Operation Postmaster was, according to one of the SOE men involved, “not really a military operation,” but “a burglar’s operation.” That was the assessment of Lieutenant CA Leonard Guise, who helped to both plan and execute the mission. Certainly, Operation Postmaster was a heist of sorts.
On January 14, 1942, two SOE-led tugs sneaked into a Spanish Guinea harbour – neutral territory – and stole three boats belonging to the Axis. It was a feat of British craftiness and derring-do, which included explosive near-misses, scenes of an agent hanging over shark-infested waters, and a plot to distract German and Italian officers by plying them with booze at a nearby casino.
If it sounds like a lowkey James Bond, that’s no coincidence. Bond creator Ian Fleming had his fingers on some aspects of the mission. Historian Brian Lett suggests that at least two of the real-life men, Operation Postmaster leaders Gus March-Phillips and Geoffrey Appleyard, provided inspiration for the James Bond character. (Including the zero in their Operation Postmaster codenames – W.01 and W.02 – which meant they were trained to kill. Not unlike Bond’s Double-O “licence to kill”.)
Operation Postmaster is also the basis for the new Guy Ritchie film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – a highly fictionalised account – starring 007 contender Henry Cavill as March-Phillips and Alex Pettyfer as Appleyard.
While the mission seems relatively minor in the grand scheme of the Second World War, the implications were bigger: it proved the value of the Special Operations Executive – which had been unpopular within the regular British forces – but at significant risk. As Brian Lett argues in Ian Fleming and SOE’s Operation Postmaster, anything short of a success could have caused an international incident. If the Allies had been caught, writes Lett, “the repercussions at international level were likely to be very damaging. Failure and exposure might even persuade Spain and other neutral countries to enter the war alongside the Axis powers, Germany and Italy.”
The story begins, in a roundabout way, at Dunkirk, where Captain Gustavus March-Phillips and Lieutenant Geoffrey Appleyard first met. They were among the near-340,000 men trapped there. Awaiting evacuation, they ducked and took cover from the strafing by German planes. Appleyard heard a voice say, “I f-f-feel a b-b-bloody coward, how about you?” Not an unreasonable comment in the face of what looked like certain death.
March-Phillips, who spoke with a stammer, was anything but a coward: an immensely courageous English country gent with – at times – a quick temper and foolhardy impulses. As described by historian Marcus Binney in Secret War Heroes, March-Phillips did not suffer the bureaucracy of the armed forces gladly.
He had, in fact, resigned from the army before the war. But March-Phillips was a perfect fit for the Special Operations Executive, which had been created with the support of Churchill in 1940 – a secret service designed to carry out clandestine ops, sabotage, and under-the-counter warfare in enemy territory. The SOE was led by the real-life “M”, Brigadier Colin Gubbins. As noted by Lett, Ian Fleming, a commander in naval intelligence at the time, acted as a liaison with Gubbins. Fleming would later borrow Gubbins’s codename and give it to the fictional MI6 chief in his James Bond novels.
March-Phillips and Appleyard joined the SOE in early 1941. March-Philips was initially recruited as a training officer but he requested to lead his own unit of commandos, with whom he could lead raids on the occupied coasts of Europe.
To launch these proposed raids, March-Phillips found a Brixham trawler called the Maid Honor, which gave his unit its name, Maid Honor Force – later known as the No. 62 Commandos or the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF).
Also enlisted into Maid Honor Force were Graham Hayes, a sailor and childhood friend of Appleyard’s (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin in the Guy Ritchie film), and a tough-as-nails Danish commando named Anders Lassen (played by 6’2”, barrel-chested Jack Reacher star Alan Ritchson). Lassen became the only non-Commonwealth soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross in the Second World War.
Maid Honor Force was stationed at Poole, Dorset but they were frustrated by inaction. The SOE’s irregular, subversive, secretive methods had made it unpopular with some parts of regular forces. Maid Honor Force had difficulty getting plans approved. But, with a mission in mind, they travelled to the Nigerian capital of Lagos, where “W Section” – the West African arm of SOE – was based. The target was a pair of boats anchored on the island of Fernando Po: an Italian merchantman called the Duchessa d’Aosta, and a German tug named the Likomba.
Fernando Po (now Bioko) is off the coast of Nigeria and Cameroon, but was then part of Spanish Guinea, about 160km south. The Likomba, accompanied by a smaller barge, the Bibundi, had been moored at the harbour of Santa Isabel (now Malabo) since the beginning of the War. She was a relatively new tug, which caused concerns that she might be useful to the German war effort if she returned to sea – or that she might help supply the German U-boats as they hunted Allied convoys.
The Duchessa d’Aosta, meanwhile, had been at Santa Isabel since June 1940, when Italy joined the War. The Duchessa was carrying a cargo of wool, skins and hides, tanning materials, copra, asbestos fibre, and bars of electrolytic copper. It was, however, rumoured to also carry munitions and armaments. The first page of the ship’s manifest was missing and when the local shipping company asked to see it, the captain refused. The Duchessa’s radio was also seen to be a threat, as it could potentially report on British naval movements.
Prior to Operation Postmaster, Brigadier Colin Gubbins had watched the vessels for a year. Alarm bells sounded when, in summer of 1941, the Likomba was loaded with 2,000 litres of fuel and looked like she was readying to move. And there were further concerns about the neutrality of Spanish Guinea, which had a pro-Nazi Governor – not to mention the potential for German forces to take the island for strategic purposes.
Despite resistance from military brass in West Africa – particularly General George Giffard and Admiral Algernon Willis – the SOE continued to collect intelligence. As detailed by Marcus Binney, they had help on Fernando Po, including an anti-fascist Spaniard named Zorilla; an English chaplain, Reverend Markham, who was mistakenly invited to a party aboard the Duchessa (the Italians thought he was Spanish) and gathered intel before scarpering; and Lieutenant Leonard Guise, who maintained a cover story as a diplomatic courier and made regular trips to the island. Another SOE man, Richard Lippett, was appointed to the office of a Liverpool shipping firm on the island, where he befriended locals, pulled strings, and greased palms.
Taking out the Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba would be tricky. The SOE was supposed to carry out strictly secret operations – designed to be absolutely deniable. They couldn’t simply blow-up ships sat in a neutral harbour. The British could not be seen to be operating in neutral territory. Not only that, the harbour wasn’t deep enough to dispatch the Duchessa’s cargo. March-Phillips suggested a heist – to simply take, or “cut out”, the vessels from Santa Isabel.
Whatever the plan, West African commanders Giffard and Willis refused to give it the go-ahead. Giffard was particularly stubborn. His job was to protect the West African colonies. He wouldn’t do anything to rock the boat (literally) and provoke the enemy. And there were also, according to Binney, “unnamed plans” in the air. Giffard wouldn’t allow the SOE to jeopardise them.
The Foreign Office eventually approved the mission, forcing Giffard and Willis to follow suit. Giffard still refused to supply personnel to assist Operation Postmaster. The British would surely be suspected of carrying out the raid, he argued. But, as Binney describes, a response of the Admiralty, backed up by the Foreign Office, said that “suspicion of British complicity was inevitable: what counted was the avoidance of any tangible proof.”
With support from the Governor of Nigeria, Sir Bernard Bourdillon, Maid Honor Force sought men from the colonial service instead. Every Nigerian man who was invited to take part immediately volunteered. “As choice a collection of thugs as Nigeria can ever have seen was assembled,” said Leonard Guise. Altogether, they numbered just 32 men – 11 from Maid Honor Force, four local SOE men, and 17 from the colonial service.
The plan was set: they would split into two groups and, under the cover of darkness, enter the harbour on two tugs – a steam tug called the Vulcan and a motor tug named the Nuneaton (the Maid Honor was unfortunately unsuitable, though as it turned out the dodgy engine on the Nuneaton would cause significant problems). The two crews would board the Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba, blow the anchor cables with plastic explosives, and tow both vessels out of the harbour. Then, 40 miles out to sea, a Royal Navy rendezvous ship would pretend to stumble upon them – a lucky find – and seize the Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba. But how could they get past the German and Italian officers? By getting them blind drunk.
There had been several parties on the island. The locals had treated the Axis officers to a dinner at the casino; the officers returned the favour by holding a party on the Duchessa d’Aosta. Richard Lippett – through his man Zorilla – arranged for another dinner at the casino, which was attended by officers from both the Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba. They sat on the top terrace, which overlooked the harbour, But Lippett had created a seating plan that ensured all the officers were positioned with their backs facing the harbour. The boats would be stolen literally behind their backs.
It took Maid Honor Force four days to reach Santa Isabel, during which time they carried out their final training for the operation. They arrived on the evening of January 14. There was almost an immediate disaster. They were meant to arrive after the town’s lights switched off at 11pm, but March-Phillips and Appleyard hadn’t planned for the hour time difference between Nigeria and Fernando Po. The lights were still on. They had to power down the tugs and wait until the harbour lights went down.
After an hour’s wait, men from the Nuneaton lowered themselves into Folbot canoes and approached the Likomba. They were armed with revolvers and Tommy guns, but were only to use them if absolutely necessary. March-Phillips had instructed them to use the silent but nasty-sounding coshes – 12-inch steel bolts covered with rubber. The invading crew, which included Graham Hayes and Leonard Guise, seized the Likomba with relative ease.
There were two watchmen on the boat, but they jumped overboard. Otherwise, the Likomba was empty. It was, however, tied to the Bibundi barge. Finding a swastika inside the Bibundi, they decided to tow that away too.
The plan was to blow the Likomba cables and tow it out of the harbour as quickly as possible. It risked altering attention before the Duchessa could be towed as well, but the Nuneaton’s engine was unreliable – they wanted to get the Likomba and Nuneaton out of the harbour as fast as possible.
There was another near-disaster when explosives on the anchor cables blew Guise and another man clean off the Likomba and back onto the deck of the Nuneaton. Incredibly, both men were unharmed, but it led to a nervy moment when the Likomba was momentarily adrift and not secured to the Nuneaton.
Meanwhile, the Vulcan sidled up alongside the Duchessa d’Aosta. The men on the Vulcan could see that the Duchessa crew was aboard. But even the flash of a torch in the Vulcan’s direction didn’t raise an alarm. March-Phillips led the men aboard. The Vulcan and Duchessa banged together and recoiled, which created a gap of eight feet between the vessels. Appleyard, who was responsible for the explosives, had no choice but to make a daring, Bond-esque leap between them. As Brian Lett describes, the remaining men then clambered from the Vulcan to Duchessa on a bamboo ladder. Falling from the ladder and into the waters below would have meant being crushed between the ships.
The watchman on the Duchessa d’Aosta also jumped overboard and the rest of the crew surrendered. The only crewmember to put up a fight was a pig, kept on board for eventual slaughtering. The pig jumped out of the darkness and knocked one of the Maid Force Honor invaders to the deck. There was another problem: one of the anchor cable explosives failed to go off. Appleyard had to demonstrate more action movie-like bravery. He dashed back to light another charge – essentially returning to the scene of an unexploded bomb. Setting a dangerously short fuse, Appleyard shouted “I am going to blow!” and jumped for cover under a winch.
The explosions on the Duchessa d’Aosta were loud – louder than the Likomba – and lit up the harbour with a flash. The officers were drunk and couldn’t see what had happened. Some townspeople thought it was an aerial attack, so the lights stayed off – helpful for Maid Honor Force – and anti-aircraft guns were fired skyward. Herr Specht, captain of the Likomba, guessed the British were responsible for stealing his vessel and marched to the British consulate. Both furious and drunk, he punched one of the undercover SOE agents, Peter Lake.
It was just the excuse they needed. “Between us [Lake and fellow agent Godden] we knocked the stuffing out of him,” said Lake. Lippett described the scene in more detail: “When Specht saw Godden’s revolver he collapsed in a heap, split his pants and emptied his bowels on the floor.” The next morning, the talk in the town was that an entire fleet of battleships had stolen the vessels. Lippett himself was questioned afterwards and detained by Spanish authorities on Fernando Po, but managed to escape the island by canoe.
For Honor Maid Force, the adventure was far from over. Escaping from Santa Isabel, the Nuneaton’s engine broke down repeatedly and it trailed hours behind the Vulcan. There were further problems when the Likomba and Bibundi kept bashing each other, and the tow rope between them frayed.
Hayes, incredibly, clambered across the rope between them to fasten a new one. Thrown around the savage seas, he was dunked into the water and flew up into the air – all while still clinging onto the rope. Hayes made it across and attached the new rope – a herculean task in itself – then climbed back again. Hayes might have been shark-food. Another of the men had narrowly avoided being bitten by a shark during the pre-mission training.
The Nuneaton’s engine eventually clapped out, leaving her way behind the Vulcan and Duchessa d’Aosta – and still in view from Fernando Po. At one point, March-Phillips decided to take the Vulcan back to the Nuneaton to try to help. But – just like Appleyard at the harbour – he had to make a daring leap between the Duchessa and Vulcan. According to Lett’s account, March-Phillips fell and plunged into the water between the vessels. For a minute, it looked like he’d been crushed to death, but he emerged from the waters, angry and bruised. March-Phillips, however, was forced to leave Nuneaton where it was and return to the Duchessa d’Aosta and meet the Royal Navy rendezvous.
It was a major risk: the entire operation hinged on absolute deniability. If the men on the Nuneaton were captured, it would be a disaster. Unbeknownst to March-Phillips, the rendezvous ship, HMS Violet, had problems enroute, too. It arrived three days late. Fortuitously, the Nuneaton was found by the SS Ajassa. All five ships – the Duchessa d’Aosta, the Likomba, the Bibundi, the Vulcan, and the Nuneaton – had arrived in Lagos by the evening of January 21, a week after taking the vessels. The success of Operation Postmaster, writes Marcus Binney, “boosted SOE’s reputation at a critical time and demonstrated its capacity to plan daring, difficult, commando style secret operations and deal robustly with the political consequences”.
Ian Fleming was responsible for a cover story that denied Allied involvement, but stated that the British navy had spotted an unidentified vessel and investigated.
The good fortune of its heroes was short-lived. March-Phillips was killed in September 1942 in Operation Aquatint – a failed raid on Omaha Beach. Graham Hayes also took part and was later captured. Hayes was executed by firing squad in July 1943 – on the same day that his boyhood chum Geoffrey Appleyard was shot down over the Mediterranean. Anders Lassen was cut down by machine gun fire in a Northern Italy raid in April 1945 – he took out multiple German soldiers and machine gun posts in the process, for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Even General George Giffard, who stubbornly opposed Operation Postmaster had been forced to give the men their due before their deaths. “For reasons I was unable to explain to you,” he wrote, “I felt I had to oppose your project. It does not lessen my admiration for the skill, daring and success with which you have succeeded.”
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