The Daring Dozen Read online

  With 9,000 British troops steaming towards Salonika, Lassen wanted to be the first Allied soldier to enter the city, even though Greek intelligence warned that the Germans had at least two tanks and some artillery among their defences as Wehrmacht engineers began demolishing the city’s breakwater. Commandeering four local fire engines, Lassen ordered his men on board and off they raced towards the city centre. ‘It was great,’ recalled Doug Wright. ‘The welcome we received was unbelievable and there were women everywhere wanting to kiss us!’19

  The western half of the city was free of Germans, but the Greeks told the SBS that the enemy was still in the eastern side, preparing to withdraw in a large convoy. Lassen ordered his men to dismount from the engines and divided them into two patrols, one under his command and the other led by Lieutenant James Henshaw. ‘I was in Henshaw’s patrol,’ recalled Wright, ‘and we took a farm boy with us who knew where the minefields were. We got round the back of them [the Germans] and opened fire. I must have fired a dozen magazines of Bren gun as they were stood there. When they started throwing flares up, we pulled out leaving behind a lot of dead and wounded.’20

  The surviving Germans hastily fled Salonika and a subsequent British Intelligence report said of the SBS action: ‘But for Lassen and his band, Salonika would not have been evacuated as soon as the 30th October 1944. The town would have suffered greater destruction. His solitary jeep and few troops were seen everywhere; behind the enemy’s lines, with E.L.A.S. and in the mountains. Their numbers and strength were magnified into many hundreds.’

  Lassen next took his men to Athens for a spot of rest and recuperation, where for three weeks they partied hard on drink and women. On one occasion a jealous husband came looking for Lassen with a pistol, but fortunately for the Greek his quarry had already fled from the scene. After Athens Lassen left for Crete as commander of a Special Forces unit tasked to maintain order on the island. As well as the thousands of German prisoners to marshal, there were also rival Greek factions among the islanders whose politics made them mortal enemies. For Lassen it was an opportunity for more carousing and he became a frequent visitor to the island’s brothels and taverns. When David Sutherland came to visit Lassen at Christmas he was treated to ‘the most extraordinary party … a lot was drunk. He was a great example of how to live up to the limits in all respects.’

  Sutherland had recently assumed command of the SBS following Jellicoe’s promotion and appointment to a Staff College in Haifa, but at the start of 1945 he was unsure of the squadron’s future role. Some patrols were sent to Yugoslavia to help clear the Croatian coastline of stubborn German outposts, but it wasn’t until the early spring that Sutherland received orders to move back into Italy.

  Lassen arrived at Lake Comacchio in April 1945, having spent a few days on leave in Rome with a pretty English WAAF girl. Opinions vary on his state of mind. Some comrades said he was his usual self, eager to kill more Germans after several months of inactivity, while others remembered him tired and listless, as if he was reaching the end of his tether after nearly four years of fighting. In addition, his pet dog had not come north with him from their base in Monopoli, and two weeks earlier James Henshaw had been killed while attempting to blow a bridge that linked the islands of Cherso and Lussin. Henshaw was a good friend of Lassen’s, and perhaps his death, coming so near the end of the war, made the Dane more aware of his own mortality. His spirits would hardly have been improved by his new posting. The landscape around Comacchio is flat and lifeless, and its waters a putrid haven for mosquitoes.

  Lake Comacchio was also shallow, in some places only between 6in and 3ft deep. In order for 9 and 62 Commandos to cross the lake and establish a bridgehead for V Corps, they required a channel deep enough to take their Goatley floats – engineless vessels that could each accommodate ten men and their equipment. The first task for Lassen and his SBS men was to reconnoiter a passage across the lake.

  One of the SBS men was Corporal Ken Smith. ‘We used to go out each night in our canoes,’ he recalled. ‘Now on the lake, on the right [eastern shore] was the spit, a narrow neck of land that separated the lake from the sea and that was where the Germans had some machine gun battalions.’ It required a steady nerve and a lot of skill with the paddle for a canoeist to negotiate his way unseen across the shallow waters. ‘As you were paddling what we had to be careful about was the phosphorous on the paddle,’ recalled Smith. ‘So we had to make long gliding strokes to make as little noise and phosphorous as possible.’21

  The SBS patrols searched the lake only at night and at first light they took cover, dismantling their canoes and concealing them among the reeds on the marshes, where they lay waiting for darkness. ‘I remember the mossies at dawn would come over and they raised an almighty noise, like bombers going overhead,’ said Smith. ‘We had mossie cream and at dusk they would come over again and settle on us. At dark we would paddle off again at the north shore.’22

  When a channel deep enough (2ft) to facilitate a crossing of the lake was found, the SBS were then instructed to launch the diversionary raid against the Germans’ positions on the eastern shore, the three-mile-long spit that separated the lake from the Adriatic. Ken Smith recalled the conversation between Brigadier Ronnie Tod of the commandos and Lassen: ‘We sat round in a small circle and the brigadier said to Lassen “I want you to spread your chaps out tonight, right along the front, get ashore, and make as much commotion to give an impression of a big landing.” Lassen kept interrupting him: “But I can take Comacchio.” The brigadier said “I don’t want you to, just spread your chaps out.”’23

  Lassen’s belief that he could take Comacchio with 50 men was either bravado or a sign that he was becoming, in the parlance of the time, ‘bomb happy’ after four years of almost constant action. Ranged against him were hundreds of Germans, well entrenched in positions affording them an excellent field of fire.

  Among the 50 men in Lassen’s squadron were several veterans of the Dodecanese campaign. At least one, Freddie Crouch, believed that they were being sacrificed so that the commandos could establish their bridgehead on the north shore. Crouch had a premonition of his own death, and one of his comrades, Les Stephenson, was also uneasy with the plan because there ‘had been no proper reconnaissance’ on account of the impossibility of getting close enough to scout the enemy positions without being seen.

  Lassen split his small force into three patrols. His own patrol would be first onto the spit while a section under the command of Lieutenant Turnbull would then land a little further north. Meanwhile a third patrol led by New Zealand’s Lieutenant Dion Stellin, nicknamed ‘Stud’ on account of his success with the ladies, would discharge numerous thunderflashes and other explosive charges to fool the enemy into believing the main assault was underway.

  The SBS had to endure an excruciating delay to their mission as they waited for the commandos to drag their landing craft across the mud to the channels. Everyone was tense. Then, at 0430hrs on 9 April, Lassen and his patrol pushed off in their canoes. Ken Smith followed in Turnbull’s patrol a short while later. ‘We lined up in our canoes and made for the shore,’ remembered Smith. ‘Lassen was away to the right and met land before us and he managed to get ashore.’24

  But already Lassen’s patrol had encountered problems in disembarking from their canoes. The mud that bordered the spit was thick, glutinous and treacherous, and Freddie Crouch got stuck as he tried to get ashore. ‘He began sinking but would not call for help because that would give away our positions,’ remembered Trooper Fred Green, who watched in horror as Crouch vanished beneath the mud.25

  Already one man down, Lassen told Green to accompany him down the spit while the rest of the patrol followed a few yards behind. Green could speak Italian and Lassen’s hope was that the Turkomans would be fooled into thinking they were local fishermen about to embark on a day’s work. The plan failed, and a Spandau machine gun began firing from a pillbox. However, the pillboxes housing the defenders were not the imposi
ng hexagonal concrete structures found along the French coast; rather, they were small bunkers made of stone and earth.

  Lassen told Green to take cover. Then, removing a grenade from his battledress, Lassen charged the pillbox and destroyed it. A second machine gun opened fire, so Lassen continued down the spit, rallying his men with a cry of: ‘Come on! Forward, you bastards. Get on, get forward!’

  As Lassen wiped out the second pillbox, his patrol dashed towards him along the spit, but more machine guns began firing and men started to fall. Les Stephenson caught up with Lassen and was ordered by his commander to hand over his grenades. These Lassen used to attack a third pillbox, whereupon a cry was heard of ‘Kamerad!’. Stephenson recalled later: ‘He told the rest of us to stay put while he went across in the darkness. As he neared the pillbox there was a burst of machine-gun fire and then silence.’

  While the rest of the patrol dealt with the occupants of the third pillbox, Stephenson attended to Lassen. He had been shot in the lower chest and he knew he was dying. ‘It’s been a poor show,’ he told Stephenson. ‘Don’t go any further with it. Get the others out.’ Lassen died a few minutes later.26

  Of Lassen’s 17-strong patrol, four were killed attacking the spit and another four suffered serious wounds. But the commandos had established their bridgehead. Ken Smith’s patrol had not even got ashore before they were spotted and fired upon. ‘I turned turtle and all we could do was swim back to our mud flat,’ he recalled. ‘Then they [Lassen’s patrol] came in in ones and twos, and someone said, “Lassen’s had it.”’27

  Colonel David Sutherland, the SBS commander, was thunderstruck by Lassen’s death but when he heard the exact details he had no doubt the Dane deserved a Victoria Cross. The medal was presented by King George VI to Lassen’s parents at Buckingham Palace in December 1945, and the citation ended by stating:

  By his magnificent leadership and complete disregard for his personal safety, Major Lassen had, in the face of overwhelming superiority, achieved his objectives. Three positions were wiped out, accounting for six machine guns, killing eight and wounding others of the enemy and two prisoners were taken. The high sense of devotion to duty and the esteem in which he was held by the men he led, added to his own magnificent courage, enabled Major Lassen to carry out all the tasks he had been given with complete success.

  Unlike the other men featured in this book, Lassen was neither a great strategist nor a great tactician. The war’s ‘bigger picture’ didn’t really concern him; he was more interested in the here and now. He was a man of action, as much a born fighter as Paddy Mayne. Lassen was also not a natural leader of men in the way that David Stirling, Friedrich August von der Heydte or Evans Carlson were. Yet few soldiers who fought in World War II were as respected and admired by their men as Anders Lassen. He was an officer who led by example, whose courage and boldness inspired his men and struck fear into the enemy. Small wonder that the Germans were purported to have put a price on the head of ‘that damned Dane’.

  Perhaps the most telling assessment of Lassen’s contribution to Britain’s Special Forces was that of David Sutherland, his former commander. At a ceremony in Copenhagen in 1987 to celebrate the unveiling of a new bust to Lassen, Sutherland gave this address to the assembled crowd:

  Anders caused more damage and discomfort to the enemy over five years of war than any other man of his rank and age … we know now that the sustained SBS attacks in the Aegean early in 1944, before D-Day, gave the impression that a second front would be opened in the Balkans. In April, Anders’ patrol eliminated the entire army garrison on Santorini. The German High Command reacted by reinforcing their Aegean positions. These troops stayed in place for the rest of the war when they could have been used elsewhere. Anders saved Salonika from demolition by the retreating Germans through the timely arrival of his squadron. In response to his ferocious attack at Comacchio on this day 42 years ago … the Germans moved troops towards the Adriatic coast allowing the British Eighth Army to break out through the Argenta Gap shortly afterwards.28

  DAVID STIRLING

  SPECIAL AIR SERVICE

  In the summer of 1939 a tall, slim young Scot was pursuing his dream of becoming the first man to climb Mount Everest. He had chosen as his training ground the Rocky Mountains of America. Moving south on horseback through Colorado, tackling the ranges in Park, Gore and Sawatch, 23-year-old David Stirling interrupted his ride south to pay a visit to Las Vegas to win some money on the gaming tables. That done, he continued on towards the Rio Grande, arriving in early September, where he heard the news that Britain and Germany were once again at war.

  Stirling, a member of the Scots Guards Supplementary Reserve, was soon heading back to Britain, returning first-class by air and presenting himself at the regimental depot in Pirbright, Surrey. It was a flight that would lead to the formation of one of the world’s most famous Special Forces units.

  The 6ft 6in Stirling was not one of life’s natural Guards officers. Born into an aristocratic family in November 1915, there was a slight Bohemian side to his character (he had studied art in Paris in the 1930s) that didn’t sit well with the drill sergeants. On one occasion Stirling was reprimanded for the state of his rifle. ‘Stirling, it’s bloody filthy. There must be a bloody clown on the end of this rifle,’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘Yes, sergeant,’ agreed Stirling, ‘but not at my end.’1

  Neither did Stirling endear himself to those senior officers whose job it was to lecture their young protégées on the art of war. In Stirling’s view, most of them held opinions that had changed little since World War I and were ‘quite irrelevant to tackling the Hun’, and none of them were interested in dialogue or the exchange of views. It was a pupil/master relationship that Stirling deplored and his response was to spend an increasingly large amount of his time drinking and gambling in London’s clubs.

  When Stirling eventually left Pirbright he was described by his instructors as an ‘irresponsible and unremarkable soldier’, a description with which he would not have demurred. ‘I think I just wanted to be off to join the war,’ Stirling told his biographer, Alan Hoe, in the late 1980s. ‘I didn’t mind where.’2

  In January 1940 it appeared that Stirling was going to get his wish, for the British government had decided to come to the aid of Finland in their ‘Winter War’ against the invading Russians. The 5th Battalion Scots Guards were sent on a mountain warfare course in the French Alps and Stirling, already a skilled skier, was promoted to instructor. The battalion returned to Britain dubbed the ‘Snowballers’, but the mission to Finland never materialized because of objections raised by Sweden and Norway.

  Back in his favourite London club, White’s, in the early summer of 1940, Stirling learned that volunteers were wanted for a special service force. Unsure of the exact nature of the force, Stirling nonetheless applied in the hope it might break the monotony of his own ‘phoney war’. In fact what Stirling had joined was the nascent Commandos, raised on the orders of Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself.

  Stirling took an instant shine to his new unit. The commanding officer of 8 Commando (there were five commando units in total) was Robert Laycock and the instructors were men whose ideas on how modern warfare should be conducted were similar to Stirling’s.

  Laycock’s 8 Commando was sent to the Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland to undergo training and Stirling, now a lieutenant, found himself a section commander in 3 Troop under the command of Major Dermot Daley. The youngest man in the section was Guardsman Johnny Cooper, who had just turned 18. ‘Because of his height and his quiet self-confidence he could appear quite intimidating but he wasn’t a bawling leader,’ recalled Cooper. ‘This quietly spoken young lieutenant commanded far more respect and confidence with his ability to put soldiers at their ease and his willingness to help.’3

  The training on Arran challenged the commandos physically and mentally. As well as the emphasis on physical fitness, they were schooled in explosives, unarmed combat, navigation and
weapons. The instructors wanted the men to become self-sufficient and initiative was encouraged; it was the opposite of everything that had been drilled into Stirling at Pirbright.

  For a man who had grown up on the family estate of Keir in the wilds of central Scotland, Stirling thrived on Arran and demonstrated an uncanny ability for such a gangly man to move noiselessly across the countryside.

  ‘There was a tremendous air of expectancy,’ Stirling said later. ‘We didn’t know where we were to be deployed or when, but we knew damned well that we were going to be good … the constant exercises, broken by short periods of equally hard play, kept one pretty well occupied.’4

  In January 1941 it was decided to send three of the five commando units to the Middle East. The reason behind the decision was simple: the Special Forces had been raised to operate in conjunction with a large-scale offensive but in 1941 the British Army was not in a position to launch such a strike in Europe. But in the Middle East it could, particularly against Italy’s lines of communications along the North Africa coast and against their lightly defended islands in the Mediterranean.