Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII (28 page)

It was almost as if he was actively seeking for that dreadful death wish to be fulfilled.

*

At dusk of 3 April 1945 Lassen’s force moved out to ‘occupy’ the lake. They climbed into their Army trucks for the drive to the shore, where their boats were pulled up in the cover of some bushes. They loaded the canoes with everything they needed for the coming days – weapons, ammunition, radios and batteries, water and food.

That done, the men brewed tea on the lakeside and waited until it was completely dark. There were thirty two-man canoes lined up ready to take to Comacchio’s unwelcoming waters. It was one of the largest missions that Lassen had ever commanded, and it was by far the most daunting.

Finally, the major gave the orders for the men to follow his lead. Amid the sucking slurp of gumboots struggling through the mud, the canoes were carried down to the water. One by one the craft were hauled out into the muddy quagmire, until each was swallowed in the darkness. There followed a long push through the shallows, until there was enough depth to let each pair of men climb into their canoe.

Their intended destination tonight was the island of Casone Agosta, some six miles out on the lake. The crossing took most of the night. Repeatedly, the raiders had to climb out of their heavily laden craft and manhandle them over slick, stinking mud-banks. Stud Stellin managed to overturn his craft
completely, getting soaked in the process and losing much of his kit and part of the radio set.

When the raiders finally reached Casone Agosta it proved to be totally devoid of any cover. The only option was to pull the craft ashore and camouflage them with cut bracken. That done, the exhausted men had to dig crude foxholes and sheet them over with camouflage netting. By sunrise, the sixty men and their canoes on Casone Agosta had apparently disappeared.

All that day Lassen, O’Reilly, Stud Stellin and the others lay still and silent in their holes. Swarms of mosquitoes feasted on their blood, but few could afford to swipe them away. The nearest German position was four hundreds yards away. Before the heat of the day rose to unbearable levels the men tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep.

Around mid-morning Stud Stellin awoke to find a large-framed figure sitting bolt upright, still wrapped in his camo-netting.

‘Get down!’ Stellin hissed. ‘Get down, or I’ll bloody shoot.’

It was only then that he realized the sitting figure looked very much like Major Lassen.

A few minutes later Lassen crawled over to Stud’s foxhole. ‘Good morning, Captain Stellin,’ he smiled. ‘Will you give me the pleasure in having breakfast with me? Unfortunately, I can only offer you minced bacon.’

In spite of himself Stellin had to smile. ‘Was that you sitting up like a big idiot just now?’

Lassen laughed that it was, and Stellin couldn’t help but join in the dark humour. No matter what way they looked at it, the
situation they found themselves in was so horribly exposed and indefensible, it was absolutely absurd.

All that day the men remained trapped in their shallow holes, eating, sleeping and defecating where they lay. Only come nightfall were they able to crawl out and stretch and ease cramped limbs. Then the canoes were uncovered, eased into the water, and the second stage of their infiltration began. Their objective now was the largest island, Casone Caldiro, lying towards the northern end of the lake.

It was well after midnight when the canoeists reached their next landfall, a small island lying between the two. Lassen went first, checking for any enemy. The island was found to be unoccupied, and he left Stud Stellin there, complete with a small force tasked to hold the main force’s rear. Lassen also left Stellin with some sappers, whose job it was to check for mines, leaving white tape marking the cleared areas, so the commandos could follow on in some degree of safety.

Lassen led the main force onwards into the night. Unbeknown to them, a boat carrying four Germans was also out on the water. It happened to be making for the island where Stud Stellin was even now digging in with his patrol. The German boat landed there completely unawares, and Stellin took four prisoners. This was great for intelligence-gathering purposes, but not so good for remaining undetected. When German patrols went missing, others tended to come looking.

The main island, Casone Caldiro, also proved to be devoid of the enemy. Having checked over a ruined building and assured himself that the entire expanse of land was clear, Lassen ordered his men to dig some proper shelter. If the Germans realized
they were here, they’d doubtless shell the island, and there was very little if any natural cover.

The other main problem – apart from remaining undetected – was water. There was a well located within the ruins, but it proved to have only a few inches of dirty, stagnant liquid in the bottom. Still, Lassen and his men knew they would die unless they had water: they forced themselves to drink the murky dregs. And then they steeled themselves for whatever the next few hours might bring.

Three further boatloads of Germans were out on the lake. They rowed past the little island where Stud Stellin and his patrol were dug-in. Stellin could tell they were making for Casone Caldiro, the main island. He let them draw well ahead of his position, before he ordered his men to open fire. It might blow their cover, but he felt he had to warn Lassen that a force of enemy was inbound, and this was the only way he could think of doing so.

Rounds tore across the lake, shattering the tense stillness. Tracer fire lit up the water around the three target boats, as if a swarm of giant, supercharged fireflies were zipping across the lake. In the glare, Lassen and his men spotted the enemy, and Lassen ordered his force to open fire. The Germans were caught in the crossfire from both islands, with absolutely nowhere to take cover or hide.

This was what the men of the SBS had themselves dreaded: getting seen and targeted out on Comacchio’s open water. Those Germans who tried to bail out got sucked into the mud, and stuck fast. They were gunned down wherever they became immobilized. Those who tried to stick with their flimsy craft
were torn to pieces by the raiders’ fire. Just five Germans made it to Lassen’s position alive, and they only managed to do so by hoisting the white flag of surrender.

Those five turned out to be Brandenburgers – the same elite troops that Lassen and his men had run into during their Aegean campaign, when the Brandenburgers had been drafted in to help General von Kleemann defend his islands. Under questioning, they yielded vital intelligence, but almost of more importance were the supplies of fresh water that they carried. The Germans knew there was none to be had on the islands, and they’d come well prepared. They’d also brought a quantity of Italian wine with them, which proved more than welcome.

At first light the following morning a boat became visible drifting through the thin grey blanket of mist lying across the dead lake. It was a ghostly apparition. That vessel was barely still afloat and it contained the bloodied corpse of a dead Brandenburger. The bullet-riddled wreck was fetched by canoe, and the German prisoners were made to bury their dead comrade on the shore. They were throwing in the last few shovelfuls of mud, when the first German shells rained down on the island.

Lassen was gathered around a map with his raiders, in the middle of a planning session. On hearing the howl of incoming artillery rounds, men dived into nearby foxholes or crawled beneath the old table that the ruins contained. Three shells hit the building, before Lassen ordered the German prisoners to dig some deep trenches along the island’s shoreline. Once they were done, Lassen ordered his men to take shelter in those, but wherever they went the German shells seemed to follow.

The enemy had to have spotters with eyes on the island. As the German gunners zeroed in on the newly-dug trenches, Lassen’s men dashed towards a second, smaller ruin on the far side of the island. But they hadn’t been there long when the barrage crept over to that building, and the men had to find some new cover.

The horrific game of hide-and-seek with the German gunners carried on all morning. One of Lassen’s men was badly wounded, his heel being blasted off and his leg riddled with shrapnel. Another was blown off his feet and thrown in through the doorway of the ruined building. By now, Lassen and his men could only move about by crawling on their bellies, the fire was so accurate and so lethal.

Mindful of the coming mission, Lassen got his men to paint up some warning signs for the commandos, who would be joining them on Casone Caldiro after nightfall. They read: ‘You can be seen from Comacchio – enemy observation posts nearby.’

Under cover of darkness the first commando forces started to advance across the lake. They were shipped in using Storm Motor Boats – a plywood-hulled assault craft powered by a 55-horse power outboard engine. The Germans knew the lake was alive with their enemy now, and without using such craft it would be a near impossibility to get the commandos into position in time for the attack.

With the commandos now holding the islands, Lassen would have liked a further 24 to 48 hours to push out night patrols and to recce the terrain leading up to Comacchio town itself. But he’d been sent unequivocal orders, stressing how crucial it was that the mission proceed with all due haste.

Those orders were unequivocal: come what may Operation Roast was going ahead that night.

Just before setting forth in their canoes, Lassen shared a quiet moment with his close friend, Stud Stellin. Stellin was struck most powerfully by one thing: for the first time ever Lassen chose to speak about what would happen if one of them were killed. It was eerie and unsettling. Stellin, like nearly all the men, had come to view their iconic leader as indestructible; bulletproof; immortal even.

Yet he was left with the strong impression that Lassen had had a premonition that he was going to be killed.

It was just after midnight on 8 April 1945, and time for the first parting of ways. While the main commando assault force would head north-east for the spit, Lassen’s men would continue paddling due north, towards Comacchio town. Their mission was to cause as much chaos, destruction and mayhem as they possibly could on the lake’s northern shore, as a cover for the big push against the spit.

The commandos’ tough Storm Motor Boats were a good deal faster than the paddle-powered canoes. They motored ahead, quickly overhauling the thirty SBS boats. The commandos waved a farewell to the distinctive figure of Lassen in the lead canoe, and he was seen to wave a cheery-seeming
au revoir
. On the surface there wasn’t the slightest sign of the turmoil that the SBS major was feeling inside.

As a major, there was no need for Lassen to go on this mission. He could have chosen to remain in the rear, in overall command. But he sensed the extreme danger that his men were sailing into, and it wasn’t in his nature to let them face it without him. He also believed it was his duty as a commander to be at the head of his patrol, leading by example.

Gradually, the raiders’ last landfall, Casone Caldiro, faded into the night behind them. The faint rustle of the breeze
ruffled the still waters, reed beds whispering in the impenetrable darkness. It provided just enough sound to mask the dip and drip of the paddles as they flicked through the turbid waters.

One of the greatest risks now was bioluminescence – the natural light that tiny, single-cell aquatic creatures give off whenever they sense movement or danger. With sixty sets of paddles churning the waters of Lake Comacchio, and thirty prows cutting through its surface, the men would have to row as softly as they could, or they risked prompting the distinctive glowing blue-green light that might be visible to the enemy.

Slowly, silently, with barely a flicker of fluorescence, the raiders edged towards Comacchio’s northern shoreline.

Lassen had divided his force into two, with a smaller, separate patrol being commanded by Stud Stellin. Each unit was to hit a different stretch of shoreline on the fringes of Comacchio town, so as to give the impression that a larger force was in action.

Lassen planned to land his force some 3,000 yards from the town itself, and advance up the road leading into it. The route lay across a raised embankment fringed by deep water on both sides, so there would be precious little cover to mask their advance. Without the benefit of any recces, Lassen had little idea what defences the German might have sited along the road, so they would be fighting all but blind.

As the canoes crept closer to the shore, the tension rippled back and forth across his patrol. The lead canoe nudged into the soft mud at the lakeside, and Lassen leapt out to drag it
further ashore. To left and right shadowy figures were doing likewise. Boats hastily made fast, each man grabbed his weapon. Lassen mustered them in the cover of a ditch.

So far so good: at least they’d made landfall without being detected. Lassen started the advance, creeping through the stillness with Fred Green, a passable Italian-speaker at his side. Fred was to yell out the cover story if they were challenged. They’d made about 500 yards when a cry rang out through the darkness.

‘
Chi va la?
’ – Who goes there?

‘
Pescatori sulla nostra strada di casa!
’ Green yelled back.

This was the agreed response – fishermen on our way home. It was the best they could think of, but with Comacchio boasting only barely edible eels for the catching, it was a decidedly thin cover story. Green had to repeat it several times before whoever was manning the forward guard post seemed to understand. There were some yells in German back down the road towards the town, after which the voice cried out in Italian again.

‘
Veni qui!
’ – Come here.

Green had no option but to step forward onto the road. The instant he did so a long tongue of flame stabbed out of the night, as a machine-gun nest positioned behind the guard post opened fire. Green and Lassen dived for the only possible cover – the slope leading into the water to the nearest side of the road.

What sounded like a fearsome
Maschinengewehr
42 ‘Spandau’ poured down a torrent of bullets, which ricocheted horribly off the road. The MG42 could fire twice the rate of rounds of any equivalent Allied machine gun. So rapid was the rate of fire the human ear couldn’t distinguish between each bullet, the distinctive
continuous
brrrrr
of the weapon lending it the nickname ‘Hitler’s buzz saw’.

To Lassen and Green’s rear agonized cries rent the darkness, revealing that some at least of the ‘buzz saw’s’ rounds had found their target. Unbeknown to them, veteran raider Fred Crouch had just been killed. His dark premonitions of his own death had proved well-founded.

Lassen knew it was time for decisive action or they were finished – pinned down and unable either to advance or retreat. It was so dark that a man lying prone on the ground could barely be seen. He crawled forward, reached for a pair of grenades, and threw first one and then another at the bunker in which the Spandau was positioned. The moment the second grenade exploded he rushed forward and sprayed the position with fire, killing the machine-gunners at close quarters.

Four enemy lay dead at his feet, but the volume of fire just kept growing. Further up the road were two more MG42 bunkers, with a third set to one side. Each was placed slightly higher than the one in front, so they could put down fire in unison. The road was being raked by storms of lead, 7.62mm rounds snapping and buzzing all around like demented hornets. The only way to avoid getting hit was to keep down by the water, but that didn’t offer much of a route to advance.

With the bunkers firing in unison, it meant that six Spandaus were in action against Lassen’s patrol. It was murder out in the open. But that didn’t stop the Danish Viking. Lassen rose again. Sprinting ahead, somehow he reached the next bunker without getting hit. Again, he hurled grenades in through the gun-slit. There was a punching blast, fire and smoke billowing out of the
narrow opening, followed by the strangled screams of the dying and wounded inside.

Two more fearsome Spandau machine guns had just been put out of action, and for a brief moment the guns on that road leading into Comacchio town fell silent.

Lassen’s voice rose above the quiet, yelling to his men. ‘Forward! Forward, you bastards!’

Shadowy figures rushed up to join him. Two men were dragged out of that last bunker injured but alive. Both were Russians who’d been press-ganged into the German army. They were sent back to the boats as prisoners, under guard. But as Lassen led his men forward, so the darkness to their front erupted into blinding points of burning light.

Flares burst in the sky, their intense illumination throwing the road into harsh light and shadow. The moment the raiders were pinned under their glare, the firing recommenced from up ahead, another of Lassen’s fellows being blown off his feet in a hail of bullets. Wounded men fell to the roadside, from where those who were able continued to fire into the machine-gun nests that had them so horribly pinned down.

*

Out on the lake, Stud Stellin could see just how serious Lassen’s position had become. But with more flares being fired every minute, there was no way he could risk bringing his canoes in to their intended landing point. They’d be doing so under the full glare of the flares, and he and his men would get blown out of the water.

Stellin tried to get his patrol into land by ascending a high dyke that formed one side of the shore-side road, but almost
immediately they came under blistering fire from the hyper-alert German sentries. As probing bursts reached out to menace the forward-most canoes, Stellin made the toughest decision that he had ever been forced to take. He ordered his patrol to turn around and head back the way they had come, making for Casone Caldiro once more.

*

Ashore, three of Lassen’s force lay dead, and many more were injured. But at this stage even sounding the retreat would prove disastrous. There was no way to fall back in safety, when facing the withering fire of a pair of MG42s Spandaus. Lassen crawled back to his nearest men and grabbed some spare grenades. He reorganized those still able to fight. He got them into the only cover there was, half-submerged in the water, and he briefed them to put down a barrage of fire once he gave the word.

That done, he turned back to the battle. He had with him two volunteers – Sean O’Reilly and a Sergeant-Major Stephenson – and together they aimed to take out the last Spandau positions. The three men belly-crawled ahead under a murderous hail of bullets, a slight rise in the road giving them only limited cover from the fire.

They continued to worm their way forwards, and when they were within range for his exceptional throwing arm, Lassen let fly with grenades – O’Reilly and Stephenson passing over theirs, so the Dane could hurl those as well.

The last explosion echoed across the flaming waters, and a lonely cry floated out from the darkness: ‘
Kamerad! Kamerad!
’ – friend. Moments later a torn fragment of ghostly cloth was hung out of the bunker’s opening – the white flag of surrender.

Lassen told Stephenson and O’Reilly to stay where they were. He rose to a crouch and scuttled forward, moving cautiously as he approached his third enemy machine-gun post of the night. He stopped a few yards short of the white flag, and in German he ordered whoever was alive in there to come out. The only answer that came was a savage burst of machine-gun fire. Even as he fell, Lassen threw his last grenade, lobbing it in through the gun-slit opening.

The explosion ripped apart the bunker, and the two Spandaus sited inside it finally fell silent. From his position a few dozen yards back, Stephenson had heard that staccato burst of rounds, followed by the answering grenade blast. As the echoes died away, a long, ringing silence fell across that bloodied road, one that seemed to go on and on for ever. And then he heard it – a distinctive cry for help.

‘SBS! SBS! Major Lassen wounded!’

Stephenson dashed forward. He found the Dane lying on his back, wounded. He knelt, and lifted Lassen half-up, getting him braced against his knee.

‘Who is it?’ Lassen asked, dazedly.

‘Stephenson. Steve. It’s me.’

‘I’m wounded, Steve. I’m going to die. Try and get the others out.’

‘No, no – we’ll be all right,’ Stephenson tried to counter. ‘Key thing is, can you walk?’

There was no answer. Stephenson tried to lift Lassen onto his shoulders, but he was a dead weight, and Stephenson found his foot snagged in some loose wire. He cursed. He needed help.

‘Sean!’ he cried. ‘Sean! Andy’s injured!’

It was then that he realised that O’Reilly too was hurt. The indestructible Irishman – without whom Lassen was barely willing to go into battle – had been shot through the shoulder by that last Spandau burst. Bone and muscle had been torn to pieces, and O’Reilly was losing a great deal of blood. Stephenson tried calling for help a few more times, but to his rear all was darkness and confusion.

Stephenson knew Lassen couldn’t walk, and he alone couldn’t manage to carry him. He felt around in his side pouch, grabbed a morphine tablet, and fed it into Lassen’s mouth.

‘What is it?’ Lassen asked. His voice was weakening.

‘It’s morphia. Don’t worry, Andy. You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you back to the boats.’

Lassen shook his head. ‘It’s no use, Steve. I’m dying. Don’t go any further. Leave me and try to get away with the others.’

Pretty much the moment he’d uttered those last few words, Anders Lassen lost consciousness. Stephenson felt a presence behind him. Some of the others had made it forward. He tried to get them to help him lift their commander, but one of them restrained him.

He put a hand on Stephenson’s shoulder. ‘Steve, the major’s dead. He’s dead. He’s gone.’

Stephenson and the others carried Lassen’s bloodied form some way down the causeway, until they again came under devastating bursts of fire. They decided they had no option but to abandon him. Lassen had ordered Stephenson to get out and save whoever he could, and in order to do so they had to leave his body behind.

*

It was shortly after three o’clock that morning – 9 April 1945 – when the first of Lassen’s patrol made it back to Casone Caldiro. Four of those who had set out were dead: Corporal Ted Roberts, Fusilier Wally Hughes, Fred Crouch and Major Anders Lassen. Many more were missing. Of the wounded, Sean O’Reilly was in the worst shape. He’d stuck with his commander to the last, and it had very nearly cost him his life.

Many of the old dependables – Porter Jarrell, Dick Holmes, Jack Nicholson, Sammy Trafford – had survived, but few would ever fully recover from losing Lassen. They were in shock. No one was able to sleep. They sat around talking about the incredible courage of their commander, who had fought on even after he was mortally wounded.

None of them could believe that he was truly gone. When Stud Stellin learned what had happened he refused to countenance that it could be true. The fact that he had failed to get his force ashore made Stellin even more inconsolable.

*

Anders Lassen died a few months short of his twenty-fifth birthday, less than a month before the end of the war in Europe. Operation Roast was the last mission to be undertaken by the SBS in the Second World War. Once across Comacchio and through the Argenta Gap the British Eighth Army thundered north, reaching Venice by late April. General Clark’s Fifth Army made similar spectacular progress in the west.

On 28 April a high-ranking German officer arrived at Field Marshal Alexander’s headquarters, to discuss terms for surrender. On 8 May 1945 the war in Europe was declared over. For his part in Operation Roast, Lassen’s final action,
he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. He is the only member of Britain’s SAS ever to have won that award.

The VC citation states: