Chapter Five

Behind Enemy Lines

Not by strength, by guile

Motto, Special Boat Squadron^*

Approximately midnight, 5 October 1950. Chongjin coast, North Korea.

An autumn moon danced on the sea’s silvery surface as the men perched on the inflatable dipped their paddles into the swell. White eyes in dark faces strained to see in the darkness ahead. To their front, an irregular black line was silhouetted against the starry sky: the enemy coastline.

The boat accelerated as the surf took it in. Foam boiled; the prow grounded. Paddles were shipped; weapons hefted. A single figure detached itself from the group and headed up the beach.

Lieutenant Peter Thomas – his green beret devoid of badges, his plain, dark uniform stripped of insignia – moved stealthily inland, a .45 pistol – waterproofed with condoms – at the ready.

For five minutes, he scanned the tracks leading off the beach. Nothing. Returning to the shore, he assessed the state of the surf. Positive. Reaching into his equipment, he produced a small, waterproof torch, masked with a red filter, the colour with the shortest wavelength. He raised it and flashed it out to sea.

Moments later, a long line of inflatables appeared out of the darkness beyond the surf and closed in on the beach. The recce party had done its job. The landing was unopposed.

The boats were dragged inshore. Men un-slung rifles and submachine guns, hefted 10-pound packs of explosives and spread out, advancing inland. The only sound was the waves of the Northern Pacific hushing onto the beach.

Some 130 saboteurs of 41 Commando, Royal Marines, were ashore in North Korea, 230 miles behind enemy lines.¹ The deep penetration raid was a high-risk operation – and an impressive feat for a unit that had not existed a month and a half previously.

* * *

While 27th Brigade in Hong Kong was preparing to deploy to Korea, a very different unit was activated back home. In discussions over the UK force package for Korea, the First Sea Lord suggested to the Chiefs of Staff that they dispatch the Royal Marine Brigade to Korea: He had been approached by the US Naval Commander-in-Chief to contribute to an amphibious raiding force, and was influenced by the fact that a US Marine Division was deploying. The Royal Marine brigade, however, was already operational in Malaya – a war which, due to its colonial setting, High Command considered a more important strategic geography than Korea.² Instead, on 16 August, a specialised force was raised in the countryside of Southwest England.³

This force was formed in response to a July request from MacArthur for a British raiding force. Originally, it was to have been Special Air Service troopers, but the SAS had been reduced to a single territorial regiment as the army slashed its various special operations outfits, post-Second World War.⁴ The Royal Marines, however, had retained the elite outfits which had pioneered the ethos, training and techniques of modern special forces. These were, arguably, the most famed units thrown up by the greatest war in history; their name remains, seventy years later, a byword for the top-tier troops considered the pinnacle of modern militaries: ‘commandos’.

In the darkest days of the war, with Nazism triumphant and the UK’s back pressed against the wall, the commandos were conceived. In June 1940, Winston Churchill called for the creation of raiding units manned by ‘specially trained troops of the hunter class who can develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast’.⁵ The first commandos – the name, borrowed from the Boer War, referred to both the units and the men in them – were formed of army volunteers. In 1942, the Royal Marines – the naval force that guarded warships, manned naval guns and shore installations – joined the party.

Armed with weapons more common to gangsters and bank robbers than soldiers – explosives, submachine guns, black-bladed stilettos – the commandos launched night raids on enemy coastal installations, then disappeared seaward before sun-up. Their operations took them to Norway, the Channel Islands, the French Coast and the Greek Islands. Their ethos and operations – particularly near-suicidal raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe – captured the imagination of the world, and provided the benchmark and model for America’s elite Rangers. When the tide of war turned and the Allies took the offensive in Europe and the Far East, commandos were used as shock infantry, taking out vital targets and spearheading offensives in Normandy, Northwest Europe and the Far East.

Commando training was longer, more rigorous and wider ranging than that of infantry. Commando School curricula encompassed the skills of rock climbing, navigation and stalking; on the tactical front, it covered not just light infantry warfare, but such esoterica as demolitions and close combat, with a specialisation in night fighting. No blanks were used on exercises, making night assault landings particularly risky: machine guns fired over boats – sometimes shooting paddles out of men’s hands – while live mortar rounds crashed into the sea. ‘Battle inoculation par excellence!’ one commando called it.

Though dangerous – forty commandos were killed in training during the war – the regimen was humane in its way. There was (and is) competition between Britain’s elite – paratroopers and commandos – but while the airborne selection course was designed to exhaust, humiliate and hammer a man down, commando training was engineered to build him up; unusually among military units, foul language was not used to belittle recruits.^* In another break from military convention, commandos were expected to be self-reliant, taking the initiative rather than blindly following orders.

A fetish was made of physical fitness. The grand finale of commando training would horrify an Olympian: Trainees had to complete a 30-mile cross-country speed march – at the killing commando pace of run 100 yards, walk 100 yards – with weapon and pack in eight hours; a nine-mile run with weapon and belt kit in ninety minutes; then a race over the assault course. Only after passing this test would trainees earn the title ‘commando’ and that prized icon, the green beret – a symbol of elitism since adopted by special forces worldwide.

The Army disbanded its Commandos in 1946; the Royal Marines did not. In 1950, there were two kinds of Royal Marines: fleet marines, posted on warships and naval gunnery installations; and commandos, manning specialist or training units or in 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines.^* Comprising 40, 42, and 45 Commandos, each of approximately battalion strength, the brigade was hunting communist insurgents in the Malay jungle.

In response to MacArthur’s request, 41 Commando (‘Four One’, not ‘Forty First’) was discreetly raised as a volunteer force among commandos at home stations or on other postings, and advertised on bases as heading ‘for service in the Far East’. The new Commando, with a bayonet strength of approximately 250, would coalesce around three key members: Its CO; its second-in-command; and its RSM. Every man was personally interviewed for suitability by 41’s commander a tall, stern-looking gent with a reputation as a disciplinarian.

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Drysdale, 34, had served as brigade major of 3 Commando Brigade in the Far East in the Second World War, when, after a battle disaster, the CO of 44 Commando was sacked and he took over. 44 Commando was preparing to invade Malaya when the war ended. ‘Drysdale liked his drink, and was incisive but jolly with it,’ said Thomas. ‘He was adored because he was charismatic: Some officers have it, some don’t.’ Despite being uncompromising, austere and a disciplinarian, Drysdale, nicknamed ‘Dougie’ was liked by his men because, as well as leading from the front, he always kept his troops informed.⁶

The unit second-in-command was Major Dennis Aldridge. Another Second World War Commando, Aldridge was a big, powerful officer who, despite his boyish face, was highly competent. The third member of the triad was Sergeant Major James Baines, universally known as ‘Sticks’ or ‘Sticky’ as he had joined the Corps as a boy drummer. His appearance – he combined the physique of an all-in wrestler with flashing eyes, bristling eyebrows and a thunderous voice – would have shaken Lucifer, but this murderous-looking man frequently had a twinkle in his eye.

The men volunteering for Drysdale’s command were highly motivated. In 1944, Peter Thomas was about to be called up as a sapper, something he was not sure suited him: ‘I wanted to be in a decent mob, a bit more operational,’ he said. Having read about commando raids, he decided they were for him; an uncle in the Admiralty pulled strings and he was assigned to the marines. He was heading to the Far East when Japan surrendered. For ‘six glorious weeks’ he was military governor of Lantau Island in Hong Kong, then it was counter-insurgency in Palestine. But like all elite troops, the lieutenant felt left out: he had not fought in a big war. 1950 found him instructing at the Corps’ NCO school. When his students learned of the new commando, most volunteered. Thomas did too, and took command of 41’s Heavy Weapons troop.

As in infantry regiments, there were those for whom the marines was a tradition. Corporal Ron Moyse had had family in the marines since 1842; he, himself, joined up in 1943 as a boy bugler and was a physical training instructor at Bickleigh Commando School near Dartmoor when he was interviewed by Drysdale for 41. Despite his gentle West Country accent, the PTI was a big, hard-looking man, one of the unit’s toughest.

In what would become a significant irony, another corporal, George Richards, joined 41 as he had previously done a tour of the Far East where he had been attracted by the Chinese, their food and their culture. ‘I really enjoyed Singapore and Hong Kong, I thought it was a good chance to get back out there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise Korea would be such a big conflict or I wouldn’t have volunteered!’

One man was accepted against Drysdale’s better judgment. Corporal Joe Belsey had recently married, but the CO had decided given the likely perils of Korean operations, not to accept newlyweds. After an initial rejection on those grounds, Belsey returned and pleaded his case strongly. Drysdale accepted him.⁷

Not all were volunteers. Marine Gordon Payne was on a heavy weapons course at Bickleigh when the entire course was assigned to the new commando. ‘Volunteers? That’s a fallacy!’ he said. ‘But nobody had their arms twisted.’ Like every commando, he expected, even looked forward to, combat. ‘You thought one day you would be engaged,’ he said. ‘It was par for the course.’

Another not-quite-volunteer was Marine Andrew Condron, a Scotsman from Bathgate, who had grown up reading about commandos, and, as a boy, had hiked the Lothian hills: ‘I always had the attitude of setting myself against nature and setting myself physical tasks,’ he said. Against his parents’ wishes he signed up for twelve years with the marines in 1946. After earning his green beret, he adopted the arrogance of the elite. ‘We did always feel that we were a bit better than anyone else,’ Condron said. ‘Esprit de corpsis inculcated.’ He was hoping to go to signals intelligence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, when his name was posted for 41. ‘I thought by the time we get there the war will be over,’ he said. ‘What can the North Koreans do against the Americans?’ At the unit interview, when asked, ‘So Condron: Are you with us?’ He replied,“Yessir!”’.

And there were those who had ‘been volunteered’. Corporal Dave Brady, a big, Anglo-Irishman, was by profession a commando assault engineer; by nature a comedian; and by (frequent) mischance, a troublemaker. Brady had been dispatched to 41 after an embarrassing incident in which an Egyptian military attaché to the UK had been ‘accidentally’ dunked underwater and nearly drowned during a demonstration of commando landing techniques; the exercise had been overseen by Brady. Arriving at Bickleigh for the unit interview, Brady – a self-professed coward – was impressed at the calibre of volunteers: ‘Lots of old mates, characters all, and hard men indeed!’ as he put it. He changed his mind: perhaps his new posting might not be so bad.⁸

If 41 Commando needed signallers, engineers and heavy weapons experts, it also requested specialists of another kind – from the Corps’ most shadowy arm. Jack Edmonds was a Londoner who had joined the marines in 1946 and served on warships when he heard about a special unit. He applied to the Special Raiding Wing, in 1949, the home of the Special Boat Squadron, or SBS, and was accepted for training. Even by commando standards, work was intense: canoeing; beach reconnaissance; diving using closed-circuit breathing apparatus; mining moored ships; raiding; parachuting; survival; resistance to interrogation. Of eight men on his course; two passed, including Edmonds. ‘We got through, we were an elite,’ he said. ‘We were brainwashed that way.’ A seven-man SBS detachment was assigned to 41.

Yet 41 Commando was so short of officers, it took on some who had not completed training. Second Lieutenant John Walter was on the commando course at Bickleigh when he saw 41 Commando mustering on the parade ground. Asked what he wanted to do after the imminent completion of his training by a senior officer, he mentioned his desire to join 41, ‘because they were off to war’. Days later, during a field exercise on Dartmoor, a staff car pulled up and Walter was summoned to 41. ‘I just went and collected a green beret from the store,’ he said. ‘I had not earned it!’

Still, there were not enough volunteers in the UK to fill 41 Commando’s ranks. The troopship Devonshire was en route to Malaya with a fresh intake for 3 Commando Brigade in Malaya when, off Colombo, a signal was received that a new unit needed men. The troops on the Devonshire were the Royal Marines’ youngest recruits, fresh from commando training. Marine John Underwood, a 19-year-old Bournemouth lad, was one of those on the ship who would be diverted from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the mountains of Northeast Asia. ‘The Korean War had just broken out,’ he said. ‘At the time, it was so remote, it was an adventure.’ Another 19-year-old was Marine Michael O’Brien from Pimlico, as was Marine Edward Stock, who was perfectly happy to join 41. ‘This came out of the blue, it was something different,’ he said. The news that they would come under American command was a plus: ‘They had better food and everything,’ he said. The contingent from Devonshire was unloaded at Singapore, from whence they flew to Okinawa and then to the Japanese mainland, 41 Commando’s staging area for Korean operations.

Back home, a cloak-and-dagger operation was underway.

The UK-based contingent of 41 Commando would fly to Japan on BOAC civil flights via Rome, Cairo, Basra, Karachi, Rangoon and Hong Kong, but as this route took them over neutral nations, they would travel under civilian cover: ‘a travelling football team’. The men who did not own one received a suit – ‘which I am sure originated in prison discharge stores,’ Brady reckoned – and would be issued a passport in London prior to boarding the first flight.⁹

The drama began at Waterloo Station where groups of commandos – hefting kitbags and dressed in ill-fitting suits – awaited contact with their handlers. ‘It was quite humorous to see these “civilians” with military haircuts and army boots marching around trying to act nonchalant,’ said one commando trained in real clandestine operations – Corporal Henry ‘Harry Langton, a Liverpudlian and leader of 41’s SBS cadre. Foreign Office bureaucrats played the game to the hilt. ‘These guys with bowler hats and umbrellas came up and whispered, “There’s a guy over there: If you go up to him, he’ll give you a passport!”’ Moyse recalled. He approached the man, and was surreptitiously handed a travel document; his occupation was listed as ‘government official’.

41 Commando tripped its first ambush before departing British shores: At Heathrow, the men were caught in photographers’ crosshairs as they boarded their flight. The Daily Express subsequently ran a cartoon of burly commandos in tight suits flying to war.¹⁰Then they took off. ‘We travelled by Argonauts and stayed at fantastic hotels,’ said Payne. ‘I’d never been anywhere except Blackpool, so this trip was absolutely fantastic, it never seemed to enter our heads that we were going to fight a war.’

The flight east took five days. At stopovers, the farce continued. In the dining room of a Karachi hotel, a waiter asked Brady whether he and his party were footballers. Brady nodded. The waiter leaned in close, put his finger to his nose and whispered conspiratorially: ‘Plenty fucking football teams come through here lately!’ For once, Brady was speechless.¹¹

* * *

41 Commando’s advance party arrived at Camp McGill, a US 1st Cavalry Division camp near the port of Yokosuka on Tokyo Bay, on 5 September.¹² The unit’s various separate components – ‘Pounds Force’, already in Japan; the UK men, flying out in relays by BOAC; the men from Devonshire flying in from Singapore, via Okinawa – trickled in.

On base, attired in olive drab American kit, the only thing that distinguished the commandos as British were green berets. The first priority was familiarisation with American weapons, compasses, radios and explosives. US marine NCOs were on hand for the training. ‘They were great characters,’ said Edmonds. ‘Being a marine is everything to them; we were impressed.’

The eight-shot, semi-automatic M1 Garand rifle was an improvement over the bolt-action Lee Enfield, but the 20-shot Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, was considered inferior to the Bren. The lightweight M1 automatic carbine, with its automatic function, proved handy and popular, though the US fragmentation hand grenade was less lethal than the British Mark 36. Ammunition was plentiful. ‘We were on the ranges day after day after day,’ said Payne. ‘In England, you were told each round cost thruppence – very sparse! – but over there, you’d fire as much as you liked.’

US barbers were a different matter. Walter had decided to get a US marine haircut – ‘i.e. no hair!’ – to make life easier in the field, when Drysdale heard about it. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ he snapped. ‘How will they pull you out of the water when you fall in?’ Falling in became commonplace as commandos began training in amphibious raiding.

Their insertion platforms were ten-man, lozenge-shaped inflatables. Four men on each side paddled, perched on the gunwales, while a coxswain steered at the stern and another knelt in the bow. Beach entry and egress through surf proved problematic. ‘We went onto Chigasaki Bay, everyone paddling together to learn how to get through surf, keeping the boat straight on,’ said Underwood. ‘Myself, and all of us with weapons and everything, were flung onto the beach; we had taken the surf side-on. And one day there was a storm, but we paddled in – good training!’ In marathon rows, the commandos learned to control their rubber steeds. Night-time navigation by compass and stars and capsize drills were ingrained.

Trained to operate in silence ashore, pre-briefings were essential: Each commando had to know the tasks of the rest of his section, RV points and extraction points. All became familiar with air reconnaissance photos of targets. Interspersed with amphibious and weapons training, speed marches built stamina.

Corporal Raymond Todd, the ‘Pounds Force’ veteran, was incorporated into 41 Commando. ‘Because we were training with a professional unit, life was easier,’ he said, but training was frenetic. ‘It was 16–18 hour days, probably the hardest I ever worked,’ said 18-year-old Marine Fred Hayhurst, a member of the Devonshire’s youthful contingent. But living conditions were lavish. The US PX – the Post Exchange, the equivalent of a NAAFI – was a place of wonder. ‘We had just left England and rationing, and the PX had things you could not imagine,’ said Payne. ‘I bought mostly chocolate and sweets, even through we were the most hard-up people in the camp.’ American dining facilities were equally wondrous. ‘When they gave you steak, you thought it was for four or five of you,’ Payne recalled. ‘Fantastic!’ Some men requested tea, rather than coffee; they received a tureen of Southern-style iced tea.

After hours, commandos ventured out on the town. One group, Brady among them, entered a Japanese beer hall, where they were welcomed and stood rounds by US servicemen. Several gallons of Asahi later, Brady spotted a small US sailor being manhandled by burly MPs. Sense of justice heightened by lager intake, Brady waded in, fists flying, but his close-combat training proved unequal to the fists, boots and sticks of multiple MPs. The end result was the little sailor escaped, while the big commando was hauled into a US brig. Released the following morning, he returned black-eyed to the barracks where laughing commandos draped a sheet emblazoned with, ‘Welcome Home Killer’ from a window. Brady was ‘severely reprimanded’ by Drysdale but – as had been the case after the Egyptian military attaché incident – somehow kept his corporal’s stripes.¹³

Brady’s qualities were noted. On another night, commandos and US troops were watching a movie in the camp cinema when the film broke. Commandos shoved Brady on stage to tell jokes. When the movie was ready to restart, the audience insisted, instead, that Brady continue – although, in Thomas’ words, ‘it wasn’t a bad film’.

In the canteen in the evenings, 41 Commando eschewed the jukebox and bawled songs. Musicality would become one of the unit’s leitmotifs, with their unofficial march being, ‘We’re a Shower o’ Bastards’. This proud addition to Britain’s martial musical heritage began:

She’s a big fat bastard –

Twice the size of me!

Hairs across her belly –

Like the branches of a tree!

She can sing! Dance! Fight! Fuck!

Fire a rifle! Drive a truck …

While hard training and off-duty bonding cemented unit cohesion, Drysdale and his officers were joining US Navy officers to pore over air reconnaissance photos of Korea’s northeast coast, where the north – south rail line runs up to the Russian border – a strategic communications artery for the NKPA. Naval gunfire and air attacks could cut the line temporarily, but with peasant labour on hand, communist authorities easily refilled craters and re-laid rails and sleepers. To impact rail operations, bridges and tunnels had to be collapsed. Neither job could be performed by air or naval bombardment; what was needed were saboteurs to land and lay explosives. To ferry them to their targets, naval assets – the submarine USS Perch and the assault personnel destroyers, or APDs, USSWantuck, and the USS Horace A. Bass were assigned, and began exercising with the raiders.

In the first week of October 1950, 41 Commando’s active service in the Korean War began.

* * *

The commandos following Thomas had staged from the Bass and Wantuck; raid commander was Major Aldridge. All men had been briefed aboard on the positions they were to take ashore, the extraction plan, and pick-up points if left behind.¹⁴

As the sun sank over the Pacific, the commandos had quietly gathered on the destroyers’ aft decks. Weapons were prepared, badges and insignia removed from uniforms and berets, dinghies inflated. As night fell, the ships blacked out. Commandos gazed at a glow on the northern horizon; they were informed the lights shone from the Russian port of Vladivostok.¹⁵

When the APDs were 3 miles off the target beach, landing craft were lowered over the side, then the commandos’ dinghies. Each raider jumped up and down to ensure his equipment and weapons made no sound, then climbed aboard his designated inflatable. Ten-pound haversacks of explosives were passed down. The dinghies were hooked up to landing craft by cable, then water churned around their sterns as the landing craft aimed themselves for the North Korean coast. Half a mile off shore, the inflatables were released. The final stretch was paddled in silence.¹⁶

The sea was glassy calm but each time a paddle dug into the water, electric light danced in crazy spirals below the surface. ‘The desperate thing was this swirl of luminescence,’ said Walter. ‘We thought, “Bloody hell, they are bound to see us!” But we carried on.’ Raymond Todd could not help wondering if an ambush was lying in wait. ‘If they know their business they’ll wait until you are within a couple of hundred yards and mow you down.’

A red light winked four times from the shore: Thomas. Beach clear. The operation was on.

Thus far the pace had been sedate. Now, on the crest of waves surging inshore, the inflatables accelerated like surfboards. The beach raced toward them. As the waves broke, commandos hurdled out and into the foam, dragging inflatables ashore against the suction. ‘Once you get feet on ground, it becomes a job,’ said Todd. ‘No stress, no fear.’ Commandos were gripped with a quiet but intense excitement. ‘As a youngster during the Second World War I’d heard about commando raids,’ said Underwood. ‘I had no idea I’d be participating myself!’

The beach was familiar; every commando had studied air recce photos. What could not be known was the purpose of a low concrete building halfway up the beach. Cautiously, commandos approached. It was deserted; it appeared to be used by fishermen. There was relief: if civilians had been discovered, their fate would have hung by a thread, for a streak of ruthlessness infuses commando operations. In the pre-raid briefing, Lieutenant Pounds had ordered: ‘Civilians are to be left alone if they stay indoors; if they interfere, they are to be “rubbed out.”’¹⁷

The demolition party, supervised by an American Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) officer, Lieutenant E. Smith, lugged the explosives to an embankment between two railway tunnels in the coastal hills. ‘We had to manhandle about 2 tons of explosive up to the railway tunnel,’ said Hayhurst, the 18-year-old. ‘The American way is to think of the amount they want – then double it!’

Other commandos, responding to whispered orders and hand signals, fanned out and took up a defensive perimeter in the darkness, covering the engineers. ‘We knew where our people were, any intrusion would be enemy,’ said Walter. ‘But there appeared to be no opposition.’

Tense hours – one, two, three, four – ticked by. The engineers carefully packed plastic explosive into a culvert. Finally, the job was done. Clock-style fuses – two in each stack of plastic – were set for 36 minutes. Extraction orders were passed from man to man. The commandos exfiltrated to the water’s edge, passed through a checkpoint and were counted in to ensure that nobody was left behind. So far, the raid had gone perfectly. ‘We’d been lucky,’ said Thomas. ‘They might’ve had the beach mined, guarded or enfiladed.’

Fortune would turn, however, in the final stage. The inflatables were being manhandled through the rising surf when a shot rang out. It was unclear what had happened. The commandos paddled seaward.

A couple of hundred yards offshore, the line of dinghies halted and turned inland: It was critical to face a detonation, so that evasive methods could be taken if debris blasted up by the explosion headed their way. Bobbing men counted down. ‘Major Aldridge said, “If it does not go off, we’ll have to go back in,”’ recalled Marine Edward Stock, in Aldridge’s boat. ‘Then it was like the heavens opening.’

Violent orange flashed in the dark, accompanied by the near-instantaneous boom. ‘It blew the whole hillside away and a lot of trees appeared to catch fire,’ said Todd. ‘Although my group must have been 800 yards away, debris – timber and rock – was falling down, making the water boil. I was really scared.’

No debris reached the boats. A relieved cheer went up. Then silence.

Out to sea could be heard the popping of the landing craft’s baffled underwater exhausts. The commandos paddled out, and hooked up. Aboard the landing craft, ‘Nancy’ a night-vision device resembling a cine-camera, was aimed at the horizon to pick up an infra-red homing signal from the blacked-out destroyers.¹⁸ Once their position was ID-ed, the boat and its train of inflatables got moving, commandos clinging on as their bows lifted.

The mystery of the shot was solved as the commandos were debriefed aboard. A man had been killed: SBS Corporal Ronald Babbs. The afternoon of the raid, he had told a comrade that he felt his luck had run out.¹⁹ It had. Departing the beach, his boat had bucked in the surf, and a slung rifle had gone off. Babbs had survived seven the Second World War raids only to die by accident on his first Korean operation.

He was buried at sea in daylight. Commandos and US sailors gathered at the stern; the destroyer cut engines; a US trumpeter played ‘Taps’; and Babbs was consigned to the Pacific. ‘You don’t realise how quiet the sea can be,’ said Hayhurst. ‘But we didn’t have time to worry – we got orders at lunch that we were to do another raid that evening.’

The commandos were going in some 50 miles south of the first night’s raid. The target was a railway tunnel and bridge south of the port of Songjin.

* * *

This time, Thomas swum in ahead while waiting commandos bobbed offshore. Dark, circular objects were spotted floating nearby. ‘Mines?’ someone whispered. After a few uncomfortable moments, the objects were identified: fishing floats.²⁰ The beach was clear. The commandos landed without incident, and again, spread out. This time, however, there were North Koreans nearby.

Marines Ralph Haine and Roger Tyack were scouting forward when they spotted a soldier and a girl locked in embrace in long grass to their front. What to do? Pounds came over their radio: ‘Five minutes, then deal with them!’ he ordered. Haines and Tyack stared at one another: Who would execute the girl? As they were deliberating, the lovers stood up, and holding hands, wandered inland – to the relief of the commandos.²¹

Situation resolved, the two demolition parties approached their targets: the bridge and the tunnel. Suddenly, firing burst out in the darkness ahead.

The demolition parties were preceded by Pounds, leading his troop up toward the tunnel entrance. Pounds spotted a sentry at the same time the sentry saw him, but the sentry had his rifle in his shoulder – he took aim – for a split second the commando officer could make out every detail of the sentry – pale face, light uniform, his baseball-type cap – then he fired. The round passed between Pounds and the commando beside him and ricocheted off the rail into the night. A commando fired a fast double tap – both rounds hit – the man went down – his rifle clattered to the ground.²² Silence reinstated itself. Then, another shot: This time it was the unit’s Korean interpreter, who had had a negligent discharge. Whispered swearing broke out.

Demolition work was well underway. O’Brien was under the wooden railway bridge, when the tracks vibrated: A night train was approaching from the tunnel. Commandos flattened themselves against the ground. ‘We saw the lights from the train shining down,and there were all these soldiers and other people sat in this train chatting away and looking out,’ O’Brien recalled. ‘We thought they were all looking at us – and we were lying there looking at them!’ Pounds, fearful that the train was carrying reinforcements, had a bazooka team sighting in. At the last moment, he yelled, ‘Let it go!’ The train thundered past, grit and dust from the tracks spitting into the faces of the commandos. They had not been spotted.²³

Work resumed until another interruption: An enemy patrol approaching along the track. Commandos froze. ‘We didn’t want to give anything away,’ O’Brien said. ‘If we fired on a patrol, we were not achieving our task.’ The patrol passed, but for a pair of stragglers bringing up the rear. The two halted over the prone figure of a sergeant. ‘We thought, “They’ve spotted him!”’ thought O’Brien, who carefully took aim. ‘We knew we’d have to put ’em down.’ In the gloom, he could not make out quite what was happening. After some moments, the North Koreans hurried off to catch up with the patrol. As soon as the two were out of earshot, the sergeant started cursing furiously. Something had happened, but O’Brien had no idea what. The patrol disappeared.

Job done, the commandos began extracting when, for the last time, the silence was ruptured as someone let out, ‘a yell to wake the dead’, Thomas recalled. It was Pounds. He had stepped on a live electric cable, cut earlier in the operation. His radio operator brushed the live wire off him with his rifle butt.

Despite the late hour, several civilians had been captured near the beach. One man, who had been wandering around inquisitively, was knocked out by a commando with his rifle butt, leaving tooth marks in the stock. Others were unharmed.²⁴ ‘We could not take prisoners,’ said Condron. ‘So we just tied them up and gagged them, in a way that they could free themselves.’ The locals were left as the commandos shoved off into the surf, running higher than the previous night.

The last boat out was Thomas’, with Corporal Gersham Maindonald as the coxswain. Maindonald was particularly competent: A Guernsey man, he had been ‘King’s Badgeman’, the best recruit in his intake. Now, he showed his worth. ‘We paddled out when I heard a pathetic voice crying, “Wait for me!”’ Thomas said. A commando had fallen asleep on the perimeter and missed the exfiltration. In darkness, amid breaking waves 6–8 feet high, Maindonald turned the boat – ‘no mean feat’ in Thomas’ words – and the commando was hauled inboard. The paddlers dug in, putting distance between themselves and the imminent detonation.

It was a little too close for comfort. ‘We were just leaving, 50–100 yards away, when the explosive charges went off and the whole place went up in a great roar,’ said Condron. ‘Lumps of earth and dirt came down on top of us.’

There was no damage from the debris – then a machine gun on a promontory let rip.

‘There were green tracers going over our heads,’ said Underwood. ‘We only had light weapons, it wasn’t feasible to return fire.’ O’Brien’s impulse was to dive across his boat’s rubber tubing: ‘My first thought was, “I have to stop this boat being punctured, it’s a long swim back to the ship!”’ he said. The streaks, however, were well overhead; the North Korean gunners seemed to be probing. ‘When the charges blew up, it lit up everything, so night vision was destroyed,’ Underwood said. ‘I think their firing was an automatic reaction.’

A rushing force hurtled over the heads of the furiously paddling commandos, and great white flashes lit up the promontory. From out to sea, the destroyers’ 4-inch guns were shooting; the gun’s tracers made it a target. ‘They must have lowered that hilltop a few inches!’ said Condron. The machine gun ceased. ‘Whether it was hit, or whether it was discretion, I don’t know,’ Underwood said. ‘But it didn’t carry on.’

Once the commandos were back aboard, American sailors broke out ‘medicinal’ brandy and O’Brien heard why the sergeant had been cursing after the patrol passed. ‘They had stopped with their feet within inches of his head to have a pee,’ O’Brien recalled. ‘He said, “First there’s a bloody bloke up there, now it’s bloody raining!” They were peeing all over his head and he could not do anything!’ The story circulated to much laughter. Then the two ships headed east for Japan.

The two destroyer-launched raids had struck the furthest north but another raid had been carried out by the other half of 41 Commando. They had inserted from an unusual vessel: ‘The Pregnant Perch’.

* * *

On 30 September, the submarine USS Perch had slipped her moorings at Yokosuka Naval Base and headed northwest. The boat was specially modified. Her torpedo tubes had been removed and aft of her conning tower, a cylindrical hanger had been built; it was this bulbous feature that gave the Perch her maternal nickname.²⁵ In place of torpedoes were tiered bunks; the hanger housed raiding boats and their tow craft; Perch was a special operations submarine. Aboard, were sixty-seven men of 41 Commando under Drysdale’s command.²⁶

Inside, the Perch was well lit. Though she rolled on the surface, once submerged, she ran smoothly, the only mechanical sound being the hum of the motors, the whirr of ventilator fans and the creaking common to all ships. But she was cramped, and with water conserved for the ‘heads’ and the galley, dirty; pre-boarding, the men had been advised to pack talcum powder.

Moyse, the big PTI, found his bunk situated under an oil drip; when lying there, he covered himself in his waterproof poncho. Once submerged, air quality deteriorated. ‘With 30 bods in one compartment, the air got pretty foul, so bad that you could not have struck a match, it would not have lit,’ said SBS man Edmonds. But the American boat offered one advantage. ‘We used to go down to the galley and the big black chef would say, “How d’you want your steak, buddy?”’ Edmonds recalled. ‘The food was fantastic! Having been aboard British subs, I couldn’t believe it.’

Some 4 miles off the port of Hungnam, approximately 115 miles north of the 38th parallel, the boat came up to periscope depth. Her captain and Drysdale examined the scene. Satisfied, the Perch sank to a safer depth. Inside, the commandos rested. Soon it would be night.

After dark, an observer scanning offshore would have seen a great displacement of water and a huge, whale-like bulk breaking the sea surface. Then the Perch lay, virtually motionless, her casing awash and only her conning tower and boat hanger jutting above the waves.

Inside the hull, a long ‘whoosh’ was heard as the submarine blew her tanks to herald the ascent. In the commando compartment, white lights went off, red lights on, so eyes could pre-adjust to darkness. In the cave-like confines of the compartment, bathed in dim redness, the commandos – faces blackened, armed to the teeth – looked like a gang of fiends.

Sailors reached up. Hatches clanged open. An invigorating bouquet – the sea breeze – wafted down, penetrating the fug. Climbing up ladders and onto the slippery casing, the commandos, assembled near the stern. Swaying with the gently rolling submarine, breathing in the night air, they gazed out at the silvers, greys and blacks of the moonlit sea and sky.

Pressure hoses inflated dinghies. They were pushed overboard. Commandos climbed down, and hooked up to the powerboat. Then Drysdale was summoned. He quickly re-boarded and entered the control room. The radar had picked up a patrol boat contact. Abort! ‘The skipper had a bit of a panic, they called us back on board, we had to rush down below decks again, down hatchways, closed hatchways, the alarm was going – we crash dived,’ said Corporal George Richards. ‘We left a chap, an American sailor, in the hanger – he was saved because it was airtight.’

The raid was reset for the following night. The commandos passed time doing what they could. ‘You could not move on the submarine,’ said Edmonds. ‘We were confined to reading or playing crib, you don’t want to disturb the stability of the sub.’ Most men tried to sleep as the Perch rested on the seabed.²⁷

The following night, 2 October, the Perch, again, rose to periscope depth. Clear. She breached. No patrol boat. The raid was on.

The commandos were decanted. Their boats hooked up to the P-boat, and were released half a mile out. Astride their inflatables’ tubing like jockeys, the commandos paddled in, line-abreast. The target was a railway line running across a horseshoe-shaped beach.

‘As we came into the beach there was the sound of the crickets and the sickly sweet smell they put on their crops – human fertiliser,’ said Edmonds. ‘We landed spot-on.’ The demolition team headed for the railway line and the tunnel. Sections of commandos spread out to set up a perimeter.

‘In position, we could see the civilian population further inland who were working on the land in the middle of the night, it was rather strange,’ said Leslie Coote, the intelligence corporal. ‘They were in white, and it was a fairly light night.’ The white-clad peasants – who may have been gathering the harvest in darkness to avoid daytime air attacks – did not notice their visitors. Commandos kept a careful watch.

The railway line ran out of one tunnel in the hill, along a bank that crossed the beach, and into a second tunnel. Charges would be laid to destroy the embankment and anti-tank mines set inside one tunnel to ambush the next train.

Brady was one of the commandos in the tunnel. Suddenly, someone fired in the darkness, then Brady was sure he heard a rumbling: A train! If one arrived, the tunnel party would be crushed. They took off at a mad dash, with Brady exiting first, ‘like a long dog’. He dove to the ground, taking up a firing position. A tense pause. Nothing. ‘I can’t hear a train,’ someone whispered. ‘No,’ agreed another. Quiet chuckles. The panicked tunnel party climbed shamefacedly to their feet, returned to the tunnel and finished the job.²⁸

A drainage culvert, some 3–4 feet high, had been found under the embankment. It was perfect for demolitions. Edmonds was engaged in ferrying the explosive packs up the beach. Some 2,000 pounds of explosive would be packed into the culvert and tamped with sandbags to channel the blast vertically. Captain Pat Ovens, the leader of the Assault Engineers, ordered Brady to pack the explosives in, then left to supervise some other work.

Brady peered inside. He sniffed. The culvert was about a foot deep in stinking rural ordure. With Ovens absent, Brady decided to use his rank: He ordered his section in. No movement. ‘Come on, lads,’ he hissed. Ovens re-emerged from the darkness. ‘Get in there corporal, we don’t have all bloody day!’ Brady had no choice. Squatting down, he crawled through the filth and started to pack the charges.²⁹

So far, so good. Time came to extract. In response to orders passed by a runner – ‘walkie-talkies were few and far between, and we were observing radio silence,’ said Moyse – the perimeter guards withdrew. Edmonds, at the culvert, was picking up his kit when there came a crackle of gunfire from the darkness: An enemy coastal patrol had blundered into the commandos. In confused shooting, Marine Peter Jones was hit.

Brady, on the beach, turned to the indistinct figure lying next to him. ‘If I were Dougie, I think I’d piss off right now!’ he whispered. ‘Well, you are not, I am and we will,’ the figure responded. It was Drysdale; a shocked Brady could see white teeth in the dark as his CO grinned.³⁰

The commandos pulled back to the boats; Drysdale was the last to leave shore. As they paddled out, there was a tremendous boom: the charges placed in the culvert had gone off as planned, blasting the embankment. The detonation was followed by shooting as Korean shore patrols opened up in confusion.³¹

The Perch had been informed by radio of Jones’ wound, but the surgeon was not required; Jones was dead by the time he reached the submarine. Sailors stowed the inflatables, commandos dropped through hatches, and the boat headed east.

Jones was buried the following day. The Perch cut her engines, US sailors lined the decks and the raiders stood hatless in the sunlight as a commando honour guard fired a volley. It was answered by gun salutes from the destroyers USS Maddox and Thomas, which had drawn alongside. UN flags fluttered at half-mast, then Jones slid into the sea under a white ensign. ‘The sea was as calm as a millpond,’ remembered Langton.

Some good news was announced: A rumble had been heard ashore, meaning the anti-tank mines laid in the tunnel had claimed a victim.³² On the surface, the Perch headed for Japan. The crew had built a strong rapport with their passengers, who they invited up to the conning tower. Brady’s imagination was captured. Lean sailors around the tower scanned with binoculars as the vessel’s sharp bow sliced the waves, heading for an empty horizon. It was a warlike, cinematic tableau – then the corporal remembered that to the west, the peninsula they were heading away from was engulfed in a terrible war. Feeling guilt, he headed below.³³

* * *

Ashore in Japan, 41 Commando were shown aerial photos of their handiwork: ‘It was complete devastation,’ said Maindonald. For those commandos who had not seen action before, it had been exciting. ‘I did quite enjoy the raids,’ said Condron, the Scottish commando. ‘It was an adventure, what we had trained to do.’

The Americans were delighted. Vice Admiral Turner Joy, US Commander, Naval Forces, Far East, issued a press release: British Marine Commandos Make Daring Raids.³⁴ The US commander, Submarine Element, Western Pacific, wrote in an after-action report to the Chief of Naval Operations: ‘The welding of American surface and sub-surface units and the indomitable Royal Marines into one assault group speaks volumes for the meticulous planning and “damn the torpedoes” spirit of all hands. It is an inspiration to serve with such fighting men.’³⁵

Most unusually, a civilian had watched the raids from the Bass and Wantuck: The Right Honorable Tom Driberg, Member of Parliament and reporter. Though a leftist himself, he was impressed by 41 Commando: ‘The most confirmed pacifist could hardly fail to admire these men’s absolute dedication to their mission,’ he wrote.³⁶ He penned a dramatic story that combined the two raids into one; it was widely syndicated.

The entire commando was invited to a British Embassy party. ‘They gave us cakes, and people were pinching the cakes and signing the visitors’ book, “Winston Churchill, RM,”’ recalled Richards. ‘We drank them out of all their beer, it was chaos – marines are good drinkers!’ One commando, unable to locate a toilet, was discovered by a female embassy staffer as he eased springs in a sink.³⁷

The raiding season was ending. Cold water complicated amphibious strikes, and with a UNC advance north imminent, there was no point in destroying infrastructure that would soon be needed by a unified Korea.

Drysdale set about retraining. Having been split into separate forces for the raids, the commando was re-organised along more conventional lines: Three Rifle Troops (each about forty-five men strong); Heavy Weapons Troop (armed with 81mm mortars and Browning .30 medium machine guns); Assault Engineers Troop; and Headquarters Troop. Training recommenced in ground warfare, including at ranges on the slopes of Mount Fuji. Transitioning from an amphibious raiding force to shock infantry, 41 Commando was mirroring, albeit in an accelerated timeframe, the experience of its wartime predecessors.

MacArthur had approved the release of certain ships and 41 Commando from theatre within November. This was premature, Drysdale wrote in a letter to General W.I. Nonweiler at the Royal Marines Office of the Admiralty. ‘I personally am not convinced the war is over … it is possible that my appreciations will be unpleasantly correct,’ Drysdale wrote. He had visited US Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke, Admiral Joy’s deputy, telling him that he did not consider it ‘morally right’ for the unit to be withdrawn, suggesting that 41 could assume a ground role. Burke signalled the Royal Marines’ American counterpart in Korea – the crack 1st US Marine Division – to see if they would accept 41 Commando. Yet Drysdale – an alpha male who exuded confidence – confided a nagging uncertainty to his superior. ‘It was a difficult decision to make,’ he wrote of volunteering his unit for further duties on the peninsula. ‘I only hope it was right.’³⁸

It was an understandable concern. While the commandos re-roled in Japan, the war in Korea had turned 180 degrees: The UNC had counter-invaded North Korea.

* The motto was changed in 2003 to By Strength and Guile.

* No longer. During interviews, several 41 Commando veterans expressed surprise and displeasure when they saw instructors swearing at recruits on a TV documentary about contemporary RM commando training.

* Today, all Royal Marines are commando-trained.