No. 6 Commando
No. 6 Commando was a battalion-sized British Army commando unit of the Second World War. Although it was raised to conduct small-scale raids and harass garrisons along the coast of German-occupied France, it was mainly employed as a highly trained infantry assault unit.
Formed in July 1940, No. 6 Commando's first involvement in operations came in late 1941 when it contributed small forces to raids in Norway. In April 1942 the whole unit was scheduled to take part in Operation Myrmidon, in France, but this raid was eventually cancelled. As a result, the first full-scale operation that No. 6 Commando took part in was Operation Torch, the Allied landings in Algeria in November 1942. Later, it joined the advance into Tunisia in 1943. On 6 June 1944, it participated in the D-Day landings in France as part of Operation Overlord, coming ashore with the 1st Special Service Brigade which was tasked with linking up with the troops from the 6th Airborne Division on the eastern flank of Sword.
Following this, No. 6 Commando were used in the defence of the beachhead and the subsequent operations to break out from Normandy before being withdrawn with the rest of the brigade back to the United Kingdom in September 1944. In January 1945, they took part in the Allied counterattack during the Ardennes Offensive before joining the advance into Germany as part of Operation Plunder. With the end of hostilities, the unit was disbanded in 1946.
History
Formation
In early June 1940 following the lightning advance of the Germans through France and the subsequent Dunkirk evacuation, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, realised the need for Britain to maintain some form of offensive action and directed his chief staff officer and military adviser, General Hastings Ismay, to begin organising a force which could conduct raids along the coast of German-occupied Europe. Shortly after this, even before the concept had been fully developed, the War Office put out a request for volunteers among the troops in Britain to join a force they would be known as the Commandos. At this stage it was decided to create 12 commando units, each with an establishment of roughly 500 men.No. 6 Commando was one of the units formed at this time. Raised at Scarborough on 26 July 1940, it was placed under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Fetherstonhaugh, who was a Territorial officer holding the substantive rank of captain in the Queen’s Royal Regiment. Initially, the unit's personnel were mainly drawn from the British Army's Western Command although later personnel were drawn from all commands and branches of the army. Garrison duties were undertaken at Romney Marsh and Brightlingsea, before the unit moved to Milford Haven where they undertook amphibious training. Around this time, the commando adopted the Scottish tam o'shanter as their official headdress.
In October, when the commandos were reorganised into "Special Service" battalions underneath the overarching Special Service Brigade, No. 6 Commando was amalgamated with No. 5 Commando and became a company-sized element in the 5th Special Service Battalion under Fetherstonhaugh's command and based at Helensburgh in Scotland. In March 1941, following a reversal in War Office thinking, the battalion was broken up again into its constituent parts and No. 6 Commando was reorganised as a battalion equivalent unit, albeit with six troops instead of the original 10.
Early operations
Following the failures of the hastily planned commando operations undertaken in June and July 1940, there was a period of inactivity in which the concept was refined and detailed planning was undertaken while individual units carried out extensive and specialised training. In early 1941 a number of raids were undertaken but No. 6 Commando did not conduct its first operation until later in the year.On 9 December 1941, No. 6 Commando, along with a detachment from No. 12 Commando and some Norwegian soldiers, took part in Operation Kitbag, a raid on the town of Florø in Norway. Embarking on, an infantry landing ship, they set out from Scapa Flow. During the voyage an incident occurred while some of the men were priming grenades for the raid which resulted in six men being killed and another 11 seriously wounded. Nevertheless, the decision was made to continue with the raid, although it was eventually called off when the naval commander was unable to locate the fjord upon which Florø was located due to navigational difficulties.
Later in the month, on 27 December, No. 6 Commando provided a small detachment of engineers to support No. 3 Commando's raid on Vågsøy and Måløy in Norway as part of Operation Archery. The raid proved a resounding success; however, No. 6 Commando did not participate in another until April 1942 when it took part in Operation Myrmidon. This operation was an abortive raid on the Adour Estuary in southern France. The plan was to disrupt road and rail transport between France and Spain by landing approximately 3,000 troops, consisting of No. 1 and No. 6 Commandos. They would be followed up by one and a half Royal Marine battalions along with an armoured regiment and a motor battalion. After embarking on the transport ships and, the force spent a month sailing off the French coast disguised as Spanish merchant ships. On 5 April, the ships approached the mouth of the estuary in order to carry out the landing. Amidst bad weather they encountered a sandbar that they had not expected and, unable to pass it, the raid was called off and the ships returned to the United Kingdom.
Operation Torch
Because of these disappointments, No. 6 Commando's first major action as a formed unit came in November 1942 when, along with No. 1 Commando, it formed part of the spearhead for the Allied landings in Algeria as part of Operation Torch. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Iain McAlpine, the commando embarked upon in October 1942 in Glasgow along with some United States Army Rangers that were also taking part in the operation. Tensions were high between the British and the Vichy French at this time because of a number of clashes and as a result the decision was made for the commandos to be equipped with American weapons and uniforms in an effort to placate the defenders.The voyage from the United Kingdom took approximately three weeks and on 7 November 1942 Awatea arrived at its assigned station off the coast near the harbour of Algiers. At 10:15 pm No. 6 Commando took to their landing craft. The launch did not go smoothly. From the outset they were hampered by the inexperience of the crews lowering the landing craft into the water and this, along with other factors that arose later including poor weather, breakdowns and navigational errors meant that the majority of No. 6 Commando's landing craft missed the rendezvous with the motor launch that was to guide them to the landing beaches. As a result, many landed at the wrong spot and the schedule was ruined. In the end the first landings took place at 3:00 am on 8 November, two hours later than planned, while the last wave came ashore in broad daylight at 6:30 am.
Nevertheless, in most places resistance was light and the first landings experienced only desultory artillery and machine gun fire from the defenders as they came ashore. Faulty navigation meant that No. 9 Troop attempted to land on the Ilot de la Marine, which was described by author Hilary Saint George Saunders as "the most heavily fortified part of Algiers harbour", and it was here that the majority of the commando's casualties for the day—two killed and 19 wounded—were suffered.
Once ashore the commando's first task was to secure four beaches between Cape Caxine and Ras Acrata for the main force. This was achieved with relative ease as the defenders surrendered almost immediately. After this part of the commando secured Pointe Pescarde, about from the town while another force, consisting of about three and a half troops under the second-in-command, Major Jock MacLeod of the Cameronians, moved on towards their main objective, which was to capture Fort Duperre, from where French artillery was firing upon the ships anchored offshore. MacLeod's men reached the fort with no trouble, but armed with only small arms, they were unable to capture it. At 1:30 pm, after the forward observer, a captain from the Royal Canadian Artillery directed an air strike on the fort from a number of Fleet Air Arm fighter-bombers, a dialogue was opened between the attackers and the defenders and after threats of a naval bombardment were made the fort’s garrison finally surrendered.
Further operations in North Africa
After capturing Fort Duperre, the commandos received reports that a force of some 2,000 Zouaves were moving up to recapture the position. The French attack did not eventuate, however, and in the end the commandos marched all the way to Maison Blanche. Having only been issued with rations for a day, they had to rely on fruit and bread that they obtained by bartering with the locals on the way. Eventually they arrived at the port, where they embarked upon the destroyers HMS Wheatland and Lamerton and in company with a force of US Rangers they set out to capture the airfields at Allerlick and Duzzerville, near Bone.Upon arrival No. 6 Commando took up defensive positions in the orange groves alongside troops from the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, the Royal West Kents and a number of Frenchmen that decided to join their cause. A brief period of lull followed where the commandos were mainly involved in defending the airfield against air attacks from the Luftwaffe, before they moved off again to take part in the fighting around Medjez-el-Bab, where they fought on the left flank of the first French regular forces to engage the Germans since the fall of France in 1940, forming the spearhead of the advance towards Tunis.
On 21 November, reinforcements had reached them and the decision was made to move the commandos to La Calle by rail. With only intermittent air cover, the train was attacked by German fighters and No. 6 Commando suffered heavy casualties with 11 killed and 32 wounded. After the train driver jumped from the engine, one of the commandos took over the duties of driving the train. The unit remained in La Calle until 26 November, during which time the commandos were used to unload stores from the ships in the port, while half the unit carried out a reconnaissance patrol near Tabarka, to determine whether the German tanks that were parked there were real or decoys.
Following this the commandos were used mainly as highly trained infantry units for the rest of their involvement in the North African campaign and for the majority of this time they were attached to the 36th Infantry Brigade. Over the course of the next five months the commandos were involved in a number of costly attacks and periods of static defence, in between which they carried out aggressive fighting patrols. Indicative of the nature of the fighting during this time was No. 6 Commando's attack on the Green Hill feature on 30 November 1942. The main attack was launched at 4:00 am, as three troops—Nos. 3, 4 and 6 Troops—attacked from the north and west, while No. 5 Troop conducted a diversionary attack from the flank. As soon as the main force left its line of departure it came under intense oblique fire from interlocking medium and heavy machine guns positioned in a diamond-shaped perimeter on top of the hill. The fire was so intense that the troop providing support by fire on the flank was unable to suppress it and the attack was temporarily postponed until the afternoon when it was hoped that artillery support could be utilised.
At 4:00 pm, following a period of artillery preparation, the commandos launched their attack. Amidst thick mist and heavy rain, the attack went badly from the start. Shortly after stepping off, No. 5 Troop was ambushed by a German force disguised as locals, reducing its strength to just five men. The main assault force pressed on, although by now it consisted of only 67 men due to earlier losses. Part of the assault force—No. 6 Troop—took heavy fire and lost forward momentum; however, the other two troops gained the top of the hill and broke in to the German position. Upon reaching the summit they were greeted by an intense volume of heavy machine gun fire and at this point it became clear that the preparatory bombardment had not been successful. Calls for further artillery support were denied due to a shortage of ammunition amongst the field batteries and eventually after a number of unsuccessful attempts at taking the position the commandos were forced to retire.
The commando's losses on Green Hill amounted to 80 men killed or wounded and as a result No. 6 Commando had to be reorganised into four troops instead of the six that its establishment called for. Shortly after this the unit suffered another blow when its commanding officer, Iain McAlpine, suffered heart trouble and had to be evacuated to hospital. In his place Major Jock MacLeod temporarily took over command.
In early January 1943, Lieutenant Colonel Derek Mills-Roberts arrived from the United Kingdom to take over the unit, and he was in command when on 26 February 1943 they were involved in bitter fighting against two battalions of German parachute infantry with armoured support which attacked their position as part of an attempt to encircle the 1st Army by cutting the Medjez road. In a fight that lasted over five hours, against an enemy that outnumbered them and had the advantage of heavy armoured support, the commandos, along with elements from the Reconnaissance Regiment, were able to stop the advance long enough for reinforcements to be brought up. In this action, No. 6 Commando incurred 11 killed, 34 wounded and 55 missing in action. This represented over 40 per cent of the unit's strength at the time, although later a number of those that were captured were recovered after the Germans withdrew.
After this, No. 6 Commando was put into the role of mobile reserve in an effort to maintain the unit's integrity and spare it from incurring further losses that might render it unable to remain in the line. Nevertheless, throughout March and into April they continued to carry out patrol operations around Goubellat and Ben Arada. Finally, in early April the decision was made to withdraw the commandos from the fighting in North Africa. Lacking the administrative support and reinforcements of regular infantry units, the unit's strength had fallen to just 150 men and as a result it was no longer considered effective. On 7 April, No. 6 Commando arrived in Algiers, where it remained for two weeks before embarking on HMT Staffordshire on 24 April. After a short voyage, it arrived back in the United Kingdom on 2 May 1943 to begin preparations for the invasion of German-occupied France.