The Advance down the Pangani River Valley Tanzania

Following the route of General Smuts’ advance with the 1^st and 3^rd British Divisions between 18^th May and 15^th June 1916

Required Reading:

Official History of the War Military Operations East Africa August 1914 – September 1916 compiled by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hordern.

Rough Guide Map of Kenya and Northern Tanzania.

Rough Guide and Lonely Planet Guide to Tanzania.

Three internet articles:

http://gweaa.com/2011/04/the-native-scouts-of-the-2nd-battalion-the-rhodesia-regiment/     

http://gweaa.com/2011/04/the-17th-cavalry-east-africa-squadron/

    http://www.kaiserscross.com/188001/200601.html

Introduction

Should you be driving from Moshi to Korogwe on the highway between Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam then you can either drive fast, hopefully avoiding even faster trucks and buses plus the occasional speed trap, or else you can leisurely follow a battlefield tour route of an interesting military advance.

The Rough Guide map of Kenya and Northern Tanzania covers the route.  The page and Sketch numbers in brackets refer to the Official History.  Accommodation along the route is not plentiful but can be located in the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet guide books to Tanzania.  These two books should also be used to determine the seasonal weather conditions that you are likely to meet.  This article is designed to assist a guide who is making a reconnaissance of the route, and who makes his or her own time and distance appreciations.  Unless 4WD is mentioned, a normal two-wheel drive vehicle is perfectly adequate.  

Rough guide map of Pangani Valley route

 

The military background

After the declaration of war Britain had opened hostilities against German East Africa with an attack by the Royal Navy on Dar Es Salaam, German East Africa (GEA – now named Tanzania) on 8^th August 1914.  The military commander in GEA, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, responded with the seizure of Taveta across the border with British East Africa (BEA – now named Kenya).  The Germans then mounted foot-patrol raids with their African infantry companies from Taveta against the Uganda Railway that ran from Mombasa on the BEA coast inland to Lake Victoria.  Until reinforcements arrived in the form of Indian Expeditionary Force ‘C’ the British defended their territory using Askari (soldiers) of King’s African Rifles units recruited from BEA, Uganda and Nyasaland, plus a handful of locally recruited European units.

The British then despatched Indian Army Expeditionary Force ‘B’ to invade GEA at Tanga.  After two days of heavy fighting the British re-embarked, although they could have remained in occupation of Tanga as the Germans themselves had withdrawn.  Force ‘B’ sailed up to Mombasa to join the other troops in BEA.  During 1915 London forbade further invasions of GEA and the Germans held the initiative and mounted more raids against the Uganda Railway.

South Africa agreed to participate in the East African campaign after her successful invasion of German South West Africa in 1915.  Two South African divisions were sent to BEA and the South African General J.C. Smuts was appointed to be theatre commander.  He was tasked with invading and capturing GEA.  The invasion commenced in March 1916 and the British seized Moshi south of Mount Kilimanjaro.  Fierce fighting took place at Kahe before the heavy seasonal rains closed down operations during April (Sketch 26).  In mid-May a British advance started down the Pangani Valley from a start line on the Ruvu River that runs into the Pangani south of Kahe.

The opposing forces

Smuts had sent most of his South African troops through Arusha to seize Kondoa Irangi (Sketch 28), and von Lettow had responded by speed-marching up there with several field companies.  Major Kraut defended the Pangani valley with seven companies and two batteries (page 287).  Smuts re-configured his 1^st and 2^nd Divisions into three columns (page 289).  The River Column, a brigade of Indian and British units, advanced through the thick thorn bush alongside the Pangani River.  Centre Column, basically an Indian Army brigade, advanced down the road that followed the route of the Usambara Railway running from Moshi to Tanga.  Eastern Column, a 3^rd King’s African Rifles (3 KAR) battle group, advanced overland from Mbuyuni in BEA towards Same on the Usambara Railway, aiming for a gap in the Pare Mountains that flanked the northeastern side of the Pangani Valley (Sketch 31).  Four battalions plus supporting sub-units were tasked to be reserves.

The British had constructed a military railway line from Voi in BEA through Taveta to Kahe (Sketch 4), where it joined the Usambara Railway.  Kraut’s plan was to withdraw down the railway, ripping up the tracks as he went.  German guns were mounted onto railway wagons to provide very mobile fire support.  At all times the Germans worked to an excellent logistical plan, falling back onto prepared positions and supply dumps.  In comparison Smuts, a very successful guerrilla commander in the South African War, had no time whatsoever for conventional military logistics. The consequences of this were that his men often went on half or quarter rations, as supplies from railheads had to be carried by African porters who themselves were malnourished and vastly over-tasked.  Smuts’ logistical failings were to kill many more of his men than the enemy ever did.  Apart from living in a hostile densely-bushed environment housing predatory wild animals, the British troops were exposed to a variety of malignant tropical diseases which their under-nourished bodies could not resist.      

Driving South from the Ruvu River  

As you cross the Ruvu River you see the Northern Pare Mountains looming high on your left – a natural boundary for the advancing troops (image 1).  The road runs straight and flat down to Lembeni (page 290) where you have a good opportunity to see the railway running below the Southern Pare Mountains (image 2).  Most features of the Usambara Railway are as they were in the Spring of 1916.

Image 1 - Looking east up the Ruvu River at Kifaru

Image 2 - The Usambara Railway at Lembini

 

At Same further down the road an interesting option is presented.  You can continue straight on down the tarmac road towards Bwiko, or you can turn left on a bush road through the Ngulu Gap (image 3) and then follow the bush road as it runs below the northeastern slopes of the Usambara Hills.  On 27^th May Smuts diverted troops from Centre Column (page 290) onto this route where they met up with the 3 KAR Column from Mbuyuni (Sketch 31).  As you bounce down this route you get the feeling of being in the real Africa, and the villages of Zerizeri and Gonja have hardly changed since 1916 (images 4 & 5).  South of Gonja you cross the Shegulu Bridge which the Germans had demolished (page 292) and have a good view of Lasa Hill which the British turned on the east (page 292).  Soon you drive alongside Mkomazi Station (image 7) where the enhanced KAR Column met up with the diminished Centre Column on 31^st May 1916.  Then turn right (north) up the highway.

Image 3 - Looking east to the Ngulu Gap

Image 4 - Zerizeri Village

Image 5 - The bush road near Gonga

Image 6 - Lasa Hill ahead with the SouthernUsambara Mountains on the left

Image 7 - Mkomasi Station looking south

The action at German Bridge  

Whether you drive straight down the highway from Same, or if you went behind the mountains on the bush road and then turned north, pull off the highway into a campsite on the west where the mountains, road and railway all squeeze together.  The reason for the squeeze is quickly seen as the Pangani River has swung in towards the mountains (Sketch 31).  You are at the site of the fight at German Bridge (page 291).  A low ridge running from the mountain appears to be the vital ground (image 9) which 130 Baluchis and 27 Indian Mountain Battery outflanked on the slopes above, whilst 2^nd Rhodesia Regiment made the frontal assault.

Image 8 - The Pangani River at German Bridge

Image 9 - The battlefield at German Bridge

 

The action at Mkalamo

Drive onwards down the highway through Bwiko to Mombo.  If you have 4WD or a very sturdy 2WD vehicle you can divert west on a rough track to the Pangani at Mkalamo, and then go onwards to Handeni if you wish, following the route of Centre and River columns.  This track is the old German trolley line (page 294) that Kraut moved most of his troops and supplies down (Sketch 32).  Even if you don’t go through to Handeni at least try to reach Mkalamo where a very stiff fight in deep bush took place on 9^th June 1916 resulting in 48 British casualties (page 296).  You bounce along into the real Africa again and pass under Mafi Hill where German gunners engaged a British aircraft (page 296 & image 10) and then drop down onto the river (image 11).  Interpret the battlefield yourself (Sketch 33) remembering that dense bush obscured the view of most of the participants, and that in 1916 the river was much wider and deeper (page 295 footnote 3).  Here 130 Baluchis was leading and had a very savage fight at close-quarters.  Talk to the inhabitants of the local hamlet.  You might meet a nice elderly chap who can show you a tree under which a mound of cartridge cases were found.  This was probably where a German machine gun was sited on a tree platform.

Image 10 - Mafi Hill from the fromer trolley line

Image 11 - Mkalamo battlefield across the Pangani River

Return to Mombo where a cool, interesting diversion is to drive north up into the hills to the old German administrative centre of Wilhelmstal, now named Lushoto (Sketch 32).  Several examples of original German colonial architecture are still standing, including the church.

The fight for Zuganatto Bridge

From Mombo carry on down the highway towards Korogwe (Sketch 32).  This route was taken by 3 KAR battle group whilst the remainder of Smuts’ men moved down the trolley line.  About 27 kilometres south of Mombo look for a parking place on the south of the road adjacent to a railway bridge over the Pangani (image 12).  This bridge was dropped by the Germans as they withdrew in early June (page 298).  Walk over the bridge and down the track to Mauri (Sketch 34).  Mauri Station (image 13) was a British railhead once the bridge had been repaired, and you get the definite feeling that not much has changed since Smuts’ men arrived here.

Image 12 - Mauri Bridge

Image 13 - Mauri Station

Now follow the highway down to Korogwe, noting Fundi Hill on your left and the part that it played in the German defence (page 299), and swing right with the highway towards Dar Es Salaam (Sketch 34).  You will immediately see a bridge so park off the highway.  Now survey the battlefield at Zuganatto Bridge (page 299) where 3 KAR took the then wooden structure from the south and Lieutenant Baron Eric von Otter, 3 KAR, won his Military Cross.  The supports to the old bridge piers can be seen in the river (image 14), and the high ground that 3 KAR seized can be noted beyond.

Image 14 - Zuganato Bridge today with the old brideg supports showing on the far bank

 

Look around Korogwe station and visualise the scene of demolition that the British found (pages 299 & 300) before they established an important railhead here.

Onwards from Korogwe

If your destination is Dar Es Salaam then continue down the highway.  However if you want to reconnoitre a really interesting and unspoiled  larger battlefield then take the road to Tanga (pages 60 to 96 and Sketches 9 to 11).  When driving to Tanga an interesting excursion is to drive up into the Southern Usambara Mountains to see the old German Research Centre at Amani (4WD definitely needed).  Whatever your movements now, you are unlikely to quickly forget the beautiful Pangani Valley (image 15) where a disciplined and well-led German withdrawal slowed down a considerably stronger British force.

Image 15 - The Pangani Valley at dawn

Map showing early operations in German East Africa

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING:

Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa by Edward Paice

My Reminiscences of East Africa by General von Lettow-Vorbeck.

The 2^nd Rhodesia Regiment in East Africa by Lieutenant Colonel A.E. Capell.

Marching on Tanga by Francis Brett Young.

Star and Crescent, Being the Story of the 17th Cavalry from 1858 to 1922, Appendix IV by Major F.C.C. Yeats-Brown.

The Desert and The Green by The Earl of Lytton.              

The King’s Africa Rifles by Lieutenant Colonel H. Moyse-Bartlett.

Turning our backs on Britain's fallen: How a new generation believes it was just U.S. troops that won World War Two thanks to Hollywood

By Max Hastings and recently published in the Daily Mail:

How ironic. Modern Europe totters on the brink of a historic political bust-up, and Britain seems more remote from our partners than ever since the Common Market was created. Yet on Wednesday, Francois Hollande made a gesture of reconciliation with ‘Perfidious Albion’. He became the first ever French president to visit a British cemetery in Normandy. In torrential rain, he shook hands with Parachute Regiment veterans at Ranville, where the 6th Airborne Division landed on June 6, 1944. If that does not sound significant, remember that throughout the intervening 68 years, French governments have tried not to notice that the British were there on D-Day.

 

Paying their respects: French President Francois Hollande, right, joined Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, left, in the British war cemetery of Ranville, western France. Most French museums, not to mention school history books, make it sound like the Americans and the Resistance did it all. Millions of French people have seen Hollywood’s D-Day epics; only about six recognise our part. But I fear the same is becoming true among our own people. A few weeks ago, I visited the Normandy battlefields in the company of Paul Woodadge, a splendid tour guide who is himself British, but lives near Caen with his French wife. He told me sadly: ‘Most British visitors nowadays know what Steven Spielberg has told them in Saving Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers, so they all want to go to the American sector. Some hardly get to our beaches at all.’.

Not just 1944, but our entire past, is seen by a new generation through a prism of celluloid myth and legend. Our governments set a rotten example by their lack of interest in heritage, real history. Consider this: the centenary is fast approaching of the 1914 outbreak of World War I — one of the two largest and most terrible events in modern European history, which changed or destroyed the lives of millions.

The French government has allocated cash and effort to a major commemoration, but our own has done nothing. In a letter written almost a year ago the Labour peer Lord Faulkner, chairman of the parliamentary war heritage group, urged David Cameron to get moving, first by deciding what we are commemorating: ‘A matter of mourning and regret? Or should we be celebrating victory? . . . The need for action is now urgent.’

In response, the Prime Minister was polite, but offered nothing. The MoD has no money, and nobody else cares. Battlefield guide and photographer Mike Sheil, who attended a meeting at Oxford about the centenary a few months ago, along with World War I historians, says that the Culture Minister present ‘could scarcely bother to be polite’. His Department is interested only in the Olympics and Jeremy Hunt’s future. I would like our ministers, and indeed David Cameron, to make the trip I did recently, across the battlefields of France alongside experts who could teach them the meaning of 1914 — a blank screen, it seems, to members of the Bullingdon Club.

I know quite a lot about our wars. But travelling lately with guides, both in Normandy and eastern France, I have learned more than I would have thought possible about the highways and byways of history — and the debt we owe to those who gave their lives for Britain.

Because I am writing a book about 1914, I spent five days crossing Belgium and France with Clive Harris — who served in the Royal Signals — and Mike Sheil, who are rated among the best guides in the business. I have seldom found a journey more rewarding. We drove from Mons, where the first British battle of the war was fought on August 23, 1914, through the Ypres Salient where 250,000 British soldiers died, on to the Marne and Aisne, then south to the Vosges mountains where the French army suffered catastrophe. From Harris and Sheil on the spot, I learned all sorts of things that are impossible to garner from books. I will bet that not many of you have heard of the August 26, 1914, battle of Le Cateau, where three divisions of the British Army under General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien fought a fierce delaying action against a vastly superior German army.

 

Misleading: Hollywood depictions such as Saving Private Ryan (pictured) have given many of us a skewed vision of the two world wars. There were no trenches, no barbed wire. This was an action amazingly like Waterloo a century earlier. The old British county regiments — Yorkshires and Middlesex, Suffolks and Surreys — simply took up positions in golden stubble-fields, supported by horse artillery deployed in plain view, and fought it out with the advancing Germans through a long, hot, bloody day. In 2012, I stood on the ridge outside Le Cateau, looking across ground that is almost completely unchanged.

My guides talked me through where each regiment stood, and where some died. I thought: this was perhaps the last battle in history where a man could see everything that happened within his own line of sight.

As the enemy masses came forward, they were mauled and harrowed by devastating rifle fire. ‘It is impossible to miss German infantry,’ wrote 43-year-old Major Bertie Trevor, a company commander in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. ‘They come on in heaps.’ Trevor later recalled the battle as: ‘Too terrible for words . . . we fired 350 rounds a man in my company, and did a good deal of execution. But we were in an absolute trap — it is a marvel that anyone there is alive and untouched. ‘Until one has been for hours pelted at with shrapnel, machine-guns and rifle fire, one cannot understand war. Where the fun comes in, I don’t know’.

 

The Somme: Though this was a battle of trenches and barbed wire, other actions in the First World War were little different from the era of Waterloo. I stood above Le Cateau thinking of Major Trevor, imagining the spectacle as British horse teams galloped forward in plain view of the Germans, making suicidal brave attempts to save their guns. Some succeeded, others fell thrashing to the ground in a terrible jumble of shattered men and animals. August 26, 1914, was a heroic day for the old British army, but cost 7,000 dead and wounded — though the Germans took many more casualties. Because today we think of World War I in terms of mud, steel helmets and trenches, it is a revelation to understand how terrible were the first 1914 encounters, which represented a bloody clash between modern and Victorian warfare. One day I stood on a ridge outside the eastern French town of Morhange, where less than a month after war began the Germans deployed to meet a French attack armed with 20th-century weapons — artillery and machine-guns. Forty-three thousand French troops advanced across the open fields below, in the manner of the 19th century: ‘They came on in their blue coats and red trousers, led by officers on horses with drawn swords, with colours flying and bands playing the Marseillaise’.

 

Pictured in 1914: General de Castelnau Curriere, whose own son died while under his orders I gazed down towards the cemetery where many of those same Frenchmen have lain ever since, slaughtered by remorselessly superior firepower. Their commander was a general named Castelnau, 74 years old, who had a custom of reading aloud each morning to his staff the names of officers who had fallen the previous day.

After the catastrophe at Morhange, his voice faltered for a moment as he spoke the name ‘Castelnau’: his own son, one of the host who had died under his orders. There were other such bizarre confrontations between the old and the new.

We stopped to look at a memorial in open country some 40 miles north of Paris, commemorating an officer named Gaston de Gironde, a 41-year-old Dragoon. The French cavalry of those days fought in the same breastplates and helmets with horsehair plumes their forefathers wore under Napoleon. On September 9, Gironde learned of some German planes parked in a nearby field. He and his squadron charged the aircraft on their horses and destroyed them, only for their leader and 11 others to be killed by a machine-gun mounted on a motor car. The Germans carried the mortally wounded officer to a nearby chateau where he died two hours later. His memorial says: ‘He had the qualities of a Christian soldier’.

The French army suffered 350,000 casualties in August 1914. On some days of that month, its losses were heavier than those of the British on the notorious first day of the Somme in 1916. Now, at least, the French government is preparing to honour those heroes when the centenary of the war comes around. Not far from where those French Dragoons perished stands the village of Nery. Never heard of Nery? You should.

  

Last-minute: Gordon Brown (pictured with General Lord Dannatt) was shamed into attending the 65th anniversary of D Day in Normandy. There, on the morning of September 1, 1914, a British cavalry brigade was surprised by German horse artillery, taking advantage of morning fog. As this lifted, L Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery was all but destroyed — horses, men and guns alike — by a hail of shells. But one gun kept firing to the end, and its crew won three VCs. Nery’s landscape is today almost unchanged, even unto the huge farmyard where hundreds of British cavalry horses were stabled on September 1. Walking the ground, I at once understood how the German guns so quickly devastated L  Battery, which was harnessed to march off, like King’s Troop at a modern parade.

I could see where the British later staged a dashing counter-attack, causing the morning to end in a German defeat. Being there offered a sense of drama, understanding and empathy that could never be found in a book.

Men like Clive Harris and Mike Sheil match their vivid words and anecdotes to maps and photos, bringing the past to life in a profoundly moving fashion. No wonder they are almost disbelieving that the British government is so eager to wash its hands of the coming 1914 centenary — the French, by contrast, are staging a prominent Paris exhibition of Sheil’s battlefield photographs.

You may remember that a few years ago, David Cameron’s predecessor showed no interest in the 65th anniversary of D-Day, until huge American and French commitments to the occasion shamed us into turning up at the last minute.

As 2014 approaches, a responsible British government would recognise its duty to find the money — not very much — and the political commitment to mark the occasion in a fashion worthy of the millions who fought and died, whose lives were shaped or ended by it.

We should learn to value our heritage, as French governments cherish theirs. The Continent today is threatened not by war, but by greater turmoil and dissension than it has known for half a century.

Only by knowing and understanding its past history, and our part in it, can we hope to come to terms with its present and future.

Royal Welsh Regimental Museum appeal to improve display

A military museum hopes to put a number of rare and highly valued artefacts on display as part of plans to breathe new life into the building.

The Grade II-listed Royal Welsh Regimental Museum in Brecon has pieces from the Anglo-Zulu War as well as 17 Victoria Crosses.

It also has the Union flag raised over the battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879, which still bears the bullet holes.

But the museum says it needs to raise £1m to make it happen.

Curator Bill Cainan said the flag from Rorke's Drift - which formed the basis of the classic 1960s film Zulu - was hanging in a corner of the museum.

"The appeal is being launched to preserve and enhance our most precious of artefacts, together with many others that deservedly ought to be presented in a more appropriate manner.

"It would be a fitting tribute for the brave men of the 24th to be immortalised forever."

Col Tim Van Rees, chairman of the executive committee of the trustees of the museum added: "Many of the fantastic items here are not currently on display.

"We are fundraising with the hope of eventually using modern technology to better present this fantastic collection in all its glory so future generations can be proud of their past and the town's history."

Published on the BBC News Website 6th June 2012 -  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-18331023

St Nazaire raid: Remembering the anti-Tirpitz operation

A ceremony has taken in the French port of St Nazaire as the last remaining veterans gather to remember one of the most daring raids of World War II.

From the start of 1941, the new German battleship the Tirpitz was the subject of enormous concern for Winston Churchill and the top brass in Britain.

The fear was that the newly built ship could target the Atlantic convoys that were the vital lifeline for Britain.

But there was only one place on the Atlantic seaboard where it could be repaired - the enormous Normandie dock at St Nazaire in France.

If that could be put out of action then London was sure that Hitler would not risk sending his prize vessel to menace the Atlantic.

But the question was how to destroy the dock? RAF bombs were not accurate enough to hit the gate.

So, a plan of brain-bending ambition was drawn up. An old ship - HMS Campbeltown - would be remodelled to look like a German vessel.

A four-and-a-half-ton bomb would be hidden on board, and the ship would be packed with British commandos.

Then it would sail up six miles up the Loire estuary, past 80 German emplacements towards the dock.

When it arrived at the 1,500-ton gate, the commandos would jump off, destroy as much as they could and distract attention until the bomb did its work.

Next to the dock were 14 U-Boat pens, and 5,000 German troops guarded the town.

Tracer fire

The attackers were supposed to escape on wooden boats which had accompanied the destroyer.

It was called Operation Chariot. Corran Purdon - then aged 20 - was one of those commandos selected to take part.

"I thought it was going to be a pretty dicey do, to be honest - but I never thought we wouldn't do it," he told me on the 70th anniversary.

The commandos had barely been deployed so far in the war and were itching to take part in the action.

On the night of 28 March 1942, the Campbeltown made it part way up the estuary before the Germans discovered the ruse - and searchlights and tracer fire lit up the night sky.

In a remarkable piece of seamanship, the ship, despite one wrong turn, hit the dock gates dead on just after 01:30.

The commandos inside were braced to absorb the impact but recall a long shuddering reverberation rather than a short sharp shock as the ship drove into the gates.

Ricochet

Mr Purdon - who was a lieutenant at the time - and four corporals were tasked with blowing up one of the two winding houses.

He jumped off the ship carrying a rucksack full of explosives. Bullets whipped past.

As he made it to the building, he was surprised to discover it locked.

Improvising, he pulled out his Colt 45 revolver and pointed it at the lock.

The bullet ricocheted off, just missing one of his corporals.

"You know, sir, when I came on this raid, I was quite prepared to get murdered by Adolf Hitler, but not by you, sir," the man told Mr Purdon, before pulling out a mallet to smash the lock.

It took 15 minutes to lay the charges, during which time Mr Purdon kept his men going with a limerick.

When the charge finally blew, the winding house rose up into the air before collapsing like a house of cards.

"Ready to return to England," Mr Purdon told his colonel.

But the colonel pointed out to the water, filled with burning wooden boats.

"There's been a problem with the transport," he said, before issuing orders to his men to fight through town and head for the Spanish border - hundreds of miles away - and then on to Gibraltar.

Game over

Mr Purdon and a group of men ended up hiding in a cellar, waiting for night to return.

But it did not take long before a door was flung open and they were greeted by German soldiers with machine-guns and stick grenades.

His colonel knew it was over.

"Right, we've done what we came for," Mr Purdon remembers the colonel telling his men, and then putting his pipe in his mouth as they were escorted out.

"If I'd been them (the Germans), I'd have chucked those grenades," reckons Mr Purdon.

One of his fellow veterans recalls the Germans even patting some British soldiers on the back in admiration of their bravery.

But still the mission looked like it might not have succeeded.

Hours after it was supposed to have destroyed the gates, the bomb on Campbeltown had not blown. The Germans, not realising explosives were on board, had begun to tour the ship.

Finally, just before midday, the massive bomb finally detonated.

"There was an almighty noise," recalled Mr Purdon, by then a prisoner-of-war.

"We cheered like anything," he said.

The dock would be out of action until after the war. The Tirpitz never ventured into the Atlantic and was later sunk off the coast of Norway.

Mr Purdon was taken first to one PoW camp. When he escaped, he was then sent to Colditz, where he spent the rest of the war.

Five VCs

The raid was a success but it came at a price.

That was clear from a ceremony on Wednesday at what is known as the "English cemetery", a few miles along the coast from the scene of the raid in what is now a quiet suburban street.

Small wooden crosses were placed on the many graves of those who never returned.

Nearly 170 British servicemen were killed. In all five Victoria Crosses were awarded for the operation and more honours were awarded in a shorter time than for any other battle during the war.

"Because it was a crazy idea, it was likely to succeed," says Bob Montgomery, who was in charge of the commando demolition teams.

On a bright sunny afternoon he explained to me: "It's something we British do. It may not seem part of our character. But it is up our sleeve."

Written by Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News - published on the BBC website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17534194