Commandos and Rangers of World War II Read online

  COMMANDOS AND RANGERS

  OF WORLD WAR II

  James Ladd

  First published by Macdonald and Jane’s Ltd. In 1978

  Copyright © James Ladd 1978

  This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books

  30 Great Guildford Street,

  Borough, SE1 0HS

  The right of James Ladd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Preface

  CHAPTER 1 - The Commando Idea—1940

  CHAPTER 2 - General Reconnaissance and Sabotage

  CHAPTER 3 - Assault Pilotage

  CHAPTER 4 - Guerrilla Warfare: Australian Independent Companies

  CHAPTER 5 - A Perfect Flank Guard

  CHAPTER 6 - Raiders in the Pacific

  CHAPTER 7 - Rangers in Africa

  CHAPTER 8 - Mediterranean Shock Troops

  CHAPTER 9 - Through Italy to the - Balkans

  CHAPTER 10 - Reorganisation and Strategy

  CHAPTER 11 - D-Day in Normandy and North West Europe

  CHAPTER 12 - Burma And The Small Operations Group

  CHAPTER 13 - Philippine Adventure

  CHAPTER 14 - Achievements And Limitations

  APPENDICES

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  by Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, PC, GCM, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, FRS

  This book tells the story of the men who carried out the raids in World War II, mostly in the Landing Craft described by James Ladd in his book Assault from the Sea 1939/45.

  Armed conflict invariably brings forth acts of great courage, but I believe that nobody showed the superb quality of our fighting men better than the volunteers for the highly dangerous task of raiding enemy held strong points from the sea.

  When I relieved Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes in charge of Combined Operations these volunteers had had their title finally settled as Commandos. I extended the entry to include our European allies, Norwegians, French, Belgians, Dutch, Danish and Polish in No. 10 Commando. We eventually recruited some Germans who were bitterly opposed to Hitler and his Nazis, and they became X Troop of 10 Commando. These men of X Troop showed quite exceptional courage by risking death by torture if captured and identified as Germans and for this reason we created new English identities for them.

  When General Marshal visited me in the Combined Operations Headquarters in April 1942 we discussed, among other matters, the highly successful Commando Training Centre at Achnacarry. He was so impressed he asked if he could send American soldiers over to be trained there in the raiding technique. These American soldiers became the 1st United States Ranger Battalion.

  I was proud when President Roosevelt agreed that I should present the first award for gallantry won by the U.S. Army in Europe in World War II to Corporal Koons of the 1st Ranger battalion. He won the British Military Medal with No. 4 Commando at Dieppe in August 1942. King George VI gave me the authority to make the presentation at a large U.S. Military Parade under General George Patton at Casablanca in January 1943.

  On two occasions I summoned men who had volunteered for particularly hazardous but important small scale raids to my Headquarters and warned them that the odds were heavily against more than about two men in a dozen getting back alive, for those captured would be summarily shot by personal command of Hitler who had issued special orders against the Commandos. I then gave them the chance to withdraw their names and let others volunteer to take their place before revealing the objectives. No one withdrew their name. Nearly all were lost. I felt quite emotionally overcome by their courage as I wished them good luck.

  Today we are used to the daring exploits of 007, James Bond, but the story of these gallant raiders, Commandos, Rangers and those associated with them, is even more exciting and gripping for these were real men facing real live dangers. It is time their story was told and James Ladd has done it well.

  Preface

  ‘A steel hand from the sea’ is Sir Winston Churchill’s description of Commandos. For they plucked the enemy from his seaboard defences in the early days of World War II, and later became—with their close allies, the American Rangers—the spearheading force in amphibious assaults.

  Throughout their existence these elite troops were controversial with arguments against the concentration of talent in Special Forces that rumbles on in the 1970s, but in the 1940s their operations heartened their fellow countrymen through freedom’s darkest hours. But discomfort and confusion these raiders caused to their enemies is seen in the history of German dispositions along the coasts of Europe in 1944 and the Japanese reactions to Pacific raids. Commandos probed the German defences north of the Arctic Circle, fought alongside partisans in the Balkans, swam ashore on secret missions against the enemies’ Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific coasts, and were in action in almost every theatre of the war. Rangers saw action in Africa, through Italy and on the beaches of Normandy, landed in the Philippines, and fought alongside the Commandos on occasions.

  Trained to fight without the support of artillery and other heavy weapons, the early commandos depended entirely on their own resources and skill with small arms. But the changing nature of the war as it moved from coastal raids to continental campaigns led to the reorganisation of the Commando and Ranger forces as flank guards and spearheaders of invasion landings: a role involving all the complexities of amphibious assault with the coordination of fire support from ships and tactical air strikes against beach defences, as the later chapters show. The raiding traditions continued, however, in the sabotage parties of the Special Boat Section, in assault pilotage reconnaissance, and other special work of Commando units in the van of invasions.

  The fighting skills of these superb infantry are explained by examples showing their talents at all levels of command. In the appendices are details of their organisations, weaponry, and equipment, with brief details of each unit’s history. Their story unfolds to show what sort of men they were, something of their robust humour, their tactics and ingenious use of conventional weapons, their achievements and limitations. A story of courage and tenacity dedicated to all who served with these Special Forces in hope that their example will not be forgotten, and to the defenders—some gallant, many tenacious in their resistance on the beaches.

  James D. Ladd

  London

  March 1977

  EUROPE AND AFRICA: SEPTEMBER 1939 TO DECEMBER 1940

  After German forces invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the British and French declared war on 3 September, and in mid-September the Russians occupied the eastern Polish provinces. Through the winter of 1939–40 there followed the ‘phoney war’ of patrolling on the Franco-German border and leaflet raids by Allied bombers. But in Finland a Russian invasion was held until March 1940, when the main Finnish defence line was breached. British and French plans to send a force of 100,000 men to aid the Finns were deferred when Norway and Sweden refused to allow the Allies to cross their countries.

  The war at sea, fought mainly between convoys and U-boats, led the Germans to include Norway in their plans for the domination of Europe, and they needed the port of Narvik (north Norway) for Swedish iron-ore shipments. Allied forces, including men raised for the intended Finnish Campaign, landed in three areas including Narvik to fight separate battles rather than a c
oordinated campaign, but without adequate air strength the Allies could not prevent the German occupation of Norway being virtually complete before the Germans’ main thrust in the west. The Swedes remained neutral with an element of pro-German sentiment among their people.

  The main German offensive began on 10 May 1940, rapidly overrunning Belgium and Holland, the momentum of its success carrying the Germans by 24 May to within 15 miles (24km) of Dunkirk on the French Channel coast, splitting the Allied armies. Some 330,000 Allied troops escaped through this port when Hitler stopped the German advance for several days.

  On 10 June the Italians invaded southern France and by the time France surrendered (23 June), British forces were preparing to meet attacks from the Italian African colonies—Tripoli, Libya, Somaliland, and Ethiopia. These east African lands soon fell to the British, but in the deserts of North Africa the war ebbed and flowed for two years.

  At home the British suffered their first serious air raid on London docks (7 September 1940). Despite the loss of nearly all their guns and tanks in France they prepared to fight off a German invasion. They convoyed food and weapons across the Atlantic and reinforced their North African armies.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Commando

  Idea—1940

  Feet firmly on the ground, the stocky Private Donkin methodically swung his tommy-gun, firing from left to right. Some 15 Germans, startled by his sudden appearance in the doorway, were cut down. In another action, the speed marchers stretched their stride to cover the last 6 of 20 desert miles after a sharp night action. Ignoring their thirst and the ache of hunger after two nights and a day in the enemy’s hills, they pushed on, fearing his tanks might encircle them. Elsewhere a lone swimmer fought off a chilling exhaustion, his senses dulled by three hours of silent reconnaissance swimming and crawling among the enemy’s beach defences. He felt pangs of doubt: would his fellow canoeist see the flickering torch among the waves before an enemy patrol boat caught sight of it?

  Men in these situations need more than courage; they need a rare determination, extreme physical fitness, and great skill in their profession of raiding, as this commando, these rangers, and the Royal Navy navigator turned canoeist showed in typical actions of the Commando and American Ranger units. In their amphibious war were all the hazards of land patrols and raids, with the added uncertainty of a seaborne approach all too easily foundering on an adverse change in the weather or some unexpected shoal.

  In preparing for a raid on a beach there was less opportunity to see the lie of the land than before conventional military raids. At best the amphibious raiders might have panoramic shots from aerial reconnaissance, or be given a flight over the target beach. Neither of these showed the sea-level view from an assault craft, when the ‘white house’ reference point for a beach could be hidden by trees. From a canoe the view was even more restricted: the looming hinterland was there, but was the beach below it the right landfall? Or was this the bay with a mined shore west of the intended landing point? This was just one of the many problems in getting ashore.

  The general reconnaissance raid, mounted to find out what enemy defences if any stood along a stretch of coast, developed into the assault pilotage surveys of 1943 and 1944, secretly landing for specific intelligence of beach conditions and defences. Would the exit road from the beach not only carry tanks but could a matting road be laid beside this route to carry wheeled vehicles? Were the peat workings of Roman times now impassable mud holes behind that beach? Would this island’s coral make an airstrip for fighters? Whatever the answers, the enemy must not discover these questions were being asked, for this would give away the landing areas of a future invasion. The assault pilotage parties, therefore, carried other people’s secrets which could betray an invading army.

  Sabotage raids were no less difficult to execute than recces, although these raiders carried no one else’s secrets. Throughout all these Commando and Ranger operations, however, the raiders wore military uniform, although often without their commando shoulder flashes for reasons that will become obvious.

  As the war moved towards amphibious invasions and a clash of continental armies, the Commandos’ numbers increased but there were proportionately fewer involved in small-scale raids. The strength of a full Commando varied with some reorganisation from time to time (see Appendix 2) but in November 1942 the establishment was 24 officers and 435 other ranks (enlisted men). At other times in action there were up to 630 men in a Commando. Each Commando had a headquarters and several Troops, the equivalent of platoons in infantry companies, the usual arrangement being six Troops, one of which was—after late 1942—the Heavy Weapons Troop armed with medium machine-guns and heavy mortars. A Commando was therefore not unlike an infantry battalion but had only five small rifle or fighting Troops by comparison with the battalion’s four companies, each with over 120 all ranks. At full strength a rifle Troop with its three officers ‘was handled like a strong platoon’, to quote Major General J.L. Moulton, CB, DSO, OBE who in 1944 was the colonel commanding 48 Royal Marine Commando. When the 60-strong Troop was reduced through casualties to the 38 or so of an infantry platoon, their handling was very similar. However, the official composition of these rifle Troops, each having two 30-man Sections with their sub-sections of 15 men, was not strictly followed; and a number of Royal Marine Commandos deployed five rifle sub-Sections rather than two Sections and the headquarters in each Troop.

  There was a higher proportion of officers and NCO’s in Special Forces than in regular formations (a term used in this book to distinguish Special Forces from other units), particularly in the specialised reconnaissance and raiding parties. But the essence of Commando organisation was its flexibility, and a Heavy Weapons Troop, for example, might be strengthened from its established two Vickers machine-guns and two 3 inch (76mm) mortars to twice that number for a particular operation. (Metric and Imperial measure comparison of all weapon sizes in this book are mathematical and do not take account of slight variations in different countries’ measurements of bore sizes, etc.)

  The choice of target beaches could be critical. General Holland M. Smith, USMC, has written of one Pacific raid that ‘it was a spectacular performance by (the) 2nd Marine Raider Battalion but it was a pure piece of folly. The raid had no useful military purpose and served only to alert the Japanese … the intensive fortifications of Tarawa dates from that raid.’ Although speaking of the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific, where the Raiders had landed on Makin Island in August 1942 leaving nine men behind to an undeserved fate, the General’s stricture could apply to several amphibious operations. When the US Marine Corps’ 2 Division stormed ashore at Tarawa in November 1943, a third of the 5,000 marines landing on the first day were casualties because the Japanese were well prepared and the tide played fateful tricks over the reefs.

  There are arguments for suggesting the landings at Tarawa were unnecessary, much in the way the Dieppe raid on the French coast the previous summer is considered by some historians to have been a waste of many Canadian and other lives. Yet in Europe, as in the Pacific, a great deal of the art of amphibious warfare was learnt from these two operations. The Allies modified their strategy, as readers will see in chapter 11, while the Germans—satisfied they had repulsed a possible invasion attempt—did not modify their posture defending major ports and paid the price in defeat at Normandy. In 1940, however, there were many lessons to be learnt, for little thought had been given to major amphibious assault. The British hardly conceived the French could be defeated and few Americans expected to be embroiled in a global war. What work was done in the United Kingdom on raiding and amphibious operations had been mainly carried out by the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre (ISTDC) and the Royal Marines’ Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation (MNBDO), the Royal Navy being responsible for amphibious operations. The Centre—with raids in mind—had devised plans for a relatively silent, low silhouette landing craft that became the LCA (Landing Craft, Assault), and produced some oth
er worthwhile ideas, including methods for supplying troops by air. The MNBDO, more concerned with landing heavy guns for harbour defences, did not include an assault force to capture a naval base because economies prevented this planned development. The US Marine Corps was responsible for the United States interwar plans for amphibious operations; and although they did a number of landing exercises in the 1930s, not until 1940 were they joined in these by the US Army’s 1 Division.

  The British, in late 1940, began to integrate command for all three services deployed in what became Combined Operations. (Allied planners, however, used this term to describe a campaign by forces of several countries and ‘Joint Operations’ for actions involving three services.) Combined operations became the commando’s mêtier and he would become as accustomed to calling up a battleship’s gunnery officer or the leader of a flight of rocket firing Typhoon aircraft as he might be radioing for mortar fire from his own Heavy Weapons Troop. The call to the Navy or RAF might be made indirectly through Forward Observation Officers or others but the effect was the same, if not more devastating.

  Long before they reached this degree of sophistication, however, in the main stream of Commando forces were spawned many small fry. The administrative problems were solved, for the early Commando units were without ‘a tail’ of cooks, cobblers, and others so essential in keeping a fighting unit in the field. At least sufficient transport was found to carry these Special Forces from one action to another in a land battle, a far cry from 1940 when one or two trucks might be the only vehicles a Commando had on its strength. Transport nevertheless remained a major problem, and as Commandos’ equipment for raiding roles did not include those infantryman’s delights of defensive wire and mines—not, that is, in the normal course—they always had problems in battles of attrition. Nevertheless, as their story does not follow the usual path of military organisation, it was not particularly surprising to find later commandos coming ashore with anti-tank mines strapped to their equipment. However, they were not normally set up for the heavy infantryman’s tactics of prolonged defence before a steady advance, although they were misused in these roles at times. They were nimble-footed, lightly equipped for the in-and-out thrust over terrain where others might not be expected to beach or march. But all the speed of foot is no substitute for an anti-tank gun to beat off armoured attack, ‘nor does a Green Beret make you bullet-proof’ (again to quote General Moulton).