Churchill's Folly Read online

  Thank you to all involved in publishing the first edition of Churchill’s Folly, not least Ian Drury and the diligent and remarkably patient Caroline Cambridge. I also wish to thank Christine McMorris for her fine work on The History Press edition.

  For this revised and expanded edition I have referred to additional British and German documents, and also include further anecdotal accounts. Former combatants whose contributions I have drawn upon include the following (ranks as in late 1943): 4th Battalion The Royal East Kent Regiment (The Buffs): Lieutenant William (Bill) Taylor; Long Range Desert Group: Trooper W.R. (Ron) Hill and Trooper John D. Kevan. In addition, Gunner J.D. (Jim) Patch answered my many questions and provided wartime reports and newsletters of the Long Range Desert Group Association; II. Bataillon/Grenadierregiment 16: Fahnenjunker-Feldwebel Jürgen Bernhagen.

  The co-operation and assistance of former LRDG personnel and the discovery of the War Diary of III./Luftwaffen-Jägerregiment 21 enabled me to re-examine the battle for Levitha, waged between ‘Olforce’ of the LRDG and troops of 11./Lw.-Jg.Rgt.21, and thus relate the full story of this little-known but fateful action.

  I have been back to Levitha, Kos and Leros on a number of occasions. When I revisited Kos in 2011 I was fortunate to meet George Androulakis, whose knowledge about wartime events helped me to form a better understanding about the island battle.

  Thanks to my brother Philip and his wife Wendy who carried out research on my behalf in the UK, and to Craig Gomm and Mrs Patricia Hutchings for their research in Zimbabwe. Assistance was also forthcoming from Hans Peter Eisenbach, Daniel Kirmatzis, Luca Sirtori, Brendan O’Carroll, Jonathan Pittaway and Hans-Jürgen Wagner. Once again, Sonja Stammwitz excelled in her faultless translation of German source material.

  A study by Luciano Alberghini Maltoni and Peter Schenk of the many gun emplacements that were a feature of Leros suggests a need to reassess what has long been considered as fact. Roles of individual batteries have been questioned. The significance of the battery prefix P.L., assumed to indicate Pezzo Leggero (light piece/gun), is also debatable. Accordingly, a revised table of Leros batteries appears in Appendix 3.

  The Special Air Service Association provided an operational report of the SBS that helped clarify unit movements during the fighting on Leros.

  Peter Donnelly, curator at the King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum, made available a diary of events for the period 5–16 November 1943 that reveals much about 1 King’s Own during the battle for Leros. The original narrative was compiled by battalion officers in captivity nearly a year after the events described. The performance of the King’s Own might have been overshadowed by the exploits of other regiments, but the alarming number of casualties, particularly among officers, tells its own story. Only seven officers, five of them wounded, were evacuated. Of the remainder, fifteen were killed and sixteen became prisoners of war.

  1

  Italy and the Aegean

  Situated in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey, the Aegean Sea provides access via the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmara. This, in turn, is linked by the Bosporus to the Black Sea. The Aegean is characterised by its many islands, with two main archipelagos forming the Cyclades in the south, and the Dodecanese in the south-east. The Dodecanese lie close to Turkey and consist of fourteen principal islands (not twelve as the name implies). These are: Patmos, Lipsi, Leros, Kalymnos, Kos, Astipalaea, Nisyros, Tilos, Halki, Symi, Rhodes, Karpathos, Kasos and Kastellorizo.1

  Although populated mainly by those of Greek extraction, the Dodecanese were ruled by Turkey from the sixteenth century until the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–2, which resulted from Italian colonial expansion in North Africa. After invading Libya, then under Turkish administration, Italy moved against the Turkish Aegean islands. While the primary objective was to secure bases from which to impede supplies and reinforcements from the Ottoman Empire to Libya, the intention was also to acquire a useful bargaining tool during peace negotiations, and to have a location for possible future operations against Asia Minor. The Italians quickly occupied Astipalaea and Rhodes, followed by other islands in the Dodecanese except for Kastellorizo, which avoided coming under Italian rule until 1921.

  The Turks sued for peace and on 18 October 1912 ceded Libya to Italy. An undertaking by Italy to withdraw from the Dodecanese when the Turks had fulfilled their obligations in Libya was pre-empted by the Balkan War of 1912–3 waged between Turkey and the allied forces of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, each seeking to consolidate and extend their respective territorial gains from earlier wars of independence against the Ottoman Empire. The situation was further complicated by the outbreak of the First World War. Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers on 29 October 1914. As an inducement for the Italians to come on side, a secret treaty was signed in which the Allies accorded Italy full possession of the Dodecanese. Italy joined the Allies one month later on 23 May 1915. Greece, another potential ally, remained neutral until 1917 – the year that America also came into the war.

  The rapid advance by the Ottomans into the Caucasus had so alarmed the Tsarist high command that it prompted an appeal to Britain and France for diversionary assistance, and led to one of the worst Allied defeats of the First World War. Partly in response to Russia’s request, and partly in an attempt to break the impasse on the Western front, the Allies decided to force the Dardanelles as the first step to an assault on Constantinople (Istanbul). Initially, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, thought that this could be achieved by naval action. Accordingly, in mid-January 1915 an operation began with the bombardment of shore targets in the Dardanelles. The results were disappointing, with mines and determined resistance from Turkish coast defences taking their toll on British and French warships. There followed a combined effort by British and French land forces together with troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) to secure the Gallipoli Peninsula, beginning with an amphibious assault on 25 April 1915. The operation was another costly failure and resulted in stalemate. During December 1915 and January 1916 the Allies withdrew. The disaster forced the resignation of Churchill as First Sea Lord and fostered in him an obsession with the Dardanelles that would resurface during the Second World War nearly twenty-eight years later.

  After the Armistice, the future of the Dodecanese again became a subject for debate and on 29 July 1919 Italy agreed to cede the islands to Greece, with the exception of Rhodes, which was to have broad local autonomy. Italy reneged a year later, only to renew a similar agreement within a month. In October 1922 the Italian Government denounced the latest accord. Events were overtaken by the Greco-Turkish war in Anatolia, which ended in 1923 with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne. This included a clause whereby Turkey renounced in favour of Italy all rights and titles to the Dodecanese, including Kastellorizo, to enable the transfer of territory to Greece. However, this was not to be and the islands remained under Italian rule until the Second World War.

  When Britain and France declared war on Germany, Turkey refrained from taking sides, preferring instead to maintain cordial relations with the warring factions. A few weeks later, on 19 October 1939, the Anglo-French-Turkish Treaty of Mutual Assistance was signed in Ankara.2 (On 18 June 1941 Turkey would also sign a Treaty of Friendship with Germany.)

  Il Duce Benito Mussolini also opted for neutrality, until the time seemed right to join what looked like being the winning side. On 10 June 1940, Italy entered the war against Britain and France. At dawn the next day the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force) opened hostilities by bombing the Mediterranean island of Malta, an outpost of the British Empire since 1814. Initially, Britain retained the upper hand in the Mediterranean as well as in the Western Desert. But Mussolini’s offensive against Malta, the campaign in North Africa and, ultimately, Italy’s invasion of mainland Greece on 28 October 1940 led Adolf Hitler to support the efforts of Il Duce by redeploying from Norway X. Fliegerkorps of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). By mid-January 1941 th
e Germans had assembled in Sicily a formidable array of front-line aircraft. For Malta, the war was about to begin in earnest. The arrival of X. Fliegerkorps posed a far more serious threat than had the Italians for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, and ended British hopes of seizing Pantellaria (Operation Workshop) some 120 miles west of Malta. Concerns that the Luftwaffe would extend operations eastward were well founded, and prompted British plans for a pre-emptive take-over in the Aegean, with Rhodes as the main objective. In Britain, Special Service troops originally intended for Operation Workshop were reallocated for the task. An additional force was assembled in the Middle East and had already commenced training when events took an unexpected turn for the worse.

  On 25 February 1941, Royal Marines and troops of 50 (Middle East) Commando carried out an amphibious assault on Kastellorizo, code-named Operation Abstention. It was intended for the force to overcome the weak Italian defence prior to being relieved by a garrison unit in the form of ‘B’ Company 1st Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment). When it was decided, somewhat prematurely, that the Commandos could achieve their objectives without support, the Marines were re-embarked on the gunboat, Ladybird. By this time it was daylight and the appearance of Italian aircraft intent on destroying the little vessel persuaded the captain to withdraw back to Cyprus. The Sherwood Foresters were to have arrived in the early hours of the 26th, but the landing flotilla was unavoidably delayed. The operation fell further behind schedule when the destroyer HMS Hereward was sent ahead to prepare the way for the assault. When she arrived off Kastellorizo late that night she received a signal from shore warning her that enemy surface vessels were in the vicinity. Hereward promptly sent an enemy report, which led the operation commander, Rear Admiral Edward de F. Renouf, RN, on HMS Gloucester, to believe that she had actually sighted the ships. Such was the confusion resulting from this exchange that the landing was postponed until the following night.

  By the 27th, Italian reinforcements had reached Kastellorizo. Faced by this new threat, under continuing air attacks and running short of food and ammunition, the raiders had not only lost the initiative but were having to fight for their lives. Unfortunately, the departure of Ladybird, which was to have provided a communications link with the assault troops, meant that the Commandos were unable to use their short-range wireless sets to report the situation.

  It was not until the night of 27–28 February that the Sherwood Foresters arrived to find the Commandos hopelessly demoralised and the Italians in control of the island. Major L.C. Cooper, officer commanding the Sherwood Foresters, thought that with the Royal Navy providing fire support his men might regain the initiative, but the flotilla had orders to clear the area before dawn and therefore was unable to comply. Under the circumstances Cooper had little choice but to order his force to re-embark. For the British, it was an ignominious failure that cost the lives of at least four men; many more were wounded and it was estimated that thirty-two were missing. In turn, twelve prisoners were taken (including two Greeks in Italian uniform); fourteen Italians were reported killed and forty-two wounded. The operation had failed for a variety of reasons including inadequate planning and preparation based on unreliable intelligence, underestimating opposing forces, a breakdown in communications and non-existent air cover. If little Kastellorizo had proved such a problem, what hope was there of conducting a successful combined operation against Rhodes? In the event, the British were forced to rethink their strategy.

  Fearing that it might precipitate a German invasion of their country, the Greeks had initially declined the offer of British troops in their struggle against the Italians. After meeting with the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in February 1941, Greek Government ministers were persuaded that Germany intended in any event to subjugate their homeland and readily accepted the offer of assistance. The Royal Navy had already been granted the use of port facilities at Piraeus and at Suda Bay on the island of Crete. Within days of the disaster at Kastellorizo, British forces began to arrive in mainland Greece. The Germans invaded four weeks later and by the end of April they had overrun the country. Surviving British and Greek forces withdrew to Crete, which fell to a German airborne assault in May. For the Germans it was a costly victory. Consequently, Fallschirmjäger (German paratroopers) would never again be deployed in such a large-scale airborne operation.

  British plans for the Aegean were scuppered not just by events in Greece and Crete. German troops had recently arrived in Libya and were proving themselves a very different adversary than their Italian allies. In the central Mediterranean, Malta continued to provide the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy with an ideal base from which to disrupt Axis supply routes, but was proving expensive to maintain. Destruction of the enemy in North Africa became the main priority of Middle East Command. The outcome of the desert war remained in the balance until mid-1942, by which time British forces had been pushed back towards Alexandria before the line was eventually stabilised at El Alamein.

  Even before America’s entry into the war in December 1941 there was a conflict of interests over British strategy. In the United States there was little confidence with the existing British policy of wearing down Germany by conducting peripheral operations combined with intensive air bombardment. The United States Military Command considered that the Middle East was a liability from which the British should withdraw and that there was really only one way to defeat Hitler: by striking at Germany itself. For the British, of course, there could be no question of abandoning the Middle East. The withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of men, not to mention an untold quantity of arms and equipment, presented a logistical nightmare. Not only was such a proposition tactically unsound, but Britain also had a vested interest in protecting its Persian oil supplies. When, in their plans for operations in 1942, the United States advocated an Anglo-American invasion of France (Operation Sledgehammer), Britain protested that the time was not yet right and pressed for a move against French North Africa, partly to forestall any similar move by the Germans, but ultimately to open up the Mediterranean for the through passage of Allied shipping. In July 1942 the Americans were persuaded to postpone plans for a cross-Channel invasion and instead to conduct an Anglo-American landing in French North Africa, to take place no later than 30 October 1942.

  On 18 October, the final Italo-German air offensive against Malta ended in victory for the defenders. On the night of the 23rd the British Eighth Army launched a major offensive against Axis forces in the Western Desert. It was the beginning of the end for the Deutsches Afrikakorps. October 1942 heralded a welcome reversal of British fortunes in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. By November, the Afrikakorps was retreating westward and on the 8th, a little later than planned, the Allies landed in Algeria and Morocco.

  Now that they were in a position to do so, the commanders-in-chief in the Middle East began to contemplate action in the Eastern Mediterranean. If they could re-occupy Crete and take possession of the Dodecanese, the British would be ideally placed to restrict Axis movements in the region, with obvious repercussions for the enemy. Such a development was bound to inspire Turkish confidence and perhaps finally persuade Turkey to declare openly for the Allies. This would allow the use of Turkish air bases from which to strike at Greece, Romania and Bulgaria; it would open the way through the Dardanelles and Bosporus and, controversially, could even lead to action in the Balkans (a notion suggested by the British Chiefs of Staff, but later rejected by Prime Minister Winston Churchill).3 However, after considering the problems, it was concluded that the defences in Crete were such that any operation at the time was doomed to failure – unless the island was selected as the primary objective in the Mediterranean. The possibility of capturing Rhodes and the Dodecanese with the object of opening the Aegean as far as Izmir in Turkey was seen as feasible, but only if the Luftwaffe was preoccupied elsewhere. There would also be a requirement for additional resources: two auxiliary aircraft carriers, ten aircraft squa
drons and eighty-eight assorted landing craft. A proposal was referred to Winston Churchill, then in Morocco attending the Casablanca Conference with President Roosevelt. The idea appealed to the Prime Minister, who decided to seek the opinions of General Sir Harold Alexander and the Chiefs of Staff. The Casablanca Conference concluded with Britain and the United States in agreement over a number of key issues, including the decision to proceed with an Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky), and to create a situation in which Turkey could be persuaded to join the Allies. A few days later, on 27 January 1943, Churchill instructed the commanders-in-chief to plan and prepare for the capture of the Dodecanese employing the utmost ‘ingenuity and resource’.4

  2

  Calm before the Storm

  February–September 1943

  On 16 February 1943, General Sir Harold Alexander was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East by General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson who was entrusted by Winston Churchill with four main tasks:

  a) You will maintain the Eighth Army and support its operations to the utmost, until TUNISIA is finally cleared of the enemy.

  b) In conformity with the requirements of General Eisenhower, you will take all measures necessary for the mounting of that part of Operation “HUSKY” which is launched from the area under your Command.

  c) You will make preparations for supporting Turkey in such measures as may be necessary to give effect to the policy of His Majesty’s Government as communicated to you from time to time by the Chiefs of Staff.