The Greatest Raid by Giles Whittell

Author:Giles Whittell [Whittell, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241992265
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2022-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

8. On Land

Only one launch from each column of six landed any troops ashore. From the port column it was Collier’s commandos: fifteen men in three small groups that were confused, dispersed and then effectively decapitated. In the circumstances they performed heroically.

Tiger Watson led the way, twenty years old and with a burning desire to prove himself. His instructions were to make sure the mole was cleared of the enemy before proceeding, so immediately on landing he scrambled up a ladder onto the flat roof of position 63. Crucially, he found it deserted. What’s more, he’d seen a row of German helmets running off the Old Mole into the Old Town, hands raised as if in surrender.

Was it a ruse? There was no reason to think so, and in any case the other two groups of commandos were off the launch and itching to get down to business. One was led by Philip Walton, a schoolmaster in peacetime. In training he had teamed up with Micky Burn and Tom Peyton to give some wealthy fugitives of the blitz at their Devon hotel ‘something to remind them of us’. It involved slabs of TNT, fifty broken windows and a dressing down. The other group was led by Captain Pritchard, the explosives expert, who could see as well as Watson that the mole was deserted.

‘What the hell are you up to, Tiger?’ Pritchard yelled. ‘For God’s sake get on!’

There was no sign of the enemy soldiers last seen running ashore, and no time to waste. Walton’s men were to blow up the inner lifting bridge at the southern entrance to the basin. George Wheeler was one of them and had been assured it would be quite straightforward. He had great confidence in his training, and besides: ‘We presumed the … assault groups had cleared all opposition away and it was dead easy. All we would have to do was to go to the lock gates with our 75 lbs of explosives, done up in their separate little packets with their detonators and their fuses, and put them in their places which we had practised for weeks … and come away and get on our boat and go home.’

Pritchard’s men were to blow up targets of convenience and assist other groups as needed. Watson’s were to blaze their trail with Bren and Tommy guns, and keep the others safe as they worked.

Watson came back down the ladder, ran past the others and kept going. It was a short distance across the quayside and some railway tracks to the Old Town Square, a long, open space leading to the lifting bridge – Bridge D. Leaving Walton’s team behind, he pushed on into the middle of the square and into a cluster of French townspeople anxious to know what was going on.

‘Dedans vite! C’est les Anglais!’ Watson said, using prepared phrases to refer to himself in the third person. Inside quick! It’s the English! If it hadn’t been so tense it would have been comic.

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