The Cockleshell Heroes raided Nazi-occupied Bordeaux in 1942. The Cockleshell Heroes target was the harbor in Bordeaux. They succeeded in sinking one ship and severely damaging four others and doing enough damage to greatly disrupt the use of the harbor for months to come. Such was the significance of the raid, that Winston Churchill said that it helped to shorten to World War Two by six months.
For a number of months during the war, merchant ships had used Bordeaux to supply the German military that was stationed in that part of France. German U-boats used the area as a base. Any supply ships that came through the English Channel could be dealt with but plenty of merchant ships were willing to sail to Bordeaux harbor via the Mediterranean and there was little the British Navy could do about it. A raid by bombers would have led to many civilian casualties so this was excluded.
The task of the Cockleshell Heroes was simple destroy as many ships in the harbor as was possible so that the harbor itself would be blocked with wreckage, thus rendering it incapable of fully operating as a harbor. This was to be called Operation Frankton.
The Cockleshell Heroes were Royal Marine Commandos. These men got their nickname as the canoes they were to use were nicknamed cockles. After months of training, they were ready to set-off for their target except that none of them knew what their target was. This was only made known to them once the submarine HMS Tuna had surfaced off of the French coast.
The twelve men that formed the Cockleshell Heroes were taken by submarine and dropped off the coast of Bordeaux. The plan was for the six teams of two men to paddle five miles to the mouth of the River Gironde, paddle seventy miles up it, plant limpet mines of the ships in the harbor and then make their way to Spain.
The raid started badly once the men were due to be dropped off by HMS Tuna. One of the canoes was holed as it was being made ready on the Tuna. The two Royal Marines who were meant to have used this canoe called Cachalot could not take part in the raid. It is said that Marines Fisher and Ellery were left in tears at their disappointment.
The leader of the raid was Major Blondie Hasler. His partner was Marine Bill Sparks. Their canoe was code-named Catfish. As the canoes approached the mouth of the Gironde they hit a violent rip tide. The waves were five feet high and the canoe Conger was lost. The two crew of Conger Corporal George Sheard and Marine David Moffat were towed by the other canoes. Once near the shoreline, both men had to swim to the shore as they were slowing down the remaining canoes. Neither men made it to the shore and they were assumed to have drowned.
The crew of the canoe Coalfish Sergeant Samuel Wallace and Marine Jock Ewart - were caught by the Germans and shot.
The crew of the Cuttlefish Lieutenant John Mackinnon and Marine James Conway had to abandon their canoe after it was damaged. They were also caught by the Germans, handed over to the Gestapo and shot.
With four canoes down, the raiders were only left with two canoes. Along with Catfish, Crayfish was left crewed by Marine William Mills and Corporal Albert Laver.
By now, the Germans knew that something was up and they had done a great deal to increase patrols along the river. The two crew paddled at night and hid during the day.
The two canoes got to the harbor. Here they were spotted by a sentry who failed to raise the alarm possibly he mistook what he saw for driftwood as both crews remained motionless in their canoes as they had been trained to do.
The crew of both remaining cockleshells placed limpet mines on the merchant ships they found in the harbor. They had an eight minute fuse on them, giving the Marines time to get away. Both Crayfish and Catfish escaped on the tide. The damage to Bordeaux harbor was severe. Now the crews had to leave their canoes, move on foot and link up with the French Resistance at the town of Ruffec. The Germans automatically assumed that the men would travel south to Spain. In fact, they travelled 100 miles north of Bordeaux a journey that took them two months.
Laver and Mills, who were moving separately from Sparks and Hasler, were caught by the Germans and shot. With the help of the French Resistance, Hasler and Sparks reached Spain and then Gibraltar. Even here, Sparks met problems. Hasler used his rank to get transported back to Britain. However, Sparks did not have such luck and was arrested. In fact the Chief of Combined Operations, Lord Louis Mountbatten, had assumed all the men were dead, so anyone claiming to be them would have been treated with suspicion.
Sparks was put under guard by the military police. However, he slipped these guards at Euston Station in London and, after visiting his father, made his way to the Combined Operations Headquarters. (less info)