Word: commandos
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Leading these black-shrouded troops was 24-year-old Lieut. Colonel Geoffrey Charles Tasker Keyes, son of the Commandos' organizer, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, and youngest lieutenant colonel in the British Army. A veteran of Narvik, Military Cross winner for Commando work in Syria, young Keyes with 30 men made his way to a wadi, near Sidi Raffa, Administrative H.Q. of Rommel's Afrika Corps. Here they lay for two days and nights awaiting the zero hour of the Brit ish attack. When the time came the Commandos daubed their faces with burnt cork, crawled over the desert...
Working with the same cold precision that has marked Commando successes in France and Libya (see p. 25), the raiders took over in 15 minutes flat, destroyed a radio mast and transmitter, shot down a lone plane offering resistance, sank a German patrol boat, took several prisoners including six quislings. The Commandos did not lose a man. Simultaneously another Commando unit made successful raids on Vaagsoy and Maaloy, islands several hundred miles south of Lofoten...
...Commando troubles, it soon developed, were confined entirely to the home front. In a House of Commons blast that the London Times tabbed as "injudicious and un-English," Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes elaborated on his removal as Commando chief (after 15 months' service), said flatly that Britain's war effort will remain lethargic and unsuccessful until the war offices of Whitehall are thoroughly overhauled...
Last week Sir Roger spoke bitterly of "heartbreaking frustrations" as Commando chief, insisted that had his shock troops been given freedom of action a year ago, they "might have electrified the world and altered the whole course of the war." Said Sir Roger...
...British had scarcely announced the formation of super-tough raiding forces to be known as Commandos (TIME, Oct. 20) when the Commando legends began to fly. Last week London reported...