Two Weeks After Guernsey Was Occupied, British Commandos Came Back in the Dark.

Two Weeks After Guernsey Was Occupied, British Commandos Came Back in the Dark

I had not realised quite how quickly Britain tried to strike back after Guernsey was occupied.

German forces arrived on the island on the 30th of June 1940. Just two days later, Winston Churchill was already asking for plans to be made for a raid on the newly occupied Channel Islands.

The recently formed British Commandos seemed ideal for the job.

Before the main raid, however, intelligence had to be gathered.

In the early hours of the 8th of July, Hubert Nicolle, a Guernseyman serving as an officer in the Hampshire Regiment, was secretly landed on his home island from the submarine HMS H43.

Nicolle spent three days gathering information about the German garrison before being collected and taken back to Britain.

Then came Operation Ambassador.

During the night of the 14th-15th of July 1940, about 140 men from H Troop of No. 3 Commando and No. 11 Independent Company set out for Guernsey.

The plan included attacking the airfield, destroying aircraft and buildings and capturing members of the German garrison.

Almost immediately, things began going wrong.

Faulty compasses and problems with some of the boats disrupted the landings. One party missed Guernsey altogether and ended up on Little Sark.

Only around 40 men from No. 3 Commando successfully reached Guernsey, landing at Telegraph Bay, just west of the Jerbourg Peninsula.

Once ashore, they found something they had not expected.

The barracks and machine-gun position they searched were empty.

The Commandos created a small roadblock and cut communication lines, but the larger attack never developed.

Getting away caused another problem.

When the men returned to the coast, their boats could not get close to the rocky beach. Most of the Commandos eventually had to swim out through the darkness to reach them.

Three men who were not strong enough swimmers to make the difficult journey were left behind exhausted. They were later captured.

A fourth man, Gunner James McGoldrick, was initially reported missing and presumed drowned during the confused withdrawal. He had actually survived and reached the island, where he too was captured. Four British servicemen from the raid therefore became prisoners of war.

Operation Ambassador failed to achieve its main objectives, but it took place at a remarkably early stage in the development of Britain’s Commando forces.

The raid exposed problems with planning, navigation, equipment and training, and the experience became part of the lessons learned as British Commando operations developed.

What struck me most was the speed of it all.

Guernsey had been occupied for barely two weeks when British troops were already trying to return.

Had you heard of Operation Ambassador before?

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Image credit: British Army Commandos in a landing craft during training in Scotland, 28th of February 1942. War Office official photograph, Imperial War Museums H 17472. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.