History Press author Dr Tom Keene (Cloak Of Enemies) was interviewed by Julia Bradbury on BBC I’s Countryfile programme last week on the shingle beach at Southsea, Portsmouth.
It was a fitting location for a story about what became known as The Cockleshell Heroes– a daring WW2 raid by canoe deep into the heart of enemy territory: in December 1942 ten Royal Marine volunteers were dropped off by submarine out in the Bay of Biscay. Their mission? To paddle frail, two-man kayaks 100 miles down the river Gironde to Bordeaux in enemy-occupied France. There they were to put limpet bombs on German shipping. Ten men set out but only four made it to the target area and only two of those survived to return home. The rest were either drowned or captured by the Germans and shot.
They trained in Portsmouth and that’s what brought Julia Bradbury and the BBC Countryfile team to the shingle beach just opposite the Royal Marines Museum at Southsea: “ Julia Bradbury, James Mair and the team were very professional ” commented Tom Keene, an ex-TV Producer himself: “ They’d done their homework and chosen exactly the right place to pitch the story.” Tom was their chosen expert because his book Cloak Of Enemies highlighted not just the raid itself but the confusion and duplication of effort that existed between Combined Operations – the Royal Marines - and the Special Operations Executive – the cloak and dagger agents in France - during the early stages of the war. That confusion resulted in needless tragedy and loss of life - but it also resulted in what was later described by one German officer as “ the outstanding commando raid of the war.”
Back in the summer of 1942, Royal Marine regular Major ‘Blondie’ Hasler recruited volunteers for his Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, a small, secret unit of high-spirited ‘Royals’ who answered the call for men who were ‘ indifferent to personal safety’ and ‘free of strong family ties’.
The RMBPD was a cover name: their real task was to study ways to attack ships in harbour by stealth. Based in Nissen huts on the sea-front a limpet-mine toss from where Julia Bradbury interviewed Tom Keene, the new recruits – most of whom couldn’t swim - almost drowned on their first day afloat attempting to stay upright in the fragile, canvas-sided canoes that, one day, would take them into battle. Hasler’s office was just around the corner from Canoe Lake where, as a boy, he had first taken to the water; his officers and men were billeted in private houses not half a mile from the seafront. Training with weapons and canoes was carried out in all weathers by day and by night and fitness, above all, was the requirement: the men used to run barefoot up and down the beach where Countryfile were filming. “ In many ways, this place is hallowed ground to the Royal Marines” said Tom Keene: “ It’s where the men trained for what remains the iconic small scale raid of the war. It may not have changed the outcome of that conflict but it did, perhaps, enhance the public’s perception of that Corps once their story became known.”
Thanks to Countryfile –and to History Press author Tom Keene - seventy years on, that stirring story is still being told.
