Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII Read Online Free PDF Page A

never see any of you again. We are sailing without an escort. We haven’t a hope.’
    Lassen’s gloomy fatalism didn’t reflect any lack of keenness on his part to go to war. Quite the reverse. In spite of his youth he was actually one of the most experienced seamen aboard the
Maid Honour
. After school, he’d more-or-less run away to join the merchant navy, and it was via that route that he’d found his way to Britain. But from his experiences on the high seas he was convinced that any ship sailing without an escort was dead in the water.
    Yet so far, Lassen’s worries had proved distinctly ill-founded. Without any form of escort, operating on strict radio silence and with no qualified navigator – prior to departure March-Phillipps had undergone a largely self-taught crash course in sea navigation – the
Maid Honour
had succeeded in making her way 1,267 miles to this remote island outpost,where they needed to take on fresh water and food. The hectic preparations now taking place above and below decks were to make the ship appear as much as possible like an innocent Swedish pleasure cruiser, once dawn and landfall were at hand.
    Across from the shadowy figure of Lassen, Lieutenant Geoffrey Appleyard and Lieutenant Graham Hayes busied themselves stowing away the
Maid Honour
’s weaponry and ammunition. It would need to be very well-hidden. Upon entering Madeira’s Funchal Harbour the
Maid Honour
was bound to be subjected to a rigorous inspection by the Portuguese naval authorities. In a war that was fast spreading to the four corners of the world, the Portuguese – like their Spanish neighbours – were desperate to preserve their neutrality.
    Known to all simply as ‘Apple’, Appleyard was a strikingly handsome twenty-three-year-old Yorkshireman. Like March-Phillipps he was a nature-lover and keen amateur ornithologist. He was also supremely fit and combat hardened, being another veteran of the retreat from France. In fact, Appleyard had first met March-Phillipps purely by chance, as both men had sheltered in a foxhole on the bloody beaches of Dunkirk. March-Phillipps and Appleyard had hated the taste of impotence and failure that Dunkirk had left in their mouths. They had vowed to strike back hard against the German enemy, and it was their chance meeting that had given birth to the present, daring undertaking.
    March-Phillipps was an inspired and driven commander, one forever inclined to think the unthinkable – qualities that made him well suited to the task at hand. His deputy, Appleyard,was the calmer, more methodical planner and thinker, though no less brave and spirited for it.
    Graham Hayes, the man now helping Appleyard stow away the
Maid Honour
’s guns, was third-in-command of the diminutive vessel. Lieutenant Hayes had grown up alongside Appleyard in the Yorkshire village of Linton-on-Wharfe, and they’d formed a close childhood friendship. A wood-sculptor before the war, Hayes was a quiet, charming, fearless dynamo of a man, and he’d been recruited for the present mission at Appleyard’s personal behest.
    To aid in their collective subterfuge – that this was nothing but a Swedish trip – March-Phillipps had recruited Private Frank ‘Buzz’ Perkins, a boyish-looking seventeen-year-old, as the fifth member of the crew. He’d been stuck with the childhood nickname Buzz, all because his baby sister, unable to pronounce ‘brother’, had taken to calling him ‘buzzer’. Blond, fresh-faced and gangly, Buzz was the son of a good friend of the
Maid Honour
’s captain – one who’d somehow been persuaded to grant permission for his child to set sail on such a perilous venture.
    As they neared Portuguese waters, Buzz was ordered to act like a ship’s boy for all he was worth.
    His other job aboard ship was to keep her single engine in good working order – something that had become a thankless and excruciating task. The underpowered four-cylinder petrol motor was deeply unreliable, but