Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII (22 page)

However, the matron soon found out and she made it clear the dog had to go. Fortunately, Lieutenant Cole’s wife lived not far from the hospital. Although he wasn’t himself allowed out, the feisty lieutenant sneaked out the back way with Pipo under his arm, taking the long route home to his house. There he persuaded his wife to keep a close watch on the Lion of Leros, until Lassen was well enough to come fetch him.

Lassen’s condition proved so serious that he was in hospital for two months. Even after he had recovered, Pipo’s separation from his beloved master wasn’t over. Lassen had taught his dog to do a series of silly and amusing tricks, which proved useful when he wanted to inveigle himself into a pretty girl’s affections. If he were out of an evening, he’d send Pipo over to a promising table, and once the girls were fully engaged he’d wander over and introduce himself.

Shortly after Lassen was discharged from hospital, the young Lord Jellicoe announced that he was getting married. The bride to be was a beautiful escapee from a Japanese prison camp. She’d ended up in Beirut while trying to make her way back to Britain. There she’d met Jellicoe and in a whirlwind romance the two were married. The wedding celebrations
became something of a wild affair, and Lassen ended up losing his false teeth (he’d knocked his two front teeth out a while ago during training).

More worryingly, he also lost his dog. By the time Lassen was scheduled to return to the raider’s Turkish pirate base, Pipo still hadn’t been found. He offered O’Reilly seven days’ leave on one condition: he had to spend it looking for Pipo. Having only recently shot Lassen, O’Reilly – who could take or leave Lassen’s dog – felt obliged to accept. Lassen gave him ten pounds to help fund the search, and left him with orders not to return to the Gulf of Cos sans dog.

For the first four days O’Reilly got drunk. On the fifth he sobered up and realized he was over halfway through his leave and no closer to finding Pipo. The Irishman began to comb the Beirut streets, but in a city even then of some quarter-of-a-million inhabitants he had little luck. On the last day he spied a woman with a dog that resembled Pipo. O’Reilly managed to seize it and smuggle it back to his hotel room. It clearly wasn’t Pipo, but with a bit of boot polish smeared on here and there, the dog acquired a half-decent resemblance to Lassen’s elusive hound.

Figuring it was better to appear with something rather than nothing, O’Reilly duly presented the dog to Lassen. It took him a while to realize the deception.

‘Who do you think you are,’ Lassen exploded, ‘bringing me that dog, when I have given you seven days’ leave?’

O’Reilly, caught red-handed in his deception, had added insult to the injury of the recent bullet wound. Lassen was adamant:
Pipo had to be found
. Together with New Zealander
Stud Stellin, the Irishman returned to the streets of Beirut and Pipo was miraculously tracked down. Lassen decided to keep both dogs – part of his growing menagerie of animals – although he was discomfited to see the two fight, and the tough little Pipo come off second-best.

The Lion of Leros had been defeated: Lassen hoped it wasn’t a grim portent of things to come.

While Lassen had been away recuperating in hospital, the raids had gathered pace across the Dodecanese. It was a new recruit to Jellicoe’s force, Major Ian Patterson, who had led one of the most daring missions. Major Patterson had been second-in-command of the 11th Parachute Battalion, the unit that had relieved the SBS on Cos, once that island had been seized in the previous campaign. Seeing the SBS in action at close quarters Patterson had expressed a desire to join them, and Jellicoe had accepted.

In early March 1944 Patterson got his chance to prove himself in action. Two of General von Kleemann’s motor barges packed full of food, wine and reinforcements were reportedly en route for Cos, via the stopover point of Nisyros. Nisyros is a volcanic island almost exactly circular in shape. It was one of those ‘minor’ islands that General von Kleemann had ordered be garrisoned only temporarily, in rotation.

Patterson and his force of six men managed to get ashore on Nisyros ahead of the Germans. When the enemy vessels pulled into harbour, Patterson was able to study them from the high ground. Each motor barge was armed with a 20mm cannon, plus machine guns, and there were some two-dozen enemy soldiers and sailors aboard. This was no small, lightly armed force.

One of Patterson’s men volunteered to dress as a local and go down to the docks to gather intelligence. In this way they learned from the Mother Superior of a local orphanage what the Germans were intending. For whatever reason they were planning to ship all of the Nisyros orphans to Rhodes, and were scheduled to collect them that very day, at three o’clock.

Patterson went to visit the Mother Superior. She was distraught at the thought of losing all her children. But Patterson sensed here the chance to strike, for the enemy would be dividing their not inconsiderable force.

‘Would you be prepared to let me use your orphanage in order to capture the Germans?’ he asked.

‘Anything,’ the Mother Superior sobbed. ‘Anything, as long as I can keep my children.’

‘Then take them up to the high ground, and stay there until the fighting is over.’

Patterson collected up the children’s luggage and laid it out in a neat line in front of the orphanage, as if ready for collection. He positioned his men at strategic firing points around the ancient building, and dressed himself up as a ‘friendly’ Italian priest.

The Germans proved typically punctual. At just before three, a line of men wound their way up the hill. Patterson the bogus priest was there to receive them. He took the Germans down a narrow passage leading into the orphanage’s central refectory, whereupon cries of ‘
Hände hoch!
’ rang out.

The Germans managed to open fire, but their aim was poor. Patterson’s raiders returned fire with deadly effect, and a brutal battle at close quarters ensued. At one stage Patterson’s gun
jammed and he was seized by a German. A fellow raider ran forward and blew the enemy’s brains out, so rescuing their commander.

Not a single enemy soldier escaped from the orphanage. Two lay dead, seven were injured and the rest were taken prisoner. With no time to delay, Patterson led his men down to the harbour, armed with a Bren gun, grenades and personal weapons. Patterson got the Bren set up on some high ground and zeroed it in on the enemy boats. Below him, two of his men were creeping forward to surprise the German crewmen, who were lounging about sunning themselves on deck – the gunfight at the orphanage being too distant to be audible to them.

But two Germans had been sent to the orphanage to investigate what the delay might be and where the children were. They blundered into the bloody carnage that had been left inside. They came running down the hill, yelling wild warnings at their comrades on the boats. Patterson cut them down with the first burst from his Bren, then turned it on the two ships. Below him, his men ran forward onto the dockside and tossed grenades into the boats.

Some of the Germans managed to get to the vessels’ guns, and they began to return fire. Patterson kept cutting them down from his vantage point, and his men tossed their final grenades. All out of Mills bombs, they resorted to hurling their Lewes bombs into the two ships. The plastic explosives ripped into the vessels, the violent blasts bringing an end to the Germans’ resistance. A white flag was raised, and those who could came out with their hands in the air.

The entire population of the island seemed to have watched the battle, and they were exultant at the Germans’ defeat. The German captain commanding the boats was less enthused. Defeated by a far smaller force, he put it down to ‘the black treachery of the Greeks’. He vowed to be back in Nisyros within six months, to take his revenge. In fact, he sailed with the rest of the German prisoners – aboard the two seized ships – for interrogation under the South African Priestley’s baleful gaze:
I will say all I can and all that I know
… He was never to see Nisyros again, for a POW camp beckoned.

Patterson’s adventures weren’t yet over. He set sail that evening in the Motor Launch upon which they had arrived on the island. They were well within Turkish waters when the launch’s captain spotted two more barges. Presuming them to be friendly the captain pulled alongside. It was only when they tied up to the nearest vessel that they discovered it was crammed full of German soldiers. There was a third barge on the far side, plus a caique armed with a 3-inch gun.

Undeterred, Patterson grabbed his Tommy Gun and leapt aboard, followed by two others. Moving through the dark confines of the ship, they sowed havoc and terror as the Germans tried and failed to identify friend from foe. The German gunboat opened fire on the British Motor Launch, her 3-inch gun killing two of the British sailors. The captain managed to get away, but not before he realized that Patterson and his two comrades weren’t aboard.

Patterson, meanwhile, had fought his way to the front of the barge and seized its twin Breda cannon. He put it to devastating effect on the surviving German troops. When the ammunition
was exhausted, he yelled orders at his fighting comrades, and all three of them dived into the sea. They struck out for the coast and managed to make the Turkish shoreline. The following day, still decidedly damp, Patterson and his men made it back to the SBS base by local mules.

The pace of raiding grew ever fiercer. Barely had one force returned than another set sail. With Lassen’s opportune attack on Halki, and Patterson’s lightning raid on Nisyros, General von Kleemann was being given a run for his money. The general ordered news of any raids to be strictly censored, so that the sense of unease and panic didn’t spread any further among his troops. But word leaked out anyway, and at his more distant island outposts General von Kleemann’s officers slept far less soundly in their beds.

Yet it was now – just as they were riding high – that the raiders’ fortunes were about to turn.

*

By April 1944 Lassen was back in action with his men. But it was another patrol, led by Captain Bill Blyth, that was to come to grief among these islands. Captain Blyth had served as an instructor in the Scots Guards for three years, before being granted his wish and getting a transfer to the SAS Regiment, from where he was posted to Jellicoe’s raiders, in the Dodecanese.

Blyth had been given a mission to raid Halki – where Lassen had fired the opening salvoes of the present campaign – as well as the tiny islet of Alimnia. Just three square miles in area, and sheltering no more than sixty inhabitants, to date Alimnia had been an insignificant player in the wider Dodecanese campaign.

But General von Kleemann had been passed a vital piece of intelligence, indicating that a British SBS unit was heading for those islands. Thirsting to strike back at the raiders –
who come like cats and disappear like ghosts
– von Kleemann dispatched four German gunboats escorted by two submarines. The ships were packed with soldiers from the Brandenburger Regiment, the nearest the Germans then had to Special Forces.

The Brandenburger fighters had been drafted in to help General von Kleemann combat the threat of unconventional warfare presented by the British raiders. The German ships landed a contingent of the Brandenburgers on Halki, plus a further force on Alimnia – with orders to lie in wait for the British force.

At well after midnight on 7 April Blyth and four men were put ashore on Alimnia, but then the converted fishing boat in which they had been travelling was spotted by the enemy. Four German gunboats and one E Boat bore down on her. In the firefight that followed her commander, Sub-Lieutenant Allan Tuckey, decided their situation was hopeless and he ordered his men to surrender.

Tuckey and four others were taken prisoner. They were loaded aboard the German E Boat, which set sail for Rhodes. Blyth’s patrol had heard all the gunfire, and from the high ground they’d seen the fate that had befallen the boat’s crew. Knowing that Alminia would be crawling with the enemy come daybreak, they persuaded a Greek fishing crew to take them off the island that night.

But en route to the Turkish coast the fishing boat was stopped and searched. As luck would have it, it was the E Boat carrying
the five men already taken captive that had intercepted the Greek vessel. Blyth and his fellow fighters were discovered and they were taken captive, along with the hapless Greek fishermen.

In just a few hours all ten men who had set out to raid Halki and Alminia had been captured. They were taken for interrogation first to Rhodes, and then on to Athens, before finally in Blyth’s case being sent to Stalag 7A, a POW camp in southern Germany.

The questioning of the captives became increasingly intense and brutal. Repeatedly, they were threatened with Hitler’s
Sonderbehandlung
– his infamous Commando Order – decreeing that all such captives be handed over to the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD), the Security Service of the SS, for termination. By early June 1944, after horrific torture, the interrogation of the captives was deemed complete. All but one were released to the SD for ‘special treatment’ – in other words, likely execution.

Only Captain Blyth would survive, and that only due to the comparative decency of Colonel Otto Burger, the commandant of Stalag 7A. Twice Colonel Burger was ordered to hand Blyth over to the
Sicherheitsdienst
, and twice he refused. Eventually, the SD seemed to have forgotten about Blyth, and he would survive the war.

Among the nine of Blyth’s raiders executed was Corporal Ray Jones, the man who had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Anders Lassen during the Kastelli Airbase raid.

None of the raiders based in the Gulf of Cos could know of the captives’ exact fate: that would only become clear many
years after the war. But they were under few illusions as to what would happen to any raiders taken prisoner.

*

Continuous raiding – month after month, year after year – pushed men to the limits, even those as well trained and self-disciplined as Jellicoe’s. The narrow escapes and close shaves took a cumulative toll. Many a raider had hidden under a rock, as a German or Italian hunter patrol had paused to have a smoke sitting astride it. In one instance, a Motor Launch packed full of raiders had rounded a headland, only to discover a German destroyer steaming into its path.

The Motor Launch’s commander had ordered: ‘Open fire – abandon ship!’ almost in the same breath.

The raiders had raked the destroyer’s bridge with Bren fire, before diving into the sea and swimming to the nearest landfall. Behind them, the Motor Launch had been blasted into matchwood, but at least they’d managed to make good their escape. Yet it had been by the bare skin of their teeth, and as always the thought of capture and the horrors that would follow played heavily on the raiding man’s mind.

Acute stress was a natural consequence of such relentless fighting, and over time even the most unlikely candidate might find himself in danger of what the raiders termed ‘crapping out’ – not being able to take it any more. Invariably, those who ‘crapped out’ couldn’t face going into action ever again. If a man’s nerves cracked during a mission, he became a liability to his fellow raiders. It was something they all dreaded.

Some feared that as Lassen drove himself to extremes, he was going to end up being one of those who ‘crapped out’. But
there was no sign of anything like that happening just yet.

In the face of what had befallen Captain Blyth’s patrol, no one in Jellicoe’s raiding force was about to lose it. Quite the reverse, in fact. There was, of course, another reaction to such acutely distressing news – one that the forces gathered in the Gulf of Cos were more inclined to. It was to redouble their efforts, and to wreak a campaign of terror throughout General von Kleemann’s command, in an effort to make amends for those friends and comrades who had been executed in cold blood.

Fittingly, the charge would be led by Anders Lassen and the men of his Irish Patrol. It would spawn perhaps the Dane’s most infamous raid of all – what would become known as ‘The Bloodbath of Santorini’.

*

Santorini forms part of the Cyclades, a chain of islands lying to the west of the Dodecanese, some 150 miles from the raiders’ Gulf of Cos base. Santorini is formed of a rugged and bare chunk of volcanic rock some ten miles long by three wide. Sheer, dour cliffs of black basalt rear out of the waves to a height just short of a thousand feet, offering an uncertain welcome to any visitors sailing through her waters.

Human habitation – ancient castles, aged monasteries and narrow, twisting rows of white-walled houses – clusters along the cliff tops, which sweep in a crescent-shaped ridge through waters as deep as the cliffs are tall, being the remains of a half-collapsed volcanic crater. That crater forms an almost circular harbour – one with the added benefit of warm, sulphurous waters to help the local fishermen de-weed their boats.

Santorini is the southernmost of the Cyclades, so it would be the first targeted by the raiders. It would remind Lassen very much of Fernando Po, the island nation off equatorial Africa where he had launched his career as a piratical raider, some three years and what seemed like a lifetime ago. Now Lassen was a triple MC winner, commanding the toughest of the few – the Irish Patrol – and a man very much on a mission of vengeance.