The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment. John Parker
under Commander F. N. Cook, RAN, who would have with him 32 officers and men of the Royal Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers to cover the final withdrawal.
For Lieutenant John Timothy and most of those around him at the time, the operation would provide the first opportunity of the war to see some real action as paratroopers. Born in Tunbridge Wells, educated at Skinner’s School and a Marks & Spencer management trainee when the war broke out, Timothy volunteered, went to Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Queen’s Own Royal West Kents before volunteering for the Parachute Brigade. Like his colleagues, he was eager for action and recalls the elation of the moment:
I was on a small-arms course at Bisley and halfway through, some of us were told to report back to Hardwick pronto. There, we were told that the company had been given the chance to go on a raid. Johnny Frost was adjutant at the time and he took over C Company. Something was on, but I don’t think even Frost was aware of the details then. We began intensive training down at Tilshead, night after night, and we did one practice jump with 51 Squadron, who were flying Whitley bombers. Then it came to the time when we got the impression we were about to go on the raid. We were sent up to Scotland, to the Combined Operations base at Inverary for more training, and exercises involving landing craft. Mountbatten came up and blew the gaff, as it were, although we still did not know exactly where we were heading or what we would be doing. There were medics and all kinds of people there for the planning. It turned out to be the Bruneval raid. We went back to Tilshead and prepared to wait.
C Company was just about 100 strong, plus two or three sections from the rest of the battalion, Para medics and Para sappers. Eventually we were shown models of our target and were briefed extensively on what was required of us and we did a couple of rehearsal exercises. We knew very little about radar, but they brought a chap in who did – Flight Sergeant Cox, a very brave man who had never jumped before. They sent him up to Ringway and he did one or two jumps. Captain Dennis Vernon from the sappers was given a bit of training to act as number two to Cox.
Cox, an RAF radar mechanic, had been summoned to the Air Ministry on 1 February 1942 and was ushered into the office of Air Commodore Victor Tait, Director of Radar, who opened the meeting with the words: ‘So you’ve volunteered for a dangerous mission?’
A surprised Cox replied, ‘No, sir.’
Tait persuaded him that he had, and went on: ‘I can’t tell you what it is but you’ll have a pretty good chance of survival.’ Cox, small and slightly built, was posted to C Company to train with the rest of the men and immediately became aware that his pre-war employment as a cinema projectionist had hardly equipped him for such an adventure. On the night of the raid he was fitted up with a revolver on his belt, a knife strapped to a leg, a concealed hacksaw blade and an escape kit that included currency. His tools – metal-cutters, screwdrivers, hammers and other burglary accessories – were packed in a metal container which would be dropped separately. The company was divided into parties of around 40 men. It was a very clear night and everyone was in great spirits when they headed off to Thruxton, in Hampshire, for take-off, scheduled for 22.30 hours.
Piper Ewing played the regimental marches of the several Scottish regiments represented among the ranks of the company as the sticks of men lined up to march out on to the runway and board their respective aircraft. Twelve Whitley bombers were lined up to transport them and one by one they soared into the sky, flying low towards the French coast. RAF dispatchers on board made the final checks and, as they neared the DZ, removed the cover from the aperture in the floor of the aircraft fuselage through which the men would drop. Within minutes of appearing over the French coastline, the aircraft came under heavy antiaircraft fire and swung and swayed and dropped violently as their pilots dodged the flak.
The men were already on alert when Action Stations! was called and they sat with eyes glued to the red light, waiting for it to change to green and… Go! Go! Go! They tumbled through the aperture one after the other to begin the operation that would go down in history as a first drop into action for Britain’s newly trained and much-vaunted parachute troops. John Timothy recalls:
It was a very good exit and landing, but when we came down, the first thing I noticed was we were minus some bodies and also some containers. Both were important. They had gone a bit adrift. It was easily done; one stick was stopped. The light changed from green to red because the pilot had given the signal over the wrong place. Another went down two miles out of position and had to make a mad dash to get there and link up. The DZ was clear and the rest of us landed unopposed. The main party moved up to attack the radar station, which they achieved virtually without opposition. My group was in the rear for clearing operations, mopping up pockets of German resistance, which entailed some pretty heavy skirmishes. We lost a few wounded and some were left behind, wounded and captured.
Meanwhile Frost’s group had come under heavy fire at La Presbytère, while at the radar site itself one soldier opened fire as they burst in and was shot. The key radar set was quickly located and the German technician working there at the time was taken prisoner and later brought back to England. Cox and his assistants started to take apart the radar set before the Germans realized what was happening. As a battle developed around the station, he and his fellow dismantlers found that screwdrivers were inadequate and instead they had to rip parts of the set out of their housing. This proved easier than he had dared hope because the equipment was made in prefabricated sections so that parts could be sent for repair or replaced.
The withdrawal was not as easy. As the raiders left the station, machine-gun fire whistled by Cox’s ears and one bullet scraped the toe of his boot. There were more heavy exchanges and they began taking more casualties. Timothy’s mopping up was not yet completed and nor were the coastal defences quelled because of the delayed arrival of Nelson group under Lieutenant Charteris, who had been dropped short of the DZ. The group arrived in the nick of time and joined the battle. Heavy exchanges ensued, but by 02.15 hours the Paras were scrambling down the cliffs towards the shore, to await pick-up by the Royal Navy. One other hitch was already apparent, as Macleod Forsyth, who was in Timothy’s group, explains:
It seemed our radios had gone kaput and we couldn’t get a response from the Navy to pick us up. Johnny Frost fired a flare but got no response and it looked as if we were going to have a battle on our hands. [In fact Naval communications had been silenced to avoid discovery by a German destroyer passing less than a mile away at that very moment.] There was a lot of heavy fire coming down on us by then from German reinforcements massing on the cliff tops.
It was some time before a shout informed Cox that the Paras had secured the beach. He descended to the shore and after hiding the radar equipment under the cliff, crouched beside it. Major Frost, fearing that the rescue fleet would not arrive, spotted a beached fishing boat and made a contingency plan to put Cox and his booty into it and launch them into the Channel. But as mortar and machine-gun fire resumed, the six landing craft appeared through the mist. Even then, all was not plain sailing. Cox and his equipment were safe, but his boat, overloaded with wounded, ran aground. Forsyth continues:
The Germans were piling mortars and grenades at us by then. The men began wading out to the landing craft under our own cover firing. I was in the last party to leave and our landing craft was shunted by a wave on to the rocks and it took us an age to get it off. The naval officer in charge of the boat yelled at us, ‘Get out and push!’ Terrific, I thought.
Five hours after leaving England with six officers, 113 NCOs and soldiers of C Company, plus nine sappers, four signallers and the RAF technician, the Para raiders were heading home. They had lost three men killed in action, seven were wounded and six had been taken prisoner, including two signallers who had become lost in the dash for the beach and arrived there only to see the landing craft vanishing out to sea. Three prisoners of war, including the radar technician, were also brought back.
By 03.30 they were all clambering aboard motor gunboats waiting off the French coast to carry them back to Portsmouth, with the landing craft in tow. ‘The Navy gave us some rum to warm us up,’ says Forsyth:
And one of our section was blind drunk by the time we landed back home. But I suppose we could celebrate. We were in mid-Channel when it was announced on the radio that there had been a