153 The Raid on Rommel's Headquarters.pdf

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battle
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THE RAID ON
ROMMEL’S HQ
5 3
9
770306
154097
No. 153
£4.25
Number 153
NUMBER 153
© Copyright
After the Battle
2011
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
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CONTENTS
RAID ON ROMMEL’S HEADQUARTERS
2
READERS’ INVESTIGATION
Wolfsschanze Revisited
21
IT HAPPENED HERE
Pershing versus Tiger at Elsdorf
32
AUSTRALIA
Australia’s Worst Air Disaster
44
PRESERVATION
Waldhaus Häcklingen
54
Front Cover:
Generalleutnant Erwin
Rommel, commander of the Afrika-
korps, visiting Generalmajor Johann
von Ravenstein, commander of the 5.
leichte Division, in Libya in late May
1941. Six months later, Rommel would
be the target of a commando raid to
kill him, led by Lieutenant-Colonel
Geoffrey Keyes.
Back Cover:
The grave of Lieutenant-
Colonel Geoffrey Keyes, VC, MC and
Croix de Guerre, in the Benghazi War
Cemetery, Plot 7, Row D, Grave 5.
Acknowledgements:
For their help with
the Keyes Raid story the Editor would
like to thank Stephen Hamilton of
Western Desert Battlefield Tours, Vern
Simpson, Alan Tomkins and Peter
Schenk who very kindly loaned us
Günther Halm's photo album. For
assistance with the Elsorf story, he
thanks Gerrie Franken, Gerard Thuring
and Marcel Zwarts.
Photo Credits:
ECPAD — Médiathèque
de la Défense, Fort d'Ivry; IWM —
Imperial War Museum, London; USNA
— US National Archives
2
IWM H11160
On June 4, 1940 — one day after the close of the Dunkirk evacuation — British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill sent a memorandum to General Hastings Ismay, his Chief
Military Assistant and Staff Officer, in which he stressed the need to strike back at
the enemy quickly: ‘It is of the highest consequence to keep the largest numbers of
German forces all along the coasts of the countries they have conquered, and we
should immediately set to work to organise raiding forces on these coasts where the
populations are friendly. ‘ Two days later he pressed his point: ‘I look to the joint
Chiefs-of-Staff to propose me measures for a vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless
offensive against the whole German-occupied coastline.’ As a result of this, on June
14 the Chiefs-of-Staff appointed Lieutenant-General Alan Bourne to the post of ‘Com-
mander of Raiding Operations on coasts in enemy occupation’. However, Churchill,
who was not consulted about the appointment, considered that Bourne was too
close to the Admiralty to resist undue influence from them and in mid-July Admiral of
the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes was appointed in his place, his position now re-named
Director of Combined Operations. Here Churchill and Keyes observe the training of
men of the 29th Infantry Brigade at Loch Fyne, Scotland, on June 27, 1941.
After the Germans became heavily
involved in Russia with the launch of Opera-
tion ‘Barbarossa’ in June 1941, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and the British
Chiefs-of-Staff pressed the Middle East
Command to resume offensive operations in
the Western Desert at the earliest possible
moment. Nevertheless, General Sir Claude
Auchinleck (who replaced General Archi-
bald Wavell in July) made it clear that he
considered that they would not have suffi-
cient trained forces to recapture Cyrenaica
before the end of the year. Exchanges of
telegrams failed to resolve the differences
and Auchinleck was summoned to London
to confer in early August.
The offensive in the Western Desert code-
named Operation ‘Crusader’ was finally
planned to begin on November 18. The plan
of operation was for the Eighth Army to
engage Axis armour in a tank battle, destroy
it, and then create a corridor through to the
besieged Tobruk garrison.
Two commando operations were con-
ceived to be launched just before Operation
‘Crusader’. The first was an airborne assault
on Axis airfields in the sector of Gazala and
Tmimi. The second, Operation ‘Flipper’, was
a seaborne mission carried out by 60 men
who would land by submarine on a beach in
Cyrenaica, play havoc with telephone lines
and, if possible, take out Rommel.
Earlier that year it had been decided to
seize the Greek island of Rhodes to prevent
the Italians from using it as a base for strik-
ing at the main British naval base at Alexan-
dria. To this end, Sir Roger Keyes, in his role
of Director of Combined Operations, pro-
posed to assemble a Special Service unit and
send it to the Mediterranean to carry out the
operation.
The force comprised Nos. 7, 8 and 11
Commandos, with a troop from No. 3 Com-
mando and the Folbot Troop (commandos
operating kayak-type canoes) — a total of
around 100 officers and 1,500 other ranks.
They departed from Scotland on January 31,
1941 in two infantry landing ships, the
Glengyle
and
Glenroy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock was
appointed acting commander of the Special
Service Brigade, but to avoid the Axis com-
mand becoming aware that a large force of
commandos had arrived in the theatre, the
War Office ordered that the designation
‘Layforce’ was to be used and that no men-
tion of commandos or Royal Navy involve-
ment was allowed.
Sailing via the Cape, they arrived at Suez
on March 7. On its arrival in Egypt, the force
was strengthened by the addition of No. 50
Commando from Crete and No. 52 Com-
mando from Sudan. ‘Layforce’ then com-
prised four battalions:
A Battalion - No. 7 Commando
(Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Colvin)
B Battalion - No. 8 Commando
(Lieutenant-Colonel Dermot Daly)
C Battalion - No. 11 Commando
(Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pedder)
D Battalion - No. 50/52 Commando
(Lieutenant-Colonel George Young)
After the German invasion of Greece and
Yugoslavia in April, the Rhodes operation
was called off and the role of Layforce was
changed to planning and undertaking raids
behind enemy lines along the North African
coast. On April 15 Brigade Headquarters
and A and C Battalions set off in the
Glengyle
and
Glenroy
to attack Bardia while
four troops of B Battalion sailed for Bomba
in a destroyer. However, the swell was so
strong that re-embarkation of the comman-
dos from the beaches would have been diffi-
cult if not impossible, and as a result the
whole operation was called off.
On the night of November 14/15, 1941, a British raiding party of 30 commandos led
by Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Keyes landed on the shores of Libya, their mission
being to attack a house in the town of Beda Littoria thought to be the headquarters
of Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, the famed commander of the German Afrika-
korps, and kill or capture him. The attack failed and Keyes was fatally wounded in the
action, being posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross.
RAID ON ROMMEL’S HEADQUARTERS
By Jean Paul Pallud
New orders were quickly issued and A
Battalion was selected for the raid on Bardia.
Escorted by HMS
Coventry,
an anti-aircraft
cruiser, and three Australian destroyers,
HMAS
Stuart, Voyager
and
Waterhen,
the
Glengyle
landed troops on four beaches on
the night of April 19/20. The objective was to
disrupt enemy lines of communication and to
inflict as much damage as possible to installa-
tions and equipment. Although the landings
were unopposed, little was achieved and
losses amounted to 67 men taken prisoner
and one officer killed by friendly fire.
At this stage of the war, there were few
reserve forces in the Middle East so elements
of Layforce were now deployed as normal
infantry battalions, a role for which they
were neither equipped nor trained. In June
C Battalion intervened in Lebanon against
French Vichy-held Syria in the battle of the
Litani River loosing 130 men, almost of third
of the 379 who had landed; and at the end of
May, A and D Battalions were deployed on
Crete to help contain the German assault.
Fighting as the rearguard, they lost 600 men
out of the 800 committed.
Keyes was the son of Admiral Keyes and the commander of C Battalion (No. 11
Commando) of Layforce. In May 1941, when the battalion was still under Lieutenant-
Colonel Richard Pedder, Keyes, then still a major, accompanied his CO in escorting
Governor Sir William Battershill during a tour of Kantara Castle in Cyprus. Keyes took
over C Battalion in June, following the death of Pedder during an operation to Lebanon.
3
IWM E3130
IWM E4732
IWM H39029
Accompanying the party on the raid to
Rommel’s headquarters was Lieutenant-
Colonel Robert Laycock, the commander
of ‘Layforce’ (seen in this photograph
early in June 1944 when he was Chief of
Combined Operations and the British
Army’s youngest major-general). Colonel
Laycock had a strong personal motive
for wanting to join Operation ‘Flipper’.
In May 1941, during the battle for Crete,
he had commanded A and D Battalions
that were deployed to cover the hasty
evacuation of ‘Creforce’, the combined
British, Commonwealth and Greek force
defeated by the German airborne and
seaborne assault of the island. On May
30, Lieutenant-General Bernard Frey-
berg, the ‘Creforce’ commander, ordered
Laycock to stay behind and to keep fend-
ing off the German assault until all the
fighting units had safely boarded the
naval transports provided for the evacu-
ation. If absolutely necessary, he was to
present the British surrender to the Ger-
man commander. Late on the 31st, Lay-
cock, judging that all Allied units were
ready to depart, ordered his force to
withdraw to the beach and embark. He
dispatched the surrender document to
Lieutenant-Colonel George Young, the
commander of D Battalion, while he him-
self embarked at Sphakia. However, in
actual fact, not all the units had left and
many were still queuing up to board
when the flotilla weighed anchor. Of the
800 commandos under Laycock’s com-
mand, some 600 were killed or captured
on Crete. British historian Michael
Asher, the author of the painstakingly
researched book
The British Plot to Kill
Hitler’s Greatest General
(first published
in 2004) judged that Laycock’s conduct
was ‘not out of cowardice but out of an
inflated sense of their own precious-
ness’. Though he had clearly disobeyed
orders, Laycock was not court-martialled
but his reputation among his peers
suffered badly. So his motive to go along
on the Rommel raid was a strong per-
sonal one: to remove the stain from his
reputation.
Greatly reduced in strength by these oper-
ations, Layforce was disbanded in July.
Many of the men were returned to their pre-
vious regiments while others were sent to the
Far East or to join alternative special units
like the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG)
and the Special Boat Section (SBS). C Bat-
talion in Cyprus managed to dodge the dis-
bandment and, when the invasion threat to
that island receded, it returned to Egypt in
early August.
During the operation in Lebanon, the
commander of C Battalion, Lieutenant-
Colonel Pedder, had been killed, so when the
unit returned Captain Geoffrey Keyes took
over although he was dismayed to see his
command broken up so soon after he had
acquired it. Consequently, Lieutenant-
Colonel Laycock, armed with a letter from
Geoffrey to his father, went to London to
plead with Sir Roger for the reconstitution of
a commando force in the Middle East.
In September Captain Keyes heard that
Rommel had been spotted by Arab agents at
a headquarters in Beda Littoria in Cyrenaica.
He probably learnt about this from an
acquaintance, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry
Cator, the second-in-command of G(R), the
code-name for the SOE’s directorate of Spe-
cial Operations in Cairo.
Beda Littoria lay some 250 miles behind
the front line but only 18 miles from the
coast so Keyes believed that this would make
it possible for a commando unit to be put
ashore and move inland to attack the head-
quarters and abduct or kill Rommel. He
therefore decided to put his plan directly to
Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham,
4
the commander of the new Eighth Army just
formed in September, at his headquarters at
Maaten Baggush near Alexandria.
Knowing that Keyes’ father was a personal
friend of Churchill, Cunningham agreed to
hear Captain Keyes out and although no
transcription of the meeting exists, his
response was favourable. Keyes’ adjutant,
2nd Lieutenant Thomas Macpherson, later
said how Keyes returned to camp at
Amiriyya joyfully exclaiming: ‘If we get this
job, Tommy, it’s one people will remember
us by’.
HASELDEN’S RECONNAISSANCE
On October 10, one week after Keyes had
met Cunningham, the submarine HMS
Tor-
bay
approached the beach at Khashm al
Kalb near Ras Aamer, a cape due north of
Beda L’Horia. On board were Captain John
Haselden, an agent of G(R), and an Arab
NCO from the Libyan Arab Force (a British-
officered unit made up of Arab exiles from
Libya). Born and raised in Egypt of a British
father and an Egyptian mother, Haselden
spoke fluent Italian and French as well as
several Arabic dialects.
Torbay
also carried a detachment from the
Special Boat Section — two crews each com-
prising an officer and NCO. The usual drill
when landing personnel was for the SBS
team to go in first to secure the beach but on
this occasion Haselden decided to swim in
first. As the submarine lay 300 yards off the
beach in darkness, Haselden, stark naked,
swam to the shore from where he flashed the
OK signal. Minutes later a folbot, loaded
with stores sealed in four-gallon petrol tins,
arrived with Haselden’s Arab clothes before
returning to the submarine. The whole oper-
ation had taken just 34 minutes.
Haselden and his companion moved west
along the coast, bypassing El Hania where
there was an Italian garrison, before moving
inland up the escarpment that ran along the
shore. At Slonta, about a day’s march west of
Beda Littoria, they met a local contact, Hus-
sain Taher. He confirmed the previous intel-
ligence reports that Rommel had been seen
using a building in Beda Littoria and that he
slept in a villa not half a mile away.
Meanwhile, a patrol of the Long Range
Desert Group under Captain Jake Eason-
smith was sent to pick up Haselden. They
waited for two days at the rendezvous at
Garet Tecasis but when Haselden failed to
show up, on October 19 Easonsmith dis-
patched two Arab scouts on foot to Marsua,
west of Slonta, to look for him there. While
two vehicles remained at Garet Tecasis, he
went with his other three Chevrolet trucks to
the fallback rendezvous 25 miles away. They
came across an Italian convoy and shot at it
before withdrawing to Siwa oasis (see
After
the Battle
No. 98) with one prisoner.
Having missed his rendezvous, Haselden
finally met the two Arab scouts despatched
to find him and was back at Siwa on October
24. Three days later he reached Amiriyya,
reporting that he was convinced that Rom-
mel was still at Beda Littoria. He also
pointed out three additional targets that the
commandos might want to tackle: the Italian
headquarters at Cyrene, the Italian Intelli-
gence centre at Apollonia, and a telephone
junction point at Cyrene crossroads.
By November 1941, Rommel’s fame as a commander was fast
becoming that of a legend. Having landed his Afrikakorps in
Libya in February-March 1941, his first offensive in April-May
had ended in the recapture of all of Cyrenaica. Here he is seen
inspecting the town of Bardia in eastern Libya on April 19
which had been retaken by his troops just a week before.
MACPHERSON’S RECONNAISSANCE
On October 19, Lieutenant Macpherson,
Keyes’ adjutant, went to double-check the
beach where the commandos planned to
land, and on the night of October 24/25 the
submarine HMS
Talisman
surfaced about
three miles off Ras Hilal. In company with
Captain James Ratcliffe, Lieutenant Trevor
Ravenscroft, and Corporal Andrew Evans of
the Special Boat Section, Macpherson
pushed off in two folbots. It was arranged
that the
Talisman
would return to the ren-
dezvous on the next three nights.
A quick survey of the shingle beach
assured Macpherson that it would be entirely
suitable for the landing. They then climbed
up the escarpment to check where the com-
mandos would be met by Arab agents. This
done, they returned to the beach and
paddled off. However when they reached
the rendezvous point three miles offshore,
(As it happened, Layforce’s A Battalion launched a seaborne
raid on the same town the very night after Rommel’s visit.)
Rommel’s successes led to a quick rise in rank and importance:
in July he was promoted to General der Panzertruppen and in
mid-August his command was raised to the status of Panzer-
gruppe Afrika.
bread rolls and cheese in one tent, he made
some noise leaving and suddenly there were
shouts and gunshots. The two men got away
but when they reached the spot where they
had left Ratcliffe and Ravenscroft, they
found them no longer there. On hearing the
firing and assuming the other two had been
killed or captured, the two SBS officers had
retired deeper into the desert.
On the night of November 3/4, as they
approached Derna along an apparently
deserted road, Macpherson and Evans were
suddenly surrounded by Italians and captured.
Ravenscroft and Ratcliffe were brought in two
days later whereupon all four were taken to
Benghazi. When the Italians later found the
folbots, they realised that the patrol had come
in by sea. On November 15, Ultra intercepted
an Italian report that they had ‘learned from
various reliable sources that the British were
planning a landing near Apollonia’.
Talisman
was nowhere to be seen. They
returned the following night but still the sub-
marine failed to appear. (Due to recurring
navigation errors,
Talisman
was waiting in
the wrong bay.)
There was now no other choice for them
but to try to reach Tobruk on foot. They
started out in an easterly direction but the
going was slow and exhausting over the
rough terrain. As Macpherson crawled to a
spring to fill up with water, a hound from an
Italian patrol ran to him so he was forced to
kill it with his knife. As they left, they heard
‘a considerable inquest’ going on around the
dead dog.
They pressed on eastwards but by Novem-
ber 1 hunger had become an acute problem.
That night they came across the camp of a
German transport unit and Macpherson
decided to go with Evans to try to steal
something to eat. Although he found some
ALAN TOMKINS
Left:
As it turned out, Rommel was not even in Africa when the
British raid to eliminate him occurred. He was actually enjoying
a two-week leave in Rome, staying at the Hotel Eden on Via
Ludovisi with his wife Lucie.
Right:
This is his entry in the visi-
tor’s book, written on November 16, 1941: ‘E. Rommel, General
der Panzertruppen, Befehlshaber der Panzertruppen Afrika.’
5
ALAN TOMKINS
ECPAD DAK 09/L6

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