Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII (20 page)

Bishop died shortly after they’d pulled him free.

Undeterred, Jarrell crawled back into the dark, dust-choked hole, squeezed through a gap between the debris and managed to reach Greaves. Whispering words of encouragement and comfort to the injured man, Jarrell managed to get an injection of morphine into him, and then a rubber tube was lowered via which he was able to feed some water into Greaves’ parched, dust-dry throat.

But in spite of such efforts Sydney Greaves died before he could be pulled free. Porter Jarrell had spent some twenty-seven hours crawling among the shattered debris of the headquarters building, trying to save two men’s lives. At any moment a hit from a Stuka could have sent the rest of the building crashing down on top of him. He emerged blood-spattered, caked in dust from head to toe, utterly exhausted and on the point of collapse.

Flight Lieutenant Leslie Harris, the RAF doctor, summed up the terrible situation, and Jarrell’s actions and his nature, succinctly. ‘It was one of the most horrific operations I’ve seen. I couldn’t perform it myself because I had a wrist injury through
falling on the rocks, so I could only guide …’ Jarrell, he said, was ‘a fantastic bloke, with his Red Cross on one shoulder and a machine gun over the other … They hadn’t a hope in hell, but we thought that we had to try something.’

At dawn on 10 October – three days after the German assault force had been beaten back from the island – the Stukas returned in earnest. Wave after wave pounded the town. That morning, Lapraik received orders to withdraw. At first he resisted, although the suffering of the islanders was causing all the raiders – Lassen more than most – serious anguish.

Lapraik agreed to evacuate his wounded, along with the German and Italian prisoners. On 12 October, after further savage bombing sorties, the orders to withdraw were repeated. Finally, the raiders bowed to the inevitable and pulled out. They could be proud of the fact that no ground force had vanquished them, and that in leaving Symi they were saving the long-suffering islanders from any further death and devastation.

Yet even as they sailed away from Symi Island, Anders Lassen was about to be called back in again.

A week after their withdrawal, Lassen received a message via the clandestine radio at Abbot Chrysanthos’ monastery, warning him that a force of Italian Fascists had been installed on Symi. After their defeat at the hands of the British raiders, the Germans were reluctant to reoccupy the war-torn island. But they were happy to send in the Italians, who’d been offered a stark choice: either they would fight in Hitler’s cause, or be sent to the prison camps. The Italians had been ordered to keep a close watch on Symi, and especially on the rebellious islanders.

Following the radio call from Abbot Chrysanthos, Lassen sailed back to Symi with his Irish Patrol, aiming to do what they did best – a snatch and grab raid. Striking by surprise in the darkness, Lassen and his men took eight Italians captive and blew up their radio station – the one through which the Italians were supposed to keep General von Kleemann, the German commander on Rhodes, acquainted with any developments on the island.

The Italians had long suspected Abbot Chrysanthos of being in league with the British. The abbot knew that the Italians had him under surveillance, but still he kept his secret radio functioning, feeding intelligence back to the raider force. Following Lassen’s return, the Italians proceeded to take their revenge.
They killed the abbot and his radio operator nephew, silencing the radio once and for all.

When Lassen learned of this he asked permission from Jellicoe to launch a third raid. Permission granted he sailed to Symi, attacked an Italian artillery post at night, killing the officer in charge of it and several of his men. And so the spiral of attack and counter-attack, revenge and counter-revenge spun out of control, as unrest spread across the Aegean as far as the Greek mainland.

In a repeat of the atrocities following the Kastelli and Heraklion raids, civilian resistance was brutally suppressed, German tanks steamrollering houses, their occupants crushed under their tracks. In one town, Kalavrita, on mainland Greece – long a focal point of guerrilla activity – the Germans executed every male above the age of fifteen. They were marched onto a field on the outskirts of the village and machine-gunned. The dead amounted to some 700 – from grandfathers, to fathers and schoolboys.

By now Jellicoe’s raiders had been fighting in Greek territory, alongside Greek partisans, and sheltered by Greek civilians, for six months or more. Most, like Lassen and Stud Stellin, had learned to speak more than a smattering of Greek. To many, it was becoming like a second language – mispronounced and bastardized but understood nonetheless. The mutual respect and affection between raiders and islanders kept growing.

Islanders and raiders shared much in common: a burning individualism; a tendency towards anarchic thoughts and actions; a certain raggedness of dress; an abiding disrespect for mindless authority; an innate affinity with the underdog; an
in-born toughness and physical endurance; an incurable love of the black market.

Raiders and islanders had grown exceptionally close, Jellicoe’s fighting men risking their very survival to help the locals. Radio operator Jack Mann had been sent on a raid on the island of Chios, in the Aegean. He and a fellow raider had managed to trap a German E Boat by posing as Greek locals, and forcing the six-man crew to surrender. But dealing with the plight of the locals had proved harder than fighting the enemy.

Mann had been called to a house crowded with civilians, where a nine-year-old-boy was said to be dying. ‘They asked if we had a doctor,’ Mann recalled.

‘We didn’t. But Fred said to me: “Zucky” – that was my nickname in the unit – “why don’t you see what you can do for him?” The islanders were literally starving to death before our eyes. I had some Vitamin C tablets, sugar and water, and I mixed up a rehydration solution for the boy. He’d hardly drunk it, when the colour came back to his face and he perked up mightily.

‘Then this massive queue formed outside, as everyone kept calling to me in Greek: “Doctor! Doctor! Doctor!” Of course, I had no medicines to speak of and no formal medical training. What could I do? We ended up giving them all the food we had. They were starving. Luckily, another patrol pulled into the island and we managed to get some supplies off them, otherwise we’d have starved ourselves!’

As news of German atrocities reached their ears, Jellicoe’s raiders – Lassen, Stud Stellin, Nicholson and O’Reilly first and foremost – thirsted for vengeance. Thankfully, across the Dodecanese island chain they were about to return to what
they did best – butcher-and-bolt raids. Holding territory as they had tried to do on Symi and the other islands really didn’t play to their strengths.

By means of hit-and-run attacks they could strike terror into the hearts of those they most wanted to terrorize – the German commanders. But first, they would need to regroup, and replace those men lost to death and injury. Then they would need to find a secret pirate base – somewhere in neutral waters – from which to launch the coming attacks.

*

Lassen’s actions on Symi earned him his third Military Cross, with the following citation: ‘The heavy repulse of the Germans from Symi on 7 Oct 43 was due in no small measure to his inspiration and leadership on the one hand, and the highest personal example on the other. He himself, crippled with a badly burned leg and internal trouble, stalked and killed at least 3 Germans at close range. At that time the Italians were wavering and I attribute their recovery as due to the personal example and initiative of this Officer.’

It was October, shortly after the withdrawal from Symi, when Sutherland – Jellicoe’s second-in-command – learned of the award. Feeling it would be good for morale to give Lassen the decoration pretty much immediately, Sutherland cobbled together a replica of the ribbon that denotes a second bar to the MC, using paper and dye, plus rosettes fashioned from the lid of a Players cigarette tin.

Once the short ceremony to present the honour was complete, the raiders drank everything in sight long into the night.
Jellicoe’s raiders had recently been boosted by the welcome arrival of the ‘Iros Lochos’ – the Greek Sacred Squadron – to fight alongside them in the Dodecanese.

Under the renowned leadership of Colonel Kristodoulus Tzigantes, the Sacred Squadron sported a distinctive badge – a sword surrounded by a laurel wreath, inscribed with the motto ‘Return Victorious Or Dead’. In the case of the Sacred Squadron’s fighters, those were to prove far from boastful words. Lassen had already bonded with Colonel Tzigantes during operations in and around Symi.

Halfway through a raid by Stukas on Leros, Lassen had amused himself by trimming Pipo’s coat, transforming him into the ‘Lion of Leros’. Poor Pipo looked more like a poodle at the end, but he did indeed seem to possess the bravery of a lion. He’d bark furiously in the direction of any approaching Stukas, his acute hearing warning the raiders long before any warplanes might be audible to the human ear. As for Colonel Tzigantes, he seemed to greatly enjoy the Lion of Leros episode, and he and Lassen had become fast friends.

As Christmas 1943 came around, the men of the SBS – together with those of the Sacred Squadron – prepared for their deployment … to Turkey. Neither the Allies nor the Axis powers particularly wanted to provoke neutral Turkey into joining the war, but Jellicoe’s raiders needed a base from which to strike deep into the Dodecanese, and Turkish waters were the obvious location from which to do so.

Training for the coming campaign was interrupted by the all-important Christmas feast. The raiders had just sat down to
a fulsome dinner, rustled up by their miracle-worker of a chef, when a brigadier emerged onto a makeshift stage to make an announcement. Apparently, the celebrated performer with the BBC Variety Orchestra, Miss Judy Shirley, was there to sing a few numbers, to ‘reward’ the raiders for their efforts in the Dodecanese.

Miss Shirley had come at the behest of the Entertainment National Service Association (ENSA), a branch of the services with the job of entertaining the troops while overseas. She was blonde, pretty and no doubt blessed with a fine voice, but few of the assembled throng gave much of a damn. As she stepped onto the stage and fine dinners began to go cold on their plates, someone was heard to yell above her singing: ‘Get that cow out of here!’

The brigadier turned puce with embarrassed fury, but at least he had the sense to withdraw with Miss Shirley, and leave the soldiers to eat in peace.

*

Six hundred miles to the north-west of Athlit, General von Kleemann was doubtless sitting down to his own Christmas feast in his fine castle overlooking Rhodes Harbour. Untroubled by Miss Judy Shirley’s dulcet tones, von Kleemann’s mind was turning to the defence of his command – the Dodecanese. The British raiders may have been driven out of his islands, but he felt certain they would return. Consequently, he had reinforcements pouring into the region.

A fresh brigade of elite mountain troops had been put at his disposal, in addition to the 999th Infantry Division. A flight of Junkers transport aircraft, some equipped with
floats, were ferrying in both men and war materiel, and a newly arrived fleet of barges was shuttling back and forth between the islands. Von Kleemann was an astute commander: he positioned his troops wisely for what he feared was coming.

He retained one division on Rhodes. To the three islands lying south and west he sent 800 men. To those key islands lying to the north – Leros, Cos and Symi – he sent over 6,000 troops. But with the smaller islands that remained he was uncertain what was the best approach. Rather than man each one with a token force, which would be highly vulnerable to British raiders, he decided to rotate a larger force, garrisoning each only for short periods at a time.

From Raider Force Headquarters, in Cairo, von Kleemann’s actions were being closely monitored. The German commander now had no fewer than six divisions of fighting men spread across his domain. The strategy developed by Raider Force Headquarters to counter von Kleemann was ingenious: it was to trap –
and terrify
– those troops on their islands, so they could play no further part in the war. It was broken down into three movements.

In the first, British submarines and Beaufighters – a fighter-bomber variant of the Bristol Beaufort – would scour the islands from below and above the waves, seeking to whittle von Kleemann’s fleet down to the point at which the German general was no longer able to evacuate those troops he had garrisoning the islands. Jellicoe’s raiders would play a key part in this stage of operations – sinking von Kleemann’s ships in their harbours, or seizing them on the high seas.

The second movement would be spearheaded by Jellicoe’s raiders. They would switch their attacks to isolated, outlying garrisons, forcing the Germans to take to the seas to reinforce those under assault and evacuate their wounded. Once those ships had been lured out of their harbours, British submarines and Beaufighters would strike once again.

The third phase, which lay entirely in the raiders’ hands, entailed pure banditry. Jellicoe’s men were to launch the
nervenkrieg
– to borrow a German phrase – ‘the war of nerves’. In the
nervenkrieg
, every garrison was to suffer the terror of a night raid complete with sabotage and kidnapping. With food and ammunition in short supply, with mail deliveries and leave a thing of the past, and with their horizons reduced to isolated, sun-baked patches of scrub, rock and sea, the German – and Italian – soldiers would always be on edge, fearing the next attack.

This was to be the phase of the collapse of morale, of desertions and of mass surrender.

*

In order to launch phase one, the raiders needed to get themselves established in Turkish waters. Quietly, some forty-odd potential bases had been recce’d all along Turkey’s Aegean coast. The ideal location for the main base quickly became obvious: it was the sixty-mile-long Gulf of Cos, running east of the island of Cos far into Turkey, and surrounded by dramatic mountains and thick forests on all sides.

On 20 January 1944 a very special flotilla set sail from Beirut, the capital of the Lebanon lying to the north of Athlit. It consisted of a fleet of the raiders’ caiques, plus a 180-tonne
schooner, the
Tewfik
– one that Jellicoe’s raiders had somehow managed to procure. In the
Tewfik
’s hold were some 4,700lbs of explosives. Not much of it was going to be wasted in the coming months.

In the lead caique were Anders Lassen, Stud Stellin and the Irish Patrol, and all – even medic-cum-raider Porter Jarrell – were spoiling for a fight. There was also a new recruit among their number – Freddie Crouch. Twenty-six-year-old Crouch was a former policeman who hailed from the East End of London. In the coming weeks Crouch would prove himself to be a born raider: a diamond geezer, as his fellow Cockneys might call him. Crouch would be steady as a rock under fire, and he was destined to become one of Lassen’s stalwarts.

The raiders packed onto those ships had an extra reason to be happy, in addition to their sailing to war with a large boat packed full of plastic explosives. They also had their pockets stuffed with gold sovereigns. It wasn’t the first time they’d been sent to sea carrying gold, which was useful as a universally accepted form of currency, one that could be used to pay guides or informers and to purchase supplies. But any sovereigns left over rarely made it back into Jellicoe’s hands.

More often than not they were ‘the first casualties of a successful operation’, as Porter Jarrell described it.

Jellicoe had long suspected Lassen of hoarding sovereigns surplus to operational requirements. The men were in the habit of stuffing the small gold coins between the double soles of their boots, to better hide them. Following one raid Jellicoe had even gone as far as searching the Dane’s clothing while he was in the shower. The raiding force commander found nothing.

Jarrell was able to explain where the missing coins had got to. ‘Andy had taken the gold pieces into the shower!’

The gold was earmarked for the raiders’ post-operations party kitty. While they fought hard these men played just as fiercely. Lassen’s wartime sweetheart was a dancing girl who performed at the Hotel St Georges, a Beirut cabaret – the diminutive, dusky-skinned and utterly delightful ‘Aleca of Alexandria’. Lassen had got into the habit of ending their epic training sessions with an equally epic session in the hotel bar. He’d make his way there in his jeep, driving at typically suicidal speed, before joining the bewitching Aleca over drinks, whereupon the real partying began.