Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Books re Combined Operations

The Watery Maze by Bernard Fergusson

Photo credit - Chartwell Booksellers

Bernard Fergusson's account (published 1961) of the four year period between the British Army being evicted from the Continent in 1940, and the landing of British and American troops in Normandy in 1944, is a full and detailed story about the origins, purpose, early raids and activities related to the Combined Operations organization. It has been said that Mr. Fergusson was "allowed free access to all the documents, archives and minutes of meetings, which have hitherto been secret."



Readers interested in Canadians who served in Combined Operations might underline some of the following, as I did:

        "Obviously two of the most urgent problems were the provision of landing ships and craft, and the crews to man them... as an illustration of the magnitude of the crew problem, the Joint Planners, in the very month of Mountbatten's appointment, had persuaded the Chiefs of Staff that our requirements in LCTs alone for the eventual invasion would be 2,250 - a figure to daunt almost anybody. And where were the crews to come from? Canada made an offer, which was gratefully accepted, of 50 officers and 300 ratings, but this was a drop in the bucket." Page 93



Much is written about Lord Louis Mountbatten, the assault on Dieppe and the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy, and the book emphasizes the role of the Combined Ops organization at every turn.

Important photographs and links to other important books, for further reading, are provided.

"The story of Mulberry (harbours) is a story of its own"
One such story - Operation Neptune by K. Edwards

Copies can be purchased online at AbeBooks and other such sites.

Link to more information at Wikipedia re Bernard Fergusson (Baron Ballantrae)

Link to more Books re Combined Operations

Unattributed Photos by GH

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Passages: Canadians in Combined Operations - Dieppe

Six Years of War, Volume 1

Dieppe from the Western Headland: Six Years of War, page 370

The following passage is found at the website entitled Six Years of War, Volume 1, in Chapter XI. It deals with one of many recorded accounts of action involving Canadians in Combined Operations during the raid on Dieppe in August 1942.

Unfortunately, the naval landing arrangements for BLUE Beach went awry. No operation of war is harder than landing troops in darkness with precision as to time and place, and the danger of reckoning upon exactitude in such matters was well illustrated at Dieppe. The Royals were carried in the landing ships Queen Emma and Princess Astrid, while the Black Watch detachment was in the Duke of Wellington. (The last-named ship's landing craft flotilla was almost entirely manned by Canadian sailors, and a Canadian officer, Lieut. J. E. Koyl, R.C.N.V.R., took command of it after the Flotilla Officer was wounded.) There was delay in forming up after the craft were lowered from the ships; this was mainly, apparently, the result of Princess Astrid's craft forming on a motor gunboat which, having got out of station, was mistaken for the one which was to lead them in. The Flotilla Officer of Queen Emmastates that the delay made it necessary to proceed at a greater speed than had been intended, and as a result the two mechanized landing craft (L.C.M.) which formed part of this ship's flotilla, and were carrying 100 men each, could not keep up. Ultimately, according to this officer, these two L.C.Ms., with four assault craft which had been astern of them, landed as a second wave. In fact, one of the L.C.Ms. developed engine trouble and consequently touched down in due course quite alone. Page 364

The Main Beaches at Dieppe: Six Years of War, page 370

Link to more details in Chapter XI from Six Years of War

My father, Doug Harrison, a member of RCNVR and Combined Operations from 1941 - 1945, wrote a short newspaper article for the Norwich Gazette (his hometown paper) in the 1990s that mentions an encounter with Lt. Jake Koyl earlier in 1942. Part of the article follows:

Lt/Comdr Jacob Koyl Earned My Respect 

In the spring of 1942, I was stationed for a short time in navy barracks at Roseneath, Scotland. As we Canadian sailors departed from Roseneath I was detailed to work on a baggage party by Leading Seaman Bowen. I told him I wasn’t fussy about handling kit bags and hammocks, at which he replied, “Fussy or not, just get at it and lend a hand.”

"Westbrook, Murray, Walker and Summers - Scotland"

After a short argument I refused (which is bad, real bad) and he took me to have a chat with our huge, no-nonsense commanding officer Lt/Comdr Jacob Koyl, later to be known as Uncle Jake. L/S Bowen explained his case about my refusal to Mr. Koyl. With that, Bowen was dismissed and the commanding officer laid his big hand on my shoulder and started to recite, without benefit of the navy book, King Rules (KR) and Admiralty Instructions (AI) about the seriousness of refusing an order. I knew I was in for rough seas as he continued to expound, his big hand bowing my shoulder. Lt/Comdr Koyl wore navy boots so big they looked like the boxes they came in. I know, because I was looking at them; this officer didn’t walk, he plodded.

At the end of his recitation, this man, who later had the undying respect of every Canadian sailor under his command, said to me, “I am not going to punish you so it shows on your records. All I want my officers and men to do is work together so we can get the job done over here and we can all go home, and that includes baggage party.”

“Harrison!”

“Yes sir!”

“You will be stowing kit bags and hammocks today, and every time a baggage party is required, you will be front and centre, and I’ll be standing by with my little eye on you.”

With that, he took his big hand off my shoulder, I straightened up, saluted, and said a little prayer. I was one lucky sailor; he could have come down much harder on me. The Canadian naval officer had played defense for the old New York Rovers farm team of the New York Rangers in the old six team NHL of 1939 - 40. I remember the dressing down he gave me and how his fingers sank into my shoulder to emphasize a point. A few years later, I remember talking to my sons in the exact same way....

....Much decorated Lt/Comdr Jacob Koyl died in November, 1987 and was buried where he had earned his honours - at sea.


Unattributed Photo by GH

Friday, April 24, 2015

Website: Six Years of War, Department of National Defense

Six Years of War, DND, Canada

Canadian Tanks in Sussex: Watercolour - Major W.A. Ogilvie

Readers can link to Six Years of War, Volume 1 and be introduced to the Official History of the Canadian Army In the Second World War, Volume I, SIX YEARS OF WAR - The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific by Colonel C.P. Stacey, O.B.E., C.D., A.M., Ph.D., F.R.S.C., Director, Historical Section, General Staff.

One will find sixteen long chapters of Canadian wartime history including some references to Combined Operation training centres and activities. Each chapter is sub-divided into numerous parts and these are accompanied by a wealth of Appendices, Charts and Tables, Maps, Sketches and Illustrations.

Combined Training Operation in Canada. Assault training at the
Combined Operations School, Courtenay, B.C., January 1944.
Photograph courtesy National Film Board. Page 114

About Combined Operations: Chapter headings and various sub-headings lead us to several mentions, particularly in Chapters X, XI and XII, related to Major Raiding Projects 1942, The Raid on Dieppe, 19 August 1942, and Dieppe: Losses, Comments and Aftermath.

In my opinion, the patient reader will be occasionally rewarded with good information related to the Combined Operations organization.

Training in Assault Landings. Canadian division troops embarking
in personnel landing craft, October 1942, while undergoing training
at the RCASC Battle School located at Cickmere Haven

Photo Credits - Six Years of War, online site

Please link to more Websites re Combined Operations

Monday, April 20, 2015

Passages: Canadians in Combined Ops - Sicily

If the Bullets Had Hit the Gas Cans


"Epus P. Murphy's pet monkey went mad and we put it
in a bag of sand meant to douse incendiary bombs
and threw him over the side"


The following are excerpts from "DAD, WELL DONE", a collection of Navy memoirs and stories by my father, Doug Harrison, Leading Seaman Coxswain (a man of the barges), a Canadian with RCNVR and Combined Operations, 1941- 45.

And Then the Worst Began

   July 10, 1943.
   We arrived off Sicily in the middle of the night
   and stopped about four miles out. Other ships were
   landing troops and new LCIs*, fairly large barges.
   Soldiers went off each side of the foc’sle**,
   down steps into the water and then ashore,
   during which time we saw much tracer fire.
   This was to be our worst yet invasion.

Those left aboard had to wait until daylight
so we went fishing for an hour or more,
but there were no fish.

   A signal came through, i.e., ‘do not fire on low
   flying aircraft, they are ours and towing gliders.’
   What, in the dark?
   Next morning, as we slowly moved in,
   we saw gliders everywhere.
   I saw them sticking out of the water,
   crashed on land and in the vineyards.
   In my twenty-seven days there
   I did not see a glider intact.

We started unloading supplies with our LCMs***
about a half mile off the beach and then
the worst began - German bombers.
We were bombed 36 times in the first 72 hours -
at dusk, at night, at dawn and all day long, and
they said we had complete command of the air. 
(Page 31)

*landing craft for infantry
**forecastle
***landing craft mechanized


Utter Death and Carnage

   We fired at everything. I saw P38s, German
   and Italian fighters and my first dogfights.
   Stukas blew up working parties on the beach once
   when I was only about one hundred feet out.
   Utter death and carnage.
 
Our American gun crews had nothing but coffee
for three or four days and stayed close to their guns
all the time. I give them credit.

“I was only about one hundred feet out. Utter death and carnage.” 

   Epus P. Murphy’s pet monkey went mad
   and we put it in a bag of sand meant to douse
   incendiary bombs and threw him over the side.
   The Russian Stoker on our ship, named Katanna,
   said Dieppe was never like this and hid under
   a winch. Shrapnel and bombs just rained down.

Lloyd Evans' and pet monkey, on another ship on its way
to Sicily, 1943. Photo credit - L. Evans, Markham 

Once, with our LCM loaded with high octane gas and
a Lorrie, we were heading for the beach when we saw
machine gun bullets stitching the water right towards us.
 
   Fortunately, an LST* loaded with bofors (guns) opened up
   and scared off the planes, or we were gone if the bullets
   had hit the gas cans. I was hiding behind a truck tire,
   so was Joe Watson**. What good would that have done?

Our beach had machine gun nests carved out of the ever-
present limestone, with slots cut in them to cover our beaches.
A few hand grenades tossed in during the night
silenced them forever. (Page 31-32)

*landing ship for tanks
**from Simcoe, Ontario


The Russian Stoker (Bill) Katanna mentioned in the second piece is second from left in above photo. My father is back centre, left of man wearing Navy cap. Katanna's hammock is now housed in the Esquimalt Navy Museum, Vancouver Island. Names of 'men of the barges' aboard the SS Silver Walnut - on its way to the invasion of Sicily - are written upon it.



Unattributed Photos by GH

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Passages: Canadians on D-Day, Sicily

Little More Than Sardine Cans

Most books about WW2 contain descriptions of scenes the average reader will never behold in their lifetime. But poignant, powerful scenes, the likes of which would be more familiar to our parents and grandparents, can become a part of our collective memories as we thoughtfully read good books written by men who were there.


"He slumped in his chair like a hung-over walrus,
but even in the queasy grip of seasickness his presence
still dominated the heaving room."


"And the great invasion fleet - that irresistible weapon -
was in total and almost helpless disarray"

Above and below are excerpts from AND NO BIRDS SANG by well-respected Canadian writer Farley Mowat (now deceased). He was aboard the heaving Derbyshire in July, 1943 as the largest armada in history, i.e., up to that time, approached the island of Sicily, itself slumbering and unaware of an impending invasion. Official start time of Operation Husky was but hours away.

Those Metal Boxes Would Have Swamped

    Beyond the ship
    the scene was something to behold.
    The sky was as harshly bright and clear as ever,
    for the sirocco brought no clouds in its train.

    The sun streamed down
    upon a waste of heaving seas,
    foaming white to the horizon.
    And the great invasion fleet
    - that irresistible weapon -
    was in total and almost helpless disarray.

    The largest warships were being swept
    by breaking seas until they looked like
    half-awash submarines. The big troopers
    were being staggered by the impact of the 
    greybeards that broke over their heaving sterns.

    Most of the smaller vessels had turned about
    and were hove-to, head to the sea and wind,
    and some of them - particularly the square-nosed
    tank landing craft - were obviously nearing
    the limits of their endurance. If the gale had
    increased its strength only a little more, many of
    those metal boxes would have swamped and sunk.

    I thanked my stars I wasn't aboard one of them...
    and then remembered that in less than twenty-four 
    hours we were due to be cast into that turmoil
    of white waters in tiny assault boats which were
    little more than sardine cans and
    not much more seaworthy. Page 51

British troops in a landing craft assault (LCA), 9 July 1943
Photo Credit to World War II Today

Instructions being signalled to waiting landing craft by
semaphore at dawn of the opening day of the invasion of Sicily.
One is LCI (L) 124 the other is an unidentified LCT. 


Unattributed Photos by GH

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Passages: Canadians Train with Commandos

Approaching a Hostile Shore

'We all know we are doing something that has never been done before' is a line from The Green Beret: The Story of the Commandos by Hilary St. George Saunders.

Though the speaker of the above line is unknown it could very well have been my father, Doug Harrison. I say this for several reasons.

In The Green Beret: The Story of the Commandos I learn that 'in the early stages of development through which the Commandos passed, each troop trained as far as possible with the naval officers and ratings who manned the craft which were to take both into action.' My father was a naval rating, not only being trained in the same area of northern Scotland and southern England and at the same time as the Commandos, but being trained to man Assault Landing Craft (ALCs, transport for troops) and Landing Craft Mechanized (LCMs, transport for much of the materiel of war, e.g., fuel, ammunition, tank mesh, rations, rum, etc.).

D. Harrison (r), guarding Quonset huts in,
possibly, Rosneath or Irvine, Scotland 1942

As well, as a child, and while sitting at my parents' kitchen table, I was privy to a conversation between my father, an uncle and cousins about father's World War 2 experience. The Commandos were mentioned, but I wasn't old enough to take in the significance of the animated conversation's details.

In The Green Beret I also read the aforementioned officers and ratings who handled the barges filled with Commandos 'belonged for the most part to that great company of H.O.'s, as those who enlisted for the duration of hostilities only were known throughout the Navy' (pg. 46). In his naval memoirs my father described his first two years of volunteer service with RCNVR and Combined Operations as 'H.O., hostilities only'.  

What follows are excerpts from The Green Beret that relate to Canadian Combined Ops ratings like my father.

The Enthusiastic Amateur

In peacetime many of them had served in
the Merchant Navy, or had been yachtsmen.
There was something to be said in wartime
for the enthusiastic amateur, able to carry out
his duties under the guidance and command of
the regular officers of the Royal Navy. When not
on patrol or engaged on operations they lived on
shore establishments run strictly on Navy lines.

   The training was designed to deal with
   the problems of approaching a hostile shore,
   landing upon it, remaining off it at close call,
   and then re-embarking troops from it. 
   How to beach, when to beach, how long to
   remain aground, how best to use a kedge for
   getting off, how to avoid stripping a propeller:
   these were among the problems which
   they learned to master.


'The business of keeping a ship beached
but not stranded, of shuffling it on its belly
up and down the shore, while it is being
loaded or unloaded, possibly under fire,
is no game for any but the trained,'
was the comment of one of the instructors.
One of the ratings was heard to say,
'The good thing about this job is that
we all know we are doing something
that has never been done before.'

The Green Beret, pages 46 and 47

How to beach... how best to use a kedge

What follows are related excerpts from my father's naval memoirs. The first relates to training exercises; the second to D - Day North Africa, November, 1942.

D. Harrison, front, watches Americans unload LCM, November 1942
Photo credit - F.A. Hudson, RN photographer (Imperial War Museum)

You Stay With the Barge

After much practice

The job of the seaman on an ALC or LCM is to
let the bow door down and wind it up by means
of a winch situated in the stern of the barge.
This winch is divided so you can drop a kedge*
possibly about 100 or so feet from shore depend-
ing on the tide. If it is going out you can unload
and then put motors full astern, wind in the kedge
and pull yourself off of the beach. The tide is very
important and constantly watched. If it is going out
(on the ebb) and you are slow, you can be left high
and dry, and if so, you stay with the barge. 

*anchor


Working like Bees

On November 11, 1942 the Derwentdale dropped
anchor off Arzew in North Africa and different ships
were distributed at different intervals along the vast coast.
My LCM had the leading officer aboard, another sea-
man besides me, along with a stoker and Coxswain.
At around midnight over the sides went the LCMs,
ours with a bulldozer and heavy mesh wire, and about
500 feet from shore we ran aground. When morning
came we were still there, as big as life and all alone,
while everyone else was working like bees. 

There was little or no resistance, only snipers, and I kept
behind the bulldozer blade when they opened up at us.
We were towed off eventually and landed in another spot,
and once the bulldozer was unloaded the shuttle service began.
For ‘ship to shore’ service we were loaded with five gallon
jerry cans of gasoline. I worked 92 hours straight and
I ate nothing except for some grapefruit juice I stole. 

"Dad, Well Done", pages 25 and 26

Canadian men of the barges, circa 1942 - 45"
lower left, D. Harrison, Norwich Ontario

Back of above photo: Canadians used the term Commando"


Unattributed Photos by GH

Monday, April 13, 2015

Passages: From The Liberation Trilogy

Grind of a Thousand Whetstones


An Army At Dawn (The War in North Africa, 1942 - 1943), the first volume of The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson, was a book of firsts.

It was the first book in which I purposefully tried to trace my father's footsteps when he was a man of the barges during WW2. (The invasion of North Africa in November, 1942 was his first D-Day of three).

It was the first book in which I wrote 'prose' or 'prose of war' as a marginal note. I envisioned Mr. Atkinson being forcefully caught up in certain words and phrases and sentences. And while I read, the events - seventy years old in 2012 -  drew breath and lived again.

I have since read others in which some paragraphs go beyond being the repository of mere facts and details, and illuminate the reader in a unique, poignant manner, but An Army At Dawn led the way. Excerpts follow.

The TORCH Plan, on Paper

   Three hundred warships
   and nearly four hundred transports
   and cargo vessels would land
   more than 100,000 troops - 
   three-quarters of them American,
   the rest British - in North Africa.

Task Force 34 would sail
for Morocco on Saturday morning.
The other armada would leave Britain
shortly thereafter for Algeria.
With luck, the Vichy French
controlling North Africa would
not oppose the landings.

   Regardless, the Allies were to
   pivot east for a dash into Tunisia
   before the enemy arrived.

An Army At Dawn, pages 30 - 31

Map of North Africa: Photo credit - Beachhead Battlefront

The Ships are Loaded

In Britain:

All the confusion
that characterized the cargo loading
now attended the convergence of
34,000 soldiers on Hampton Roads.
Troop trains with blinds drawn rolled
through Norfolk and Portsmouth,
sometimes finding the proper pier
and sometimes not.

   Sober and otherwise,
   the troops found their way to 
   the twenty-eight transport ships.
   All public telephones
   at the wharves were disconnected,
   and port engineers erected a high fence
   around each dock area...

Thousands struggled
up the ramps with heavy barracks bags
and wandered the companionways for hours
in search of their comrades.
A distant clatter of winches signaled
the lifting of the last cargo slings.

   And a new sound
   joined the racket:
   the harsh grind of
   a thousand whetstones
   as soldiers put an edge
   on their bayonets
   and trench knives.


In America:

Dawn on October 24
revealed a forest of masts and
fighting tops across Hampton Roads,
where the greatest war fleet ever to sail
from American waters made ready.

   The dawn
   was bright and blowing.
   Angels perched unseen on
   the shrouds and crosstrees.

Young men,
fated to survive and become old men
dying abed half a century hence,
would forever remember this hour,
when an army at dawn
made for the open sea in a cause
none could yet comprehend.

   Ashore,
   as the great fleet glided past,
   dreams of them stepped, like men alive,
   into the rooms where their
   loved ones lay sleeping.

An Army At Dawn, pages 38 - 41

About those same days in 1942 my father, a Canadian member of Combined Operations (1941 - 1945) wrote, rather matter-of-factly, the following (in part):

We left Greenock in October, 1942 with our LCMs aboard a ship called Derwentdale, sister ship to Ennerdale. The 80th and 81st flotillas, as we are now called, were split between the Derwentdale and Ennerdale in convoy, and little did we know we were bound for North Africa.

I became an A/B Seaman (Able-bodied) on this trip and passed my exams classed very good. We had American soldiers aboard and an Italian in our mess who had been a cook before the war.

In the convoy close to us was a converted merchant ship which was now an air craft carrier. They had a relatively short deck for taking off, and one day when they were practicing taking off and landing. A Swordfish aircraft failed to get up enough speed and rolled off the stern and, along with the pilot, disappeared immediately. No effort was made to search, we just kept on.

One November morning the huge convoy, perhaps 500 ships, entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was a nice sun-shiny day... what a sight to behold. (pages 23 - 25, "DAD, WELL DONE")

More to follow.


Unattributed photos by GH

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Passages: World War 2 Reporter

Ernie Pyle - American War Reporter 

Ernie Pyle: Photo Credit - Indiana University Archives

One of the best sets of books about WW2 I have upon my bookshelf, i.e., The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson, refers several times to reports by Ernie Pyle, an American war reporter.

‘To his readers, Ernie Pyle was a master of telling the story of the little guy, of describing the fears and daily strife of soldiers fighting in World War II. He was not just a passionate writer, however. An early “embedded journalist,” he worked alongside the troops, experiencing much of what they did, placing himself in danger as they did.’ From Indiana University website

 
Ernie Pyle, pictured in Normandy not long after the invasion of Europe.
Pyle (left) is shown with G. Gammack (center) of the Des Moines
Register and Tribune and D. Whitehead of the AP. IU Archives

The following excerpts are from one of three of Pyle's columns written shortly after D-Day Normandy:

A Pure Miracle

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 –
In this column I want to tell you what 
the opening of the second front
in this one sector entailed,
so that you can know and appreciate
and forever be humbly grateful to those
both dead and alive who did it for you.

Ashore, facing us,
were more enemy troops than
we had in our assault waves.
The advantages were all theirs,
the disadvantages all ours.
The Germans were dug into positions
they had been working on for months,
although these were not yet all complete.
A one-hundred-foot bluff
a couple of hundred yards back from the beach
had great concrete gun emplacements
built right into the hilltop.
These opened to the sides instead of to the front,
thus making it very hard for naval fire
from the sea to reach them.
They could shoot parallel with the beach
and cover every foot of it for miles
with artillery fire.

Then they had hidden machine-gun nests
on the forward slopes, with crossfire
taking in every inch of the beach.
Now that it is over
it seems to me a pure miracle
that we ever took the beach at all.

These Bitter Sands 

Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements,
I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day,
after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.

By the time we got here the beaches had been taken
and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland.
All that remained on the beach was some sniping
and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast
of a mine geysering brown sand into the air.
That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage
along miles of shoreline.

Submerged tanks and overturned boats
and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps
and sad little personal belongings were
strewn all over these bitter sands.
That plus the bodies of soldiers
lying in rows covered with blankets,
the toes of their shoes sticking up
in a line as though on drill.
And other bodies, uncollected,
still sprawling grotesquely in the sand
or half hidden by the high grass
beyond the beach.

Click here for full article.

Postscript -

‘Among the Allied casualties was Ernie Pyle...
Eight months later while covering the Pacific war,
he would be killed by a Japanese bullet in the head.’
[pg. 183, The Guns At Last Light by R. Atkinson

Link to Passages: Books re Combined Operations

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Memoirs re Combined Operations - Doug Harrison

"DAD, WELL DONE"

The Naval Memoirs of Leading Seaman
Coxswain Gordon Douglas Harrison


The 11 chapters in "DAD, WELL DONE" can be read individually by following the links below:

1. Foreword and Chapter ONE

2. Chapter TWO. Halifax

3. Chapter THREE - Part 1

4. Chapter THREE - Part 2

5. Chapter FOUR. Dieppe

6. Chapter FIVE. North Africa

Combined Operations Insignia
Motto: United We Conquer

7. Chapter SIX. South Africa

8. Chapter SEVEN. Sicily

9. Chapter SEVEN. Italy

10. Chapter EIGHT. Scotland

11. Chapter NINE. Vancouver Island

12. Chapter TEN. My Leaves

13. Chapter ELEVEN. Discharge

Four WW2 Vets reunite at a Navy reunion. D. Harrison, 2nd left.

"DAD, WELL DONE", the book that includes not only Doug Harrison's Navy memoirs but selected newspaper columns, stories submitted to books re Combined Operations and newspaper interviews as well, can be purchased for a nominal fee by contacting Editor of 1,000 Men (Gord Harrison) at gordh7700@gmail.com

Please link to more Books re Combined Operations

Photos by GH

Books re Combined Operations

Visit the Best Combined Ops Website


In the next few years I am certain I will direct you to the best website concerning Combined Operations many times. It is entitled 'Combined Operations Command' and is carefully maintained by its creator Geoff Slee, a tireless Scotsman who lives within easy reach of Edinburgh.

We have much to learn: Photo Credit - Imperial War Museum

On the site's Homepage, Mr. Slee provides a link to a section devoted to Books related to CO (approx. 300 titles to date).

Bon Voyage!

Please link to Books at Combined Operations Command

Also, link to another book about Combined Operations, "DAD, WELL DONE"

Monday, April 6, 2015

Origins of Combined Operations (4)

Information and Resources

A map of some CO raids: Photo Credit to A Watery Maze

Several fine books and websites provide information about how the Combined Operations organization began in the UK and how Canadian involvement in it originated. The book A Watery Maze by Bernard Fergusson, copyright 1961, is one such fine resource.

In it one finds the following:

Churchill's verbal briefing (to Lord Louis Mountbatten, in October, 1941) ran something like this:

I want you to succeed Roger Keyes in charge of Combined Operations. Up to now there have hardly been any Commando Raids. I want you to start a programme of raids of ever-increasing intensity, so as to keep the whole of the enemy coastline on the alert from the North Cape to the Bay of Biscay. But your main object must be the re-invasion of France.

Mountbatten: Photo Credit to A Watery Maze

You must create the machine which will make it possible for us to beat Hitler on land. You must devise the appurtenances and appliances which will make the invasion possible. You must select and build up the bases from which the assault will be launched. Before that you must create the various Training Centres at which the soldiers can be trained in the amphibious assault. I want you to bring in the Air Force as well, and create a proper inter-Service organisation to produce the technique of the modern assault. I want you to consider the great problem of the follow-up, and finally, I want you to select the area in which you feel the assault should take place and start bending all your energies towards getting ready for this great day...

All other headquarters in the United Kingdom are at present on the defensive. Your headquarters are being created to be on the offensive. You are to give no thought to the defensive. Your whole attention is to be concentrated on the offensive. (Pages 87 - 88)

Just a few pages later we read:

Obviously two of the most urgent problems were the provision of landing ships and craft, and the crews to man them... As an illustration of the magnitude of the crew problem, the Joint Planners, in the very month of Mountbatten's appointment, had persuaded the Chiefs of Staff that our requirements in LCTs alone (i.e. landing craft for tanks) for the eventual invasion would be 2,250 - a figure to daunt almost anybody. And where were the crews to come from? Canada made an offer, which was gratefully accepted, of 50 officers and 300 ratings, but this was a drop in the bucket. (Page 93)


The author's father, Doug Harrison (left) and Buryl McIntyre,
among the first members of Canada's 300 Comb. Ops ratings

The Effingham Division, in Halifax, Canada, 1941

Raid on St. Nazaire occurred in March, 1942: Pg. 133, A Watery Maze

Dieppe Raid occurred in August, 1942: Photo Credit - Imperial War Museum 

Link to Origins of Combined Operations 3

Unattributed Photos by GH