Operation basalt

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Operation Basalt was a military operation conducted during World War II that saw a small group of British soldiers land on Sark Island to take prisoners and conduct reconnaissance.

course

On the night of October 3rd to 4th, 1942, twelve men of the Special Operations Executive ’s Small Scale Raiding Force and No. 12 Commando on Sark, with the order to carry out offensive reconnaissance and to take prisoners.

Several men of the troop broke into a residential building. The resident of the house, Frances Noel Pittard, proved to be willing to cooperate and was a helpful source of information for the soldiers. She told them that there were about 20 German soldiers in the nearby Hotel Dixcard. She also presented them with the first documents, including Guernsey newspapers , which would be the first evidence that the Germans had committed war crimes in the Channel Islands, namely the deportation of civilians to Germany.

The troops succeeded in capturing sleeping German soldiers from a hut next to the hotel, all but one of whom were able to escape or were killed in a subsequent battle with other German soldiers. The British soldiers withdrew to the beach and the last prisoner was brought back to England by the soldiers, where he was interrogated.

The operation is believed to have contributed to Hitler's decision to issue the command order.

List of soldiers involved

  • Major Geoffrey Appleyard
  • Captain Philip Pinckney
  • Folks. Let it be different
  • Patrick Dudgeon
  • Colin Ogden Smith
  • Bruche Ogden Smith
  • Graham Young
  • James Edgar
  • Sargean Horace 'Brummie' Stokes
  • Corporal Flint
  • Sergeant Joseph 'Tim' Robinson
  • Private Redborn

More than a year later, in December 1943, there was another raid on Sark Island. This operation, called Operation Hardtack 7, was carried out by British and French commandos and was a complete failure. The soldiers took the same route across the island as that of Operation Basalt, but mines were now laid there, killing two of the four soldiers.

literature

  • Will Fowler: Allies at Dieppe: 4 Commando and the US Rangers. Osprey Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78096-596-3 .
  • Will Fowler: The Last Raid: The Commandos, Channel Islands and Final Nazi Raid. The History Press 2016, ISBN 0-750-9687-96 , p. 9.