Back in early 1942, British Combined Operations was confronted with a grave problem. The problem was this: German blockade runners carrying valuable war cargoes were eluding allied submarine and air attack by hugging the French, Belgian, and Dutch coasts. Could Combine Ops think of a way of ferreting them out?
Various measures were suggested. Major H. G. Hasler, O.B.E., a Royal Marine Commando with a record of expert sabotage work in the Norwegian campaign, came up with the boldest idea. If the blockade runners were hard to catch on the run, why not go in and get them in their key hideaway at Bordeaux?
Hasler proposed that twelve Marines in six light, limpet-carrying canoes do the job. Since the canoes could not submerge,* the raiders would run by night and hide by day. Surprise and smallness would be their chief assets.
Rear Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, said splendid. The project was christened Frankton, with Lord Louis as godparent, and plans were soon underway.
Training was long, Scottish, and arduous. Of the thirty Marines originally selected, twelve were hand-picked by Hasler for the final team. If each had received a degree at the end of the course, it would have read: frogman of the first order, master of the delicate science of small explosives, long-range silent canoeist.
Hasler was leader in the old, exemplary sense of the word. He could do everything better than anyone else; he never asked anything of his men that he could not do himself. As for the craft, they were beautiful cockles, fifteen feet long, with flat, plywood bottoms and canvas sides. But could twelve resolute men negotiate ninety miles of busy estuary and river, both closely patrolled, attach their limpets, and make good their escape? Just possibly, night tests in the Thames and off Portsmouth showed. But escape would have to be overland by ones and twos. To expect to slip downriver after so brazen an attack was a little too unlikely even for Hasler and his Royal Marines.
By December of 1942 he was ready. On the world scene things were brightening a little. Rommel was backpedalling toward Tripoli. U. S. Marines were mopping up a blood-soaked bit of jungle known as Guadalcanal, and Adolf Hitler still had a mirage named Stalingrad on his mind.
With somewhat more immediate objectives in mind, Hasler and his team board H.M. submarine Tuna. They have with them their six cockles: Catfish, Crayfish, Coalfish, Conger, Cuttlefish, and Cachelot. Flagship of this oddest of all small flotillas is Catfish, for she is Hasler’s craft, with a husky Marine by the name of W. E. Sparks as stern paddle.
Tuna heads for the Bay of Biscay. Six hours out of port, Hasler calls his men together and tells them their destination at last. He breaks out a large-scale map, allots specific targets, and rehearses the escape drill.
“I want you all to know,” says Hasler, in his friendly, serious way, “that if any man thinks this thing is too much for him, he can speak up now.” No one speaks, but they all grin back. It is far too good a show to miss.
Hasler takes inventory.
“Every man have his compass?”
“Aye, aye, sir,”, they answer in chorus.
“Limpets? Chemical fuses? Aerial photos? Escape maps? Sten guns? Automatics?mKnives? Grenades? Canoe capes? Bird whistles? Camouflage cream? Badges of rank and regimental insignia?”
Each man answers in the affirmative after checking his gear. The last item is especially important: badges and insignia have been sewn inside the hooded canoeing jackets. They may just possibly save the wearer from the firing squad if caught. But all of them know that behind-the-lines operators can expect short shrift at best.
Fifteen miles southwest of the Gironde Estuary, Tuna breaks surface. It is eight o’clock on the moonless night of December 7, and it is very cold.
Cachelot is the first casualty. In launching her from the submarine, she takes an 18-inch slash below the waterline. There is only one thing to do. Hasler orders her crew back aboard the submarine and scuttles the craft with a longer slash.
So where there were six craft, now there are five. In line ahead Catfish, Crayfish, Coalfish, Conger, and Cuttlefish vanish like shadows into the murky night.
Soon they spot the yellow light of the lighthouse on the Pointe de Grave on the southern side of the estuary. Tilting their double blades the men dig to port, dig to starboard, with a will. Dip-swing, dip-swing, dip-swing goes the rhythm of the paddles.
Two things happen at once. The raiding party raises the bank of the estuary, gray against black. And they hear a distant roaring sound that seems to grow louder. Hasler identifies the sound. It is a tide race. Before any uncertainty can communicate itself to his men, he makes his decision. His hand signals forward. The boats will meet for muster on the other side of the race. The five craft plunge into the white inferno. Ten minutes of flailing paddles and spinning cockles and the lead boat is through. Then, one by one, Crayfish, Conger and Cuttlefish appear. Of Wallace and Hewitt in Coalfish there is no trace. Hasler and Sparks plunge back into the white water, their bird whistles mewing like gulls in the agreed signal. Now they are battling the six-knot tide as well as the boiling water. No welcome gull cry answers theirs. Coalfish has vanished.
And so there are four.
They dare not linger. It is nearly midnight and soon the flood tide will slack. Hasler gives the signal to press on, keeping close to the west bank. Within minutes, a second tide race capsizes Conger. Again Hasler and Sparks turn back to help. The craft cannot be righted so Sparks, on orders, holes her with his knife and she slips under. But what to do with Sheard and Moffat, helpless now, one clinging to the bow of Catfish, one to the bow of Cuttlefish? Hasler steers for land, making heavy weather of it. Cuttlefish follows, equally weighed down. A hundred yards offshore Hasler does what must be done. He explains to Sheard and Moffat that they are on their own now. They take it well, shake hands all around, and strike out for shore.
And so there are three.
Time is the essence, for dawn is near. By now the favoring tide is less strong, and the major obstacle of the patrol craft still lies ahead. Catfish and Cuttlefish rejoin Crayfish and the three race upriver at a flailing, backbreaking pace. Half an hour later they make out the blue light in the bows of the patrol craft. But two other gray shapes loom behind her, and the gap between them and the landing jetty at Le Verdon is only seventy yards. They had hoped to slip by one craft undetected. Three is an unforeseen hazard. Hasler must choose: either to run the gauntlet between ships and jetty or make a wide detour to the east bank. Failing tide and flushing dawn-sky decide for him. Catfish will shoot the narrow gap. If no alarm is raised, Crayfish and Cuttlefish will follow, well-spaced.
Low in their cockpits, each using one blade only now for their burst of speed, Hasler and Sparks sprint for the gap. They drive past the first ship and are abreast of the second when a signal lamp aboard her starts chattering to shore. Figuring they have been spotted, Hasler and Sparks brace themselves for the probing searchlight and the lash of machine gun bullets. But nothing more happens. Incredibly they are past the third patrol craft at last. Even the signal light has stopped blinking by now.
Fifty yards farther on they stop at last and gulp the night air. While they are still gulping, Lavers and Mills come surging out of the graying blackness. Of Cuttlefish, last in line, they see nothing. Now all thoughts and prayers are with the missing pair. Still Cuttlefish does not join them. That signal light starts blinking again. They hear a challenging shout. A single shot rips the night. Silence shuts down abruptly, oppressive now and full of waning hope. Whether McKinnon and Conway have been sunk, or have turned gallantly away—after being spotted—to mislead the patrol craft, the alarm has surely been raised by now. The weapon of secrecy is gone.
And so there are two, where once there were six.
Bone-weary and sick at heart, the four survivors—Hasler and Sparks, Lavers and Mills—press on upstream. The situation looks bad to hopeless. The alarm is raised. Two-thirds of their force is gone already. Bordeaux is still nearly seventy miles away. And their enemy, the December dawn, is coldly flooding the eastern sky. But Hasler is not the man to indulge in despair. He gives the familiar signal and sets a brisk pace.
As the day brightens and the river turns to blue, they come to an island. Not an ideal island, for there is not much cover, but they cannot be too particular about where to picnic for the day. They drag their cockles across the mud and into the reeds. There they shake out their camouflage nets and crawl under them.
But sleep is not yet to be. Hasler, the lookout, curses a good round Anglo-Saxon curse which rouses the others. They look where he is pointing and see a fleet of fishing boats bearing directly down on the island. The four scatter for better cover. From the shore side they hear voices and laughter. The island, it seems, is no island, but connects by causeway with the mainland. Across the causeway, laughing and skylarking, comes a crowd of women and children to join the fishermen, now beaching.
So it is to be the end after all. There is no chance of not being seen. Still, Hasler chooses the bold course.
“Bon jour,” he says in his guttural, slightly Germanic French. “Permettez que je vous presente mes amis. Nous sommes tous des soldats anglais.”
One of the fishermen shrugs.
“How can one be sure?” he asks, skeptical as only a Gascon can be.
“Please believe. Please don’t mention seeing us.”
“How can one be sure?”
“We are on a special mission. You must believe us.”
“How can one be sure?”
The other fishermen are inclined to be friendly; their women fearful and suspicious. Cigarettes and chocolates help. Finally, after a half hour in which Hasler’s eloquence is taxed to the full, the whole group moves off, promising not to give the raiding party away to the enemy.
Hasler resumes his interrupted watch. Lavers, Mills, and Sparks slide into sleep. They would probably have slept less well, even in their exhausted state, had they known what the survivors learnt many months later: the extra two patrol craft were part of a full-dress rehearsal of the Gironde defenses. German radar had even picked up the Tuna when she surfaced in the Bay. The whole area is now fully alerted.
Yet the day passes quietly enough. River traffic seems normal. A plane or two drones overhead, too high to be searching. At dusk the little camp comes alive. Craft and arms are checked. Hasler briefs his men on the night’s objective. To make up for the slow start they must put at least 22 miles behind them. Hot tea is served, and hope again runs high. Twilight comes and with it the running of the tide across the mud flats. Squelching and slogging along, they drag their cockles for nearly a quarter of a mile to where the river is. At last they launch. Sweating, they climb into the cockpits. With powerful strokes Hasler and Sparks send Catfish shooting diagonally across stream; Crayfish is not far behind.
The plan is to hug the east bank, which their air maps tell them is higher and so gives better cover. The night is freeezing cold and very dark. In seven hours the two cockles cover the 22 miles, zigzagging across river when necessary for better protection. The flashing lights which mark the shipping channel help to guide them. Once a convoy of seven ships goes by, heading upstream with a wash and a rush, rocking the cockles with its passing.
“More targets for us, boys,” Hasler observes. Reassured, the men laugh and press on. By the time their objective is reached— the marshy area opposite the Medoc vineyards—the seawater is freezing on the cockpit covers, the men are drowsy and almost numb with cold. But Frankton is on schedule again. After a meal of tinned meat, biscuits, chocolate, and compressed fruit, they dig in for the day.
Toward noon a fighter plane zooms them so low that they can see the swastikas on the wings and the pilot’s face peering down at them. Other planes follow, beating both shores for stray Britishers. They know for certain now that the dragnet has been thrown.
But the day passes without further incident and again with dusk they are waterborne. That night is memorable for one near- miss. A gray motorboat, showing no lights, goes hurtling by them so close there was no time to hide. Hurtling by at twenty knots on some mysterious mission, the motorboat acts as a powerful depressant. As the frail canoes rock like corks in her wake, the four men wonder once again how they could have failed to be spotted.
Dawn comes suddenly, catching them short of the Bee d’Ambes, which is the low tongue of land at the place where the Gironde Estuary divides into the rivers Garonne and Dordogne. They are forced to beach where they are, a small, flat, sandy island with almost no cover. Hasler makes a quick reconnaissance, comes back at speed with some unsettling news: the small island is a German ack-ack position. Jerries by the dozen are swarming around the gun site.
Again they shove off and find somewhat better cover in the tall grass at the south end of the island. There, with double sentries posted, they sweat out their worst day, within sight and sound and smell of the enemy. Sitting in their boats, with the camouflage nets over them, they wait for the miracle of darkness to come. But time it seems has died. The day that started like a rocket has no end. They watch a German work party digging a ditch, and envy the men their freedom of movement. They smell cigarette smoke, and the urge to smoke is almost unbearable. Hasler doles out some rum and water. Occasionally they nibble on a biscuit. Toward noon a small, cold rain begins to fall, adding to their discomfort. Sometime in the afternoon they find themselves surrounded by a herd of cows. The cows study them patiently, uncuriously. Finally they wander away.
At last it is dusk. By now the days and nights are beginning to form a pattern all their own. Time as such has become meaningless, something to be measured in freezing limbs, close escapes, cubes of chocolate, and cups of boiling tea, rather than in hours and minutes. That night they enter the Garonne. The indelible moment is when they first see the pale glow of the city itself against the night sky. Bordeaux is within reach at last! There are other signs of civilization, too—a railway along the east bank, the sounds of motor traffic faintly from the west.
Four hours of paddling brings them to a jetty, blazing with light, where two fat merchantmen are loading. The sight is heartening. They know from their maps that they are at Bassens, some three miles below Bordeaux proper. They also know that, across from the jetty, there is a field of tall grass where they can hole up if necessary and make ready for the final phase.
It is in fact high time to go to cover. They dare not paddle past the jetty in the blaze of the loading lights. Looking for a likely spot, they nose along the opposite bank. Now, at long last, comes a real windfall. The field of grass turns out to be a reedy marsh. And into the marsh runs a three-foot wide creek into which they waste no time in turning. They are almost exactly opposite the jetty, yet perfectly screened by the tall reeds. And the noise from the jetty is such that for once they can even talk in natural voices.
The rest of the night passes in fitful sleep and high excitement. But by daybreak they have grown used to the nearness of the targets. By turns they sleep, more soundly now. They smoke and talk. They eat. They listen to the grunt of the cranes, loading the ships they have come so far to see. To their dismay one of them sails as they watch. Hasler promises other, riper targets. They speculate what the weather will be for their night of nights.
Gray and mizzling all day, the weather is another windfall, for the night when it comes at last is cloudy, with fitful rain and a slight, southerly breeze. The water is flat calm, another asset when it comes to the securing of limpet mines.
At seven they eat their last meal together. Then Hasler says to break out the limpets, of which each canoe has nine. The next hour is pleasantly spent inserting the fuses in their sockets. Hands tremble slightly over the delicate work, but from anticipation not fear. At last both acid bulbs and precautionary percussion caps are secured. The time setting is nine hours.
One final time Hasler briefs his men. The east bank belongs to Lavers and Mills. If necessary they will take their hungry Crayfish right into Bordeaux itself for likely targets. If none are found even there, whatever is tied up at the Bassens jetty is theirs for the sinking. They will scuttle Crayfish not later than 0500, and then escape by land. As for Catfish, the west bank is her hunting ground.
The major cocks his wrist.
“It is now eleven o’clock. Time to get cracking.”
At the entrance to the little creek they part, with mutual good luck's and cheerio’s and promises to meet soon at a favorite Portsmouth pub. Hasler and Sparks turn Catfish briskly to starboard and head for the growing halo of light where the seaport-city lies. In exactly one hour they come to the dock area. They are suddenly in the midst of more ships than they had ever dreamed of, ships by the dozen tied up almost bow-to- stern.
The first one is a tanker. Fussy now, like someone choosing a 'meal at a good restaurant, Hasler shakes his head. Tankers have too many compartments for limpets to do a thorough job. In deep shadow, in the lee of the jetty lights, they work Catfish along the dark, outboard side of the line of ships. Clear to the end of the narrowing basin they go. The major, it seems, wants to read the whole menu before he decides what he is going to have. Finally, on the way back he makes up his mind. The main course is a gray merchantman of some 15,000 tons. Using a magnetic holder, Sparks keeps the canoe firm under her stern. Hasler clicks on three limpets, underwater. He uses a six-foot placing rod they have brought along for just such an eventuality.
Now they come to a big German naval auxiliary (sperrbrecher). They click a limpet on her hull. Suddenly from the deck above comes the clanging of bobnail boots. There is a shout. A dark figure leans over the rail. A beam of light plays on the canvas deck of Catfish, touches the remaining limpets in the cockpit. Hasler and Sparks freeze, bent almost double, and listen to small, metallic sounds on deck, as if the sentry were cocking his rifle. As they crouch, suspended in time, the tide begins to ebb. Gently, firmly, it carries them the length of the ship. The sentry follows them, clanging along the deck above, uncertain now, perhaps not over-bright. Out of the flashlight’s beam at last, Catfish goes to cover under the bow-flares of the sperrbrecher.
It is too good a chance to miss. In that anxious moment, while the puzzled sentry is still flashing his beam aimlessly out over the dark water, they click on two more limpets. Then, still feeling a little naked between the shoulder blades, they sprint for the next target.
They have three limpets left. The final victim is a cargo vessel which they had ignored on the way in. The reason for ignoring her was the fact that a small tanker was tied up outboard of her, making access to the hull difficult. Now, having reached the dessert course, with time and limpets running out, Hasler is less particular. He takes Catfish boldly between the two ships, securing a limpet on the stern of the larger one in passing. There is a bad moment when the ships swing closer at the whim of the tide. Catfish’s plywood bottom groans under the pressure. In a hopeful, hopeless gesture Hasler pushes against the steel walls that seem about to crush them, and Sparks follows suit. But luck rides with them still. The tide drifts the ships apart again. Catfish is able to back out of the trap. Once more, with no waste time, they run between the two ships, placing one limpet to port on the tanker, one to starboard on the bigger ship as they pass.
Then, on the ebbing tide, they shoot downstream as if the devil were after them, as well he may be. Forty minutes later they hear the familiar, wickering cry of a gull. Crayfish materializes out of the murk. In some excitement Lavers explains how their side of the harbor had contained less than prime targets. So, as instructed, they have mined two ships tied up at the Bassens jetty.
Hasler makes a quiet, rather formal little speech. He thanks all three of his men for the job they have done and the rust they have placed in him. Everyone shakes hands. Then Crayfish turns eastward to carry out final orders. Mills waves his paddle in salute as he and Lavers vanish in the darkness, never to be seen again.
Hasler and Sparks scuttle Catfish off the west bank and head inland.
Nine hours later the 18 limpets, well and truly placed, detonate. Results: six ships sunk or so gravely damaged as to be useless for the rest of the war. Frankton is finished, mission accomplished.
The rest is silence and sadness. Lavers and Mills were captured and executed by the Germans. So were five of the other six who had been forced out of the operation in transit. One was drowned. Only Hasler and Sparks came home to tell the tale, working their way through to Gibraltar in five nerve- wracking months.*
The final lesson of Operation Frankton is one of comradeship and of surpassing valor. It contains the very essence of the offensive spirit, proving that nothing is impossible to those who greatly dare.
*The X-Craft, first of the British small submersibles, was not delivered to the Fleet until January. 1943.
*Hasler was made a member of the Distinguished Service Order and Sparks received the Distinguished Service Medal for their part in Operation Frankton.