GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY
My boat, which was Number 1 of the
M.Ls was meanwhile keeping its station on the starboard quarter of the destroyer Campbeltown, and things were getting pretty hot. Campbeltown was hit again and again and anything which missed her astern was passing mighty close to us! No praise can be too high for our gunners; I don’t mean particularly those in my boat, but all our gunners. They were magnificent and continued to fire quickly and with accuracy, and when one was killed or wounded, another stepped in, took his place and continued.
All went well until we were almost abeam of the Old Mole and within 200 yards of our objective. We had been bit a number of times, but were still quite seaworthy, and whilst we had some wounded, they were none of them serious. Then our luck ran out and they got us twice at point-blank range with something very large, probably about 4-inch. The results were sudden and disastrous: both engines and the steering went and the boat was swung hard-a-port by the impact of the shells hitting her. By chance, however, we managed to come more or less alongside the Old Mole allowing a few of the Commandos to climb up the wall and get ashore. My signalman also managed to get ashore, the idea being that we should put a line across to him and make fast. Unfortunately he was killed before he could do this and the boat, having hit the wall of the Mole very hard, immediately rebounded some 15 feet and we were left with neither engines nor steering and all the while being subjected to point-blank fire from a 20mm. gun ashore. The damage was frightful, there was virtually no engine room left and some incendiaries must have hit our tanks, because we were blazing fiercely in the petrol compartment.
It was then decided that as there was no possibility of saving the boat, the best course to adopt was to abandon ship and get ashore in order to join up with our forces who should by this time have landed a little further up river. We got everyone into the water all right, including our wounded, but owing to the number of soldiers we still had on board, there wasn’t room for everyone on the Carley Floats and consequently some of us had to swim ashore. I shall always remember those last moments on board. There was practically no firing at us by this time, it being too obvious to the enemy that we had already “had it”, and they were concentrating on other targets. I stood right up in the bows and whilst getting out my flask to have a last “quick one” I looked around me. The scene was indescribable. We were burning furiously as were two other boats astern of us a little further out in the river. It was a very sad sight. Tracer was still flying in all directions and the whole scene was brilliantly illuminated by searchlights. After a very long pull at my flask (little did I realise when I should next taste whisky), I slid over the bows on a line and into the water and my God! It was cold! I started to swim at first quite slowly and casually because it was only 60 or 70 yards ashore, then harder as I suddenly realised the current was carrying me fast down stream and away from any possible landing place. I kicked off my flying boots - something I was to regret bitterly later - and swam as I’ve never swam before. I had to fight to stop myself panicking. Slowly I began to make headway, time seemed interminable, but I suppose I had only been in the water seven or eight minutes when I reached a small slipway and, having arrived at it, I just lay there half in and half out of the water and quite exhausted. At that moment I didn’t really care much what happened to me; however, someone, I think my First Lieutenant, pulled me clear and after a minute or two I became more or less normal. We found that only one of our party had not made the shore. Really remarkable considering how strong the current was just there.
The next thing to do was to get along the docks and so join up with our own forces. If we had known a bit more about evasion in those days we might have managed it, but as we tried it - almost marching in three’s and with not even a revolver amongst us - it was quite hopeless and sure enough we were spotted by a platoon after we had gone about 20 yards. We all ran and tried to hide behind some huge rolls of wire netting on the quay. After that it was just a question of minutes until we were rounded up and made to understand that we must hold our hands up; and so at 2.30 a.m. on 28 March 1942, I became a prisoner of war.’
Stephens was awarded one of 17 D.S.Cs for the raid, while his Telegraphist, G. C. Davidson, received the D.S.M., and his Chief Motor Mechanic, G. S. Snowball, and Ordinary Seaman G. H. Hallett, posthumous M.I.Ds. At least two other ratings from 192 were killed, namely Ordinary Seamen A. E. Hale and H. W. Little, these in addition to several of Captain “Micky” Burn’s No. 6 Troop. He was awarded the M.C.; see also Storming St. Nazaire, by James G. Dorrian, for several first hand accounts of 192’s fate.
Prisoner of War - Early Escapades
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, Stephens and his party of survivors experienced the sharp end of German hospitality, including been lined-up against a church wall, with ‘three of the enemy facing us in a very menacing way with their machine-guns at the ready’ - but luckily an officer appeared on the scene before anything untoward occurred. And, after being marched off to temporary incarceration at the port’s submarine pens, during the course of which the German bringing up the rear of the party was ‘pretty free with his rifle butt’, not even water was provided for the wounded on arrival. Here, then, all the encouragement the likes of Stephens needed to contemplate a bid for freedom.
His first such bid, after being held at Rennes in ‘the most revolting and disgusting habitations I have ever seen’, was from the P.O.W. camp at Marlag in early June 1942, but he was recaptured after numerous adventures which are vividly described in his unpublished memoirs. Awarded seven days’ in the cells, he was moved to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf, where conditions were very poor, and thence, in early September, to Oflag IVC (Colditz), but not before launching a daring escape while en route by rail to his new destination.
Unseen by his guards, he escaped via a lavatory window, climbed onto the carriage’s roof and clung on for dear life - ‘a most unpleasant and frightening experience’ - until, at length, the train slowed down on approaching a station. At this point Stephens jumped down to the carriage’s rear-footplate before running off over the tracks to the nearest cover, and, just over an hour later, climbed back on to the roof of another train, bound for Chemnitz. A ‘perfectly horrible’ journey ensued, in which he got colder and colder, such that by the time the train reached its destination he could barely move. Nonetheless, he tried his best to make a run for it when the train arrived, but was quickly pursued and grounded by ‘a large Hun on top of me’.
Colditz - The Plan
Arriving at Colditz a day or two later, and after having spent a week in the solitary for his latest escapade, Stephens quickly befriended another recent arrival, Major R. B. “Ronnie” Litterdale, K.R.R.C., who had been captured at Calais. Stephens’ unpublished wartime memoirs continue:
‘It was during one of our walks down to the park that Ronnie and I got our big idea; the kitchen, where the German cooks prepared our food, faced the court-yard on the one side and the Kommandantur Building on the other; we knew that we could get into it and we thought that if we could saw through the window bars and get out on the other side, we might, if we were lucky, avoid being seen by the sentries ... The window we proposed to get out of was some twelve feet from the ground and backing up against it was a “lean-to” affair with a corrugated iron roof, which was used for storing coal. There were three sentries standing or, as was supposed to be the case, patrolling the roadway which ran past this “lean-to” hut. After we got out of the window we should be in full view of two of these men as we crawled across the roof; we should then have to drop from the roof to the ground, a matter of about eight feet, cross the road on which the sentries were standing, passing within six yards of one of them, before we could gain the comparative safety of the Kommandantur garden. This was all made more difficult by the fact that the whole area was brilliantly floodlit and should the sentries chance to look in the direction of the coal house roof they could not fail to see us.
www.dnw.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254 |
Page 255 |
Page 256 |
Page 257 |
Page 258 |
Page 259 |
Page 260 |
Page 261 |
Page 262 |
Page 263 |
Page 264 |
Page 265 |
Page 266 |
Page 267 |
Page 268 |
Page 269 |
Page 270 |
Page 271 |
Page 272 |
Page 273 |
Page 274 |
Page 275 |
Page 276 |
Page 277 |
Page 278 |
Page 279 |
Page 280 |
Page 281 |
Page 282 |
Page 283 |
Page 284 |
Page 285 |
Page 286 |
Page 287 |
Page 288 |
Page 289 |
Page 290 |
Page 291 |
Page 292 |
Page 293 |
Page 294 |
Page 295 |
Page 296 |
Page 297 |
Page 298 |
Page 299 |
Page 300 |
Page 301 |
Page 302 |
Page 303 |
Page 304 |
Page 305 |
Page 306 |
Page 307 |
Page 308 |
Page 309 |
Page 310 |
Page 311 |
Page 312 |
Page 313 |
Page 314 |
Page 315 |
Page 316 |
Page 317 |
Page 318 |
Page 319 |
Page 320 |
Page 321 |
Page 322 |
Page 323 |
Page 324 |
Page 325 |
Page 326 |
Page 327 |
Page 328 |
Page 329 |
Page 330 |
Page 331 |
Page 332 |
Page 333 |
Page 334 |
Page 335 |
Page 336 |
Page 337 |
Page 338 |
Page 339 |
Page 340 |
Page 341 |
Page 342 |
Page 343 |
Page 344 |
Page 345 |
Page 346 |
Page 347 |
Page 348 |
Page 349 |
Page 350 |
Page 351 |
Page 352 |
Page 353 |
Page 354 |
Page 355 |
Page 356 |
Page 357 |
Page 358 |
Page 359 |
Page 360 |
Page 361 |
Page 362 |
Page 363 |
Page 364