Yet the SOE encountered only loyalty and bravery from the local people. Whatever the German threatened if they refused, the British agents were never betrayed. In 1941 the British Admiralty started receiving reports that German submarines were using the rivers in Vichy French parts of Africa as a base for refuelling. [3] The unit selected to investigate the reports was the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) also known as No. 62 Commando. [4] The SSRF was formed in 1941, and consisted of a small group of 55 commando-trained personnel working with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). [4] While being under operational control of Combined Operations Headquarters, No. 62 Commando itself was under the command Major Gus March-Phillipps. [5] The force dragged the boat onto the beach and moved towards the village itself, only to see a small German patrol of eight or nine men. A firefight ensued, and the raiders made a fighting retreat to their boat. But who was Tom Winter and what did he achieve during his career that made him a key model for James Bond? This is a true story of a force of ”licensed to kill" secret agents, commanded by a real war time secret service chief code names M, with whom Ian Fleming worked, and upon whom his James Bond stories were based.

Graham Hayes, MC (9 July 1914 – 13 July 1943) was a British commando in the Small Scale Raiding Force in the Second World War. [1] Early life [ edit ]

The Mission

Britain’s Special Forces units, including the famous SAS and lesser-known (and long-defunct) SSRF, have their origins in the early 1940s when military leaders realised the value of using small, mobile and highly-trained units to launch hit-and-run raids on a far larger enemy force. An intriguing question is whether Gus March-Phillipps, an established novelist with an in depth knowledge of working as a secret agent licensed to kill, would not himself have written the James Bond stories, had he survived the war. Gus had married a fellow SOE secret agent, Marjorie Stewart, in April 1942, following a whirlwind romance. Unknown to him, Gus left behind both a widow and an unborn child, Henrietta, who was never to meet her father.

have a demoralising effect on the enemy forces. The raids would also keep the Germans in a state of nervous vigilance requiring the deployment of purely defensive resources. The operation was a huge embarrassment to the Germans and a massive morale boost to the Cretan resistance and population. Centre d'Entraînement de Commandos". Ministère de la Défense,la Composante Terre. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012 . Retrieved 17 April 2010.The details of the raid were being kept secret even from the British Chiefs of Staff, who were only informed on 18 January 1942, that Duchessa d'Aosta had been intercepted 230 miles (370km) offshore and was being taken to Lagos. [8] Messenger, Charles (1991). The Last Prussian: A Biography of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, 1875–1953. Brassey's. ISBN 0-08-036707-0. To transport the raiders to the island, the tugs Vulcan and Nuneaton were provided by the Nigerian administration. The chosen raiding force was 32 men in the form of four SOE agents, 11 SSRF commandos and 17 men recruited from the local population as crew for the tugs. The mission suffered a blow when General Sir George Giffard, the British military commander in West Africa, refused to support the mission and would not release the 17 men required on the grounds that the undertaking would compromise some unnamed plans he had in mind and that which was in law an act of piracy would have significant repercussions.