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Gus had been commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1928 at the age of twenty, and had served in India until he became bored with garrison life, and resigned his commission in 1932. Returning to England and to Dorset, Gus hunted, sailed, and wrote. He published three well-received novels before the outbreak of war in 1939. An intriguing question is whether Gus March-Phillipps, an established novelist with an in depth knowledge of working as a secret agent licensed to kill, would not himself have written the James Bond stories, had he survived the war. After the war, Ian Fleming wrote to M and urged him to write the true and exciting story of those who had served in SOE. M was denied official permission to write that history, and a few years later, Fleming began to write his fictional accounts of James Bond, M and “the British Secret Service.” The details of the raid were being kept secret even from the British Chiefs of Staff, who were only informed on 18 January 1942, that the Duchessa d'Aosta had been intercepted 230 miles (370 km) offshore and was being taken to Lagos. [7]
In August 1941, Gus and his team of twelve set off for British West Africa. Five of them, including Gus, sailed on the Maid Honor itself. The others travelled in civilian clothes by civilian ships, all carrying false passports issued to them by SOE. Once arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Gus and his men were given codenames by SOE. After the Second World War most of the commands were disbanded leaving just the Royal Marine 3 Commando Brigade but their legacy is the present day Royal Marines Commandos, the Parachute Regiment, Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service who can all trace their origins to the commandos. [2] Their legacy also extends to mainland Europe, the French Naval commandos, the Dutch Korps Commandotroepen and the Belgian Paracommando Brigade can all trace their origins to men who volunteered to serve with the British Commandos. [3] [4] [5] Operations [ edit ] 1940 [ edit ] But who was Tom Winter and what did he achieve during his career that made him a key model for James Bond? The raid, under the command of Major Gus March-Phillipps, founder of the SSRF, was carried out on January 14. Of the three enemy ships, Burundi and Likomba were moored together and were approached by the Nuneaton raiders, including Winter. Gus had married a fellow SOE secret agent, Marjorie Stewart, in April 1942, following a whirlwind romance. Unknown to him, Gus left behind both a widow and an unborn child, Henrietta, who was never to meet her father.Like millions of others, I will watch the next Bond film in the cinema over the coming days and, as the credits roll, I will certainly spare a thought for Thomas William Winter who was, in so many ways, the real-life James Bond. In the India / Burma theatre 142 Commando Company also operated in conjunction with the U.S. unit Merrill's Marauders. [ citation needed] 1944 [ edit ] No. 4 Commando engaged in house to house fighting with the Germans at Riva Bella, near Ouistreham. After subduing the opposition, No 4 Commando moved inland to link up with 6th Airborne Division. CWGC headstone March-Phillipps". Commando Veterans Association . http://www.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/v/Commando+War+Graves+Memorials+and+Plaques/graves/St+LAURENT+sur+Mer/St_+LAURENT-sur-Mer++comunal+cemetery+_1_.JPG.html . Retrieved 3 June 2010. [ dead link]
AS THE new 007 film, No Time To Die, is finally premiered, military historian Lord Ashcroft tells the story of the real-life war hero who inspired James Bond. In November, No. 4 Belgian and No. 6 Polish Troops joined the 2nd Special Service Brigade in Italy. [42] Notably the Poles captured a German-occupied village alone when the 2/6th Battalion Queen's Regiment failed to reach a rendezvous on time. [43] Later in the year No. 2 Dutch Troop was sent to the Far East to work with No. 44 (Royal Marine) Commando and No. 5 Commando behind the Japanese lines in the Arakan in Burma. [44] In Burma 142 Commando Company formed part of the Chindits (the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade), and fought in the first long-range Chindit operation behind Japanese lines, codenamed Operation Longcloth. The raid began on 8 February 1943 and lasted for about three months. It inflicted little damage on Japanese supply lines but it did show that British and Indian Army and Indian forces could fight in the jungle as well as or better than the Japanese; this gave a boost to the morale of the Allied forces fighting in the South-East Asian Theatre. [ citation needed] Saunders, Hilary St. George (1959) [1949]. The Green Beret: The Commandos at War. London: Four Square Books. Operation Postmaster was a British operation conducted on the Spanish island of Fernando Po, now known as Bioko, off West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, during the Second World War. The mission was carried out by the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in January 1942. Their objective was to board the Italian and German ships in the harbour and sail them to Lagos. The SSRF under the command of Major 'Gus' March-Phillipps left Britain in August 1941 and sailed the Brixham trawler, Maid Honour, to the Spanish colony. While a PoW, he sent coded letters to his wife, Lily, that provided the War Office with valuable information, gleaned while on working parties, about factories in the area producing equipment for the German war effort.
The British authorities in the area refused to support the raid, which they considered a breach of Spanish neutrality. Permission for the operation to go ahead eventually came from the Foreign Office in London. On 14 January 1942, while the ships' officers were attending a party arranged by an SOE agent, the commandos entered the port aboard two tugs, overpowered the ships' crews and sailed off with the ships, including the Italian merchant vessel Duchessa d'Aosta. The raid boosted SOE's reputation at a critical time and demonstrated its ability to plan and conduct secret operations no matter the political consequences. [2] Ian Fleming, who later went on to write the James Bond series of novels, was serving in British Naval Intelligence at the time of this operation. This book ties Fleming to the SOE operation and speculates on how the heroes of that action contributed to the character of James Bond.
The detailed planning, the timely execution, and the personal fortitude of the men is quite evident. The fact that they received almost no help from their own military only added to the tale. The BritishGeneral Officer Commanding (GOC) West Africa Command refused to support the mission. The only way they could accomplish this mission was to get help from the Governor ofNigeria. Centre d'Entraînement de Commandos". Ministère de la Défense,la Composante Terre. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012 . Retrieved 17 April 2010.This book is a pretty good yarn and telling of the WWII story of Operation Postmaster, a 1941 commando mission of the British Special Operations Executive (or SOE, the British counterpart to the US Office of Strategic Services(OSS)). In July 1943, he landed on Crete to destroy German aircraft. Accompanied by a gunner, he created a diversion on one side of Kastelli airfield, passing three groups of sentries and answering them in German, claiming he had dropped his rifle. When a fourth sentry had to be shot, the alarm was raised. The operation was a huge embarrassment to the Germans and a massive morale boost to the Cretan resistance and population. March-Phillipps married Marjorie, later Lady Marling on 18 April 1942. He was the nephew of Gustavus Hamilton Blenkinsopp Coulson.
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