The Ron Penhall Collection

The Second World War St. Nazaire raid D.C.M. group of six awarded to Troop Sergeant-Major G. E. Haines, East Surrey’s, attached No. 2 Commando, who, prior to being taken P.O.W., set a ‘magnificent example of courage’ in numerous close encounters with the enemy, not least in a suicidal breakout charge under Newman, V.C., across a fireswept bridge at the action’s end - ‘outstanding among them was T.S.M. Haines, who was superb. He alone knocked out several pockets of enemy with Tommy-gun and Bren-gun fire. He always seemed to have a fresh weapon in his hands’: commissioned after the War, Haines served with the East Surrey’s in Palestine and in the Royal Pioneer Corps in the Brunei and Borneo operations, latterly in the rank of Major

Distinguished Conduct Medal, G.VI.R. (6141513 Sjt. G. E. Haines, E. Surr. R.); 1939-45 Star; Defence and War Medals; General Service 1918-62, 2 clasps, Palestine 1945-48, Brunei (Capt. G. E. Haines, D.C.M., Surrey’s); General Service 1962, 1 clasp, Borneo (Major G. E. Haines, D.C.M., R.P.C.), contact marks, otherwise very fine and better (6) £20000-25000

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

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George Ernest Haines was born in Rosyth, Scotland in February 1918 and enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment in 1935. Posted to the 2nd Battalion in the following year, he served in the Shanghai Defence Force and was advanced to Lance-Corporal prior to his return to the U.K. on the eve of hostilities. Bored by his subsequent appointment as an instructor, he applied for special forces and was accepted for training with the Commandos in the Highlands, being posted to No. 2 Commando, and with that unit, in the rank of Sergeant, participated in the Vaagso raid of 1941. As for his subsequent selection for the St. Nazaire raid, he offered to tear off his Sergeant’s stripes when Lieutenant-Colonel A. C. Newman informed him that he had no more vacancies for men of that rank - ‘In a very short time he had regained his Sergeant’s stripes and advanced further, and in battle was to win from his Commanding Officer the highest possible of all commendations.’

Haines, described as ‘short and square’ with enormous hands, was given command of a 14-strong Commando assault group charged with the task of attacking enemy guns on the waterfront between the heavily-defended port’s Old Mole and Old Entrance, following which he was to join up with Lieutenant-Colonel Newman’s H.Q. Reserve. But in order to fulfil his part in ‘the sauciest job since Drake’, he first had to get ashore from M.L. 177, commanded by Sub. Lieutenant M. F. Rodier, which craft was the sixth and rear-most in the column designated “Group Two”, a little way astern of H.M.S. Campbeltown. Accordingly, Rodier’s final run-in to the Old Entrance was a sight to behold. C. E. Lucas Phillips’ The Greatest Raid of All takes up the story:

‘The scene that confronted Rodier’s eyes as he followed close astern of Fenton was not one to be faced by the chicken-hearted. To port, to starboard and ahead Motor Launches were on fire and drifting out of control, for the spectacles that we have seen in the starboard column were being duplicated to port. Already the agonized cries of men trapped in the pools of burning petrol, which were to be one of the memories of that night for British and Germans alike, were beginning to be heard. Wreckage, corpses, flames and drifting palls of smoke were starkly clear in the cold glare of the searchlights. These, the sudden water-spouts of bursting shells and the swift streaks of coloured tracer, ‘like red and green stitches on a piece of cloth’, threatened the sixth launch with a like fate. Last of the troop-carrying boats in the starboard column, all that had gone before her seemed to have gone only to destruction.

Yet Rodier held firmly on his way. He saw Tillie blow up ahead, Stephens and Platt on fire to port, Fenton sheer away to starboard immediately ahead. Hit several times, but nowhere vitally, he sailed through the maelstrom, past the guns of the Old Mole blazing at him at a hundred yards range, past the wrecks of his friends, through the stream of projectiles that seemed to bar the way in to the Old Entrance. This he slightly overshot, as Burt and Beart had done, but, quickly discovering his mistake, turned short round, steamed into the Old Entrance, first of the troop-carrying M.Ls to enter, and came alongside the southern quay at about 1.40 a.m. He gave Haines the order to disembark and the eager Commandos climbed quickly ashore and, in the words of the watching Arkle, “Passed rapidly into the shadows”.’

As it transpired, Haines and his assault group failed to locate any operating enemy guns in the area designated them, and as a consequence they moved inland to join up with Newman and strengthen his Reserve H.Q. On reaching his embattled C.O., he stood to attention ‘as if on the parade ground’ and patiently listened to his orders - he was to stay near his Colonel for the remainder of the operation, for the latter had declared he was the only reserve now available and would undoubtedly be needed. Lucas Phillips’ continues:

‘He very soon did need him, for the fire from one of the 20mm. guns beyond the Submarine Basin and from machine-guns mounted on the roof of the pens began to harass them. Newman called up Haines and said:

“We have simply got to stop those guns. What have you got you can take them on with?”

“I’ve got a 2-inch mortar, sir. No sights, but it’s the only thing we’ve got.”

With extraordinary unconcern, Haines took forward in his great hands a little 2-inch mortar, siting it slap in the open near the quayside of the Submarine Basin just beyond the end of one of the warehouses. Here he knelt down and, taking the small bombs that were passed to him by a chain of hands, including Newman’s, from behind the cover of the building, dropped them down the barrel of the mortar, to go soaring high into the air and on to the enemy positions only two hundred yards away. With the enemy fire plunging down on the very spot where he knelt, but with “unsurpassable coolness”, he successfully silenced one position after another, if only temporarily.

There then came against him one of the armed vessels in the Basin, the flash of his mortar and the crump of its bombs being only too audaciously apparent. Coming close in, the ship made his position a “veritable death trap”. Quite unperturbed, however, Haines leaped over to a Bren-gun that some fallen comrade had left, and, although the fire from the ship’s machine-guns was “cascading” in the very place where he was now lying, he sent a series of bursts so devastating and so well directed that the ship ceased fire and sheered away ... ’

But even heroism of this remarkable calibre was not enough, and before too long Newman realised that he and his surviving Commandos - about a hundred of them, many wounded - were facing hopeless odds, a realisation made all the more bitter to accept when he discovered that virtually all the gallant M.Ls assigned for their re-embarkation were burning hulks - Sub. Lieutenant Mark Rodier, R.N.V.R., who had delivered Haines and his team to the Old Entrance, had been mortally wounded, and his command, M.L. 177, sunk with heavy loss of life - he was posthumously mentioned in despatches. It was at this juncture that Newman ordered a breakout from the dockyard, in a final desperate bid for freedom, Haines being placed in command of the rearguard:

‘Sometime after 3 a.m. this extraordinary column, encumbered with wounded, short of ammunition, with little hope but for a faint chance of vagrant freedom, began its inspired and defiant dash through the serried rows of buildings thronged with enemies firing from every window and lying in wait at a few yards’ range at every corner. Little finesse was possible now. Like an old-time garrison sallying out to cut their way through a besieging army, they moved forward at the double with spirits high ... They moved by bounds, keeping to the shadowed ways at the edges of the long warehouses and halting from time to time to squat in some dark patch and collect together - sometimes to rush some open stretch by parties under covering fire, or to overcome some point of enemy resistance, or to give time for the straggling wounded to catch up ... ’

The responsibility for clearing one of these points of enemy resistance fell to Haines. Ordered by Major W. O. Copland, also of 2 Commando, “to crash on with all speed”, but nonetheless invited to ask whether he had any questions, Haines replied in a steady but quiet voice, “None, sir” - exactly how he and his partners-in-crime accomplished this task was never ascertained, but Newman’s column was soon on the move again. Once more, too, in the column’s final effort to reach the town via “Bridge D”, his Troop Sergeant-Major excelled himself. Lucas Phillips’ continues:

‘There lay the girdered Bridge D, gaunt and ghostly in the curious light. It was barely seventy yards away. Beyond it the German machine-guns looked down from roof and window. Astride it on the far side, and stretching along the quayside, lay a line of enemy riflemen, last remaining elements of the German naval troops.

No means of indirect approach to the bridge was at hand, no cover to make use of against cocked and loaded weapons, no opportunity for finesse. Very coolly Haines, at his own suggestion, sited a Bren-gun to give a little covering fire. Then Newman called to his waiting soldiers:

“Away you go, lads!”

Without hesitation the Commandos went for it, moving at a steady double as a hurricane of fire burst upon them from beyond the bridge. The astonished Germans, quite in the dark about the purposes of all these confounding occurences, shot high and wide, as they had done all night. A violent storm of bullets swept over the Commandos’ heads; others struck the steel girders of the bridge like hammers ringing on an anvil and, as the bullets ricochetted away, their tracers shot like sparks in all directions.

Disdainful of it all, Donald Roy made on right in the middle of the road, a splendid and inspiring figure, Newman now beside him. Close behind him were Sergeant Rennie, Denison, Montgomery and Haines. They saw the German riflemen athwart the bridge scramble to their feet and retire. They passed the ships that Pritchard had sunk, passed Philip Walton’s dead body and swept superbly over the Bridge of Memories, their rubber boots thudding on the hollow road while the bullets rang and sparked on the steelwork or whistled overhead into the night. They were a smaller party now, their route marked by a sprinkling of their dead and wounded, but marked too by the bodies of their enemies. To all those who took part it was the most inspiring moment of the night, like a charge of the olden times across fire-swept ground right into the heart of the enemy. In the stirring pages of British history there have been many glorious charges, many heroic assaults on battlemented walls and ramparts deemed impregnable, but, on its smaller scale and in its more modest intent, the breakout of the Commandos of St. Nazaire ranks high among them as a manisfestation of soldierly purpose and of the will and determination to defy odds ... ’

And it came as no surprise to those who participated in this magnificent charge that T.S.M. Haines was to the fore throughout, and beyond, right up until the appearance of an enemy armoured car which marked the end of Newman’s bold intention - in company of three others, Haines was last seen engaging an enemy machine-gun post. But there his story did not end, for with six other members of 2 Commando, he holed up in the basement of a damaged building overnight. Lucas Phillips continues:

‘To escape is honourable and the duty of all prisoners of war. To avoid capture and to fight again is still more honourable. Not all who landed at St. Nazaire fell into enemy hands. Five Commandos, by their own determination and wit, by a great deal of luck and through the generous help of patriot Frenchmen given at the peril of their own lives, succeeded in avoiding capture and in obeying Newman’s order to make their way to far distant Gibraltar.

These remarkable achievements were carried out by three separate groups, and two of them originated from the cellar of a bombed shop in St. Nazaire, where a particularly gallant and resolute party of six men had concealed themselves. These were Troop Sergeant-Major Haines, Sergeant Challington (Camerons), Lance-Corporal Howarth (Grenadier Guards), Corporal Wright, the R.E. diarist, Corporal Douglas (Liverpool Scottish), and Private Harding (Gloucesters). All but Douglas and Harding were pretty sharply wounded, Wright bleeding profusely from a calf partly shot away, but that did not lessen their determination to seek freedom. Taking up a posture of defence, they stayed in the cellar all that Saturday, in considerable pain and with very little to eat, and narrowly escaped discovery as a German search party went through the ruins overhead. By good fortune some civilian trousers and a jacket were found for Challington, who had no chance of escape in a kilt, and a jacket for Haines.

Haines decided that that night they should make their way out in pairs, but Wright, knowing that he would seriously hold back other people and that he was too badly injured to go alone, walked out after dark and gave himself up. Haines and Challington, both with leg wounds, set off painfully together, the first to leave, and succeeded in making their way into the country but had the bad luck to run into a party of Germans ... ’

So ended Haines’ war.

Liberated from Stalag 344 at Lamsdorf in 1945, he returned home and attended a six-month officer training course, was awarded the belt of honour and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of his old regiment, the East Surrey’s, with whom he served in Egypt and Palestine 1945-48. Briefly re-employed back in the U.K., Haines next applied for a posting to West Africa, where he served until 1954, latterly as Adjutant in the 2nd Battalion, Gold Coast Regiment, prior to his final appointment in the Royal Pioneer Corps, with whom he served in the Brunei and Borneo operations, attaining the rank of Major before his retirement in 1973.

Sold with an orignal letter from Haines, dated March 1984, in which he forwards several photographs copied from his own archives (these included).