The Lost Band of Brothers by Tom Keene Read Free Book Online Page B

the bows and decks, but she never showed a sign of misbehaviour and shook herself straight out of everything … She is a marvellous craft. That seems to be about all. Only 1½ hours left of 1940 so I’ll wish you the best of days for 1941. May it see a reunited family again before the year is over and the war a thing of the past.
        Good night and God bless!
        Geoffrey
Notes
       1 .   The Commandos 1940–1946 , 29–30.
       2 .   ‘If I Must Die …’ , Gérard Fournier and André Heintz, 14–15.
       3 .   The Green Beret , Hilary St. George Saunders, 21.
       4 .  WO 106/1740.
       5 .   Green Beret , 21.
       6 .   The Commandos , 34, citing PREM 3/330/9.
       7 .   The War in the Channel Islands , Winston G. Ramsey, 133.
       8 .  Ibid., 136.
       9 .   The Watery Maze , Bernard Fergusson, 49.
    10 .   March Past , 187.
    11 .   The Second World War , Vol. 2, Winston S. Churchill, 412.
    12 .   Geoffrey , 51.
    13 .  Ibid., 50.
    14 .   Anders Lassen , 21–2.
    15 .  BBC Henrietta.
    16 .   Geoffrey , 54.
    17 .  Ibid., 55.

15
Loss and Condolence
    When Appleyard reported back to COHQ in London on the disaster that was Operation Aquatint , there was an extensive debrief. That same day Combined Operations’ Intelligence Officer GSO2 Major Ian Collins issued a memorandum entitled: ‘Lessons Learnt and Notes for Future Consideration Ref: S.S.R.F.’ 1
    Top of the list of twelve points was a statement of the painfully obvious that ‘The risk of carrying out a frontal assault even on a supposedly lightly defended objective is considerable.’ Having stated that the plan had to be changed once it was found impossible to identify the small beach and narrow gully that had been their primary landing objective, Collins went on to note the need for choosing a landing place where ‘a safe and quick get away can be effected’. With hindsight, it should perhaps have been noted at the early planning stage that, on the exposed Normandy coast, there were likely to be precious few of those once the German defences had been alerted and started putting flares or starshell up over the flat and open sea. Yet alerting the German defences was the implicit and desired consequence of all such raids. In any event, noted Collins, the raiding force should in future be backed up by two Goatleys, not just one.
    There should also be an agreed recovery plan in case raiding parties got left behind. Lt Bourne and Capt. Appleyard received a mild rap over the knuckles for hazarding their boat: ‘MTB incurred too great a risk in lying so close off-shore and was lucky not to be sunk’, but there was praise for their navigation throughout which he described as ‘excellent’. At that early stage the morning after the raid, however, the true extent of the navigational error that put the Goatley so far west of their objective had yet to be realised.
    News of the disaster that had befallen the men of Operation Aquatint – that the entire raiding party of six officers and five other ranks were now to be posted missing – was distributed four days later by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of Combined Operations. Stating that ‘it is particularly requested, for operational reasons, that further circulation of this report may be severely restricted’, 2 Mountbatten sent it to the C-in-Cs Portsmouth, Plymouth, Portland and Dover, to Gubbins at SOE, to their friend and mentor Brigadier Robert ‘Lucky’ Laycock at the newly formed SS Brigade and to the Air Officer Commanding Nos 11 and 12 Group, Royal Air Force. It was also circulated to a host of smaller commands and organisations.
    Two days later Mountbatten made time to write another, more private letter in his own hand. It was to Marjorie, the newly widowed wife of Gus March-Phillipps. By then his death, at least, had been confirmed. Mountbatten wrote to her at the home she and Gus had just made in Alford Street:

    I write to you to express my