Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Second World War clandestine operations D.C.M., M.M. group of nine awarded to Sergeant B. W. Ogden-Smith, East Surrey Regiment, a Commando who was attached to No. 2 Special Boat Section (later S.B.S.), and a member of the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (C.O.P.Ps): in this capacity he swam ashore to enemy beaches on 30 occasions, gathering intelligence for the Normandy landings - so impressed was General Omar Bradley with such handiwork that he was ordered to guide in the assault troops to Omaha Beach on D-Day

Distinguished Conduct Medal, G.VI.R. (6826651 Sjt. B. W. Ogden-Smith, E. Surr. R.)); Military Medal, G.VI.R. (6826651 Sjt. B. W. Ogden-Smith, E. Surr. R.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals; Efficiency Medal, G.VI.R., 1st issue, Territorial, on H.A.C. riband (6826651 Sjt. B. W. Ogden-Smith, E. Surr. R.), mounted as worn, together with a set of related miniature dress medals, good very fine and better (18) £12,000-15,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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Bruce Walter Ogden-Smith was originally drawn into the world of clandestine operations by his brother, Colin, himself a Special Forces’ officer, initially as a member of the Small Scale Raiding Force (S.S.R.F.). And it was in this capacity that he participated in an intelligence gathering operation to Sark in the Channel Islands on the night of 3-4 October 1942, being one of seven men of the S.S.R.F. and five from No. 12 Commando to make the return trip in M.T.B. 344. Led by Major J. G. Appleyard, M.C., “Operation Baslat” was a complete success, an informative German prisoner being brought back to Portland and further intelligence being gathered from members of the local populace. One German sentry was despatched by 2nd Lieutenant Anders Lassen - later, of course, the winner of a posthumous V.C. and three M.Cs - while others were temporarily bound and gagged as the raid proceeded, news of the latter treatment being poorly received by the German High Command - indeed it was as a result of this incident that recently captured Dieppe raiders were ordered into chains. As Ogden-Smith would later say, “We never thought about the significance of what we had done until the press took it up.”

Ogden-Smith next joined the the Commandos’ fledgling Special Boat Section - better known today, of course, under the auspices of the Royal Marines, as the Special Boat Squadron (S.B.S.). According to his Commando certificate of service, this transfer would have taken place in January 1943, so we may be sure that he was actively employed in the Middle East prior to winning his D.C.M. and M.M. in the space of three weeks in January 1944 - the former decoration was for “Operation Postage Able”, a protracted beach reconnaissance of St. Laurent on 17-21 of that month, and the latter for “Operation KJH”, a similar reconnaissance of La Riviere on the night of 31 December 1943-1 January 1944. And his partner in crime on both occasions was Major Logan Scott-Bowden, R.E., who was awarded the D.S.O. and M.C.

No better summary of Ogden-Smith’s activities on the Normandy coast is to be found than that written by David Howarth in Dawn of D-Day:

‘Probably everyone who fought his way ashore on Gold Beach believed that they were the first Britons to set foot on it in the past four years, but they were not. Two soldiers had been there, on New Year’s Eve. They made a survey of the beach in the dark; and although this escapade happened five months before D-Day, it had an influence on what happened that day. The men were two Commandos called Logan Scott-Bowden and Bruce Ogden-Smith; the first was a Major and the second a Sergeant and they were the chief exponents of the curious art of swimming ashore by night and crawling out of the water unobserved.

A small unit for the reconnaissance of beaches had existed for years. Like many odd little fighting units, it owed its existence to the passionate belief of one man. That man was a naval navigator, Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Willmott; and his belief was that it was stupid to land an army anywhere on a hostile shore using only charts and photographs, because there were so many things which neither charts nor photographs could show. One of these things was the hardness of the sand; a matter of obvious interest in landing tanks and trucks.

After years of half-hearted support, Willmott found his ideas received with enthusiasm in the highest quarters. Although it was mid-winter, he was told to go ahead and get samples of the material of certain French beaches as quickly as possible. He himself was ill and not fit for winter swimming; but he had trained other swimmers. Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith were two of them.

Sergeant Ogden-Smith was the son of a family which had made fishing tackle for nearly 200 years and sold it in a formidably dignified shop among the hatters and bootmakers in the neighbourhood of St. James’s Palace. He had had the kind of education which makes it easy, in the British Army, to become an officer. When people asked him why he was not one, he explained that he was quite happy as a Sergeant. This was an attitude that had been fashionable in the first year of the War, among the intelligentsia of the Territorial Army, of which he had been a member; but few men stuck to it as a principle, as he did and resisted the comfort and prestige of being an officer right through the war. Once he had given in to temptation and started an officers’ training course, but he had only been half-hearted and had been returned to unit when he wrote rude words on an intelligence test which he thought was a waste of time.

When he asked why he made a practice of swimming ashore on hostile beaches, he simply said that he liked it - it was not too bloodthirsty and yet was quite exciting. In short, Ogden-Smith was one of those brave but eccentric soldiers who can be a great asset to an army if it does not have too many of them: a square peg who had luckily found a square hole.

Through most of the Winter and Spring before the invasion whenever there were moonless nights, Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith were taken across the Channel to within a few hundred yards of the shore of France by small landing craft or midget submarines. The equipment they took was simple. They wore loose-fitting waterproof suits, and each of them carried a torch, compass and watch, and underwater writing tablet, an auger with which to bore holes in the beach and bring up cores of the material it was made of, and a reel of fine sand-coloured fishing line - the reel had been made in Ogden-Smith’s father’s workshops. They also took a fighting knife and a .45 Colt, which they had found to be one of the few firearms which still work when they are full of salt water and sand; but they relied more on the hypothesis that only an exceptionally wakeful sentry would see a man swimming in surf or crawling on a beach at night.

When the shore was in sight on these expeditions, they slipped over the side of the boat (or midget submarine) and struck out for the breakers together. It was always extremely cold. When they felt the bottom they waded to the edge of the surf and lay there to get their bearings and study the skyline till they were sure of the movements of the sentries; and then, if everything was reasonably quiet, they stuck a skewer in the sand with the end of the fishing line tied to it, and started to crawl on their stomachs up the beach, probing for mines and unwinding the line as they went. At each bead on the line, they bored a hole and took a sample, and skewered the line again and crawled on, on a compass bearing.

In this way they made passably accurate surveys of a great many beaches. They found it difficult, after several months to remember which beach was which; but they did remember their landing at La Riviere because it was there that Ogden-Smith suddenly remembered the date, and noticed that it was midnight, and had taken into his head to crawl to where the Major was lying listening to the conversation of two sentries on the seawall, and in a stage whisper had wished him a happy and prosperous New Year.

They measured the gradients of beaches and charted sandbars offshore where landing craft might have stranded; and here and there they went inland to measure and investigate obstacles beyond the beaches. In the middle of January they were on top of the shingle bank at Omaha. They made an entirely uneventful tour of Utah; but on a second visit to Omaha, a sentry came along the beach between them and the sea and tripped over their fishing line. It was through this accident that the American Army was able to land with the assurance that the beach was not mined; because if it had been the sentry would not have been there.

In the quest of mud, they swam ashore on 30 beaches. The result of this unique performance was to be seen in the plans of specialised armour.

General Omar Bradley had been worried by a suspicious patch on the photographs of Omaha. He had never heard of beach reconaissance, but he asked British Intelligence whether anything was known about the texture of the beach. The inquiry was passed to Willmott. Without telling the General, he sailed across and landed Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith and the next day he attended an American conference and produced a small sample of the sand from his pocket, explaining that his unit had fetched it the night before, and that the beach was firm and would carry tanks all right. This achievement amazed General Bradley, and he generously said so.

As for Ogden-Smith, his wife received an invitation to an investiture at Buckingham Palace, where he was to receive the Military Medal, although nobody told her what he had done to earn it. The date of the investiture was 6 June 1944. On 5 June she had a telephone message to say that her husband was unavoidably detained and would not be turning up to meet the King.

It would have been quite in character for this curious soldier to have been late for his own investiture, but in fact it was hardly his fault. He and Scott-Bowden were on Omaha Beach again, this time not alone. The American Army had taken them there as guides. They were the only people in England, so far as anyone knew, who had ever been there before ... Sylvia Ogden-Smith, whose husband was the man who swam ashore to sample sand was at work in her factory in Wales when she heard the news, and understood why Bruce was not coming to Buckingham Palace that afternoon to get his medal. Her husband, just about then, was trying to rescue the crew of a landing craft which was burning furiously aground on Omaha Beach.’

Ogden-Smith died in December 1986; also see Lot 79 for his brother’s Honours and Awards.

Sold with the following related documentation and artefacts:

(i) The recipient’s Commando Service Certificate, for service between January 1943 and December 1945, signed by the Chief of Combined Operations and dated 3 December 1945.

(ii) Several small pieces of fabric taken from kayaks used by Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden off Normandy in 1944.

(iii) The recipient’s original Commando “fighting knife”, as used by him as a silent weapon and for probing for mines, since re-plated; together with related forwarding letter from Ogden-Smith to Ron Penhall, dated 8 October 1977.

(iv) The recipient’s specially adapted fishing reel and line, as made at his father’s workshops and carried to the Normandy coast to assist in measuring beach contours (and once stood upon by an enemy sentry).

(v) Bound photocopies of the official reports appertaining to operations “Basalt” and “Postage Able”, gilt titles; together with a modern drawing of Ogden-Smith in operational attire, with explanatory notes for his equipment; and a reunion dinner menu card for former members of the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, March 1977, signed by several veterans, including Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith.

(vi) A fine quality panoramic model of a midget submarine, with Ogden-Smith and his Major awaiting to be embarked from the quayside for another operation to France.

Provenance: originally sold by Spink in 1971 (Numismatic Circular, Item No. 3831).