Night Raid Read online

  Mountbatten’s staff quickly decided that the best way to maintain the key elements of speed and surprise was not to use commandos to land on the beaches but to employ the other new force available to Combined Operations. Mountbatten decided he would use airborne troops for the first time. Paratroopers would drop about half a mile inland and would advance to the coast in order to launch the attack on the radar battery. But even if this were successful, there were further challenges to consider. How should the fragile equipment itself be captured? And then, most importantly, how could they transport it, along with the raiding party, back to Britain?

  On 8 January 1942, Mountbatten summoned General Browning, the new commander of the 1st Airborne Division, to Combined Operations headquarters to ask if he thought his men could carry out the raid. Mountbatten also approached Group Captain Sir Nigel Norman, the man at the RAF charged with co-operation with the Airborne, to ask if he could organise transportation of the paratroopers to the French coast.

  Browning was immediately impressed with the plan and with Mountbatten’s enthusiasm for it.7 He was keen to carry out such a mission and to make amends for the miserable baptism of fire twelve months earlier when all the men in the raid on the Italian aqueduct had been captured. But there were real problems for him in mounting a raid of the scale needed with his troops in their current state. Trained men were thin on the ground. To mount an effective operation, Browning realised that he would need to find troops of roughly a company in strength, that is about 120 men. Moreover, realistically, he had to face the prospect of losing the entire force if the raid went wrong or the men were captured en masse, as in southern Italy. This would be tough to take for a unit that was only slowly coming up to strength.

  Within the recently formed Parachute Brigade, the 1st Battalion was nearing the completion of its training. It was led by a tough, forceful commander, Lieutenant Colonel Down, whose nickname was ‘Dracula’. But Browning felt he wanted to keep the unit intact in case there was a sudden call for an operation of battalion strength. Browning and the brigade commander, Richard Gale, decided that although the 2nd Battalion was only partially trained, it was better to select a company from this unit. If it was lost in its entirety it could be replaced and the battalion could carry on with its training and later come together as a complete unit.

  So Browning and Gale settled on the 2nd Battalion. Looking across the range of companies on offer, they quickly decided to select C Company – known in the battalion as ‘Jock Company’, since it was made up mostly of Scottish troops. These were hard men originally from some of the toughest regiments in the British Army. There was only one problem. Major John Frost, who until the end of the previous year had been adjutant to the battalion, had recently been appointed the new commander of C Company, but he was still recovering from the knee operation following his disastrous second parachute jump. He had not made sufficient jumps to qualify as a paratrooper and wear his wings. But his predecessor, Philip Teichman, was a good soldier too. Browning knew that whoever was in command would do a good job and so he decided to put up C Company for this very special new mission.

  On 21 January, the same day that Rommel launched his counter-attack in Libya, the three Chiefs of Staff discussed Mountbatten’s plan in Downing Street. This was the highest group within the British military, a sort of battle headquarters at the apex of Britain’s war effort. At this time of the war the Chiefs of Staff usually met daily in the morning and consisted of the heads of the three military services, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal and General Sir Alan Brooke, the newly appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). Churchill as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence had the right to attend meetings but rarely did so. He was represented by his military chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay, who would report back to him after every meeting.8 Other military and intelligence chiefs would attend as and when necessary.

  The Chiefs of Staff meeting on 21 January had a variety of major issues to weigh up, including the response to the dramatic Japanese advance down the Malayan peninsula, the defence of Burma, which was key to defending India from Japanese assault, and whether or not to order the sinking of Italian merchant ships carrying supplies to the enemy forces in North Africa. At this meeting, Mountbatten presented the case for the paratrooper raid at Bruneval, explaining that it had been suggested by Air Ministry scientific intelligence and was intended to provide long-term help to the RAF by obtaining details of a new German radar. He pointed out that Churchill was in favour of this type of raid.

  Portal, the RAF chief, supported the raid as expected, on the grounds that the RAF wanted to reduce their losses from radar-directed anti-aircraft fire and night fighters. Pound, the head of the Royal Navy, was unenthusiastic. Against the avalanche of calamities that faced Britain, it seemed like a drop in the proverbial ocean. The CIGS, Brooke, sat on the fence and tried to assess objectively the possibilities of success.

  It was unusual for a group at this high level to discuss the objectives of a military unit of barely 120 men. But so important were such small missions at this stage of the war that Britain’s top military chiefs devoted some time to assessing the risks and the possible advantages of a raid at Bruneval, even when they had so many other weighty strategic matters to consider. They realised the propaganda value of a successful paratrooper mission and, with Mountbatten arguing persuasively for the raid, gave formal approval two days later on 23 January.9

  As the bitterly cold winter month of January 1942 turned into the even harsher month of February, so the war situation became even worse. On 12 February, the Germans jammed British naval radar installations in the area around Dover and so effectively blinded the eyes of the Royal Navy along the south coast. Then, two German battle cruisers that had been sheltering and refitting in Brest harbour, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, along with the cruiser Prinz Eugen, slipped out of their moorings and made a dash up the English Channel in broad daylight. They succeeded in sailing the length of the Channel, evaded the batteries at Dover and reached the safety of the German ports in the North Sea. All three German ships were badly damaged during their journey, but as far as most Britons were concerned what became known as the ‘Channel Dash’ was a shocking humiliation. Where was the Royal Navy? Where was the RAF? Why did the big guns at Dover not engage with the German capital ships? The press were up in arms. Even the Daily Mail, usually so loyal, published a leader criticising the Prime Minister.

  Only three days after this humiliation came one of the greatest disasters of the war. In early January, Japanese troops had broken through the defences of the Slim river on the Malayan peninsula and poured further south. After the fall of the capital Kuala Lumpur, the demoralised, disorganised British, Indian and Australian defenders had retreated to the fortress of Singapore that was believed in Britain to be impregnable. The British had spent huge funds on building up the defences of Singapore in the inter-war years and the heavy guns placed there had become a symbol of British power in Asia. But the defences had been designed exclusively to prevent an attack from the sea. Now, the Japanese advanced down the Malayan peninsula and attacked from the undefended landward side. The fortress of Singapore surrendered to Japanese land forces after barely a fight. More than sixty thousand British and Australian troops became captives of the Imperial Japanese Army and began a three-year nightmare in Japanese prisoner-of-war and labour camps where half of them would die. News of the defeat went out like ripples across Asia, where it was seen that British power and authority had been challenged yet again by the Japanese Blitzkrieg, and had failed. Churchill felt the surrender was not just a defeat but a disgrace and described it to Conservative Party colleagues as ‘the greatest disaster to British arms which our history records’.10

  Even though there were further defeats to come, the second half of February 1942 was possibly the lowest point in the war. After Rommel’s advances in North Africa, a dramatic increase in shipping losses in the North Atlantic, the hu
miliation of the ‘Channel Dash’ and the surrender of Singapore, Churchill was under pressure to reshuffle his government and agreed to refocus the War Cabinet. He was exhausted by the strain. His daughter, Mary, had lunch with him on 27 February in Downing Street and wrote in her diary, ‘Papa is at a very low ebb… He is not too well physically… and he is worn down by the continuous crushing pressure of events.’11The nation and the Prime Minister desperately needed a success to promote British arms and restore confidence.

  10

  Underground Intelligence

  The proposed raid on Bruneval was codenamed ‘Operation Biting’ and the first great need in its detailed planning was to find out details of the German troops deployed along this stretch of coast. It was also essential to discover the locations of minefields and other defensive measures like machine-gun emplacements that might be hidden from aerial photography. This involved human intelligence (known in the business as HUMINT), which entailed getting someone on the ground to take a detailed look at the various locations.

  It was not going to be easy. The Channel coast of northern France was well defended and heavily garrisoned, and parts were closed military zones. The coast was crawling with enemy soldiers and visitors were most definitely not welcome. But there were friends in France, members of the French Resistance, who demonstrated extraordinary bravery and had built up networks to report back on enemy activities in the occupied territories. Most of these organisations were controlled out of London by the Bureau de Contre-Espionage, de Renseignement et d’Action (BCRA), commanded by a French Intelligence chief known as ‘Passy’. His real name was Major André Dewarin. He worked for General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed leader of Free French troops, based at offices in Carlton Gardens in central London.

  One of the biggest underground networks in northern France was called La Confrérie de Notre Dame (the Brotherhood of Notre Dame), a network that believed itself to be a brotherhood aided by God. Its leader was a Frenchman named Gilbert Renault who was an extraordinary individual, as one needed to be to survive and operate as an underground intelligence officer in occupied France. His father was a professor of philosophy and he was brought up in an intensely Catholic family. Before the war Renault had worked in the French cinema industry and in finance and had travelled extensively to London, and even more frequently to Spain.

  Aged thirty-six when war was declared, he was frustrated when on volunteering for military service he was turned down because of the size of his family. He had four young children including a baby, Manuel, of just a few months. He lived in Vannes near the Brittany coast and was there when the Germans invaded in May 1940. A month later, with the complete collapse of the French army imminent and German forces speeding across northern France, Renault decided to take the bold and rather romantic step of trying to get to England to join a volunteer army to fight on abroad. His wife, Edith, had only just become pregnant again, but Renault decided it was his duty to France to somehow continue the struggle.

  With the Germans only a few miles away, he explained to Edith, ‘We don’t have the right to let ourselves be taken. The war must go on. If we give in, if Germany becomes mistress of Europe, life won’t be worth living.’ If, on the other hand, she told him he must stay, he said, then he would remain. ‘No, go!’ she said tearfully.1

  He and his younger brother escaped on a trawler and a Norwegian cargo ship, finally reaching Falmouth only to hear that their Great War hero, General Pétain, had asked for an armistice. France had surrendered. Renault was shattered by the humiliating news.

  In London, Renault and his brother, Claude, volunteered for General de Gaulle’s nascent Free French forces. Claude eventually joined up. Frustrated by endless delays, Renault managed to convince the authorities that he could do better work by setting up an intelligence network in Madrid through which he could smuggle messages in and out of France. British SIS officials were asked by the French to give him instructions on how to operate as a secret agent. They proved to be very rudimentary: a talk on how to code messages into five-letter sets lasted only ten minutes. Renault was left bemused by the lesson, but was a great lover of codes and soon worked out the practice of coding he was to adopt. He briefly met General de Gaulle on the staircase of his headquarters and explained that he was about to lead a secret mission to France. The tall Frenchman, now commanding the Free French army in exile, turned to him, shook him by the hand and said, ‘Au revoir, Raymond. I rely on you.’2

  The following day Renault flew out to Portugal on an Imperial Airways flying boat. From Lisbon he made his way to Madrid and began to formulate his network, on the pretence that he was a French film producer setting up a film about Christopher Columbus. Despite an amateurish start, somehow Renault picked up the necessary techniques to begin to create a communications network and started to send dispatches back to London. In November 1940, he managed to return undercover to his beloved France. He entered the non-occupied zone run from Vichy which at this stage of the war made up most of the south-eastern half of France. But he quickly made contacts and crossed into the German-occupied zone in the north-western half of the country. There he met old friends and family contacts, and on the basis of introductions to what he was told were honourable patriots who wanted to ‘do something to help’, he began to recruit agents to report on German activities in occupied France. He looked for people working at key locations like docks, ports and railway stations, and inside requisitioned factories.

  The recruitment of many volunteers only took a few minutes. ‘You understand what you are taking on?’ Renault would ask the stranger.

  ‘I do, monsieur,’ would be the reply.

  ‘You realise that it is dangerous work and what the consequences could be for you and your family if you are caught?’ he would ask.

  ‘I do, monsieur,’ was the second reply. If Renault was convinced of their integrity, they were in.

  Renault relied upon personal recommendations, as there was nothing else to go on. He took relatively few precautions in the early stages and even the extended families of the recruits would know what was going on. Renault himself wore a rather flashy suit, bought in London, that made him stand out from the crowd, quite unlike most undercover agents who preferred to look completely anonymous.

  Renault gave every new agent a nickname, and these were the only names by which agents knew one another, so no one knew anyone else’s real name. ‘Hilarion’ was someone who made Renault laugh, ‘Lhermite’ was the quiet one, ‘Pedro’ the one who looked like a Spaniard, ‘Pol’ the one called Roger who liked champagne. Renault himself acquired several names, but the one he became best known by was ‘Rémy’.

  Rémy’s instructions were to obtain information about German activities in the French Atlantic ports, from Bordeaux in the south-west right up to Brest in Brittany. The intelligence chiefs in London wanted to know where U-boat pens were being built and how they were being constructed, as well as where some of the big German warships took refuge between outings into the Atlantic. Local dock employees began to acquire valuable information. In April 1941, Rémy’s agents were first to spot the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Brest harbour. But the process of getting information across the border to Madrid and from there to London was cumbersome and slow, taking at least two weeks.

  So, in May, British Intelligence sent Rémy a radio transmitter to speed up messaging. But this brought new risks, as the Germans could detect the sending of radio signals and in time track down their source. The first radio operator, Bernard Anquetil, was caught while in the process of sending a message. He was taken away and tortured by the Gestapo. Suddenly, Rémy’s network became far more aware of the risks it was taking. It had to be assumed that Anquetil had named names under torture and the whole network was closed down. But like many French underground agents, the radio operator did not talk, and the network survived.

  In August, the Gestapo infiltrated and broke another underground intelligence network covering the northern coast. Ré
my himself was arrested briefly, but remarkably managed to talk himself out of trouble and get away. Once his network had recovered, Rémy was asked by the BCRA in London to take on a new northern operation and more patriots were recruited to make up the losses. New, smaller radio transmitters were dropped in by parachute and before long Rémy was managing a vast supply of intelligence dispatches to London, providing increasingly important information about what was happening along the French coast. A radio operator known only as ‘Bob’ was sent from Britain to help in the process of sending messages. It was at this moment, with his underground network still growing, that on 24 January 1942, while he was staying in a rented flat in Paris, Rémy received a detailed message from London requesting some new and precise information.

  Like most of the coded messages sent to the French underground from London, there were two halves to the communication, neither of which would mean much without sight of the other. Rémy himself decoded the messages. They asked for details of the defences along the stretch of coast north-east of Le Havre, in the area around the villages of Bruneval and Theuville. The message asked for five specific pieces of information. First, how many machine guns were there defending the road heading inland from the coast? Second, what other defences were there in the area? Third, what was the number and state of preparedness of the defenders? Fourth, where were they billeted? And, finally, there was a request for information on the existence and positioning of barbed wire and minefields along this stretch of coast. It was made clear that Rémy was not to undertake a mission to Bruneval himself and that he should tell the agent who was to carry out the local search that several other coastal locations were being investigated in the same way, so that in the event of the agent being captured and tortured not too much emphasis would be put on this single underground reconnaissance.