAD DAM 524 L33

ATB

Ten torpedo boats also moved to Cherbourg in September 1940 and this photo taken from the Quai de France shows two of them moored on the far side of the Darse Transatlantique,

39

40

ECPAD DAM 516 L14

The triple torpedo tube mounting on a T-Boat moored along the Quai de Normandie (ships of this 1935 Type had two such mountings). In the background, across the Darse Transatlantique, two other T-Boats lie moored along the Quai de France. Because of the ferries docking here, this section of the Quai de Normandie is today a strictly guarded area to prevent clandestine migrants from boarding ships.

ECPAD DAM 521 L08

Somme to the Seine (HQ at Le Havre); Seeko Normandie from Le Havre to SaintMalo (HQ at Cherbourg) and Seeko Kanalinseln covering the Channel Islands (HQ at Jersey). In July 1942, the Channel Islands sector was integrated into Seeko Normandie. ‘S’ boats (S-Boot being short for Schnellboot) were small and fast motor torpedo boats with a displacement of about 100 tons (for some reason these craft were known to the British as ‘E’ boats, the ‘E’ presumably standing for ‘enemy’). The two motor torpedo boat flotillas that the Kriegsmarine had in early 1940, the 1. and 2. S-Boots-Flottillen with a total of 12 vessels, first took part in the invasion of Denmark and Norway (see After the Battle No. 126). From May they operated off the Dutch coast and in the Channel, the Anglo-French evacuation from Dunkirk soon providing plenty of targets including the sinking of two destroyers. The first successful S-Boat sortie to the English coast was on the night of June 19/20 when S19 and S26 torpedoed the freighter Roseburn off Dungeness, the first S-Boat loss taking place the following day when S32 detonated a mine in the Channel. On the night of June 23/24, S-Boats again operated off Dungeness when S19 and S36 sank the tanker Albuera and the small coaster Kingfisher. In July, the S-Boats made their first forays to England’s South Coast and on the 4th the 1. S-Boots-Flottille, operating out of Cherbourg, attacked convoy AO-178 south of Portland, sinking the freighter Elmcrest and damaging two more ships. On July 12 the flotilla lost S23, mined north of Calais. From the beginning of September, two German torpedo boat flotillas, the 2. and 5. T-Boots-Flottillen, moved to Cherbourg with ten operational boats (T-Boats were much larger torpedo boats than S-Boats, having a full-load displacement of 1,000 to 1,500 tons). They were soon joined by five destroyers of the 5. and 6. Z-Flottillen (the ‘Z’ standing for Zerstörer, destroyers with a displacement of 3,000 to 3,500 tons). The Z6 Theodor Riegel, Z10 Hans Lody, Z14 Friedrich Ihn, Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt and Z20 Karl Galster arrived at Cherbourg on the 11th, escorting five minelayers. One week later the RAF bombed the port, sinking the transport Johann Blumenthal and damaging torpedo boat T11 and minelayer Schiff 23. On the 19th, the five destroyers sailed for Brest, soon joined there by two more destroyers, Z5 Paul Jacobi and Z15 Erich Steinbrinck. Six of them departed from Brest on September 28 to lay mines in Falmouth Bay. They laid the minefield without interference and returned to port on the 29th. On the night of October 8/9, six torpedo boats (Greif, Seeadler, Kondor, Falke, Wolf and Jaguar) left Cherbourg for the Isle of Wight area. Late on the 11th, they engaged the Royal Navy’s 17th Anti-Submarine Group and Greif sank the French armed trawler Listrac with a torpedo and Kondor and Falke sank the British anti-submarine trawler Warwick Deeping with gunfire. Early on the 12th, the German force contacted and sank the French submarine chasers CH6 and CH7, 12 survivors being picked up by Greif. Royal Navy destroyers HMS Jackal, Jaguar, Jupiter, Kelvin and Kipling then came out from Plymouth and Jackal soon engaged two of the German ships at a distance of over 25 miles but neither side suffered any losses. In Operation ‘Medium’, the battleship HMS Revenge sailed from Plymouth on October 10 with seven destroyers to shell the port of Cherbourg. The group was covered to the west by two light cruisers and four destroyers and to the east by one light cruiser and two destroyers. From 3.33 a.m. to 3.51 a.m. on October 11, the Revenge group bombarded the port. German torpedo boats put to sea and briefly attacked the minesweeping force but without result.

Built by Deschimag at Bremen and launched in 1939, the T-Boats of this series had a full-load displacement of about 1,090 tons and were armed with one 105mm gun, eight 20mm Flak guns and six 53cm torpedo tubes. They were also fitted for minelaying and could carry up to 30 mines.

ATB

ECPAD, DAM 516 L21

Left: Another shot of T-Boats, most probably T7 and T8, moored along the Quai de France. The movable gantries of the Gare Maritime were all raised up against the building to clear the quayside. In peacetime, these walkways allowed transatlantic passengers to have direct access to the railway station in the building, with its speedy rail service to Paris. This quay

the light cruisers HMS Newcastle and Emerald with five destroyers sailed from Plymouth. Contact was made about 4 p.m. and action lasted for two hours until the German destroyers had outdistanced the British vessels. The two forces were never closer than 12 miles and no damage was caused to either side.

On October 22, a new destroyer, the Z4 Richard Beitzen, arrived at Brest but five others had to return to Germany for refit and repair, leaving only Karl Galster, Hans Lody and Richard Beitzen to operate from Brest. The trio sailed on November 24 to operate off Plymouth, sinking one fishing trawler and

ECPAD DAM 1194 L20

Early on October 17, Z10, Z14, Z15 and Z20 sailed from Brest to raid British shipping at the western exit of the Bristol Channel and torpedo boats Greif, Falke, Jaguar, Kondor, Seeadler and Wolf sailed from Cherbourg to act as a support force. The German squadron was spotted off Brest by a British aircraft and

would be ruined in June 1944 when the surrounded German garrison carried out its methodical demolition of the harbour installations. Right: The railway station in the Gare Maritime closed down years ago but fortunately some of its movable walkways survived destruction and are still in use today when large cruise ships call at Cherbourg.

A squadron of minesweepers from the 2. Minensuch-Flottille enters the port. The rear vessel is M10, a Type 35 which was launched in 1939 at the Stülcken shipyard in Hamburg. Having

a displacement of over 700 tons, boats of this series were armed with two 105mm guns, two 37mm Flak guns and six 20mm Flak guns. 41

ECPAD DAM 629 L01 COLIN PARTRIDGE

Searching the archives of the French Army audiovisual service ECPAD, Jean Paul came across a photo report of a visit by Admiral Otto Schultze, the Admiral Frankreich (Commanding Admiral France), to the Channel Islands in July 1941. Above: Before leaving Alderney, Schultze inspected a party of the garrison in front of the Fort Albert.

COLIN PARTRIDGE

ECPAD DAM 629 L05

Colin Partridge took this comparison for us of the former Officers’ Quarters, with the ramparts of the old Battery No. 3 beyond. The fort was substantially demolished by the Royal Engineers during an exercise in 1978 and it remains in a derelict state (see The War in the Channel Islands Then and Now, pages 112-113).

the Dutch steamer Apollonia. They attacked again on the 28th, sinking a tug and a barge off Start Point. Five destroyers from Plymouth sailed to counter them and in the engagement which followed south of the Lizard HMS Javelin was hit by two torpedoes from Hans Lody. She lost her bow and stern but was successfully towed back to port where she remained under repair for over a year. This was the last engagement of the Kriegsmarine destroyers in the West. On December 5 the Karl Galster and Hans Lody returned to Germany. Richard Beitzen remained to conduct a few more operations, including escorting the cruiser Admiral Hipper as she operated from Brest in February 1941, before returning to Germany in March as well. The attack on the Soviet Union the following year necessitated the transfer of S-Boats to the Baltic and the 1. and 2. S-Boots-Flottillen were withdrawn from the West in May, being replaced by the newly formed 4. SBoots-Flottille. It was first based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, then moved to Cherbourg in June, only to leave for Boulogne in July. The number of S-Boats operating off the east and south coasts of England remained small throughout 1941, their torpedoes and mines accounting for just one destroyer, HMS Exmoor (sunk by S30 off the Lizard as she was escorting convoy FN-417 in February), and 46 merchant ships. With the transfer of the 2. and 5. S-BootsFlottillen from the Baltic and the 6. S-BootsFlottille from Norway, the number of S-Boats operating in the Channel increased again in the first half of 1942. The 2. and 4. S-BootsFlottillen moved to Cherbourg in June, staying until August when the former moved to IJmuiden in the Netherlands and the latter to Boulogne, their place at Cherbourg being taken by the 5. S-Boots-Flottille. By October, with four flotillas in operation, the S-Boat strength in the West was 40 boats conducting minelaying operations and attacks against convoys. During 1942 they accounted for two destroyers, HMS Vortigern and HMS Penylan, one motor launch, one tug, four trawlers and 24 merchant vessels. With the Royal Navy improving its defences, by 1943 it was becoming increasingly difficult for the S-Boats operating in the Channel. During the year they managed to sink two destroyers, HMS Worcester and the Norwegian Eskdale, one LCT, nine trawlers and ten merchant ships. Early in 1944, the 8. and 9. S-Boots-Flottillen arrived in the West but at the same time the 6. S-Boots-Flottille left for the Baltic, resulting in a strength of five flotillas operating in the Channel: the 2. and 8. S-

Left: The visitors then boarded R-Boats of the 3. RäumbootsFlottille to return to Cherbourg. Right: Colin found the quay undergoing major reconstruction when he took these comparisons in July 2009. The view is looking south-west from the 42

commercial quay built in 1895 towards the entrance to the inner harbour at Crabby on the right. Alderney is today considerably more built up in the harbour area, with the two-storey port office in the centre and the Alderney Sailing Club to the left.

ECPAD DAM 629 L15 ATB

The small convoy soon reached Cherbourg where the top-brass party disembarked. A Propaganda-Kompanie cine cameraman was present to record the event.

Though an extension now hides most of the original windows, the building in the background still enabled Jean Paul to identify the quay where Admiral Schultze came ashore as the Quai de l’Artillerie at the north-eastern corner of the Bassin Charles X. Visible in the foreground is the prow of a decommissioned SSBN submarine waiting to be dismantled. Taken out of service between 1991 and 2008, the six ships of the first generation of SSBN had the ten-metre-long section housing the nuclear power plant simply removed and the two remaining parts were then re-welded together. Le Redoutable is now on display at La Cité de la Mer in the Gare Maritime but the other five still lie moored in the military harbour awaiting final scrapping.

ATB

ECPAD DAM 629 L24

Boots-Flottillen from IJmuiden, the 4. SBoots-Flottille from Rotterdam and the 5. and 9. S-Boots-Flottillen from Cherbourg. On February 5 these five could deploy only 28 operational boats instead of the nominal strength of 50. At Cherbourg, the 5. S-Boots-Flottille (Korvettenkapitän Bernd Klug) and the 9. SBoots-Flottille (Korvettenkapitän Götz von Mirbach) had about 16 operational boats between them. They conducted a number of attacks against Allied shipping off the southern coast of England including, on April 22, a successful attack on motor gun boats in Lyme Bay. On the morning of April 27, an Allied convoy left Plymouth for Lyme Bay as a preliminary to Operation ‘Tiger’, a rehearsal for the forthcoming D-Day landings on Utah Beach. The exercise was to be conducted on Slapton Sands near Dartmouth. That afternoon, a Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft reported the convoy off Start Point. The Cotentinbased radar systems monitored its progress and about 9 p.m., as soon as it was completely dark, the 5. and 9. S-Boots-Flottillen slipped out of Cherbourg. Comprising six and three boats respectively, they evaded the small covering force of Allied MTBs off Cherbourg and, steaming at 36 knots under radio silence, quickly covered the 90-odd nautical miles to the north-west to break through the outer defensive screen across Lyme Bay. The S-Boats moved slowly and quietly at first in order to retain surprise but identification of targets was difficult in darkness. Finally at about 1.30 a.m. S136 and S138 spotted two ships at a range of 2,000 metres and closed at speed, firing torpedoes. S140 and S142 had also identified targets at about the same time and opened fire too. LST 507 and LST 531 were sunk and LST 289 and LST 511 damaged. A total of 639 Americans were killed and missing, some ten times the actual losses suffered on Utah Beach on D-Day (see After the Battle No. 44). The commander of the S-Boats in the West, Kapitän zur See Rudolf Petersen, and Korvettenkapitän von Mirbach, the commander of the 9. S-Boots-Flottille, were both awarded the Oakleaves for this remarkably successful operation. Two weeks later, the tables were turned however when on May 12 around ten SBoats patrolling south of the Isle of Wight were surprised by Allied destroyers. During the ensuing engagement, the Free French ship La Combattante succeeded in sinking S141. Among the 18 crew who died was Oberleutnant zur See Klaus Dönitz, the son of Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz, Commanderin-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

Left: The party swiftly walked through the harbour on its inspection tour, Admiral Schultze and Kapitän zur See Fink leading, followed by Konteradmiral Joachim Lietzmann, Schultze’s Chiefof-Staff, Vizeadmiral Hermann von Fischel, Admiral Kanalküste (Commanding Admiral Channel Coast), and Konteradmiral

Friedrich Hilbig, chief of the Marine-Ausrüstungs- und ReparaturBetrieb Cherbourg (Naval Equipment and Repair Service Cherbourg). Right: They were photographed in front of what was then the Direction du Port, just west of the Napoléon III Basin, which today houses some of the staff of the Base Navale. 43

USNA

USNA

USNA

These three photos of the Forme Cachin, located between Docks Nos. 2 and 3 on the southern side of the Avant-Port, were taken by American Signal Corps photographers after the capture of the harbour in June 1944. The one (above) shows the rear-side of the concrete shelter with the triangular-shaped ends of Docks Nos. 2 and 1 in the background.

ATB

ATB

In late 1940 the Germans began the construction of strong bunkers with wet and dry repair pens in which U-Boats could be maintained safely. Such bunkers were built at Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast of France (see After the Battle No. 55), followed by Bergen and Trondheim in Norway. Construction of pens for motor torpedo boats and minesweepers also took place at IJmuiden, Rotterdam, Dunkirk and Le Havre, though with lighter walls and roofs of only 1.5-metre-thick concrete. At Cherbourg, two existing French docks were vaulted with a semi-circular concrete roof. Right: The interior of the Forme Cachin in June 1944. About 72 metres long and 20 metres wide, it could shelter four S-Boats. Matching up these photos is now impossible because the Forme Cachin was demolished in 1985, as was the German concrete cover, when the DCNS built its new shipyard. The old dock was replaced by an immense lifting platform, while a huge assembly hall was built behind it (see the aerial photo on page 31). Completed submarines are moved onto the platform by a system of ‘walking’ robots and then taken down to sea. The complex is able to handle vessels as long as 147 metres and displacing up to 14,000 tons. This sector is now the most-secure part of the DCNS installations and though Jean Paul was allowed to view the SSBN Le Terrible which had only recently been launched, he was not allowed to take photos of her.

Fortunately, the other shelter built by the Germans to protect the second dock, located on the western side of the Bassin Napoléon III, still survives to this day. This dock is about 100 metres long and 20 metres wide. A floating quay now runs 44

along the whole length of the dock, small service boats mooring along. At this location, the French Navy kindly agreed to let Jean Paul take photographs: from the rear (left); from the basin side (right), and from the inside (centre pages).

YANNICK BERTON

ECPAD DAA 2834 L22

There were many old French coastal batteries in the Cherbourg area but they were generally too antiquated to be integrated into the German Atlantic Wall. Built in the late 1880s and modernised in 1907, this battery near Nacqueville, eight kilometres west of Cherbourg, comprised six platforms for 240mm guns Modèle 1903 TR. It was obsolete by 1940 and of the four guns

The expansion of the ‘Atlantikwall’ gained speed in the spring of 1942 when Hitler issued his Directive No. 40 for the conduct of the defence of the West. Strong defences were to be built on vulnerable beaches, and sectors threatened by attacks to be defended by a series of strong points. Less endangered areas were to be patrolled. All positions were to be equipped with sufficient ammunition and supplies so that they could keep fighting even if overrun. The Nazi civil engineering body, the Organisation Todt, was entrusted with the task and its Einsatzgruppe West (Assign-

ment Group West) was created in Paris to cover France, Belgium, Holland and the Channel Islands. At first, it consisted of seven local commands, known as Oberbauleitungen (Chief Construction Sections), but with the intensification of the building programme more became necessary. At the end of 1942, Oberbauleitung Cherbourg was created with its headquarters in the town’s Hôtel Atlantique. Its workforce consisted of 20,000 men split into eight Bauleitungen (Construction Sections), five in the Cherbourg sector, one at Caen, one at Granville and one at Alderney.

YANNICK BERTON

ECPAD DAA 2834 L24

BUILDING THE ATLANTIC WALL Though the threat of invasion in 1941 was negligible, the Commander-in-Chief West, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben, began taking steps to organise the defence of France. Initially, the labour force and available materials were mainly devoted to the construction of U-Boat pens on the Atlantic coast (see After the Battle No. 55). Work on defensive fortifications proceeded at a slow pace and up to the end of 1941 the only emplacements built were seven coastal batteries in the Pas de Calais for the cross-Channel guns (see After the Battle No. 29).

remaining in position, none was serviceable. The Germans used the old French fortifications for storage, as barracks or, as in this case, to house radar and communication installations. These pictures were taken in May 1942 when Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, the commander of Luftflotte 3, paid a visit to a Luftwaffe communication section installed in the Nacqueville battery.

Left: Previous researchers claimed these photos were taken at the Bretteville battery (seven kilometres east of Cherbourg) but this has proved to be incorrect. The layout of the five double concrete bunkers in between the gun platforms, plus one simple bunker at each end, enabled Luc Malchair and Jean

Jacques Moulins to identify this as Nacqueville. Right: The place is now completely overgrown and though Catherine and Yannick Berton did their best to cut branches and weeds, taking meaningful comparisons still remained an impossible challenge. 45

USNA

The four casemates remain on the hill overlooking Amfreville. Marie Thérèse and Yannick Berton ventured with Jean Paul through the grazing cattle to take the comparison.

ATB

USNA

By the spring of 1944, with the addition of the Mediterranean coastline, there were 19 Oberbauleitungen within Einsatzgruppe West, by far the largest OT operational unit outside Germany. The amount of concrete poured into the Atlantic Wall, which had risen from 12,000 cubic metres monthly at the beginning of 1942 to over 370,000 in September, was to reach a peak of over 750,000 in April 1943. In late 1943, the issuance of Hitler’s new Directive No. 51 gave a new impulse to the defence in the West, and Rommel, by now a Generalfeldmarschall, was brought in as the Chief Inspector of Coastal Defences in the West. Under his pressure, work on the fortifications was pushed forward with energy and the amount of concrete laid, which had fallen to a monthly total of 250,000 cubic metres by the end of 1943, rose to reach a new peak of over 600,000 by April 1944. However, all these efforts were handicapped by the lack of materials and the small size of the available labour force. This was particularly the case in the 7. Armee sector in Normandy because from the first days of

in Type M271 casemates and one fire-control post. It was manned by the 8. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260.

ATB

Batterie ‘York’ near Amfreville, a few kilometres west of Cherbourg near Querqueville, comprised four 170mm SK L/40 guns

Left: The 170mm guns of the battery were pre-First World War naval pieces adapted for coastal defence. They had a maximum range of 27,000 metres, the shell weighing about 63 kilos. 46

Note the three small marks in the concrete, the result of Allied gun-fire in June 1944. Right: Still faintly visible today, they enable us to identify this casemate as the second from the west.

ATB

USNA

Access to this casemate remains possible and, though it is filled up with various pieces of old farming equipment and the wreck of a motor car, the circular base of the gun can still be seen. Through the rear entrance one can reach the field behind to explore the battery’s fire-control post. However, unlike the field in the front, which is kept down by grazing cows, the area at the back is much overgrown.

ATB

USNA

planning the Atlantikwall, the German command expected the Allied invasion to take place at the shortest crossing point, i.e. the Pas de Calais, which fell in the sector occupied by the 15. Armee. This conclusion was never seriously questioned so the 15. Armee received priority in the apportionment of labour and concrete. (By mid-1943 the concentration of troops along the 15. Armee coast was almost three times as strong as in the 7. Armee sector in Normandy.) Consequently, fewer bunkers and gun positions were built in Normandy than elsewhere. For example, over 1,350 bunkers were built by Oberbauleitung Belgien (Belgium); about 800 by Oberbauleitung Nordwest (the Pas de Calais area), but only 540 by Oberbauleitung Cherbourg in Normandy and the Channel Islands. By the end of May 1944, the LXXXIV. Armeekorps holding the threatened sector of Normandy reported that the construction programme was only half complete, neither the fortifications of the main line of resistance along the water’s edge nor the coastal batteries having been finished. The Kriegsmarine’s building programme also suffered and its plan to shelter their coastal batteries under concrete was far behind schedule. By the end of April — the target date set by Hitler for all the batteries to be casemated — Marinegruppe West reported that only 299 out of 547 coastal guns had been casemated, and in Normandy, where the Kriegsmarine had 47 coastal guns, only 27 were under concrete.

Destroyers quickly made smoke, the minesweepers were withdrawn, and the Allied fleet opened up on its designated targets, and on the batteries that were shelling the ships. The cruisers HMS Enterprise and Glasgow returned fire at Batterie ‘York’ but Glasgow was hit at 12.51, and again at 12.55, possibly by ‘York’ (or by the 155mm guns of the nearby Batterie ‘Les Couplets’, see page 50). Right: Comparison taken from in front of the second casemate.

ATB

Left: An American Signal Corps photographer pictured Battery ‘York’ in September 1944, apparently to show the field of fire of its 170mm guns, with Hameau de la Mer in mid-distance and the moles off Cherbourg in the far background. Shortly after noon on June 25, 1944, Batterie ‘York’ opened up with its four guns at the Allied naval force manoeuvring to bombard the defences of Cherbourg in support of the American attack on the city. Its first salvoes crashed among a group of minesweepers.

Left: The fire-control bunker stands a little higher up the hill, approximately behind the third casemate from the west. Though built in a line, each of the four casemates faced in a

slightly different direction. Right: Thick undergrowth makes it difficult to take an exact comparison and a post-war French addition to the bunker’s roof has altered its shape. 47

USNA ATB

ATB

USNA

Above: Batterie ‘Hamburg’ near Fermanville, some 14 kilometres east of Cherbourg, consisted of four 240mm SK L/40 guns, another type of pre-First World War naval gun adapted for coastal defence. It was manned by the 9. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 commanded by Oberleutnant Rudi Gelbhaar. If completed, the casemates would have been impressive constructions, about 35 metres long from the front of the embrasure to the rear wall of the magazines and about 26.5 metres wide. However, only the walls of the casemates had been finished by June 1944 and the concrete roofs were all lacking. During the fighting for the city, Oberleutnant Gelbhaar ordered that the left-hand side wall of one casemate be blown up to enable its gun to be trained towards the south-west at the approaching American troops. Right: Mounted in revolving armoured turrets, these 240mm guns had a range of 27,000 metres, with shells weighing 148 kilos. Batterie ‘Hamburg’ stands astride the D612 south of Fermanville, with two casemates east of the road and two west of it. All are now on private property, restricting access without permission.

Left: This casemate on the west side of the D612 is now completely overgrown, trees having grown up right in the middle of its gun platform. Right: Across the road, at the north-eastern corner of the battery, another casemate remains relatively 48

clear of vegetation. This is the one that had its side wall demolished to give its gun a wider field of fire. A short distance behind it, its entrance totally hidden by scrub, is a well-preserved underground shelter.

USNA

Taken on July 8, 1944, this aerial shot clearly shows the casemate’s revolving armoured turret and the demolished wall.

La Pernelle Two batteries of Heeres-KüstenArtillerie-Regiment 1261: the 9. Batterie with four casemates for 105mm K331(f) guns, captured from the French, and the 10. Batterie with four 170mm K18 guns in open positions for the planned casemates were never built. One gun of the 10. Batterie was damaged during an air raid on May 9 and moved to Cherbourg to be repaired; it did not return before the battle.

ATB

COASTAL BATTERIES The German coastal batteries were manned jointly by the Army and Navy. The Army deployed two coastal artillery regiments in the Cotentin, Heeres-KüstenArtillerie-Regiment 1261 and HeeresKüsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1262, both formed in France in December 1943. The former controlled ten batteries along the peninsula’s eastern coast and in the Cherbourg area, the latter eight batteries along the western coast, with one in Alderney. The naval Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 had been formed in Cherbourg in June 1940 and by June 1944 had nine batteries in the Cherbourg area and along the Cotentin’s eastern coast. The following batteries were distributed from east to west.

Above: Looking south-westwards, with the blown-out side wall now covered with thick ivy. Below: Looking in the opposite direction at the rear of the casemate. The reinforcing rods installed by German engineers to link with the next layers of concrete show that the bunker was still under construction when it was captured.

Gatteville Stationed here was the 7. Batterie of Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1261 with six 155mm K420(f) captured French guns. The position had four casemates facing the sea but four open circular platforms had also been built to give the guns a much wider field of fire. Batterie ‘Blankenese’ Located near Néville, the 2. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 consisted of four casemates mounting 94mm Flak Vickers M39(e) anti-aircraft guns captured from the British.

ATB

Batterie ‘Hamburg’ Located near Fermanville, the 9. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 controlled four 240mm SK L/40 guns, planned to be protected by casemates although only their walls had been completed. The guns were pre-First World War naval pieces adapted for coastal defence, the ‘SK’ standing for Schiffskanone (ship’s canon). 49

Batterie ‘Brommy’ Near Le Béquet, close to the old French ‘Les Caplains’ battery, the 7. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 featured four casemates for 150mm SK C/28 guns, another type of ship’s gun adapted for coastal defence. Batterie ‘Les Couplets’ Near Equeurdreville, near the old French fort, the 8. Batterie of Heeres-KüstenArtillerie-Regiment 1261 controlled six 155mm K420(f) ex-French guns. The position had four casemates and eight open circular platforms.

The battery’s ex-French 155mm guns had a maximum range of 21,000 metres, with shells weighing 43 kilos.

ATB

ATB

In the Hague peninsula at Auderville-laRoche, the 1. Batterie of Heeres-KüstenArtillerie-Regiment 1262 manned four casemates for 155mm K420(f) guns. At Auderville-Laye the 3. Batterie of HeeresKüsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1262 featured two circular platforms for heavy ex-French 203mm SK C/34(f) guns. In Cherbourg proper, four batteries defended the port’s entrances and inner roadsteads (Grande and Petite Rades): in the Fort du Roule, on a hill overlooking the whole town and harbour area, the 5. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 manned four 105mm SK C/32 (adapted naval) guns emplaced in casemates built into the rockface; in Bastion II of the French Arsenal the 4. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 had four casemates with 105mm SK C/32 guns; on the mole of the Gare Maritime, the 3. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 manned two casemates with 105mm SK C/32 guns; and in the old French Fort Central on the main breakwater, the 1. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 operated four ex-British 94mm Vickers M39(e) antiaircraft guns. These latter four were removed in March 1944 and sent to various locations in the Cotentin (one went to Cap Lévy, another to Néville and two to Saint-Vaast-laHougue) so that the only guns then remaining in the Fort Central were three 37mm Flak 36 guns.

Batterie ‘Les Couplets’ near Equeurdreville, just west of Cherbourg, consisted of four H679 casemates for 155mm K 420(f) guns plus eight open circular concrete gun platforms. The second casemate from the west can be seen in this aerial taken in July 1944, with a gun on the platform just behind and the fire-control post in the background.

USNA

Batterie ‘Landemer’ At Castel-Vendon, near Gréville, near the old French ‘Tourville’ battery, the 6. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 had four casemates for 150mm SK C/28 guns. Construction had begun for two 380mm SK C/34 ‘Siegfried’ guns some distance behind the battery, but only the platforms had been completed by June 1944.

USNA

Batterie ‘York’ Located near Amfreville, the 8. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 260 consisted of four casemates for 170mm SK L/40 (adapted naval) guns.

The area is now largely built up but fortunately the casemates have been preserved and integrated into a large park which has been developed by the town of Equeurdreville. 50

Although the eight open gun positions have been buried under mounds of earth, the concrete platform of this one was still visible at the time of our visit.

ATB

BA 101II-MW-0929-27, HASERT

The 150mm railway guns had a range of 22,500 metres, the shells weighing 43 kilos.

ATB

In addition, the 709. Infanterie-Division had deployed eight batteries of its ArtillerieRegiment 1709 in positions to shell any possible assault beaches. Six of these were in concrete casemates of Type H669, though not all had been completed, and the other two were in open field positions. Four of these batteries were east of Cherbourg to cover the coastal sector between Cap Lévy and Barfleur, three being armed with four 76.2mm guns each and one with four 105mm guns. Two batteries were at Digosville and Le-Mesnil-au-Val, just east of Cherbourg; each armed with four 155mm sFH 414(f) howitzers to cover the beaches between Cherbourg and Cap Lévy. The remaining two batteries were west of Cherbourg, at Ozouville and Sainte-Croix-Hague, one armed with four 100mm guns, the other with four 105mm guns. On the eve of D-Day, the LXXXIV. Armeekorps had two divisions deployed along the coast from the sector east of Caen to Carentan, three divisions in the Cotentin peninsula, plus one holding the Channel Islands. The defence of the peninsula was as follows: the 709. Infanterie-Division was along the eastern coast and in the Cherbourg area; the 243. Infanterie-Division along the western coast; and the 91. Infanterie-Division, which had arrived in May, was stationed in between. In addition, subordinated to the 91. Infanterie-Division, Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6 was in reserve in the Lessay — Périers area. MG-Bataillon 17, an independent army heavy machine-gun unit, and Ost-Bataillon 561, a unit of Russian soldiers captured on the Eastern front, were in the Cap de la Hague area, west of Cherbourg, both subordinated to the 709. Infanterie-Division. Also in the same area was Panzer-Abteilung 206, equipped with some 45 obsolete French light tanks of miscellaneous types. In the Cherbourg area were the I. Bataillon of FestungsStammtruppen LXXXIV, an ad-hoc fortress battalion formed in 1943, comprising four companies and totalling about 1,350 men, and the II. Bataillon of Sicherungs-Regiment 195, a battalion of security troops, also with four companies and just moved in from the Caen area. Further south, stationed near Carentan, was Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 100, another unit equipped with some 30 exFrench tanks of slight combat value.

150mm naval pieces was too small to justify the use of a costly railway mounting with traversing turntable and stabilising outriggers. The battery, which moved to the Cherbourg area in the summer of 1942, stayed only a short time, being transferred to the Mediterranean coastline at the end of the year. These pictures were taken by PK photographer Paul Hasert. Right: The railway then linking Cherbourg to Barfleur has been completely lifted and a road now runs along the coast in its place.

BA 101II-MW-0929-08A, HASERT

Left: While they built concrete casemates to shelter coastal guns, the Germans also moved some railway gun batteries close to the coast. Eisenbahn-Artillerie-Batterie ‘Gneisenau’ emplaced its four 150mm Kanone (E) SK L/40 guns in the Anse du Brick, some ten kilometres east of Cherbourg. Produced during 1937 and 1938, these four were the only railway guns of this sort existing, the type being dropped from the production program because it had quickly become clear that the punch of the old

Looking westwards from Anse du Brick, now considerably built up. 51

ATB

BA 101II-MW-6313-04A, KIETZMANN

52

As there was no railway line nearby, the 85-ton guns were transported to the site on road carriages, quite an enterprise for the local roads were all narrow, steep and winding. A railway line about 150 metres long was built to serve the two platforms, the two sections outside the platforms being hidden under an overhead camouflage ‘tunnel’, pictured here by PK photographer Zwirner.

ATB

D-DAY On the eve of D-Day, the Kriegsmarine fleet in the West was desperately small. Distributed along the coast from the Netherlands to the Spanish border, the only offensive forces under Admiral Theodor Krancke’s Marinegruppe West were a flotilla of destroyers, a flotilla of torpedo boats and five flotillas of S-Boats. In addition, Krancke had about 400 smaller vessels, mainly minesweepers and patrol craft. Although not under his direct control, there were also around 50 U-Boats based in the Atlantic ports, scheduled to attack the Allied naval force in case of invasion. At the beginning of 1944, Marinegruppe West had still possessed two torpedo boat flotillas but the 4. T-Boots-Flottille based at Brest soon had only two vessels left and was therefore disbanded in April, T24 remaining at Brest and T28 joining the 5. T-Boots-Flottille at Cherbourg. Two more torpedo boats, the T27 and T29, were lost to Allied hands in April and May, and a third, Greif, on May 2 just as the 5. T-Boots-Flottille moved from Cherbourg to Le Havre. By June Marinegruppe West was down to six torpedo boats, five at Cherbourg with the 5. T-Boots-Flottille and T24 at Brest. The five S-Boat flotillas distributed from Cherbourg to IJmuiden in Holland consisted of 31 operational boats and six under repair. At Cherbourg, the 5. and 9. S-Boots-Flottillen had 13 operational boats with two under repair. The 8. Zerstörer-Flottille, based in harbours in the Bay of Biscay, had five ships but only three of these were serviceable. In the early hours of June 6, reports of Allied airborne landings in Normandy and of ten large ships off Port-en-Bessin led Admiral Krancke to alert his forces. The U-Boats were brought to instant readiness; the three available destroyers of the 8. Zerstörer-Flottille were ordered to move up from Royan to Brest; the 5. T-Boots-Flottille from Le Havre was to reconnoitre the Orne estuary area, and the S-Boats from Cherbourg were to patrol off Cap de la Hague. Following Krancke’s order, the three available vessels of the 5. T-Boots-Flottille – Jaguar, Möwe and T28 – left Le Havre at 4.30 a.m. while several S-Boats departed from Cherbourg. However the latter were all forced to return to port before dawn due to the heavy sea. The three T-Boats soon encountered the smokescreen laid by Allied aircraft to protect the assault fleet from the fire of the Le Havre batteries. They made good use of the smoke and at 5.35 a.m. suddenly emerged within range of the Allied fleet, quickly fired 15 torpedoes and then retreated back into the smoke cover. One torpedo hit and sank the Norwegian

The unit built two circular platforms at Auderville-Laye, in Cap de la Hague, the western tip of the Cotentin peninsula, for its two guns, surrounded by many shelters. Right: This is the entrance to the battery with an H622 personnel shelter on the left and an H134 ammunition bunker in the background. The D901 lies about 50 metres off to the right.

BA 101I-615-2462-18A, ZWIRNER

Left: Another railway gun unit which moved to the area was Eisenbahn-Artillerie-Batterie 685, equipped with two 203mm Kanone (E) SK C/34, pictured here by PK photographer Kietzmann. Integrated into Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1262 when this unit was formed in December 1943, it then lost its initial designation and was renumbered as the regiment’s 3. Batterie.

Although the railway track has been lifted, looking from close to the first platform, one can still see where the line ran.

BA 101I-615-2461-35A, ZWIRNER ATB

A traverse of 360 degrees was obtained by means of a turntable composed of a circular track set over the main track, with a power unit attached to the turntable. The internal diameter of the circular platform was about 12 metres.

Jean Paul had to work his way through thorny bushes and high weeds to reach the spot where Gefreiter Zwirner had stood to take his photograph: on top of the roof of a concrete ammunition shelter built on the edge of the platform.

ATB

BA 101I-615-2462-15A, ZWIRNER

destroyer Svenner, two others passed just between the battleships Warspite and Ramillies, while HMS Largs, the headquarters ship of Force ‘S’, just managed to avoid another. The German flotilla was back in Le Havre two hours later and reported having met six battleships and 15 to 20 destroyers. This was the only intervention by the Kriegsmarine on D-Day and Korvettenkapitän Heinrich Hoffmann, the commander of the 5. T-BootsFlottille, was awarded the Knight’s Cross the following day. All 35 U-Boats that were ready in the Atlantic ports were ordered to sea early that morning, 16 of them to target the Channel, the remaining 19 to form an off-shore screen across the Bay of Biscay to guard against any further Allied assault there. The 16 in the Channel were relentlessly hunted down and within a week six had been sunk. On June 15, U-764 succeeded in sinking the frigate HMS Blackwood between Cherbourg and Portland and U-621 sank LST 280 south of the Isle of Wight. On June 18, U-441 was sunk by a Wellington bomber and the nine surviving boats returned to Brest. The three German destroyers making for Brest were soon spotted by Allied aircraft and the Royal Navy’s 10th Destroyer Flotilla was despatched to intercept them. When the destroyers left Brest on June 8 with torpedo boat T24, eight Allied destroyers waiting off Ouessant attacked them on the 9th and Z32 and ZH1 were sent to the bottom. Z24 and T24 managed to escape to Brest but they never fought again. The S-Boats of the 5. and 9. S-Boots-Flottillen again left Cherbourg for operations on the night of June 6/7 but without success and two of them were lost to mines. More SBoats were transferred to Le Havre from ports further east, and those at Cherbourg were also progressively transferred to Le Havre. They finally claimed two LSTs, two LCTs, two tugs towing components for the ‘Mulberry’ artificial harbour, one motor torpedo boat and three small freighters, but in the same period six S-Boats were sunk and ten others damaged. Bearing in mind the enormous amount of Allied shipping in the Channel, the damage inflicted by the S-Boats was insignificant. The turning point came on the night of June 14/15 when 234 Lancasters bombed Le Havre. The attack destroyed 11 S-Boats and damaged three more, and wrecked three TBoats and damaged another. Only one TBoat and one S-Boat remained operational. Admiral Krancke reported on June 15 that ‘it will hardly be possible to carry out the operations planned with the remaining forces . . . The naval situation in the Seine Bay has completely altered since yesterday’s

Left: The 203mm railway guns were redundant naval guns (intended for the ‘Admiral Hipper’ class of heavy cruisers) mounted on a specially designed railway mounting. Eight were produced and they entered service from 1940. They had a maximum range of 36,500 metres and shells weighing 122 kilos. The two heavy pieces could not be withdrawn in time and they

were captured by the Americans in their emplacement in June 1944, in poor shape after having suffered from air attacks. Right: The two platforms, here the south-western one, and the many shelters serving them remain in good condition, albeit somewhat overgrown. They can be easily reached from the D901 but the area is now privately owned land. 53

BA 101II-MW-1827-14, KIETZMANN ATB

BA 101II-MW-1827-03, KIETZMANN

Yet another battery of railway guns, Eisenbahn-Artillerie-Batterie 722, had just reached the Cherbourg sector when these pictures were taken by PK photographer Kietzmann in 1941. The battery comprised four 240mm Theodor Bruno Kanone (E). Six of these were produced between 1937 and 1939 with pre-First World War guns originally built for the ‘Wittelsbach’ class of battleships mounted on a specially designed railway mounting. Right: Testfiring out to sea. Eisenbahn-Artillerie-Batterie 722 had set up shop in the large railway complex near the Arsenal in the western part of Cherbourg. Its 240mm guns had a maximum range of 20,200 metres, its shells weighing a hefty 150 kilos. The rate of fire of one gun was one round every three minutes. By early 1944, the battery was still in Normandy and subordinated to the II. Abteilung of Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1262, although it is unclear exactly where it was then stationed. In June 1944, one of its guns was found abandoned in the Torignisur-Vire railway station, 13 kilometres south-east of Saint-Lô.

The railway complex just west of the Arsenal has completely disappeared and the wide Boulevard de la Saline is now the main access to Cherbourg from that direction. However, 54

several of the houses in Equeurdreville that can be seen in the wartime picture fortunately still remain, enabling Jean Paul to pinpoint the spot for his comparison.

This original German document of early 1944 details the composition of Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1261. When formed in December 1943, the regiment actually integrated odd existing artillery elements (see figures between brackets); only the staff of the I. Abteilung and the 10. Batterie were new units.

June, the American forces attacking westwards from Utah Beach had cut the Cotentin peninsula at its base, thus isolating Festung Cherbourg. On June 19, the US VII Corps began its northward drive toward the port city, its aim being to capture the deep-water harbour that would enable the Allies to

bring in reinforcements and supplies directly from the United States. The German troops cooped up north of the Montebourg line and inside the city awaited the final outcome of the battle with little hope of a successful defence. Hard fighting lay ahead, but the city would fall within ten days.

ATB

BA 101I-615-2462-29A, ZWIRNER

attack on Le Havre’. On June 28, another air attack finally despatched the damaged T-Boat Kondor and the last operational torpedo boat, the T28, escaped to Germany on July 22. Meanwhile, land fighting in the Normandy bridgehead evolved. By the third week of

The ‘arrow’ signs identify coastal guns and the letter just right of it gives the origin of the guns: most were of French origin here, but the 1. Batterie had ex-Russian guns and the 10. Batterie had German ones. The figures, 4 or 6, under the arrows indicate the number of guns available with the battery.

Left: A 20mm Flak gun overlooking a lighthouse and the sea on three corners of the horizon, pictured by Gefreiter Zwirner. Right: With such a remarkable backdrop, it was not difficult to discover that this gun was set up at Goury at the very northwestern tip of Cap de la Hague. Alderney is not far off to the west. It seems surprising to see an anti-aircraft gun emplaced

here as there was no obvious objective of importance nearby. In all probability, it was installed to protect the railway guns of the 3. Batterie of Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment 1262 at Auderville-Laye (see pages 52-53). [In our next issue, No. 147, Jean Paul will continue the story by recounting the battle which followed in June 1944 to capture Cherbourg.] 55