Auction Catalogue

29 June 2022

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 105

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29 June 2022

Hammer Price:
£18,000

The unique Second War 1942 S.B.S. ‘Operation Reservist - attack on Oran Harbour’ M.M. group of six awarded to Sergeant D. C. Ellis, 2 Special Boat Service, late King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, a veteran of Dunkirk, who served with 101 Troop, No. 6 Commando prior to joining the S.B.S. for the raid on the Vichy French held Oran Harbour. Paired in a Folbot with the S.B.S. raid commander, Major H. V. Holden-White, Ellis launched from H.M.S. Walney into the night, 8 November 1942.

The Oran Harbour attack was the first British-American Combined Operation of the Second World War, which also produced a superb Victoria Cross for Walney’s Captain, F. T. Peters, and was described by Winston Churchill as ‘The finest British naval engagement since Trafalgar.’

Holden-White and Ellis launched mini torpedoes from their canoe against a submarine and a destroyer, seemingly hitting the latter, prior to be being captured and taken prisoner of war whilst trying to escape from the harbour. Having been repatriated, Ellis was posted for further S.B.S. service under the command of 136 Force (S.O.E.), and served in India, Ceylon and Burma, 1944-47

Military Medal, G.VI.R. (4032370 Sjt. D. C. Ellis. K.S.L.I.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, mounted as worn, last 2 mounted in wrong order, generally very fine (6) £12,000-£15,000

M.M. London Gazette 27 April 1944:
‘In recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North Africa.’


The original recommendation, which is best read in-conjunction with his commanding officer’s [Captain H. V. Holden-White] own recommendation for the Military Cross, states: ‘Oran Landings. Assault on port by H.M.S. Walney and H.M.S. Hartland - 8th November, 1942.
Was Captain Holden-White’s partner in the Folbot, he displayed coolness and courage in directing his Officer on to the target and later, when by himself, he salvaged and re-floated the damaged Folbot, almost under the eyes of a French sentry.’


Holden-White’s M.C. recommendation states: ‘Was in Command of the Special Boat Section Unit, which was detailed to carry out dangerous and delicate operations in-conjunction with assault on the port of Oran. He was in charge of the party operating from H.M.S. Walney in folbots and displayed courage and initiative of a high order in attacking with small torpedoes a French destroyer which was leaving the port, and it is believed that one hit on the vessel was obtained.’

Derek Charles Ellis enlisted as a Boy in the 2nd Battalion, The King’s Shropshire Light Infantry at Shrewsbury in May 1935. He transferred to the 1st Battalion the following year, and served with the B.E.F. in France, 24 September 1939 - 8 June 1940. Ellis was posted to No. 6 Commando (Special Service Brigade) in May 1941, before transferring to the Special Boat Service in April 1942. He was to become part of the newly formed 2 SBS, which was gathered from a nucleus of 101 Troop, 6 Commando and new recruits such as Holden-White. Their billet was a private hotel in a suburb of Ardrossan, Scotland, and from here they learned all things according to the gospel of ‘Jumbo’ Courtney.

Ellis had been part of 101 Troop, and had taken part in a reconnaissance 22/23 November 1941:
‘At Dover 101 Troop were mostly engaged in helping the Royal Navy destroy floating mines by rifle fire, but two canoe pairs were used to make a reconnaissance on the night of 22/23 November 1941. This was in preparation for a raid the next night by a hundred men from No. 9 Commando on a coastal gun battery at Houlgate near the mouth of the river Seine. Lieutenant Smith and Corporal Woodhouse overturned in surf and were captured, while Corporal D. C. Ellis and Private Lewis missed the rendezvous and paddled back across the Channel to England. However, they had gathered sufficient information to confirm that LCA’s (landing-craft assault) could land on the beach.’ (
SBS In World War Two, The Story of the Original Special Boat Section of the Army Commandos by G. B. Courtney refers)

Operation Reservist
In the second week of October 1942, Holden-White was summoned to Lord Mountbatten’s Combined Operations Headquarters in Whitehall. There ‘was something big on. Hush-hush. Destination secret for now, but the SBS had an important role to play. Holden-White gleaned enough information to guess that an attack was planned on the Vichy French and that SBS canoeists would be launched at the head of a sea-borne onslaught which, even for one quite new to the service, seemed to nullify what he assessed to be the section’s greatest asset, operating clandestinely.’ (SBS The Inside Story of the Special Boat Service by J. Parker refers)

The above - Operation Reservist - was to be a subsidiary part of Operation Torch, the massive invasion of North Africa in November 1942. The SBS operation was to be part of the amphibious assault on Oran, 8 November 1942. The Vichy French held harbour which was heavily protected by shore batteries and contained a number of the surviving vessels of the Vichy French Navy:
‘Opposition inland was judged correctly to be minimal, but the Vichy naval chiefs were still smarting over the sinking of part of the French fleet at Oran by the British in 1940 and would take drastic measures to protect their remaining vessels.


Oh, and one other thing, said Courtney. The SBS had the honour of testing a new weapon, a mini-torpedo designed to be fired from canoes, which would hopefully cut down on the need for limpet mines whose clamping was always a hazardous business. A few days later Harry [Holden-White] and Lieutenant E. J. A. ‘Sally’ Lunn went to an experimental station in Hampshire to see a demonstration of the mini-torpedoes. A stock of them was being prepared which, they were assured, would be dispatched with an officer to Gibraltar, where they would be collected by the SBS en route to wherever they were going (then still a secret).

The day of embarkation came. Harry took five pairs of SBS canoeists to Greenock, where they loaded their stores, weapons and canoes aboard two converted American coastguard cutters now under the Royal Navy flag and named H.M.S. Walney and H.M.S. Hartland. Three pairs [including Ellis] led by Holden-White boarded Walney while Sally Lunn headed the other two in Hartland. Orders were now clear. They were to join a large convoy at Gibraltar, protected by destroyers and submarines. There, the two ships would pick up 400 American troops, who were to mount a sea-borne assault on Oran harbour and hold it until reinforcements arrived from inland.

The SBS role in all of this was to go in first, blowing up shipping in the harbour with the still-experimental mini-torpedoes. Each pair of canoeists was to be given two torpedoes, which they were to release towards suitable targets as soon as feasibly possible. The torpedoes were to be collected in Gibraltar, they were told, where an office would explain all.

Harry takes up the story:
“Well, that was the first thing to go wrong. When we got to Gib, there was no bloody officer to explain it all, no bloody instructions, and the baby torpedoes were in bits. Luckily, I had Sergeant-Major J. Embelin with us, who was a demolition expert, and he was able to assemble them. But we still had only a vague idea about range and so on...


Another problem for us was launching the canoes from ships. Normally, SBS crews are floated off submarines or lowered from MTBs. These cutters gave us a drop of eight to ten feet and our flimsy folbots could have been damaged. So on the way out we decided to practise and unpacked the canoes we had brought aboard in kitbags to assemble them, staggering about the heaving deck like some mad ballet. Fortunately, the Walney’s shipwright designed a sling to lower our boats into the water.

As we sailed into Oran, it was evident that the harbour was a death-trap for a sea-borne assault. Although the overall length of the harbour straddled the coast for about a mile, the opening to it was protected by a boom, which we knew about, of course. Once inside, there was no escape. Walney was supposed to ram the boom and, if that failed, Sergeant-Major Embelin, the demolition expert was to break open the boom with explosives. Sadly, he was subsequently killed by French machine-gun fire from the shore.

Anyhow, as soon as we sailed in, the Vichy French shore batteries started firing. The three SBS pairs on board Walney were virtually thrown overboard and started paddling towards the docks. Frankly, I was so bloody glad to be away from it. Soon that feeling turned to guilt as I and my number two, Corporal Ellis, paddled off to find suitable targets for our mini-torpedoes. We had not travelled far when there was a huge explosion. We looked back. Walney had been hit by shore batteries and was already sinking.”’ (SBS, The Inside Story of the Special Boat Service, by J. Parker refers)

Holden-White and Ellis did not have much time for thoughts to linger on the fate of the Walney, as Saul David illustrates in SBS: Silent Warrior:
Meanwhile, Holden-White and Ellis were paddling hard towards their primary target - a destroyer lying alongside the fourth mole, known as the Quai Centrale - at a brisk pace of four to five knots, and using the cover provided by a thin stretch of water between a block of barges and the northern arm of the harbour. Hearing French voices from a barge on their port bow, they slowed to barely half a knot to avoid discovery. In this they were successful and, having reached the end of the barges, they moved out of the shadows to try and identify their target. As they did so, a searchlight came on ahead and began to cover an arc from the northern jetty to H.M.S. Walney which, by now, had reached a point opposite the mole Quai Centrle. The light caught the bow of the folbot, causing the pair to back-paddle furiously for the cover of the barges. Before they could reach it, 37mm cannon fire blazed over their heads.

“It seemed to be coming from a point near the western end of the Quai Centrale,” recalled Holden-White. “There were also a few shells falling into the sea about twenty yards to the south, and quite a lot of debris (presumably from H.M.S. Walney) was falling around us.”

Regaining the shadows, they moored the folbot to the last barge and climbed inside. From there they could see Walney’s bridge and surrounding superstructure ‘burning furiously’ as more shells were fired at it from a French battery on the hill overlooking the eastern end of the harbour...

The pair returned to the folbot. But as there was no sign of their target, the innermost section of the harbour, the Bassin Gueydom, was “unapproachable in a canoe owing to shellfire, small-arms fire and searchlights”, Holden-White decided to remain where he was. While he prepared the mini torpedoes for action, he sent Ellis back into the barge to report any warships leaving the Bassin. The corporal carried out his task with “great coolness”, noted Holden-White, “as small-arms fire was passing about two feet over the top of the barge and he had to have his head over the top in order to observe.”

Five minutes later, Ellis returned to say a submarine was exiting the Bassin. Holden-White edged the folbot forward so that the target was in view. “In accordance with my orders to attack warships leaving the harbour,” he wrote, “I fired a Mobile Mine [mini torpedo] at the submarine which was travelling on the surface at three knots. I did not apply enough deflection and I could see from the phosphorescent bubbles sent up by the Mine on the first few yards of its [run] that it was going to pass astern.”

He sent Ellis back into the barge to keep watch while he prepared the second torpedo. Within ten minutes the corporal reappeared with the news that a French destroyer was leaving the inner harbour. Sneaking a look, Holden-White estimated that the warship was moving at 1.5 knots towards the harbour entrance. It was just 200 yards away when he fired the second torpedo, aiming it seventy yards in front of the ship’s bows. The torpedo would take, he estimated, about a minute and a half to reach its target. He watched the explosion but none came.

Instead, the destroyer stopped as its crew scurried about on deck. Corporal Blewitt, who was in the second of the three folbots with Corporal Loasby a short distance away, heard an explosion on the port side of the destroyer, but saw no flash. By now, Holden-White was back in the barge, observing the battle.’

Captured - ‘Spitting Feathers’
Holden-White’s memoirs offer insight as to how the rest of the attempted raid unfolded:
Walney had been hit by shore batteries and was already sinking. Then Hartland was hit; they were being shot to pieces and eventually we learned that around half the men on board were lost. Sally Lunn had been unable to launch his pair of canoes because they were damaged by shells. They joined escaping US troops on Carley life rafts. Ellis and I paddled on. We had lost sight of our other chaps. We hid behind a barge to get our bearing, and as we did a ship loomed up out of the darkness coming towards us, a bloody great ship, absolutely enormous. Anyway... a suitable target, I thought. I fired one of my mini-torpedoes. There was no big bang, although the ship slowed down for a moment. Whether we hit it or not I do not know. She was eventually sunk outside the harbour by one of our subs. Then a submarine came out and I fired my second mini-torpedo at the sub. Unfortunately, my arm was jolted as I put it in the water, so that one went astray. We watched it go, streaking through the water, but at least it made a bang. It hit the harbour wall just below the lighthouse, which was not, of course, lit... After that, there was nothing we could do but go on. The original plan, in the event of failure, was to paddle back out to sea and get aboard one of the many Allied ships outside the harbour. This was now impossible. Walney and Hartland, still ablaze and listing, blocked our route. There was no alternative but to go on to the harbour and try and make our escape there and link up with troops coming inland.’

The harbour was swarming with Vichy-French troops, and as such, it was no great surprise when Holden-White and Ellis were captured shortly after landing their canoe, ‘we were only a few yards from the quay, where, as we emerged on to it, showering water, from the top of the steps, we were met by the impersonal stare of a Sergeant in the French Army. I instantly recognised him as yet another of those magisterial figures for whom the misdemeanours of such as myself held no surprises, and trembled in my shoes at the thought of his reaction, should he realise that Ellis and I had been trying to sabotage two of his country’s ships... Why weren’t we wearing uniform, he asked, and then, cutting short my lame excuse that perhaps flotation suits were more suitable for canoeing, he informed us - dispassionately and quite correctly - that, as we weren’t, we were liable to be shot as spies. "On peut vous fusiller", he said, to which I replied, horrified, “Si nous sommes fusilles, reprisaux, reprisaux", guessing wildly at the French word for reprisals. Unfortunately, this exchange was lost on Ellis who spoke even less French than I did, and he took this inappropriate moment to spit vigourously in the neighbourhood of the Sergeant’s feet.’ (Ibid).

Luckily for them both the French Sergeant did not react and they were carted off to a makeshift POW camp outside of town where they were eventually reunited with the other SBS men on the mission and the survivors of the two sinking cutters. Whilst they were being marched off to the camp, Lunn, had been horrified to see one of the mini-torpedoes floating in the water near the quay where he was being marched away from. Captivity was short lived, “We were freed within five days when the troops [American] arrived from inland, but needless to say there was bloody confusion all over the place. We, the SBS, were told we would have to make our own way back to England, so I [Holden-White] wandered around to the aerodrome to see if we could find a plane. We eventually got a lift to Gibraltar and linked up with Gruff Courtney. From there we hitched a ride on an American Fortress returning to England. We landed back in Cornwall, where we were immediately arrested. Bloody funny, really. We hadn’t got any papers, of course, and wearing these odd clothes, the local police and immigration people surrounded us. We were interrogated for half an hour and eventually, after a few telephone calls, we were taken under close escort to London, where I was finally able to report on the mini-torpedo trials.’ (SBS The Inside Story of the Special Boat Service, by J. Parker refers).

Despite the losses, and relative lack of success for the raid, no fewer than thirty-eight British awards were made for Operation Reservist. These included one Victoria Cross, four D.S.O.’s, six D.S.C.’s and thirteen D.S.M.’s. Three gallantry awards went to S.B.S. men: Holden-White and Lunn were both awarded the M.C., whilst Ellis was awarded the M.M.

Ellis was to go on and fight in a new theatre of war, when he was posted to 136 Force in India in October 1944:
‘In January 1944 ‘Z’ Special Boat Section was posted to Ceylon to work under Force 136 of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), responsible for provision of operational intelligence and fostering guerilla activity in the SEAC (South East Asia Command) area. We were attached to the 4th Submarine Flotilla at Trincomalee.


At the time ‘Z’ SBS consisted of Captains E. J. A. Lunn M.C., N. G. Kennard, A. R. McClair and W. G. Davis, Sergeants N. Thompson M.M., J. Gilmour, J. Galloway and F. Preece D.C.M., and myself [G. B. Courtney]. In mid year we were joined by Lieutenant J. P. Foot M.B.E., Sergeants Blewitt, and G. C. [sic] Ellis M.M., and Trooper B. Moores. Meanwhile, plans were being implemented to co-ordinate small-scale raiding parties under SEAC. These were to be based in the north of Ceylon under Royal Marines control. Instead of being called the Special Boat Unit (SBU) as previously suggested, the name was changed to the Small Operations Group (SOG).’ (SBS In World War Two, The Story of the Original Special Boat Section of the Army Commandos, by G. B. Courtney refers).

Ellis served in India, Ceylon and Burma, 22 August 1944 - 7 May 1947. He transferred to the 7th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment in February 1946, and was released to the Army Reserve the following year.

Sold with copied research, including M.O.D. letter giving details of recipient’s service.