Article: "The Navy Commando Dotes On Fighting"

R.C.N. Commandos Are Ready for Action

As found in The Ottawa Journal

W Commando RCN Beach Cdos. rope training

Photo Credit - Bill Newell. Posted at Commando Veterans Assoc. 

I have presented several articles published in newspapers (e.g., The Herald Chronicle, Halifax; The Montreal Star; The Hamilton Spectator to name a few ) during World War II, with more to come. The news articles, editorials and timely cartoons not only provide useful context for actions undertaken by Canadians in Combined Operations but facts and details about the members themselves.

On May 10, 1944, the following article appeared in The Ottawa Journal (now available on microfiche at a local university) that provides details about a little-known group, Canadian Beach Commandos. We read that it was written from "A United Kingdom Port" for "The Crow's Nest"*, then "published in Halifax by the Royal Canadian Navy".

R.C.N. Commandos Are Ready for Action

Amidst the rugged loveliness of Scottish hills, a group of Royal Canadian Navy officers and ratings, all of them volunteers, have completed training under Royal Navy tutelage for one of the toughest jobs the navy has to offer. Now that their course is completed, they are Commandos, the first Canadians to take the Royal Navy's Commando course as a group.

From their training centre in Scotland, these leather-tough Canadians have moved into a Combined Training Centre where they are working with units of the Canadian army on landing craft flotillas. They are participating in army manoeuvres and will be attached to army beach troops, ready and hardened for the Big Show.

A navy Commando differs from an army Commando. The army Commando is a specialist in fighting, with the hand-to-hand variety preferred; he fights anywhere. The navy Commando dotes on fighting too, but he never leaves the beach which has been chosen for an assault landing. Rather, he defies the enemy to drive him from the beach.

Caption: Able Seamen James Skinner (left) and John Joyce of W-1 Party, Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando "W", demonstrating how to disarm an opponent attacking with a knife, H.M.S. ARMADILLO, a training establishment at Ardentinny, Scotland, February 1944.

Photo Credit: Lt Gilbert A. Milne / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-183022. As found at Commando Veterans Association.

* * * * *

The naval Commando lands with the first wave of attacking troops and signals the remainder of the assault in. He helps to organize the beach for the landing of troop and materiel-bearing craft. It is his job, during an invasion, to work on the beach in close contact with the naval officer who is in charge of the landing and who is standing offshore with the assault flotillas. When the beachhead is established, he controls the traffic into and through the beach until a more suitable port for handling the incoming traffic is available.

This Canadian navy "tough type" must be ready for anything. He must be prepared to spend days on a beach under enemy fire. He must learn to live on scanty rations and thrive on them. He must be prepared to fight and fight superlatively well to hold the beach on which he has been landed.

That's why the training he took at this centre in Scotland was aimed at making him tough, scrappy and self-reliant. He learned how to beach his landing craft correctly, how to organize a beach in navy fashion, and how to handle all types of light weapons.

"He is a soldier and a sailor, too," says Lt. Cmdr. Dennis O'Hagan, R.C.N.V.R., of Halifax, N.S., the principal beach master, who wears the George medal and bar for bravery on special duty. "The Commando receives a great deal of army training which ordinary sailors do not get and he learns to make himself comfortable almost any place and under almost any conditions."

* * * * *

Here in Scotland, amidst some of the loveliest scenery in the world, the Canadian navy Commando has learned to kill swiftly and silently in unarmed combat classes. He has gone on days-long exercises under full kit; he has slept and cooked his meals in the open and was ready at the end of the gruelling manoeuvre to take prepared positions by assault.

He has smashed his way through obstacle courses and negotiated tough water hazards with powder and thunder flashes bursting around him and live ammunition cracking like a great whiplash over his head. He is now prepared to get soaked to the skin like a Spaniel and to work and fight that way for days on end if need be. He soon turned into a very tough guy.

Canadian Commando badges: Lt. D. Rayburn, Beachmaster, W-2 Party, RCN

Beach Commando "W", at H.M.S. ARMADILLO, Scotland, February 1944.

Photo as found at British Badge Forum

The Canadian navy Commando has learned to wear with pride the badge of his "trade" on both arms, a black flash and on it, in red, an anchor surmounted by a stooping eagle with a light machine-gun crossing the anchor shank. Above the patch is the word "Commando", and above that again, "Canada".

* * * * *

"These boys will have a big part to play in the coming invasion," says Lt. Cmdr. O'Hagan. "They will be the fighting handy men on the beaches through which our troops and materiel will pour. They are fighting harbor masters, really."

Personnel of Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando "W" in

the Juno Sector of  the Normandy beachhead, 20 July 20, 1944. 

Photo Credit - Canada at War, Forums

(L-R): Able Seaman (A/B) A.H. (Art) Petty, W-2 Party; D.S. (Don) Murphy of

W-3 Party; unknown; A/B Dan Kroshewsky, Leading Seaman J.P. (Joe) Adams

and Petty Officer Douglas E. McIntyre, all of W-2 Party.

* Back issues of "The Crow's Nest" can be found online, beginning in 1948, at the following link: The Muninn Project - Cold War

Please link to Article: Canadian War Correspondents on the Move