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  Churchill was determined to see this new type of warfare succeed and picked as successor to Keyes none other than the King’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Mountbatten’s father had been First Sea Lord at the Admiralty in 1914 but had resigned because of his German background. Mountbatten not only had royal blood in his veins but had also enjoyed a distinguished naval career, becoming something of a hero as captain of the destroyer HMS Kelly, which had gone down off Crete in May 1941. Tall and striking, Mountbatten had a natural sense of leadership and authority, though only in his early forties.

  When Churchill decided to appoint him, Mountbatten was in the USA giving a series of uplifting lectures to groups of naval officers, telling them about the war in the Mediterranean and the role the Royal Navy was playing. Although the USA was still neutral, Mountbatten was a big hit there, meeting all the key naval personnel; he even spent an evening at the White House talking with President Roosevelt. Recalled by Churchill, he was told he was to run Combined Operations headquarters but since he was of too junior a rank to be placed in such a senior command position, his title would simply be ‘Adviser’. Mountbatten was amazed to be offered the job, as it involved a substantial promotion to the rank of commodore. The new head of Combined Operations was young, energetic, and lacked neither confidence, drive nor contacts at the highest level. He wrote to a friend, ‘I am enthusiastic about this mad job and may even be able to contribute personally towards speeding up the war… it is all very thrilling and exciting.’5 He was absolutely determined to make a name for himself as a senior commander and to mount the sort of raids that would really hurt the enemy.

  While the creation of the commando force was under way, arguments continued to rage about the efficacy of developing a parachute brigade. Despite the obvious prowess shown by German airborne troops in launching the invasion of northern Europe, many in the senior army ranks were still sceptical. They felt that airborne troops were unlikely to be able to exert any influence upon the war for some time to come and that they would be little more than a nuisance – primarily because of their demand for the allocation of scarce resources. Some in the War Office even doubted that parachutists could ever play a proper role on the battlefield, imagining that they would all be shot as they descended or rounded up before they could organise themselves after landing. Added to this was the rivalry between the RAF and the army as to who should be in charge of the training of airborne troops. And behind everything was a lack of policy agreement as to what role these new troops should play.

  At the end of December 1940, the Air Ministry presented a paper to the Chiefs of Staff arguing that, as it was unlikely that many troop-carrying aircraft or gliders would be available for these duties for some time, the provision of airborne troops should be kept to a minimum. The Ministry agreed however that the ‘staging and conduct of airborne operations should be a RAF responsibility to meet army requirements’.6 The War Office responded by insisting that there was a need to get a small airborne force up and ready as quickly as possible and that the RAF should meet the requirements of the army in terms of making sufficient aircraft available. The Air Ministry’s answer was that parachute troops should still form only a small proportion of an airborne force, the majority being glider-borne troops so as not to divert the limited number of available bombers from their duties at Bomber Command. The fact was that the Air Ministry had neglected to develop sufficient transport aircraft in the pre-war years. Now airborne forces were being asked to pay the price.

  As a form of shuttlecock debate continued back and forth between the ministries, the planners at Combined Operations searched for some sort of mission to try out the first parachute troops that had been trained up, members of the newly designated 11 Special Air Service Battalion. Britain was now involved in the war against Italian forces in North Africa and it was thought that anything that could hamper the Italian war effort would be a useful exercise.

  Many supplies for North Africa sailed from the ports of Taranto, Brindisi or Bari, all situated around the ‘heel’ of Italy. All three ports were fed from the river Sele by a pipeline that crossed the Apennines bringing fresh water to the arid province of Apulia. A weak point in this system was an aqueduct at Tragino. Since this was too far inland to be reached by seaborne commandos and too much of a pinpoint target to be hit by bombers, it was decided to try out the newly trained parachutists. By striking a dramatic blow against the Italian war machine in southern Italy, it was hoped that they would show the world that Britain was developing its own airborne troops with an ability to strike offensively at targets across occupied Europe.

  A party of seven officers and thirty-one other ranks started training for the mission in January 1941. Major Trevor Pritchard was put in command. He was tall, 5 ft 10 in, and solidly built. A professional soldier for ten years in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, he had been army heavyweight boxing champion and a top rugby player. He was just the sort of lion of a man the parachute force had been looking for. Captain Gerrard Daly of the Royal Engineers was to be in charge of the demolition party. He was short, 5 ft 5½ in, and another regular soldier from a family of professional soldiers. Serious and quiet, he had picked up a reputation for toughness during the evacuation from Dunkirk. Two of the sergeants in the squad were Percy ‘Clem’ Clements and Arthur ‘Taff’ Lawley. Both in their thirties, they had been miners before joining the army. Clements had served in India for ten years, Lawley in Egypt and Palestine. The men they commanded ranged upwards in age from nineteen and had all been among the first to volunteer. They were all enthusiastic about the mission they faced.7

  Their preparations included practice drops around a mock-up of the aqueduct built in Tatton Park. Tragically, there was a fatal accident during the training when a paratrooper got stuck on the bottom of an ice-covered lake into which he had drifted. An element of farce crept in when strong winds blew some of the men into high trees alongside the drop zone and the local fire brigade had to rescue them.

  It was decided to use Whitley bombers for the drop, and so eight aircraft were assembled and flew to Malta with the paratroopers in early February. While two caused a diversion by bombing the airfields around Foggia, the remaining six were to drop the parachutists. After the attack on the aqueduct had taken place, the plan was for the men to march fifty miles to the mouth of the Sele river. There, five nights after they had jumped, a submarine, HMS Triumph, would surface to extract them. The plan was codenamed Operation Colossus.

  With the paratroopers went two Italians who were to translate on the ground. Trooper Nicol Nastri was short and wiry. He had lived in the East End so long that he had picked up a cockney accent, and was now going into battle using military papers that bore the name of John Tristan to disguise his origins. Fortunato Picchi joined the unit at the last minute. He had been the banqueting manager at the Savoy before the war and was a committed anti-fascist. Both Italians were taking a considerable risk. If captured, they were likely to be shot as traitors.

  The Whitleys, loaded with their paratrooper cargo and canisters of explosives, took off from Malta early on the evening of 10 February. Flying over the mountainous terrain of southern Italy at only 500 feet took courage and skill. Five of the Whitleys dropped their men right in the drop zone, within a few hundred yards of the aqueduct. It was an impressive piece of flying. Unfortunately, the other Whitley got lost and dropped its men in the wrong valley, some miles away from the target. This was doubly disastrous, as they included Captain Daly and many of the engineers who were to carry out the demolition, along with many of the canisters of explosives.

  Missing this important part of his detachment, Major Pritchard nevertheless assembled his men. The aqueduct was clearly visible in the bright moonlight. With many of their explosives missing and the marker lights on some of the remaining containers not working, it took several hours to find those that had been dropped nearby. Pritchard instructed the senior engineer present, Lieutenant Paterson, to move everything he could to the aqueduct. Paterso
n was staggered to find that the structure was not made of brick as he had been told, but of reinforced concrete. He gathered about 800 lb of explosives, all he could muster, piled it against one pier and its abutment and at 0030 detonated the charge. The pier fell away and water began to pour into the ravine. They had successfully damaged if not destroyed the target. Now it was time to set off for the coast.

  The men split into three parties. They had four and a half days to reach the rendezvous point with the naval submarine. But it was hard going over mostly mountainous terrain, up steep slopes and down across deep ravines. They hid in the daytime and travelled at night. But before long, the carabinieri and local militias were in pursuit of each party. On the second day, Pritchard found himself surrounded by a group of women and children who had come out to stare at them. Behind stood a group of soldiers who demanded their surrender. Pritchard took the honourable decision that they could not fight their way out with so many women and children surrounding them and gave the order for the men to put down their weapons. The elite force of British paratroopers had the ignominy of being captured by a tiny group of enemy soldiers and they were marched off in handcuffs.

  The other two groups also met with the same fate and were rounded up and taken off to captivity. Captain Daly and the engineers who had been dropped in the wrong valley heard the explosion as the aqueduct was blown and began their march to the coast. They had come within a few miles of the extraction site when they too were surrounded by a group of soldiers and police. They tried to bluff their way out by pretending to be German airmen who had been shot down and demanded the police provide them with a vehicle. The tactic nearly worked, but when the Italians realised they had no papers they were arrested. All of the paratroopers were eventually taken off into a prisoner of war camp, except for Picchi who was interrogated and then shot. Nastri, with his false English papers and strong cockney accent, successfully convinced his captors that he was as English as the rest of the captives.

  None of the men reached the extraction rendezvous. What they didn’t know was that even if they had made it, they would not have been rescued. One of the Whitley bombers on the diversionary raid had developed engine trouble and had to ditch in the sea. The pilot sent out a radio message that he was ditching near the mouth of the Sele as this happened to be the nearest point. He had not been told that this was where the extraction was to take place. As the message had been broadcast in an insecure code, the planners at Malta realised that this stretch of coast would be teeming with Italian soldiers for some days to come. Reluctantly, they decided to cancel the orders to HMS Triumph to come up in the bay on the night of 15 February to rescue the paratroopers. They judged it was too dangerous for the submarine crew to be in the bay at this time. There was no alternative. The paratroopers behind enemy lines had to be abandoned.

  It was certainly not a great first mission for the newly formed parachute force. The aqueduct had been put out of action, but only, as it turned out, for a few weeks. It was quickly repaired and the water supply to Taranto, Bari and Brindisi was restored. Many of the explosives and the leading engineers had gone astray. And worst of all, the entire force had ended up in captivity. If the intention had been to show off the capabilities of the new British airborne force as heroes of a triumphant mission behind enemy lines in the south of Italy, then Operation Colossus was a dismal failure. At least, however, the planners at Combined Operations were left with plenty of lessons to ponder about the use of airborne troops. And it left the men in the new force with a grim legacy to reflect on as the parachute unit’s baptism of fire.

  Despite the failure of this first mission, the parachute force continued to grow. On 26 April Churchill himself visited Ringway to watch a demonstration. He was disappointed in that he only saw forty men jump. Although he didn’t show his disappointment to the men, on his return to London the PM asked urgently for the latest proposals for increasing the parachute and glider force beyond the early target of five hundred men.

  The following month the Germans launched their airborne assault on Crete using 500 Junkers Ju 52 transport aircraft, 80 gliders and 16,000 airborne troops, both parachutists and glider borne. It was the greatest airborne invasion launched by the Germans during the war. The paratroopers were to seize key targets such as airfields and ports and hold them until supplies and reinforcements arrived. The Allied troops on Crete, many of whom were New Zealanders, fought back ferociously. But after eleven days of bitter fighting, Crete fell to the Germans and the remains of the defending force were evacuated from the south of the island. The assault was yet another German victory, although at a high cost. One in four German paratroopers involved was killed in the battle. The Germans concluded that airborne troops would not be used again. Hitler told General Student, ‘Crete proved that the days of parachute troops are over. The parachute arm is one that relies entirely on surprise… the surprise factor has exhausted itself.’8 For the rest of the war, German airborne forces were used instead as ground infantry, mostly on the Russian front.

  Ironically, Churchill drew the opposite conclusion from the German success on Crete and lamented that he had not pushed for more progress in the development of British airborne forces. He wrote, ‘I feel myself greatly to blame for allowing myself to be overborne by the resistances which were offered… We ought to have 5,000 parachutists and an Airborne Division on the German model… A whole year has been lost, and I now invite the Chiefs of Staff to make proposals for trying, so far as is possible, to repair the misfortune.’9

  The Chiefs of Staff were finally stung into action. They agreed to build up the paratrooper force to Churchill’s original request of five thousand over a twelve-month period, by May 1942. There would be one brigade based in the UK and one in the Middle East. Finally, the RAF agreed to provide up to ten squadrons of transport aircraft, although they pointed out that this would reduce the capacity of Bomber Command to expand its own effort as much as had been intended. In addition an order was placed for four hundred Hotspur gliders in order to develop a Glider Brigade of about the same size, although it was not expected that the gliders themselves would be available until the following year. All this required a scaling up of the work at the Landing School at Ringway, which was now to take a hundred men at a time to pass through a training course lasting three weeks.

  In July, Squadron Leader Maurice Newnham took over the Ringway school and, realising that the whole process of jumping from aircraft had to be made less frightening, he began to revolutionise the process of parachute training. Newnham insisted on the use of balloons from which men were to make their first jumps. These were safer and much easier to jump from. Not only did they lack the din of being inside an aircraft and the disturbing sight of men dropping one by one in front of you, but also there was no aircraft slipstream to cope with.

  To run the training he brought in RAF instructors, whose mission was to be far more matter-of-fact about the idea of jumping from aircraft. It was to be regarded as a normal military procedure. The RAF instructors introduced the use of the para-roll on hitting the ground to spread the impact of the landing. Both safer and less gymnastic than the forward and backward roll taught by the army instructors, it was also closer to the German technique developed at Stendal before the war. The RAF was to train men in the use of parachutes and in jumping and the army was to concentrate on everything from the point at which the paratrooper landed on the ground. It was a sensible division of labour that lasted for decades to come.

  In September, the 1st Parachute Brigade was formed under the command of Brigadier Richard Gale. He proved to be a farsighted commander who could at last spend time to develop the tactics of parachute forces. A new burst of recruitment was instigated and again the call went out for volunteers.

  Among the many to respond was Captain John Frost. A solid, stocky man who sported a stubby, dark moustache, he came from an army family and had been born in India. He was a tough, no-nonsense Englishman who after officer training at Sandhurst w
as commissioned with a Scottish Rifles regiment, the Cameronians. On service at home and in Palestine he learnt to be an experienced professional soldier. Just before the war, Frost was transferred to command a rifle company of Arab and Kurdish tribesmen in an imperial force called the Iraq Levies, based eighty miles from Baghdad. Returning to his old regiment, the Cameronians, in late 1940, he was posted to guard a stretch of the Suffolk coast. This turned out to be rather a cushy billet, with plenty of leisure time for him to pursue his hobbies of hunting and game shooting. Yearning for a bit more action he responded to the call for volunteers, although he felt very uncertain about the prospect of jumping from aircraft. After a brief interview and medical examination he was ordered to report for duty at Hardwick near Chesterfield, the new base of the 1st Parachute Brigade.