Badass of the WeekGus March-Philips and the real Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
In today's episode Ben Thompson and Producer Andrew Jacobs talk about the true story behind the new movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. And you won't be surprised to know that Operation Postmaster and those behind it were even more badass than portrayed in the movie!
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by High five Content. January fourteenth, nineteen forty two, under the cover of darkness, a Nigerian flag tugboat silently slips into the harbor at Fernando Po, a small island off the coast of West Africa. The island is controlled by the Spanish, who are ostensibly neutral in World War Two, yet their government has allowed the base to be used to refuel and re arm the deadly Nazi U boats submarine fleet that is ravaging Allied shipping in the North Atlantic. Three massive resupply barges sit in the harbor, which is bristling with anti aircraft guns, naval artillery, and at least a battalion of ground troops. Major Gus March Phillips's mission is simple. Sneak into the harbor with a small team of elite commandos and steal those three barges from under the enemy's nose without being detected, and get out of there before the Nazis can mobilize enough troops, aircraft and artillery to smash you to bits. Hello and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I am joined today by producer Andrew Jacobs. Andrew, how's it going. Good to have you back on the show.
Good glad to be back. Yeah.
So we are kind of doing a little bit of a current event today. We are well current, not.
So current events, but it's current for a reason, right, Yeah.
So have you seen The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare? It's out in theaters right now.
I have, I have seen it.
I am a sucker for Guy Ritchie movies, and so I did go see it, and I actually I will say it's a little over the top.
Yeah.
This isn't a Ken Burns documentary version of what happened. It's the Guy Richie version. But if you know that going in, yeah, I think you'll have a lot of fun.
Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of my take on it as well. Is it historical, No, not really, but it's pretty fun and you kind of have to go into it as like, yeah, Guy Ritchie doing inglorious bastards. Yeah, it's kind of the vibe.
It's like, you know, what, if you like movies where they kill Nazis, this is a good one for that.
Yeah, there's a lot of that, a lot of that happens in this movie. But interestingly, you know, it is based off a true story and fairly loosely based off a true story. But one of the I guess one of the main differences between this version of the story and the original is that or the real thing is that in the real version of these events, nobody is killed, and then this version of a lot of people are killed, like a lot of Nazis dying.
Yeah, I mean, you couldn't do a movie like this without killing a few Nazis like that? Right?
Yeah?
Are there any other bad guys in history that are better to kill off than Nazis? I challenge anyone to come up with an answer for that one. I say, the movie plays out like an episode of pat Mass of the Week kind of. It's like a it's like a movie version. You know, if we had done this, that would have been the movie they made.
It kind of does right, like it really is that where? Yeah, how can we take this true story and just really crank it up to eleven?
Yeah?
Yeah, which it does. It does that very well.
Yeah. It's a it's a fun it's a fun time. Yeah, it's a fun ride.
I you know, I would put lock Stock in two smoking barrels up as one of my favorite movies ever made, and you know, I don't know that this is quite in that same category, but but I had fun with it, and uh, you know, and it's a good opportunity for us to tell this story, that true story of the well, the Special Operations executive in World War Two and Operation Postmaster and some of the people who are portrayed in this movie, because they are really interesting characters and the story that this is based on is really amazing and it's true, and it kind of was the beginning of special operations and commando operations and kind of started the started military history on the path that led to like you know, the SAS and Delta Force and all of these special operations. So it's a really cool story and we're really looking forward to telling it to you. We're going to take a really quick break to hear from our sponsors, and when we come back, we're going to get into the story of the true story of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. So stick with us. So, the story of Operation Postmaster begins in the summer of nineteen forty one, which is early in World War Two, and it's kind of the darkest part of World War Two. Germany has taken Czechoslovakia, They've overrun Pollen, They've overrun France, they defeated the British Army at Dunkirk. They're fighting in Russia. They're winning. They've got Italy on their side. Spain is technically neutral, but they are implicitly allied with Germany. And basically right now, the USSR is getting crushed. London is in the middle of the Blitz, so they're getting bombed nightly by German bombers, laying waste London, laying waste to other cities in England and the United Kingdom, and things are looking pretty grim for the Allies. It's kind of the darkest moment that they the darkest sum that they will have throughout the entire war.
Basically, we're all about to be eating uhl.
H, Yeah, that's right. I that's.
Sour crout, sausages and black bread.
Yeah, I eat not great which I like, but that all the time. Yeah, sausage, the black bread and the sauer kraut not my thing.
Yes, I have a I was an exchange student to Germany for the summer of like nineteen ninety six and when I flew out there, I didn't like any of the plain food. So I got there and I was staying with my host family and they had made my host mother had made a chicken schnitzel, and it was like, I was so hungry and it was like the best thing I'd ever eaten, and I just ate this monster plate of it. And then from that point on though, my host family was just like, oh, this is just this is Americans. They just eat a lot. This is what we've heard about them. They're all like fat Americans. So every other meal we would have, she would make me like twice as much as everybody else. I'd have this monster plate and if I didn't eat it all, she'd be like, oh, you didn't like it. No, no, I love it. It's great, Thank you, missus Fordenberg. I'll eat it. It was kind of awesome.
But that's great.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah. So things are looking bad for the Allies in the summer of nineteen forty one, and they need to do something right. They're trying to bring in supplies the US and Canada. Canada is shipping a lot of supplies Canada and Quotation Marks a lot of American supplies are somehow ending up in Canada, and then those are being mixed with some Canadian supplies and it's all being shipped on Canadian flagged ships to England and the USSR. And because the United States is not in the war yet, they can't officially be sending weapons and AMMO and trucks and tanks to the Allies, but they can if they ship it through Canada on Canadian flag ships. Unfortunately, because Canada is in the war, that means those ships are fair game for German U boats. German submarines are attacking Allied shipping. They're blowing up ships that are carrying these supplies to England and to the USSR to help them fight the war. In addition to that, you know, England is really on the defensive. They're getting bombed every day, and they really need to find some way to punch back at these submarines and also at mainland Germany. The German forces disrupt them anyway they can, right They need something, They need some kind of win, some kind of way to attack them, because right now they're just kind of turtling up and getting bombed. So okay, yeah, it's rough. Churchill decides what's in Churchill, the Prime Minister of England. He decides that he needs to create a special unit that will try to attack German infrastructure behind enemy lines. And that's when we get into the creation of a unit that are known as the Commandos. We've talked about commandos before. We did an episode on mad Jack Churchill, who was a founding commando. Churchill never quite got it. He would go into combat, charging ahead with a sword and screaming the word commando. That was how he did his commando operations was to play the bagpipes and scream the word commando. That's not what's going to happen on this mission.
Slightly more subtle.
Yeah, mad Jack's not invited to Operation Postmaster. Yeah, but yeah, you have these volunteer soldiers from other units that sign up for the Commandos to keep the Germans off balance with special raids behind enemy lines. They end up being pretty successful, to the point where Hitler will eventually put out an order called the Commando Order. That's like any commandos you captured, just execute them as spies on the spot. That's how annoying they get to the Germans.
That's that feels like the Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare two, Yeah, exactly.
Order. So in nineteen forty one, a commando unit is formed. They're known as number sixty two Commando. It's fifty five guys and they're assigned to the British Special Operations Executive, the SOE, which is a precursor to I six.
So can just to interrupt you because you were going in an interesting direction, number sixty two Commando. We don't know if there were sixty one something before that, right, or if they just.
Gave it number sixty two in order to make it sound like there were a lot of units.
Well, that's what the story is behind Seal Team six was there actually wasn't a Seal Team one through five at the time they started Seal Team six, and they were like, we're gonna call it that, and then that'll make the Soviets think we've got five other units of these packs.
So I don't know for sure.
It could just be the address of their office.
Right exactly. And like a lot of this stuff was secretive, right, So, like the Special Operations Executive, like they weren't known to anyone. The existence of the SOE was not known to high ranking members of the British Army right. This was this was secret agents doing secret agent stuff, bribing, sabotage, intercepting transmissions, hunting down enemy spies, assassinating if they have to, lying to whoever they need to get what they need. And this Number sixty two Commando was the unit that was assigned to work specifically with the SOE. A lot of these other ones were kind of more combat units, but these guys were a little bit more related to special ops.
Now. Question in the movie, Ian Fleming is a character, and you know who we've talked about on this show. Is he realistically involved in any of this or is that a just a fun element of the movie.
I'll tell you this because I was like when he shows up in the movie and he's like, I'm Ian Fleming, and I was like, Oh, they're going to do this. They love to do Ian flem Any spy, anything from World War Two puts this guy in it, like Ian Fleming. He was a British Naval intelligence officer and he worked with the SOE. He liaisoned SOE to British Naval intelligence. He was a critical member of the SOOE. He oversaw Number thirty Commando. He was part of the team working on the Dormandy operation. He led intelligence teams in spain Ian fleming. You know, people always want to kind of throw him in there because everybody's like, oh, James Bond, and so when he showed up in the movie, I was like, Oh, they're going to do this, I guess, but I looked it up and yes, he did meet every member of this team. There's not evidence for sure that he was part of the planning operation for it, but he did meet everybody, and he was leading intelligence groups in Spain, and Spain's going to be heavily involved in this operation, so maybe there is like some you know, there's an entire Wikipedia entry on people who are possibly inspirations for James Bond. There's a million. There's like seventy five people on that list, but three of them are the characters that we're going to talk about as main components of operation.
I'm going to go out on limb and give this the stamp of boom factually accurate.
Yes, I use that liberally.
Yes, absolutely, Yeah, we can say that, like, you know, putting him in the room is is not entirely fictional. He might have been there cool as much as we know anything about any of this secret agent stuff.
Yeah, it's not.
I don't know who's a good, like completely anachronistic person we could put in that room Ethan Hunt, Yes, right, yeah, although I do intend to make a mission impossible reference late.
Okay, great.
The commander of this Unit number sixty two Commando is Major Gustavus march Phillips. They call him Gus in the movie. This is Henry Cavill's character in the movie. They break him out of prison to like give him command of the unit. That didn't happen with Gus march Phillips. It did happen with a guy named Patty Maine, who was another founding member of the SAS. This guy David Sterling, who started the sas his best friend or like one of his favorite soldiers, was this irishman named Patty Maine, and he had to break that guy out of jail to get him to join the SAS. That's a true story, But it wasn't. It wasn't this guy.
All right, let's come back. Let's come back to that story for another episode to hear about that.
Yeah, yeah, Patty made is awesome. He was the founding member of the long range desert patrol. I wrote about him in one of my books. He's awesome. I would love to talk about him on the show in the future. Okay, So for Major March Phillips, he was born in nineteen oh eight. He joined the Royal Regiment of Artillery. He had a pretty hot temper, he loved cars, but he was supposedly like very calm under fire. He served in India for a while, but he wasn't seeing any combat, so he retired and became a novelist and a journalist. But then when World War Two started, he came out of retirement to fight. He actually traveled to France and was part of the Battle of France. He was at Dunkirk and he may have been a member of Number seven Commando in the earlier days, like commandos were formed in nineteen forty and so now we're in nineteen forty one. We don't know for sure because he was taken off all active duty military rosters and was paid directly by the SOE and they kind of hid where all the money was coming from. So it's hard to track exactly where he was stationed and when, which is very okay, which is the level of secrecy that the SOOE had. He did have a code name. His code name was Agent W zero one. W because he's operating in West Africa. Zero because literally licensed to kill, like he's combat trained. And then one because he's the commander of the unit of the.
First Wait, is that what zero actually means? I mean this whole license to kill thing always like licensed to kill? You know, it's what Yeah, the jamespot movie or whatever, right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. The zero one means he, like W zero one means he's like the number one combat guy, like he's trained in killing. W one would be for like a spy, more of a spy related guy who has like you know, he works at the the docs and cole wires messages in that kind of thing. Okay, So W zero two is his friend, Captain Jeffrey Appleyard, who in the movie was portrayed by twenty Eleveneen Choice Award winner Alex Pettifer from Beastley. If you saw Beastley, I.
Knew I recognized him from somewhere. I was like, I know that guy.
He's from an obscured twenty eleven young adult twilight ripoff about beauty and the Beast, the real Captain Applyard. He was a champion skier who who may have invented water skiing. There's a story that he may have invented water skiing, or that he at least was the first person to bring it to England. He was a champion international water skier or champion international downhill skier. May have invented water skiing. I don't know. He had an engineering degree at Cambridge. Yes, pretty bad. I invented water skiing, invented water skiing, sure, an engineering degree from Cambridge, so it's possible. And he was a champion skier, so maybe him and March Phillips had been friends. They actually shared a foxhole that they dug out of the sand on Dunkirk Beach and the British are trying to escape at Dunkirk. They vowed to each other that England would never be humiliated like that again, and so that's kind of their plan. These two guys get together, they're gonna run this they're gonna run this unit and they're gonna do some badass secret agent stuff.
I feel like that's a missed opportunity spoiler alert, there's a missed opportunity to do that.
At the beginning of this movie.
They're at Dunkirk being like never shaking, never again. That was in the script somewhere and they cut it out.
Maybe maybe, and then the third guy that they bring onto the team, like these two guys are friends. And while they are kind of starting to organize this team, they meet a guy from Denmark named Anders Lassen who in the movie, he's portrayed by the guy who's reach who does Reacher. And andrews Lassen was gigantic in real life. He'd been a member of the Danish Merchant Navy, but he left Denmark when the Germans took over his hometown, so he came to England to try to see if he could just just see what he could do to help. He met march Phillips and Appleyard. They got along really well. March Phillips described him as being quote good hearted and good at everything, even if he does dislike discipline.
That sounds like the model sooe yes, you know, operative.
Loose cannon, badass Andrews last ingine.
It likes discipline, yes, yeah, perfect, exactly.
He was the really Andrews Laston was a really badass bow hunter. They said that he could shoot fifteen arrows in a minute, and that he would back in Denmark, he would hunt everything from sparrows to stags with a bow and arrow. It's like a hawky, right, Yeah. They there's no indication that he fired a at Germans during the war. That's another Majack Churchill thing. Majack did do that.
There's no indication, but I choose to believe.
Yes, yes, When asked about it, andrews Lassen said he wouldn't. He's that was where the sparrow's toys stags come out. He's like, I've shot everything from sparrow's to stags with this. I think if I shout it at a human, I'd have the same effect. Something along those lines, which was pretty badass. So but still, the only documented person killed with an arrow that I was was Majack Churchill so far, but it's entirely possible that andrews Lasson has done it as well. A lot of his files are still classified. I mean not even that his files are still classified. He just has like during the course of his career, he earned two Military Crosses for heroism in battle, and we don't know what either of them were for.
Oh wow, so what's what's the deal? Why any idea? Why we don't have these juicy a government.
I think because they were in places the British weren't supposed to be or missions that we weren't supposed to know about it. I don't know.
World War two. I think we can let it all, put it all out on the.
Table now, Okay. So these guys form the core of number sixty two Camino and as we're going to see, like Operation Postmaster is undertaken by like five people, and these guys get a mission, and their mission is you have these German U boats that I mentioned. They're attacking Allied shipping. It'll be known as the Battle of the Atlantic because the Canadians and once the US enters the war, the US will be sending a lot of transport ships. The US is producing a ton of war material and they need to get it to Europe. But they got across the North Atlantic, and the North Atlantic is full of U boats, and there will be this kind of escalation of the Americans will send more and more ships, the Germans will try to send more and more U boats. But at this point in the war, we need to start disrupting or England needs to start disrupting U boat production. Now U boats the submarine, and Germany does not really have a lot of water access to the North Atlantic they without having to go past England, which controls the seas. It stands to reason that these U boats are going to be based somewhere else. They've taken France, and they've taken a lot of with taking France, France at the time had a lot of colonies in Africa, and so those are warmwater ports. They're on the equator. They are prime spots to like quickly get in and out of the Atlantic. You go out, you shoot down some shipping, you come back, you refuel your resupply, you go back out again. It's much easier to do that from West Africa than it is from Berlin or hanover.
Northern Germany where you have to sail right next by.
England to every time you get there. Yeah right, it's going to take you an extra six days of sailing through very dangerous waters that are probably mine. They believe that there are U boat bases there, and some of the information that's being pulled up by these SOE spies in the case that there is so March Phillips has to organize his team and train them and start to find German U boat bases in West Africa. He becomes Agent W zero one. He loves Sir Francis Drake and he's excited about like being able to do some piraty Francis Drake kind of stuff. We haven't done Drake on the show. I've written about him before, but we should do an episode on him in the future. Two.
Sign me up.
Yeah, So Major Mark Shultz, he organizes and trains his unit. He drills them at sea and at land in shooting and sailing, getting in and out of boats, amphibious assaults, naval operations, boarding enemy ships. He trains them pretty much exclusively, you know, all day, every day for six weeks straight. And this is still during the Blitz. So they have no you know, no heating, no air conditioning, there are no lights. They got to turn all the lights off at night because it's a you know, commandos are being trained here that is a spot for the Germans to bomb. So they're uprating in these various locations. But it's like it's cold and they're being bombed and there's no lights and there's no you know, it's grueling. It's very difficult training. You train all day, you know, until you can't walk anymore, and then you have to sleep on like a concrete floor of the cold.
But I bet it provides good motivation. You're like, this sucks, let's do something about this. Yeah, you know, I could see if they were just like training, you know, and Jamaica, you know, have some rum on the beach, they might not be so motivated.
No, that's very true. So on, you know, after six weeks, on August ninth, nineteen forty one, major Gus March Phillips and five other guys and leave Southern England aboard a ship called the made Honor. It's a seventy foot like fishing boat, three masts like a sailing ship. It was a cup winning sailing yacht, but they've kind of disguised it as a fishing boat. It looks pretty innocuous, except that, like in.
A wooden boat, it's like a wooden sailing. Wooden sailing doesn't have cannons on it.
Well it does, but they hit them in there.
Okay, good.
They built a dummy deckhouse and they put two thirty milimeter mortars and two heavy machine guns in there, all right.
They retrofitted it.
Yes, it looks like a boring fishing boat, and they only rolled like a real pirate. They only roll those out when they really need a Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, So it's just a fishing boat from the twenties. So it takes them. They sail it for forty one days, three thousand miles south to Sierra Leone in West Africa, which is a feet by itself. For five guys to sailor ship for forty one days is like not an easy thing. You have to have some understanding of that is dangerous.
Yeah, a lot of crossword puzzles probably, Yes.
So they get to Sierra Leone, they link up with the team. So Latsen and March Phillips are on that ship. Appleyard has gone down earlier to scout the area. They all link up on the boat and they start sailing around up and down these rivers, these inlets, caves. They're looking for German U boat bases and on land, the SOE is doing the same thing and they're talking to German agents. They're intercepting radio communications. They're trying to find these bases. We got to find these bases and knock them out. Well, eventually they find one. It's a big refueling and resupply area and it's on an island called Fernando Po. It's off the coast of Guinea and Nigeria and West Africa. And there's three ships in the harbor, the Italian, the Chesedosta, the German tug Licombai and a big barge called Burun. And these are you know, the shipping manifests, are weapons and supplies and things that you need to operate U boats.
Yeah the movie you made it all about some sort of air filter, right right.
I couldn't find anything about that. But yeah, it doesn't mean it's not true. It doesn't mean I just missed it. But this is U boat stuff and we need to knock it out. But here's a little problem is that Spain, I think I mentioned earlier, is neutral. They have a fascist dictator who was put in power thanks to help from the Nazis and the Italians. But we talked about Franco actually a little bit in our Bonus episode on the history of the Barcelona Real Madrid rivalry. But Spain is not a member of the war. They're not in this they're neutral. Officially, so angering them brings in maybe brings them into the war. It definitely causes an international incident if you have British soldiers shooting Spanish people or attacking even German in a Spanish harbor which is supposed to be neutral.
Okay, this is a situation where they have to tread lightly, yes and any. It's one of those they always tell spies if you get like killed or captured, will deny all involvement. It's one of those those sort of like, yeah, we don't know those guys.
Yeah, exactly, it exactly is mission impossible, right, mission impossible. You've got your one ship, right, You've got your one little sailing ship. They have three large vessels crewed by somewhere around thirty guys in an enemy harbor that's full of naval artillery, anti aircraft guns. It's crawling with Spanish troops, German troops, and Italian troops. All three ships have radios that they can use to call for help from any number of air, naval, or land assets. Being discovered not only puts you under immediate danger of being shot to death, but it also creates an international incident and possibly brings a neutral country into World War Two on the side of the Nazis. And on top of that, the British government does not officially approve of this operation because that would be a declaration of war on Spain. And on top of that, a lot of the high ranking members of the British government, including the governor of this area and like the heads of the Admiralty Board, they actively oppose this operation when they're when it's presented to them that we're gonna steal these boats, We're gonna blowup these boats, they are like, absolutely not, it's too risky. So Churchill and the Sooe say in the Ministry of Ford Affairs, they say, Okay, we're doing it. We're going to go green light. But if you or a member of your team are caught, were killed, your government will disavow all knowledge of your existence. So perfect, Major Gus marsh Phillips, Captain Jeffrey Appleyard and andrews Lassen are commando pirates.
Nice.
I mean, could you find anything better that embodies bad as of the week than commandos and pirates and pirates.
With bows and arrows?
Yeah? Yeah, perfect. Killing Nazis is so much to make a.
Movie out of this, They should well, I think this is a good spot to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to see some commando pirates in action. All right, welcome back. It is the go time for operation Postmaster so. In January nineteen forty two, the green light officially comes down from the Foreign Office to undertake this mission. The SOE, the British Special Operations Executive. They have spies in town in Fernando Po. They are pretending to be you know, merchants or you know, shipping moguls, that kind of thing. They are even like doc hands and ship workers. They get intel on all three ships in the harbor, learn the layouts of the ship, the crew, what they like, when's there, you know, when's their shift, change, that kind of stuff. And they have to find a way to weaken the ships so they can be captured. So what do they do. They do something that we saw in our Klondike Joe Boyle episode. They arrange a big party for all the German and Italian officers, the the SOEES. Besides, we're gonna throw this big They rent out like an entire restaurant. They fill it with like booze and food and they say come on. All you guys are all invited. We're gonna have a big party, picturing Castle Blanca here it's.
Very Castle Bloga.
It's also like hard to believe that you know, people are falling for this.
It worked, It worked. The entire officer crew, fourteen Italians and three Germans, they all go to this party and on Janue were fourteenth, nineteen forty two, around midnight, under the cover of darkness. While all of these officers are at the party, the SOE launches Operation Postmaster so two Nigerian flagged tugboats. They were a gift from the Governor of Nigeria. They enter the harbor at Santa Isabel on Fernando Po the German the Germans have a tugboat, and the Italians have this big barge and this big this big merchant ship. The German tugboat shines a light at the lead tugboat and there's only two guys standing on deck. It's Appleyard in March Phillips and they just kind of wave back or try to look innocuous enough because on the p.
Guten Knacht don't mind us, because on the other side of that ship there's thirty eight commandos undoing, folding kayaks and lowering them into the water.
So kayaks like two person kayaks, they're deploying them out. They're lowering them out the side of these these tug boat ships, and the tugs get a little closer, get a little closer, and these kayaks start to set sail for start to row out towards these three ships. Now the lead one, the most dangerous one, is the dashes Dosa. It's the big merchant ship, the big Italian merchant ship. It has the most powerful radio. It's you know, the most heavily crude. So of course they have to send andrews Lassen to be the first guy up there.
It's because they're like guards on it.
There's guns, ye, guards, there's whole lot of guards. Yes, there's armed guards with guns on the ship. Andrews Lassen is the first guy up there and he climbs over onto the deck in the middle of the night. He's got a knife between his teeth, he's got his he's got a submachine gun. He jumps up there. He looks at these first two guards that are on the night watch. The guards look at him and they jump overboard into the water.
See that that feels it's now I'm like, well, why wasn't that in the.
Movie, Like they look at him and jump overboard and swim.
It would have been unbelievable. It would have been too comical for the movies.
Yeah, it would have made a laugh r Yeah. Yeah. And so these these groups of canoes they get up there, and it's just a bunch of commandos in full war gear up against these sailing vessels. Some of these guys on these ships are armed, some of them are not. Some of them are soldiers, some of them are not. They fan out and they just kind of take these boats by overwhelming force. So, you know, I I was talking to a guy who was in the Dea once and he said was telling me something. He was like, you know in the movies or in TV or whatever, when it's like some think like the movie hackers were like the kid like hacked some stuff. But then when they go to get him, there's seventy five guys sticking guns in his face, Like would they go after like a small time drug dealer. They sent thir the SWAT team members with assault rifles in there to wake him up. Yeah, and the overwhelming force is what he called it. Whereas like if you're facing two cops, you think maybe I can get maybe I can draw my gun and shoot it fast enough, you're facing twenty cops, the thought does not even cross your mind to resist, Like you're just I'm dead, you know, you just surrender. And so that's kind of how they take these boats. But they take all three of them. They do not send off a radio signal. They capture all three of these boats cleanly. They march the crews into guarded areas where they can't access radio. They start putting plastic explosive on the chain that goes from the ship to its anchor. There's not going to be time to raise the anchors because they're big and loud and heavy. It'll make noise, it'll take too long. Can't do it. We're gonna blow.
The acres quick, little explosion.
Yes, yes, So they plant C four or plastic explosive on all three of these anchorchains. They drive those two tugboats right up to the three ships, so two of these ships are more together. So one ship takes two, the other tugboat takes the big one, and they link them up. And so once everything's kind of linked up, you've got the cruiser subdued, the tugboats are hitched up, everything's ready to go. The plastic explosive has been laid. They push the button, they blow the plastic explosives, and then they immediately start hauling these boats out of the harbor.
So the pirate commandos are pulling off a heist.
They're pulling off a heist, and it's going smoothly so far. The explosions, though, were loud, and the people in town hear it, and the guards in town hear it, and what do they think? They think we are being air striked. So they start shooting all of their anti aircraft machine guns and cannons up into the sky, thinking that whatever that explosion was, it must have come from the air, because there's no way it was a bunch Romania eggs sailing a boat into our harbor who are currently stealing. So these guys are currently stealing these boats out from under the noses of the Germans and the Italians in the Spanish, they're literally dragging them out of the harbor and they're all shooting their guns up in the air. That's hilarious, it's great, and so they make it out. It's thirty minutes from when they enter the harbor to when they leave the harbor. They don't have to kill anybody in the process. They don't lose anybody in the process. They steal all three ships. Every member of that crew that was on the ships is a prisoner now that they can interrogate for information if they need to, and they sail out. And you know, I said, there was fifteen Italian officers and two German officers at that party. When it finally becomes clear what happened, the lead German captain, the tugboat captain, he's a guy named Spect and he he figures out what happened and he puts it together. It's like that had to be the British. But he's at this part, he's been drinking, so he drunkenly storms into the British consulate on Fernando Po and starts screaming and yelling at them about what they did. Some British officer gets up, or a British official gets up and is trying to like calm him down. So Captain Spake he punches.
The British calming him down. Yeah, like so very patronizingly.
Yes, absolutely, he was quite upset. Yeah, so Spick doesn't like it. He responds by punching that British official in the.
Face, and so we got combat.
Now we have combat. It's the first casualty of the battle, right is that guy gets punching the face and knocked down. And there's this amazing report. Uh that is I was told by somebody who was there. So so what happens immediately following this? The drunken officer comes in there, he's making a bunch of ruckus. He punches this official. Some guy who was only identified as Agent w F fifty one stands up and according to the report, he quote puts some heavy North of Scotland stuff on him, So whatever you take that to mean. He pummels this captain Spaked. It's unconscious. I've been North of Scotland, that is. It is it gets heavy up there, all right?
So yes, whatever that is that that guy wasn't getting back up.
Yeah, he was the only wounded in battle on the in the battle. That yeah, Agent W fifty one, whoever he is, he lays his captain Spaked out and that's it. There's no other injuries to anybody on either other side. They stuck in there, they banked the three ships, pulled it out right from under their noses. Super heist. After they get out of the harbor the next morning, they're intercepted by a British Royal Navy corvette that just happened to be out there. Oh, we found him. Came across this stolen stuff, but I don't know who did it, but we're going to take get off your hands. So they steal these ships. And when the men of number sixty two Commando arrive in Lagos, Nigeria, the governor, the guy who had lent them those tongue boats, he's standing on the end of the dock holding whiskey sodas, just cheering them as they pull in. I mean, a drink ready for him.
That's how we.
All like to be greeted when we arrived in port. Yes, you know, with a whiskey soda.
Yes, exactly, I should have made one for the during the recording.
You're drinking what are you drinking? No, modelo, modelo.
Yes, this is a leftover from Sama, Yeah, from last episode. But yeah, the interestingly, like nobody knew what happened after this. So for the first couple of weeks after the battle. After this this heist, nobody knew who it was. Was it the French? Was it the British? Who did this? Spain was all upset. They called it an intolerable attack on their sovereignty. But they couldn't really it was. They knew they it was pirates. I don't know, pirates came in stall these I don't know who they were.
What did they do with them? They sailed them out of the port and then what.
So they I mean, the most important bit is they're denying all of the cargo to the Germans. So the Germans don't get to use that stuff to resupply. The British can use it. The British can look through their log books, look through their radios, try to.
They just scuttle the ships after rifling through their stuff.
No, they convert them.
They took them.
Home, put British flags on them.
Yeah, just a little little paint job and.
Yep, yep, that's it.
They they got a new pink slip.
Yep, that's it. That's it. They put British flags on them, and you know they're they're volugal for intel. The prisoners were viable for intel. It was good to deny them the goods and also now we have three new ships for athlete.
You think someone was like, hey, but my ship it's over there that it's got the Union jack flyne above it.
Sure that's my ship. No, no, no, your ship was called this we painted over they rename him and then yeah, after that, they get back and Lassen he gains a commission, He becomes a lieutenant Appleyard gets a Military Cross. He'd already received one for an earlier commando operation, so it's his second one, and Gus March Phillips he earns the Distinguished Service Order, which is basically one step below the Victoria Cross, like the second highest award for bravery they have. He gets back to town and he marries an actress named Marjorie Stewart, who is a character in the movie. We don't know for sure if Marjorie Stewart was We know she was a British actress, but we don't know if she was so we or not. There is some indication that she may have been and that's where he met her. There's also a story about he got back and was having this big party and was taking the elevator up to his hotel room and she was in the elevator with him and that's why they met. I've heard both stories, but you know that's sooe for you, right.
Yeah, I'm gonna I mean, I'm going with I'm going with the movie version.
It's more fun.
I like it too, Yeah, I prefer it. And I guess though in that version she's the one who puts the North of Scotland stuff on. Maybe, but yeah, I mean, and most importantly this this raid, you know, people weren't sold on it, on SOE or special operations in general. You know, you have these very very British, very proper military guys, and you know, pirate raids and secret missions. That's not that's not army stuff. That's you know, that's sneaky stuff. We face our enemy head on.
I mean, we're it's I think it's worth knowing. Like you know, this is the nineteen forties, is less than one hundred years ago, and I mean Civil War being my reference, where we just literally just had guys march at each other in a line.
Yeah.
Shoot, yeah, that's what you know. Obviously there was some stuff going on. There were kind of like spies, but like irregular warfare, you know, was still evolved very much evolving.
Yes, yes, so this is kind of the first first to spy raids kind of stuff, right, And even in World War One, that's how they were fighting. It just worked out really really poorly for them, and they still marched in lines and ran a machine guns. It didn't worry out. But yeah, so this kind of proves the it proved the value of special operations and kind of paves the way for all of this other stuff that follows. I guess I shouldtick him in and kind of tie off the stories of some of these characters, because you know, after Operation Postmaster, they really start to ramp up special operations. Gus March Phillips, he leads a few more pretty intense raids. He's attacking bases in France. There's an operation where he attacks a lighthouse off the French coast, kept it without firing a shot. He captures the defenders while they're still in their pajamas and you know, captures their log books, blows up the lighthouse, but he is going to be killed in action. In September of nineteen forty two, he's he and his guys are trying to infiltrate They're trying to attack a German base in a place called santoin Arinda, Perts on the French northern coast, but their ship landed in the wrong spot and they were ambushed by a patrol. They landed, they tried to do their mission, they were in the wrong place. They're going back to their boats. They get attacked whi they're going back to their boats. German machine guns sink their kayaks while they're trying to get out, and he's he's shot while trying to swim. For sure, the place where he died would later be famous as Omaha Beach, so he might have been the first Allied among the first Allies killed on Omaha Beach.
Okay, sounds about right for him.
Yeah, yeah, Jeffrey Appleyard. He gets promoted to major, takes over number sixty two Commando after after gus Maart Phillips's death, they fold the sixty two Commando into the Second SAS Regiment once the SAS is invented or created. He's the second in command of Second SAS and he receives three Distinguished Service Orders for heroism leading as the second in command of the SAS. The Second SAS. There's a joke that when he went to receive his third Distinguished Service Order King George, he walked up to King George to get or King George walked up to him to give him the medal and said, oh what you again. But Appleyard doesn't survive where either. He dies over Sicily during a mission. It was an air drop and his ship was or his aircraft just was disappeared over the Mediterranean and that was it. Nobody knows, you know, went down over the Mediterranean. Lassen continues on. He serves in the Special Boat Service. He fights in North Africa, Crete, Yugoslavia, Greece. He gets two military crosses. He leads a raid on Santorini, like the tourist destination in Greece. He takes nineteen SBS commandos and they take out like sixty Germans and blow up their base. The Germans called the battle Lassen's bloodbath.
That's a good title.
That's a good title. Yeah. But Laston is also not going to survive the war. He's killed in action in April of forty five while fighting in Italy. He was leading a patrol of eighteen guys to attack an Italian and German base, but he came under fire from machine gun nests. He charges them with his rifle and grenades. He takes out two German machine gun bunkers, kills eight Germans, disables three machine guns. The last bunker surrenders to him. He goes to accept their surrender and they shoot him.
Oh, come on, that's bullshit, while he.
Was trying to take them prisoner. Yeah, he has posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, which is there the British Medal of Honor, and he is the only person in history who was not a member of the British Commonwealth to receive the Victoria Cross, which is kind of cool. Yeah, so that's it. That's the Ministry of ungentlemanly worfair. They had this amazing operation Postmaster. I hope it's not too depressing that they all die afterwards, but.
I mean, it's it feels very for who these guys were and there their approach to.
The war.
It's it's not surprising. It would be far more shocking if if any of them survived what they were doing.
Again, they're all balls to the wall all the time. They're winning, receiving all of these medals for just doing these over the top of arrooic things. You know, when you're behind enemy lines with a dozen guys and the enemies shooting at you from every angle. These guys decided to run into the machine guns right rather than away from them.
Uh.
That's how they operated. That's how they were so successful at what they did. But yeah, that also, you know, is a is a pitfall of that.
Uh.
Yeah, so that's the story. If you guys want to learn more about this. Brian Lett has a couple of good books on the ministry of Ungentlemanly warfare. The movies is loosely based off Damian Lewis's book, which is also very good. Uh. And I also really liked the descriptions of these stories from Philip Warner's Secret Forces of World War Two and The Daring Dozen by Gavin Mortimer. So those are some books that you can check out if you want to keep, uh, you know, learn more about these guys and about the so oe, because there's not time to cover all of it here.
And yeah, I think you said in the movie, if you want to in the movie, you have to have the Badest of the Week abbreviated two hour version starring Henry Kale.
Uh.
Yeah, Henry if you if you want to watch Superman mown Germans with a machine gun, sign up. That's the movie. Yeah. Significantly more people die in the in the Fernando po Raid in Operation Postmaster in the movie version that we do in the actual version, but I think both versions are badass.
Yep.
All right, that's a lot of time we have for today. You guys, thank you so much for listening. Please do like and subscribe if you are enjoying the show, We really do appreciate it, and we will see you on the next one.
Stay Badass.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by Me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based on the website Badass of Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you can email us at Badass Podcast at Badassoftheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as We'll be back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
