It is a story that had almost faded into the shadows of history: a wartime tale of courage, friendship and desperate improvisation that began as Britain found herself on the back foot awaiting German invasion in that long, hot summer of 1940.
Two young officers – Gus March-Philipps and Geoffrey Appleyard – found themselves with three things in common: a slit-trench on the beaches of Dunkirk, a deep-seated love of their country and a burning desire to hit back at the enemy who had pushed the BEF back to the sea. Evacuated home to England, both volunteered for one of the early Commando units. They trained in Scotland, transferred to the Special Operations Executive and then moved south to Poole, Dorset. There they formed their own unit and commandeered a Brixham fishing trawler named Maid Honor. Fitted out with hidden weapons, they planned to use her for clandestine missions to the enemy-occupied shore across the Channel. Thwarted by their rivals, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) what had now became Maid Honor Force sailed to West Africa to hunt down secret German U-boat bases. Instead - and in direct contravention of international law - they seized German shipping from a neutral Spanish harbour and returned home to England in triumph, their success a timely fillip for SOE at a time of constant sniping from Whitehall. Feted by Churchill himself, Maid Honor Force was now expanded into the Small Scale Raiding Force, a group of fifty hand-picked commandos led by March-Phillipps. Based in a stately home in the village of Anderson in Dorset, he and Geoffrey Appleyard – both now freshly-decorated after their adventures in Africa – set about forming No 62 Commando, a top-secret unit dedicated to raiding the enemy shore.
In 1942-1943 after a period of intense training in German and allied weapons, small boats and silent killing, they mounted a series of successful pin-prick raids across the Channel. There they would snatch sentries, seize documents, code books and weapons, gather vital intelligence about German dispositions along Hitler’s much-vaunted Atlantic wall. But, in war, very little goes to plan. After one disastrous raid to what would later become D-Day’s Omaha beach, the unit suffered crippling losses. Reformed and transferred to North Africa after further adventures, it was absorbed into 2 SAS.
Tom Keene is the author of The Lost Band Of Brothers, which tells in full and meticulous detail for the first time the extraordinary story of a top secret Commando unit that had almost slipped unnoticed into history. Tom is winner of the Royal Marines Historical Society award and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is former investigative journalist and television producer. His PhD explored the back-corridor Whitehall rivalries surrounding the early days of SOE in the Second World War, now uncovered in his book Cloak of Enemies.