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  In the ‘piping days of peace’ there were night runs, when high speed craft would exercise their wiliest tactics to evade the penetrating beams of light. On they would come, twisting, turning and jinxing about in the inky blackness of night, at times wallowing stationary bow on in the hope that the beam would pass over unsuspecting, then the dash in through the black patches of unlighted water. Once in the beam they would be held and followed, meantime the guns would blaze away, round after round. The only lack of realism, so we thought then, was the blank ammunition, hence it was not surprising that when real war came, it was a bitter disappointment to find the encounter of our dreams existed solely in the imagination. The German High Seas Fleet could have joined Sweden in her neutral outlook for all we saw of them; an excellent thing from a national point of view, but it made life less interesting for us. As those long winter months crept by the truth became fairly obvious. Our job was remote from any action and, whatever chance there may have been, in the opening phases of hostilities, of an attack upon the port it now all seemed highly improbable. The inevitable reaction upon the minds of the men, all anxious to do their bit, can well be imagined, the slow developing feelings of frustration, disappointment and futility.

  The old forts were laid out in regular angles to a geometric pattern with bastions and moats on principles dating from the great French engineer of former days, Vauban. There were the relics and remains of many generations of gunners where changes had been made with each succeeding improvement in armament. The glacis of earth, beyond the moat, must have been a task in keeping with the works of Ancient Egyptians. As the CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) I pondered on the geometry of the place and tried to visualize the fire plan of the original defenders of these shores.

  These forts dating back into history, with their grim masonry walls, miserable little windows, and with the general air of mediaeval prisons, in themselves gave a background to the mental outlook of the garrison. The living accommodation was mainly old casemates with domed brick roofs covered again by many feet of earth and concrete and through the cracks the water trickled down the walls. With little or no ventilation, two courses remained open – either to have large fires and produce a kind of Turkish bath atmosphere, or alternatively to freeze in one’s tomblike surroundings. In one case the fort was an island in the river, rather like a large lighthouse with the tide oozing in and out below the floor and adding its smell to the atmosphere inside. During the winter months it was perpetually dark inside and over the door was chalked ‘abandon hope all who enter here’.

  My room, like the others, had a vaulted roof and was just over the central archway leading in to the interior of the keep, the audible conversation of the guard below and all who went in and out, floated up to my open window. The unconscious humour of much of this and the references to our peculiar share in the war gave one food for thought. I, personally, was very well looked after by Corporal Holland, my batman. He was a very popular figure and I believe had been a professional boxer at one time. He was one of the few men in the unit who had not been an employee at Bevans Cement Works in Northfleet before the war. He was landlord of the King of the Belgiums public house on the riverfront at Gravesend which he ran with his sister, as he was a bachelor.

  In spite of all this, night after night these gunners and sappers kept their weary vigil, peering out into the inky blackness over the North Sea, frequently in the teeth of an east wind which overcame all efforts to keep warm by wrapping up. Speaking of wrapping up, the British soldier is a past master at this – starting with regulation issue clothing he adds several cardigans, arctic socks, mittens, gloves, balaclava helmet, plus an old oilskin which he puts on over his greatcoat, and gets a pal to rope him around the middle. Then fortified by a tot of rum he goes up to his OP gun site or emplacement for his watch, looking more like a bundle than a human being.

  Not withstanding the discomforts, the troops were singularly good-natured about their new found mode of life which fate or Hitler had thrust upon them. They did all that was asked of them, behaved well and carried on; but always hoping against hope that something would turn up to relieve the monotony. Meanwhile the Hun was overrunning Poland with a thoroughness and frightfulness that proved all too well that the breed had not changed since the First World War. Quite a number of the older men had served in the last war, and would regale the younger members with tales, largely augmented by imagination no doubt, of the stirring events and bloody battles of those days, but always with a happy ending. It was inevitable that these men, who were volunteers and had given their leisure in peace to train as soldiers would feel that circumstances had cheated them and become, as the army so aptly puts it, ‘browned off’. I can recall a scrap of conversation that sums the situation up fairly well.

  The setting was a Company Office, the principal character the sergeant clerk, who was still smarting under a reprimand for some slip in procedure. Addressing himself to a younger NCO, he was heard to observe, ‘I don’t know chum, this war ain’t like the last, ruddy good war that, plenty of fight and no fuss; this war, no fight but all ruddy fuss.’

  Spasms of off duty were devoted to football, NAAFI concerts, and in the case of officers, sherry parties, but whilst this helped to entertain it did not relieve the ennui, for the simple reason that they did not want entertaining, they wanted to get on with the war.

  This is a point of view frequently not appreciated by those well meaning people at the top always trying to organize entertainment for the troops which, while necessary, should be in small doses. The average soldier is quite keen to get on with his job, to learn more about his new found calling, to become more efficient, but above all to get on with the war.

  We had an arrangement with the gunners that we would mount guard on alternate nights with them at the Quarter Guard leading into the Fort. This led to great rivalry between the Royal Regiment and the Corps; at first it took the form of competition in the matter of turn out with wholly beneficial results. Guard duty became an orgy of trouser pressing, polishing, and burnishing, until the respective excellence of guards RA and RE became a topic of conversation; not unnaturally, we thought ours the best. Looking round for new fields to conquer, commanders would practice the ritual of changing guards, until the precision of command and movement would have found favour with a grenadier. Then boredom set in, and the rivalry took an unfortunate turn, when the night sappers were on guard it was woe betide an erring gunner who, returning from the local hostelry, sought admission! One would see the eager NCO waiting anxiously to bang the heavy doors, breathlessly watching his wrist watch for the split second! The reverse process would take effect if it was a gunner night and a gentle tap on the outside would gain admission for those wearing a white lanyard. However a few fights outside were only symptomatic of the irritation of all this watching and waiting, for up in the town they stuck together when they met the sailors ashore. It was not the war they expected, it just seemed like another training period without end.

  The cookhouse too, was another combined operation requiring much tact on the part of the orderly sergeant to convince the opposing teams that they each had a fair division. The story went round that a sapper who was aggrieved with the size of his dinner, produced the offending morsel in his mess tin to the orderly sergeant for inspection, only to be charged with having a dirty receptacle.

  We sappers tried to preserve our keenness by building additional observation posts, emplacements and field fortifications during the day, in addition to our nightly watches – anything and, in fact, everything about the forts and their environs that needed improving, fell to our lot. This proved a blessing, but it seems strange to think that one could get mental uplift from erecting barbed wire entanglements on those frozen marshes and mud flats which fringe the coastline on the estuary, often working in half-light and invariably in foul weather. But it is a fact that it did us more good than all the entertainment. We really felt we were doing something besides the interminable watching and waiting
. Even an occasional raid by the German sea planes which came over at night and laid mines, helped to revive enthusiasm. The ack-ack guns would put up a good display of tracer on these rare visits of the enemy, and our seaward searchlights had the fun of following them in, as far as elevation would permit. But the reaction soon set in, and the entire garrison again began to feel that they were in the remotest backwater of this very queer war. It will be remembered that in the spring of 1940 little land fighting took place so even news was scanty.

  But we were wrong. By a peculiar combination of events many of us were, before long to have our share of the excitement. It happened like this. An influx of additional troops to the coast defences, coupled with the fact that others were taking over the searchlights, resulted in our being transferred away from the forts, to Milton Barracks, Gravesend. We carried on our training in fieldworks, bridging, pontooning, and such like sapper activities. Long marches and exercises out in the country were a welcome relief to our previous existence and offered at least some hope of being drafted to an active theatre of war.

  One day early in 1940, before the other units had joined us, a Senior Officer came down and inspected us at work; at the time we were training in demolitions. He asked whether we could take over certain highly secret responsibilities, from another formation that was under orders for France. I jumped at the prospect and before long found myself before a small staff committee unfolding the plan and outlining requirements. This was during the time of the nine months phoney war after the Germans had invaded Poland. The military planners realized that should they strike at France, they would almost certainly adopt the strategy of the First World War and achieve a flanking movement by invading the Low Countries. This was the famous Schliefen plan adopted in 1914. Should this happen and if they invaded both Holland and Belgium, the Allies would move into Belgium to confront them. However the North Sea ports would almost inevitably fall into enemy hands. In this war very large oil stocks were held at Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp and it was known that the Germans were desperately short of fuel oil of all grades. The proposal was that our unit would be called on to provide small demolition teams to go, under Admiralty command, to land and destroy these very important oil stocks if the Germans invaded.

  It was a thrilling opportunity to really get cracking, as the sappers say, but there was a snag. Nothing could be done unless the Germans invaded the Low Countries. Weeks went by, and perversely enough it did not happen; all the same we had hope and something to encourage us. The next few weeks were spent in harder and tougher training. As may be imagined, speculation amongst the men was rife as to their ultimate objective, perhaps the most popular idea was the invasion of Heligoland. At night two or three officers, who had been let into the secret would meet behind locked doors and study plans, maps, charts of waterways and aerial photographs, making detailed plans for personnel, explosives and other equipment. There was no precedent for demolition on anything like this scale, therefore a number of different options were considered on methods of destruction which could be employed to destroy oil storage tanks with the limited stores that the small parties of men would be able to carry. (For details see Appendix III)

  Unarmed combat was not heard of so much in those days, but we developed movement by night, practised stealth and studied quiet methods of liquidating sentries without alarming the neighbourhood. We visited certain industrial plants, docks and quays that may have put Heligoland into the men’s minds. Because of the secrecy of the proposed operations it was impossible to carry out any specific training that would suggest the destruction of bulk oil installations. Looking back on those days one is impressed with the tonic effect upon all ranks of some definite objective. Perhaps the most significant aspect is how the dullest existence can become brimful of interest by an unexpected twist of fate. The difficulty is to get men who, in long periods of training and waiting, are living in a state of suspended animation to realize that their turn may be close at hand.

  Looking back, those periods in life that seemed so dull, in reality passed quickly enough, although at the time they seemed interminable. Similarly, the minor irritations and disappointments of life assume their correct perspective and sink into insignificance against the background of memory. In fact there is quite a lot of amusement to be gained in reflection upon the anxiety to be doing something different, or our impetuousness for time to pass quickly. It passes all too quickly as we came to discover.

  Chapter Two

  ACTION STATIONS – AMSTERDAM

  During the early part of the year 1940 the German Army had been massing troops along the Dutch frontier and there was a long drawn out period of tension. At this time the Dutch had taken what they considered to be adequate counter-measures by preparing bridges for demolition and flooding tracts of their country in the hope that this would deter or harass the threatening enemy just over the frontier. At the same time they maintained strict neutrality and appeared to assume a rather lofty detachment from the march of events. It must be remembered that Holland had not engaged in any war for over 100 years and, no doubt, clung to the hope that Germany would respect her neutrality. The forces at her disposal were pathetically poorly equipped and trained compared with her powerful neighbour but in spite of this she refused cooperation with the Allies until it was too late to be effective. It was fairly obvious to the observer that the mechanized enemy might, and probably would, overrun the country and that at best the Dutch could only fight a delaying action.

  It so happened that large petrol refineries and oil stocks existed at Amsterdam and Rotterdam which, bearing in mind the enemy’s great need for these products for his army and air force, constituted a very tempting prize quite apart from the other resources of the country. This did not escape the notice of our Government. The direct result was that when, in the early hours of 10 May Hitler gave his army orders to invade Holland, three small parties of our formation, who had been at two hours’ notice to move for several days, moved to Dover within the hour to join a naval operation designed to cope with the situation. It must be appreciated that at this time in the war there was no Combined Operations HQ and so these operations were all carried out under Naval Command. On shore the joint naval and sapper demolition parties were, in each case, commanded by a Naval Commander, RN, not to be confused with the skippers of the destroyers. The parties moved down to Dover in specially requisitioned lorries. One of the lorries broke down on the way and they were forced to waylay a passing lorry carrying a large quantity of gas bottles. When they arrived alongside the destroyer these gas bottles were inadvertently cross-loaded onto the ship as the Navy thought they were part of the sappers’ demolition equipment. These had to be returned to the quay and the hapless driver was faced with reloading them himself.

  At eleven o’clock HM destroyers Whitshead, Wild Swan, Verity and Brilliant left harbour at full speed. The plan was for the leading vessel, Whitshead to make for Ijmuiden carrying the sapper party for Amsterdam, the second, Wild Swan to go to the Hook of Holland with Rotterdam as the sapper objective, the third, Verity to Flushing with no sapper party as there were no significant oil stocks there and finally, Brilliant would try to get up the Scheldt as far as possible and put a party off for Antwerp. Because the position at the latter port was very much the same as the Dutch ports as regards oil stocks and installations, it was included in this operation.

  Whitshead had on board a naval demolition party of eighty men to destroy the port facilities at Ijmuiden and eighteen NCOs and men of the Royal Engineers demolition party under Captain Peter Keeble and his second-in-command Lieutenant Don Terry, to deal with the oil installations at Amsterdam. Both the naval and sapper demolition parties were under command of Commander Goodenough RN. Besides the 100-odd extra personnel who were additional to the destroyer’s normal complement, cases of explosives, arms, ammunition and equipment were piled on all available deck space until there was hardly standing room. The ship’s company were grand hosts, as the Royal Navy always
are, and in spite of the choppy sea that raked the destroyers from stem to stern, the demolition parties were in high spirits.

  It was at this stage that Keeble, the OC of the sapper detachment could break silence and brief the men on their objectives in general. He told them that the sappers, on reaching Ijmuiden, would move on to Amsterdam and destroy the vast oil stocks located in tank farms. In addition he distributed Dutch money which had been provided to buy food as there were no such things as twenty-four-hour individual ration packs or similar emergency food supplies at the beginning of the war. It was hoped that it would also assist them generally when ashore. As to their method of withdrawal, he could not be too reassuring. The navy would do their best to take them off but the safety of HM Destroyers was of paramount importance and the captains were ordered not to hazard their ships unnecessarily in order to evacuate what were, after all, only a handful of soldiers. In short, there was no guaranteed return ticket for the sappers.

  Nearing the Dutch coast, Whitshead was the first to be attacked by a lone German bomber but it was driven off by the ship’s guns. The captain took avoiding action, zigzagging violently at full speed. Port and starboard gunwales were alternately awash and life for those on deck was a misery. Attacks by several aircraft developed later on and eventually after several near misses, Whitshead was hit on the port side aft, killing and wounding several ratings and blowing half a dozen more men into the sea. The sapper demolition party were lucky not to suffer any casualties. It also set fire to some cordite in the ammunition locker on deck. It hardly needs saying what a devastating effect it would have had if it had spread to the explosives stored on deck. The fire was quickly dealt with by some sailors who, with great bravery, seized the cordite boxes and threw them overboard. The ship went round in a circle to pick up the men but was again heavily attacked from the air and the skipper could do no more than throw over Carley floats for them before racing on to Ijmuiden. Lance Corporal Twocock’s account after the operation sums it up: