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Such was Major Anders Lassen’s impact that he became the only non-British or Commonwealth recipient of the Victoria Cross druing the war. In Italy, the Allied advance had for months been held along the Gothic Line between the River Reno to the north of Ravenna and Massa and La Spezia on the Italian west coast. The Allied Supreme Command planned to break through the Gothic Line in April 1945: The American Fifth Army was to push forward via Bologna and Verona towards the Brenner Pass, while the British Eighth Army, further to the east, was to break through the Argenta Gap (a narrow strip of dry land between the small town of Argenta and the huge flood plains to the west of Lake Comacchio) and further north through Ferrara and Po towards north eastern Italy, Trieste and Gorizia. One of the British tugs launched two kayaks. The first of them put two men on board the Likomba, the local guards on which immediately jumped overboard when the crew of the other kayak blew up the anchor chains on the German vessel by means of specially constructed bombs. At the same time, the other British tug slid up alongside the Duchessa d’Aosta and put a boarding party on board. The force dragged the boat onto the beach and moved towards the village itself, only to see a small German patrol of eight or nine men. A firefight ensued, and the raiders made a fighting retreat to their boat.
The Special Operations Executive had now demonstrated their ability to undertake operations, no matter the political consequences. Hugh Dalton, the government minister in charge of SOE, informed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the outcome of the raid. He also stated his belief that..."other neutral governments would be impressed that Britain would if needed disregard the legal formalities of war in their efforts to succeed." [22] The agent in charge of SOE Africa station submitted a report to the head of SOE Colin Gubbins reflecting on the success of Postmaster: "perhaps next time it will not be necessary for prolonged negotiations before undertaking a 30 minute operation." [19] In July 1943, he landed on Crete to destroy German aircraft. Accompanied by a gunner, he created a diversion on one side of Kastelli airfield, passing three groups of sentries and answering them in German, claiming he had dropped his rifle. When a fourth sentry had to be shot, the alarm was raised. This later became No 11 Special Air Service and he was posted for duties with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which specialised in secret actions behind enemy lines. Gus returned to London with Geoffrey Appleyard in February 1942. Within a few weeks, he had obtained permission to set up a new unit, the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF). This was to operate as a part of Lord Mountbatten’s Combined Operations, but M remained Gus’s direct boss. Into the SSRF Gus recruited a true cross-section of agents – both British and from the Occupied Countries. Under Gus’s leadership, men of such diverse views as Peter Kemp (a convinced anti-communist who had fought for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War), and Richard Lehniger (a Sudeten German and convinced communist who had fled to England from Nazi oppression) were moulded together as comrades in arms. The SSRF based themselves at Anderson Manor, and carried out a series of seaborne operations against selected targets.Taken prisoner, Winter was brutally interrogated by the German SS, before spending the next two years held at PoW Camp 344 in Ober Silesia from September 30, 1942, until December 14, 1944. The diversion plan succeeded, and many aircraft and tonnes of petrol were destroyed at Kastelli airfield. Lassen received a bar on his Military Cross. This is a true story of a force of ‘licensed to kill’ secret agents, commanded by a real war time secret service chief code names M, with whom Ian Fleming worked, and upon whom his James Bond stories were based. Operation Postmaster was a highly secret joint raid in West Africa by 11 men of the SSRF and four from the SOE. seriously hazardous work requiring a special breed of men and women. For example ‘F’ section (France) of SOE
Gus fought with the British Expeditionary Force, was evacuated through Dunkirk in May and June 1940, and then joined the newly-established Commandos. From there, he was recruited into the Special Operations Executive in January 1941. SOE was the most secret of the wartime secret services. After this, the Eleonora Mærsk sailed under the British flag, first to Colombo, Australia and Singapore, and then on a regular route between South Africa and the Persian Gulf. The ship was provided with a gun, and Anders Lassen became a member of the gun crew. He was proud of this exciting responsibility, as he was each time he carried out some particularly difficult or dangerous task “with honour”, as he wrote in his diary. Operation Aquatint on 12 September 1942 was a failed raid by 11 men of No. 62 Commando British Commandos on the coast of occupied France on part of what later became Omaha Beach. Three commandos were killed in the raid, including their commander, Major 'Gus' March-Phillipps and the others became prisoners of war, of which only five would survive the war; one was killed in captivity and the fate of the other two is uncertain.Gus had been commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1928 at the age of twenty, and had served in India until he became bored with garrison life, and resigned his commission in 1932. Returning to England and to Dorset, Gus hunted, sailed, and wrote. He published three well-received novels before the outbreak of war in 1939. History of No. 2 Commando". Commando Veterans Association. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008 . Retrieved 27 April 2010. This is a well-researched adventure story. Operation Postmaster was a highly controversial, extremely dangerous secret operation in West Africa during World War II. The Official Secrets Act kept the story out of the public eye long after the end of the war, and it was an enterprising modern author, Brian Lett, who researched and told the tale long after it happened. NetGalley, Melissa McDaniel In November No. 1 and No. 6 Commandos formed part of the spearhead for the Allied landings in Algeria as part of Operation Torch. [33] 1943 [ edit ]
The first is to establish his thesis that the Operation Postmaster-era SOE served as the basis for the James Bond stories created by Ian Fleming. In almost every way, there are distinct parallels between James Bond's Cold War MI6 and SOE in 1941 (including among other things the double [W] O system, the persons of "M" and "Q," the training of agents in primarily naval commando tactics, and the entire secret agent construct that made Operation Postmaster a success). Ian Fleming was the Naval Intelligence Service's liaison officer between the Admiralty and SOE. He was intimately involved in the planning and coordination required for Postmaster. In later years, Ian Fleming would declare that he got all of his inspiration for his Bond stories from his real-life WWII intelligence experiences. The critical difference is that Fleming was a mere staff officer and observer. But he was well-read into all of the personalities and planning with the SOE. And in follow-on projects, Fleming would unabashedly copy SOE's Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) concept to create the Admiralty's own 30 Assault Boat Force, one of Fleming's greatest WWII achievements. At the end of the war, Fleming tried convincing "M" -- real name, Major-General Gubbins, to write a history of SOE in WWII. But the British Secrets Act would prevent almost any publications of SOE secrets for another 40 years. Fleming's alternative was to honor SOE in fiction, in the person and adventures of James Bond. He succeeded far beyond his expectations. and today, 007 and the terms created for SOE in WWII are well known to the millions of James Bond fans who have seen the films or read the stories since the mid-50s. Brian Lett succeeds admirably in making this case and it is the best historical explanation I have read for the real-life inspiration behind Bond.Since 1953, Fleming’s 14 Bond books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The latest, Bond film, No Time To Die, starring Daniel Craig, is released in the UK this week having been postponed three times over 18 months due to the pandemic. Lassen’s force was 20-strong and equipped with a variety of weapons including an old German 20 mm gun. The Germans – a hundred of them – came in caiques (sailing ships), and there was no time to build defences. Although crippled by a badly burned leg and internal trouble, Lassen stalked and killed three Germans at close-range. The commandos would serve in all the theatres of war from the Arctic Circle, to Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. Their operations ranged from small groups of men landing from the sea or by parachute to a brigade of assault troops spearheading the Allied invasions of Europe and Asia. However, Winter was undoubtedly a major inspiration for the Bond character, described by Fleming as having “dark, rather cruel, good looks”.
Brown, Gordon (2008). Wartime Courage: Stories of Extraordinary Courage by Ordinary People in World War Two. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 0-7475-9607-7. but it was Chamberlain who, on the 19th July 1940, put his name to the paper which effectively created The story follows a small group of soldiers from Dunkirk through special operations training to mission “Operation Postmaster.” Brian Lett explains how Ian Fleming was involved with the SOE, how he knew the individuals involved, and how he incorporated certain characteristics from each member into his fictional character James Bond. Brian breaks down the makeup of the SOE and the code words and letters utilized during the time and how Ian Fleming incorporated those into his series. The objective for the raid in occupied Normandy was to test enemy defences, collect information, and take prisoners.To transport the raiders to the island, the tugs Vulcan and Nuneaton were provided by the Nigerian administration. The chosen raiding force was 32 men in the form of four SOE agents, 11 SSRF commandos and 17 men recruited from the local population as crew for the tugs. The mission suffered a blow when General Sir George Giffard, the British military commander in West Africa, refused to support the mission and would not release the 17 men required on the grounds that the undertaking would compromise some unnamed plans he had in mind and that which was in law an act of piracy would have significant repercussions. This had, of course, to be false since Great Britain could not admit that it had carried out the raid in neutral territory, despite the fact that she ended up in possession of the three enemy ships. It was perhaps Fleming’s earliest piece of creative fiction. He was later described as knowing the early operations of SOE better than anyone else in the Navy. party ambush a German patrol only to hear them ambushed by a larger German force. Gus March-Phillips and three of his men were killed as The Court of Appeal has previously heard that many subpostmasters’ lives were “irreparably ruined” as they lost their jobs, homes and marriages after they were prosecuted by the Post Office – which knew the Fujitsu-developed Horizon system had “faults and bugs from the earliest days of its operation”.
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