Читать книгу The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment - John Parker - Страница 12

By the early spring of 1941 the British had made little progress towards establishing a fully fledged parachute brigade. There were still some doubters who worried that much-needed aircraft and men would be diverted to a dubious cause. But all that was about to change. On 17 April Yugoslavia buckled to the Nazis in the face of a massive Blitzkrieg. That disaster was followed almost immediately by the fall of Greece, where the Allies were forced to retreat after ferocious battles which overwhelmed Australian and New Zealand forces. By then the Enigma decrypts supplied by the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park revealed that the Germans were planning a massive invasion of the strategically important island of Crete.

Churchill ordered General Wavell to send reinforcements and more guns to Crete, but the commander wired back that he could spare only six tanks, 16 light tanks and 18 anti-aircraft guns. After the fall of Greece, however, Allied manpower on the island was bolstered to around 30,000 men, with British, Australian and New Zealand troops under the command of General Bernard Freyberg. Even so, Churchill, having viewed the Germans’ precise order of battle – courtesy of the Enigma decrypts – clearly had doubts that the Allies had sufficient firepower to hold on. Freyberg was desperately short of heavy equipment, much of it having been abandoned during the retreat from Greece.

Churchill’s worst fears were realized on the morning of 20 May, when, as predicted by Enigma, German Stuka dive-bombers and artillery aircraft roared and screamed over the horizon and began pummelling the Allied troops’ positions. They were followed by wave after wave of stinging aircraft attacks and landings, including Ju 52s towing huge DFS 230 gliders packed with troops, vehicles and guns. Suddenly the skies were filled with the greatest airborne invasion force ever assembled in the history of warfare. By late afternoon almost 5000 men had been dropped or landed on the island and one of the most costly battles of the war to date was under way as more German paratroopers and mountain troops were delivered to the island hour after hour, eventually to total 22,040. They met unexpectedly spirited resistance, the Allies’ strength having been hugely underestimated by German intelligence. Even so, Freyberg was in dire trouble from the outset owing to his shortage of heavy artillery and, the greatest weakness of all, an almost total lack of air power to meet the Germans’ massive aerial bombardment.

After five days of unrelenting attack, Wavell pleaded with Churchill to allow an Allied withdrawal from Crete. It had been impossible, he said, ‘to withstand the weight of enemy air attack which had been on an unprecedented scale and has been through force of circumstance practically unopposed’. Churchill reluctantly agreed. The cost was high: 4000 Allied troops killed, 2500 wounded and more than 11,000 taken prisoner. The Germans also took heavy losses, particularly among the parachutists, who were shot from the skies as they came down: 3500 dead and the same number wounded.

The pull-out began on 27 May. Churchill’s thoughts turned straight away to Britain’s own airborne capability. In a personally written minute of that same day, he demanded immediate action towards the formation of an airborne division ‘on the German model’. Seething at the failure to provide him with that force, he commented to Ismay: ‘Thus we are always found to be behindhand by the enemy.’

The dramatic impact of the German paratroop landings on Crete, combined with Churchill’s anger, gave the military managers what one of their number later described as ‘a veritable kick up the arse’. Within three days the Chiefs of Staff issued an edict for the immediate formation of a Parachute Brigade and called for volunteers from across the whole Army. The 11th Special Air Service (SAS) Battalion, which so far had deployed for just one operation – from which not a single man returned – was to be incorporated into the new organization, thus leaving the title of SAS vacant for the inception of David Stirling’s new force, which would operate against Axis forces in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Stirling, a young officer with the Scots Guards, had been engaged in commando operations with Layforce, now about to be disbanded after heavy losses in Crete. Stirling harboured the idea of airborne raiders on a much grander scale than the operations of Major Roger Courtney’s Special Boat Service, which was running sea-borne sabotage and clandestine reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines.

Stirling had never attempted a parachute drop himself and on his first attempt his canopy failed to open properly and he came down to earth with a bump. In hospital for several weeks, he used the time to set down his proposals and as soon as he had recovered, presented them personally to General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief in the Western Desert. Auchinleck liked the sound of it and so did Winston Churchill, who needed little persuading after he visited North Africa and asked to see Stirling personally. Thus the SAS was born and given a base at Kabrit, near the Suez Canal, in July 1941. Initially it went under the grandiose title of L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade, in an apparent attempt to fool the Germans into believing that the Allies had a new airborne brigade.

To some extent, this supposition would have been correct. For back in England that same month, recruiting teams began visiting British Army regiments to select volunteers for the new Parachute Brigade that was forming under the overall command of Brigadier Dick Gale and had its headquarters at Hardwick Hall, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Alastair Pearson, a future brigadier and a stalwart and hero of the Parachute Brigade, eventually becoming one of only two soldiers to be awarded a DSO and three bars during the war, had already seen service in France in 1939–40 and in Suffolk during the invasion scare as a junior officer with the 6th Battalion Highland Light Infantry when he volunteered for special duties. The Parachute Brigade was not quite what he had in mind:

I had volunteered for the Special Forces and was eventually called for an interview for what I hoped was going to be a place with the Special Boat Service. One of my friends had joined them and told me it was very good. I had an interview with Dick Gale, which went quite well and I was told I would be accepted. I had no real idea of what I was letting myself in for until just as I was leaving. Gale said, ‘You know, you will have to make parachute jumps.’ Well, I didn’t know, but anyway I had been accepted and I began my training course. It was, shall we say, interesting. The discipline was much harder than in normal Army regiments. The men tended to be slightly older, at least 60 per cent were drawn from regulars, experienced soldiers. It was a different kind of discipline to that when dealing with conscripts or temporary soldiers. The training was tough and we began preparing immediately for a series of operations across the Channel, but most never came to anything because the Navy could not guarantee to get us off and back.

Another Scot, Macleod Forsyth, was, like many of the early volunteers, a regular soldier. He had been with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders since enlisting at the age of 19, and in 1941 he read the notice from the Army welcoming volunteers for special duties. It contained a note at the bottom, he recalled, which specifically stated that all applications had to be forwarded so that there could be no question of company commanders keeping back their best men. Forsyth applied and was accepted, and soon discovered that although the training was as ‘keen as mustard’, the methodology was still somewhat primitive:

I went down to Chesterfield and was put into C Company, which was going be made into a Scottish company – Seaforths, Black Watch, KOSBies [King’s Own Scottish Borderers] and Royal Scots. The CSM was a Black Watch man. We realized then what training was; everything had to be improvised. Training was being invented as we went along. In the gym, they had tables and chairs stacked 14 feet high and you climbed up and jumped off. The corporal had a foil and when he said jump you jumped; otherwise you got a whack across the arse. Other things we did [included] jumping from the back of three-ton lorries – jumping off backwards with the lorry travelling at 20 miles an hour. C Company was the first to go up to Ringway to begin a programme of jumps there. The first was the balloon jump. There were four of us in it, with an RAF corporal in charge. We sat in a basket staring down this hole in the middle. As it soared skywards … one of the others said, ‘This is daft – we’re hanging on here like grim death and in a minute or two we’re going to bloody well jump out.’

And then, before you know it, the first jump and you don’t have time to think. You land and you say to yourself, ‘I’ve done it.’ The feeling you got was tremendous; you felt so good. In those days, damn few had done it. Then we went on the aircraft – first a familiarization ride, and then up for the jump. They told us that if you didn’t want to do it, nothing would be said and you would simply be returned to unit. I remember one chap refusing. He’d done two or three jumps and then suddenly he couldn’t do it any more and just crawled away. It was understandable, but I said to myself, ‘My God, I’ll never do that! I’m going to stick it out.’

They told us that once we had our ‘wings’, we couldn’t refuse. To refuse then would be a case of refusing to obey an order or, if we were on an operation, cowardice in the face of the enemy. In fact, that was the only refusal we had in our unit. The other thing I remember about those early days: we discovered that because we were on special training, we could get second helpings in the mess. Well, second helpings – the boys went back again and again. I once ate three Army dinners. After all that training, you could eat a horse – shoes as well. From morning to night, you were on the gallop, so you needed sustenance. And the RAF boys used to come in and there was nothing left for them. In the end, the Army had to increase the rations to fill them up.

The 1st Parachute Brigade was initially to have four Parachute Battalions, an airborne troop of sappers from the Royal Engineers and a signals team. The old 11th Special Air Service Battalion became the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Brigade, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Eric Down. By the end of the summer the 2nd and 3rd Battalions were in place and the 4th was fully recruited by the end of the year. The latter was to form the nucleus of the 2nd Parachute Brigade, which came into being early in 1942. To give the new force an immediate strength, in view of the shortage of suitable volunteers, the 7th Battalion the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders and the 10th Battalion the Royal Welch Fusiliers were transferred en masse to the 2nd Parachute Brigade to train as parachute troops.

At last Churchill’s dream of an effective force of paratroops was beginning to take shape. There was still much to be done in terms of training, building purpose-made equipment for simulated jumps, assembling all other essential gear, exercises, delivery of the gliders, training of pilots and so on – all of which needed the input of a large amount of expert knowledge from RAF fliers and technicians. To establish a single cohesive management, Headquarters 1st Airborne Division was formed under the command of Brigadier Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, DSO, MC, who was commanding a Brigade of Guards at the time. Although he had no hands-on experience of airborne warfare, he too accepted the challenge, was appointed commanding officer of Paratroops and Airborne Troops and became the father of Britain’s modern airborne forces.

Browning took the whole operation by the scruff of the neck, cut through the red tape, stamped on petty jealousies and inter-forces rivalry, ditched the uncommitted and acquired equipment and services that had been earmarked for other units. A regimental tribute records that ‘despite a multitude of difficulties and disappointments, there was no looking back. Airborne forces were now an integral part of the British Army, and presently wore on their heads the maroon-coloured berets soon to become famous, and on their shoulders Bellerophon astride winged Pegasus.’

In addition, Browning streamlined the training schedule yet still insisted upon quality rather than quantity, and even in those dire, dark days many men faced rejection as unsuitable. This procedure was conducted initially at Hardwick Hall, which became the combined home of the 1st Parachute Brigade and the Airborne Forces Depot. As training and exercises became more sophisticated, volunteers – as every aspiring paratroop had to be – were put through a gruelling programme of exercises to test both physical and mental stamina. It was tough; the toughest military preparation in the entire British Army, driven by the certain knowledge that airborne troops would often have to hit the ground running, often under fire from ground troops, fight their way forward from a DZ against well-hidden or heavily armed enemy formations, and survive that ordeal until they were able to link up with their own infantry or armoured troops; or, in some cases, perform their own predetermined assault and make what they hoped would be a successful exit.

However, theory and practice were seldom in harmony, and training had to be of sufficient calibre to meet all eventualities. Recruits were tested on their ability to jump from mocked-up fuselages, swinging from trapezes like circus performers and taking an air-sickness test by swaying back and forth for a quarter of an hour in a suspended boat. The physical training schedule was intensive and considered a hurdle for all who entered – and failed here. Out of it was born the dreaded P Company training unit. According to Alan Wooldridge, whose 35 years of military service included three years with 3 Para, this was:

designed to push you to the very limits of your physical endurance – and beyond it. They eventually introduced some favourites in this test of human endeavour, including the log race, where your unit carried a very heavy log over a long distance and you had to prove you were carrying your share. And then there was a test called milling where everyone went into a ring and flogged away at each other for a minute or so and the ones left standing were the winners. It seemed bloody stupid at the time – but it was all part of the overall scheme of things to get the right people. After that, you moved on to the jump instruction – how to land, how to fall and roll, and then jumping off towers high in the hangars against a large fan which slowed the body down, acting like an air brake. Finally they unleashed you in the cage beneath a barrage balloon, and you got to jump with a parachute from around 800 feet before an aircraft drop… it was nerve-racking and then exhilarating. Some, however, did not find it so. One officer who volunteered from my regiment [the Royal Warwickshire Regiment] completed the toughest part of the course with flying colours – and then decided he could go no further. He simply could not face the fact of jumping from an aircraft.

The finer arts of parachute training were instilled at Ringway and as the early months of 1942 passed a good deal of progress was made in improving both tuition and techniques, although mishaps causing quite serious injury and occasionally accidental death were not uncommon. Part of the problem lay with using bombers which had been converted for the task of parachuting troops. This usually meant exiting through a hole in the floor – and in many cases it was literally that. A bad exit could lead to a trainee taking a nasty knock as he left the aircraft; but in addition his rigging lines might become twisted together, the parachute canopy would not fully open and the rate of descent to earth would be dangerously swift and uncontrolled, although the worst malfunction was the ‘streamer’, in which a canopy failed to open at all. Local hospitals had a regular supply of patients ‘injured in training’. The causes were kept secret. The majority would have completed seven descents in the final two weeks of training, thus qualifying for their highly prized parachute wings. They were, however, in desperate need of another test. As Alastair Pearson recognized, the work-ups and training for operations across the Channel were never-ending: ‘We were put on alert and then stood down so many times, it became frustrating to all concerned. None of the operations ever came off and as I understood it, the problem then was that the Navy could never guarantee to get us back once we had dropped for our mission, completed the task at hand and were ready to come back.’

That was about to change, if only to a limited degree – but it was a successful change for all that. In October 1941 Commodore Lord Mountbatten was appointed Chief of Combined Operations with instructions from Churchill to breathe life into the raiding programme across the board, to insert sea-borne and airborne parties into sabotage and general troublemaking operations whenever and wherever possible. Mountbatten’s appointment was treated with open derision by many in the military and naval hierarchy, and he was dismissed by one commentator as a ‘vain and mendacious hustler’.

Over the following months his lordship personally pressed into action a number of highly risky ventures, anxious as ever to promote his own standing as well the department he was running. Some, like Mountbatten himself, were overambitious and even disastrous – the most controversial being Dieppe, where 3000 troops were lost. Some of the smaller operations – such as Operation Frankton, more popularly known as the Cockleshell Heroes’ mission – also ended in tragedy without doing any real or lasting damage to the enemy, nor much to boost the morale of the British nation. And yet many lessons were to be learned from the techniques and innovative equipment devised by swashbuckling team leaders and their scientific advisers who arrived at Combined Operations in those early months under Mountbatten, and these were to be adopted for mainstream Allied operations in the coming months.

In fact, Mountbatten began his programme under the Combined Operations banner with a series of smaller raids, the second of which was to be an attack on a German radar station near Le Havre. It was one of a number of such stations strung along the Channel coast by the Germans, and RAF intelligence had pinpointed these as the main cause of increasingly heavy losses to British Bomber Command aircraft over Europe. One of the keys to the increasing effectiveness of Luftwaffe fighters and ground-based attacks on the bombers was identified as a radar system known as the Würzburg. This vectored German night fighters on to individual bombers, and RAF aerial reconnaissance had taken photographs of a dish used by the system, on a cliff top near the village of Bruneval, 12 miles north of Le Havre. The RAF and Mountbatten’s communications experts at a special unit in Hertfordshire were anxious to get their hands on one of the radar sets and this was the key object of the mission.

The radar stations were all heavily defended against attack from the sea – which was the only direction in which the Germans suspected a raid might be mounted. In fact, the initial plan had been to launch a sea-borne attack using Commandos, but this was eventually ruled out as being too risky. The Army’s new parachute troops, now straining to be let off the leash, might prove the answer. In January 1942 Mountbatten called in ‘Boy’ Browning, who needed no persuading at all to accept, realizing that this was a great opportunity to provide his men with some real action at last.

C Company of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, under the command of Major Johnny Frost, who had come to the Paras from the Camerons, was selected for the operation. The raid was pencilled in for late February, for it had to coincide with favourable moon and tide conditions and these allowed a four-day window of opportunity. Another reason for this schedule was that many of the men were still in training and the work-ups for the operation would take time. Aerial and ground intelligence had provided an excellent visual plan of the area, and allowed analysts to assess that the stations were guarded by 30 full-time guards, with a garrison of around 40 men based in the village of Bruneval itself, half a mile away. Another 100 men – operators, signallers and coastal defence troops – were housed in farm buildings around the station, and at a villa called La Presbytère, and the shore was under constant observation from the pillboxes.

It was planned to drop the Paras in groups named after famous sailors. Nelson group, for example, under Captain John Ross and Lieutenant Euen Charteris, would hit the coastal defence troops and the Bruneval garrison. Drake group included Major Frost and an expert radio mechanic, RAF Flight Sergeant C. W. H. Cox, and would take the radar station. Rodney group, under Lieutenant John Timothy, would take on the troops and off-duty staff housed at La Presbytère. No. 51 Squadron, under Wing Commander P. C. Pickard, would provide the necessary aircraft and the Royal Navy would arrange their evacuation with a flotilla of gunboats and landing craft 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 raid in France, and we grumbled about it. They might have let us get home first. But then soon afterwards we heard the Spitfires up above to accompany us home. When we got back we were given leave, and the chaps found they were being treated like heroes in the pubs. Every pub you went into: ‘Have a pint, mate’ – even for Paras who weren’t on the raid. It was a great morale-booster not just for us, but the whole country. And we needed it. At the time we were losing everywhere and the papers picked up on it and gave us all a good boost. And it was right – the papers had been full of the Germans doing this and that and now we had caught them with their trousers down. It was one of the best-organized raids of the war.

That fact was rammed home by Mountbatten’s PR machine, which would become familiar to all who worked with him over the course of the war. He arranged for Johnny Frost and his men to get a hero’s welcome and for Frost to give an account of the raid in a radio interview for the BBC, which was broadcast on 2 March 1942. Briefed in advance by Mountbatten, Frost gave an enraptured interviewer a dramatic but carefully worded and unrevealing summary to provide the British public with a much-needed fillip:

We had a certain amount of worry about the weather and we were waiting for quite a few days before it was perfect. Then the day dawned and we felt it was now or never. We fed ourselves as we went along to the aerodrome and got into an aeroplane. We had never been so comfortable in an aeroplane before. Usually when we do our practice dropping we are fairly uncomfortable and worry about getting out. But this time no one worried at all and in fact every aircraft had its own little concert party going on the whole time. Even when we got to the French coast and opened the hole in the bottom of the aircraft, everyone looked out and had a good view of the coast and the sea and I rang up the pilot and made quite certain we weren’t dropped in the water because that’s the one thing we didn’t want. We were all dropped by our air force pilots in exactly the right places and we could see as we came down the landmarks that we’d been trained to look out for.

Once we arrived in France it was just a question of taking off our parachutes and forming up at a prearranged place which every man in the company knew in advance. It was quite perfect. There was snow on the ground but we could see everything we expected to see, by moonlight. Everybody in the company made a very good landing. Once we’d formed up, we then went on to do the job. At this time there were a certain number of shots going off. The Germans were prepared for something to happen. There was a certain amount of shots coming at us, but we couldn’t quite see where from. The Germans didn’t seem to know who we were or what we were. Altogether, I think they were quite astonished and very frightened too. We got exactly what we wanted and destroyed everything we could and once we’d done that, we noticed a certain number of German reinforcements forming up behind the woods not very far away.

We then thought that, having done everything we set out to do, we’d better withdraw to the beach. During this time part of our company were fighting the Germans who were holding the beach defences and they very successfully overcame them and held the beach for us. We then came down and made our signal to the Navy and we were very glad to hear their engines coming in. Once we were with the Navy again, our troubles were over.

The Parachute Regiment, which officially did not come into being until August 1942, had won its spurs – and its first Battle Honour. Needless to say, Winston Churchill did not apologize for stating when next the War Cabinet met, ‘I told you so!’

The vital piece of radar equipment, carried safely into the laboratories of RAF scientists, gave up its secrets. First-hand knowledge was gained of the state of German radar technology, particularly as applied to the enemy night-fighter system. Charles Cox, a modest man who died aged 84 in 1999, delivered his prize for scientific investigation in what had been one of the most remarkable exploits of its kind. Back in England, some time later, wearing RAF uniform and parachute wings, he went into a shop to buy a Military Medal ribbon. This somewhat surprised the shop assistant, since the MM is normally an Army decoration. ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked. ‘Not much,’ was Cox’s reply.

Much later Cox learned that he was lucky to survive the raid. At a reunion, one of his former colleagues on the raid revealed that the radar mechanic had been given orders, if he was captured, to shoot him. Thereafter he served at Air Ministry experimental establishments. After the war he opened a radio and television business in his home town of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and in 1982 was among the surviving Paras who attended the unveiling of a plaque at Bruneval by the Prince of Wales, in the presence of President Mitterrand of France.