Operation Colossus

Io sono il nipote di Robert Brimer Watson, uno degli primi paracadutisti inglesi chi fecero parte dell’incursione nel confine di Calitri di febbraio 1941, si chiamò ‘L’operazione Colosso’. Fu la prima volta che l’esercito Brittanico usò i paracaduti per un’incursione nel territorio nemico, e intendevano distruggere l’acquedotto sul Tragino.

Dopo l’incursione, lo squadrone inglese intendeva andare a piedi al imbocco della Sele, sud di Napoli a ritrovare un sottomarino inglese, pero stati catturati e signor Watson stato imprigionato per due anni, in gran parte a Sulmona, e finalmente evase da prigione e scappato a piedi in Svizzera.

So che questa storia successe molti anni fa, pero io vorrei sapere cos’é successo a mio nonno, sopratutto del periodo ‘in fuga’, e mi chiedo se ci sia qualcuno a Calitri che potrebbe aiutarmi risolvere questo mistero.

Se potrebbe aiutarmi, il mio indirizzo é mikepackwood6@gmail.com

Vi ringrazio.

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In Search of the English Desperado

Lance Corporal RB Watson R.E attached 11 SAS

Robert Brimer Watson and his part in Operation Colossus

Robert Brimer Watson was my grandfather (my mother’s dad). I never met him. He died in the same year that I was born, 1962. I didn't know anything about him until my uncle Bob got us all a book called the Guinea Pigs published back in the 80’s. This is one of those family stories that could easily have remained shrouded in mystery and aside from what you will read here -  the few war years of his life where there is quite a lot of material available - much of his life especially the post war period will remain just that - a mystery.

Like many of us who research family history, the internet has proved invaluable, providing more information than we ever thought existed and it’s amazing that now, if you google his name, there he is, and we can find out more than we ever knew before. The internet is alive with information about operation Colossus - not to be confused with the Bletchley Park Colossus - but precious little information about RBW himself - so if you know or can add anything please get in touch using the contact details further down the page.I'm happy to be updated, contradicted, or enlightened and when I think I have enough of the dots joined up, I’ll write the book.

Before the War

Robert Brimer Watson (Bob) was a builder. He was also a Geordie. He was born in 1909. Looking for work in the late 30’s he travelled from Newcastle to Northampton. He had his own building company and if you’re living in the Kingsthorpe area of Northampton, he laid the bricks - He settled there at 140 Eastern Avenue, with his wife, my Mum and his son (my uncle Bob). He also built Watson Road in Long Buckby which is either an amazing coincidence, or he got to name his own street?

Operation Colossus - The first ever raid carried out by British parachute troops

On 8^th January 1940 Bob joined up. He was quite old at 31 and as a builder was in a protected profession and not required to join up. He joined the Royal Engineers and at some point volunteered for ‘special service’ and ended up at Ringway near Manchester – which is now Manchester airport – training to be a one of Britain's very first parachute troops.

Parachute Training at Ringway near Manchester, 1940

The German had already made significant use of parachute troops but the British army had no experience of this type warfare at all - but Churchill was determined that the fight should be taken to the enemy and this was seen as one way of doing just that. 

He was billeted at Knutsford and my mother, who would have been three or four then, remembers going there to visit him. In the picture of him at the top of this article you can see that he has his Royal Engineers uniform on, but is also sporting his newly applied parachutist wings on his shoulder.

The raid was designed to test the capability of the newly trained parachutists and also as a means to take the war to the continent during a period when Britain was more or less besieged. Why the aqueduct was chosen is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was because it was thought it would be ‘quieter’ in Southern Italy than Nazi controlled France. 

Whatever the reason, with hindsight, although the chance of landing and blowing it up may have seemed reasonable, it is clear that the chances of the troops escaping afterwards were slim at best. The aqueduct had some military importance, supplying war to the Italian War machine, but you can’t help thinking of any number of more worthy targets with a better chance of success and escape.

A pre-war picture of the Aqueduct

Following training which involved around 10 practise jumps and Commando training in Scotland the men chosen to be part of  X Troop taken first to Mildenhall and then flow direct to Malta, which was to be their staging point. for the raid On the evening of 10th February they took off for Italy. The landings were relatively straightforward given that is was pitch black and they were jumping into unknown enemy territory from only a few hundred feet, although one of the Whitley's dropped many of the sappers and much of the explosives into the wrong valley and those men played no part in the destruction of the aqueduct itself.

With the remaining munitions the aqueduct (and a small adjoining bridge) was blown up: 

"....Cpl Watson, RE, placed the charges and I sent a message to Tag to explain what was happening and that the small bridge would be blown up as soon as I had heard the big bang.The explosion of a single slab of gun cotton was he signal that the aqueduct was about to be blown up....the sound of the warning explosion in that still air echoed and re-echoed among the hills...Cpl. Watson and I stayed behind to to deal with the little bridge...Cpl.Watson lit the fuse and we withdrew just behind the cottages waiting for the two explosions, the one of the aqueduct and the one from our own little bridge. "Whoom!" Our bridge went up in a cloud of flying concrete, iron rails and bits of masonry...Cpl.Watson and I went up to inspect the damage we had done to the little bridge before joining the rest of the party". (Excepts from Return Ticket. Anthony Deane Drummond. 1954)

The damage done wasn't as great as had been hoped for. (It was repaired very quickly afterwards and little economic damage was done. Later in the War, the Germans, retreating from the Allies, made a much better job of it, and at the end of the war it was rebuilt again by Canadian engineers). Interestingly the aqueduct was built by a British company in the 30’s and yet when the paratroops arrived at the scene they were surprised to find it built from concrete rather than the easier to destroy brickwork they were expecting. Considering who built it you’d have thought someone would have told them!

Having done their job, X Troop split up into smaller units and got underway on arguably the hardest part of the mission. In freezing conditions - it was the middle of February- they had to march 60 or so miles to the coast where they were to be picked up by a submarine, HMS Triumph, at the mouth of the river Sele.

It was a mammoth effort of endurance and almost needless to say, none of the groups made it. Marching at night and hiding during the day they did their best to keep out of sight, but one by one they were picked up by the furious Italians - one contemporary newspaper report describes the Italian search for 'the English desperadoes’ -  and soon they were all brought together at Calitri police station before being taken to Naples prison.

Tragically, even if they had made it to the coast, their ordeal wouldn’t have been over. The submarine wasn't there to pick them up. It had set out as planned but was recalled en-route:

Sir Dudley Pound said that the enemy would now probably be aware of the rendezvous for the submarine as the message sent out by the aircraft had unfortunately been in a simple code which the enemy would almost certainly have intercepted and considered it wrong to risk a valuable submarine and its crew against the possibility of bringing off a few survivors. Sir Charles Portal said latest air reconnaissance reports appeared to show that the objective had suffered no damage. As the operation had miscarried it was probable that most if not all of the personnel had been killed or rounded up. Minutes of War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee. 13th February 1941 10.30am

Bob in on the left of this picture (in shorts) at Sulmona. 

Bob ended up at Sulmona 87 PoW camp where he spent two years until September 1943 when he walked out along with everyone else - following Italy's surrender to the advancing allies. 

What happened next is another part of the mystery. He was captured again buy the Germans, but then escaped again.,Nothing else is known about this period, other than it ended with a very long journey to the safety of neutral Switzerland - along with over 20,000 other escaped Allied Prisoners of war  and also the award of a Military Medal  .

Military Medal Citation

1888304 L/Corporal Watson, Robert Brimer

RE attached 11 SAS

Watson was captured on 13^th February 1941 at Avelino after being dropped by parachute to carry out a special mission. As a result he was imprisoned at Naples, Sulmona and Aquila. Watson served as a member of the escape committee and sent valuable information to the war office by secret means.

Released on 11th September 1943, he found a shelter at Coppito until his recapture on 6^th December 1943. Six days later he escaped from the Germans and returned to Coppito. On 27^th December 1943 he went with a companion to Aquilia. At the beginning of May 1944 when attempting to reach the Allied lines Watson was caught. Imprisonment at Aquilia and Laterina followed. Entrained for Germany on 23^rd June 1944 he and two others escaped through a hole they had made in the floor of the truck. Travelling North to Switzerland on foot they crossed the border on 15^th July 1944.

The medal award was Gazetted on 31^st January 1946. No one knows the actual medal is now.

How the raid was reported in the British Press

London Saturday February 14th 1941

British Parachutists land in Italy - Rome Report

                        

FIGHT IN WOODS WITH GUARDS

        British Parachute troops landed in the province of Calabria in the 'toe' of Italy, on the night of Monday-Tuesday, to destroy communications and waterworks, according to yesterdays Italkian High Command communique

        Squads of parachutists, ikt stated dropped on the border between Calabria and Lucania, the province to the North of Calabria, but were captured before they could do any damage.

        It was added that in a skirmish before there capture an Italian policeman and civilian were killed.

        The Ankara radio last night announced another reported landing of British parachutists in Sicily, says the British United Press.

        The announcer added. The Italian communique claims that the British parachutists were captured. We must therefore wait for further news.

LANDED AT NIGHT

        Giving details of the landing in Calabria, the official Stefani Agency last night stated that it took place between 10.30pm and 2.00am on the night of Monday-Tuesday.

        The parachutists, who carried automatic arms and explosives, intended to damage the water supply system, railway lines bridges and roads.

       "Having landed in a clearing surrounded by forests", said the agency,the parachutists occupied some farms and immobilised the peasants

        One parachutist, who had broken a leg, was left in one farm, where he was later arrested by guards.

        The British parachutists deceived the peasant farmers by shouting 'Duce' and so inducing them to open their doors to them

        After abandoning their injured companion, the British made their way to the springs which feed the irrigation system, guiding themselves by means of maps which they had.

CORDON ROUND AREA

        But the alarm had been given in the region by guards, co-operating with the military police and the military organisations of the Fascist party, drew a cordon around the area. A search was instituted making the position of the parachutists precarious.

        Speedily surrounded, they were unable to execute their plans and had to hide in the woods to avoid capture. To make capture more difficult they divided into groups, hoping that some would be able to break through the cordon.

        Their plan failed, for while 11 parachutists were seized in one place, seven others were arrested at the same time a mile or two away

After the War

Bob was demobbed in October 1945. He gave his home address as 140 Eastern Avenue Northampton (one of the houses he had been involved in building before the war). He came home to his family and his building firm but the winter of 1947 saw to that. Unable to work in the extreme weather that year, he continued to pay his men and eventually went bust. 

After that he went away and that was pretty much the last anyone saw of him. Before he went my mother remembers him asking if he could take some of her toys. Presumably that might explain what he had been up to whilst on the run in Italy! Perhaps somewhere we have Italian relations? He said he was going to build oil-rigs in Burma. Who knows.

One thing is sure though, he came home to the North East at some point and died there aged 53 on 25th June 1962 – 4 months before I was born. His death certificate gives his occupation as a ‘bricklayer’ of 68 Finsbury Avenue Newcastle.

Harry Pexton

At the time of writing the original blog article in July 2011 there were only two living survivors of the raid: Anthony Deane Drummond was one but he sadly passed away on Dec 4th 2012 and the other is Harry Pexton. Harry has done a fair number of interviews over the years and I found him via the Parachute Regiment, who kindly asked him if he would mind me calling him and then passed on his phone number.

I was quite nervous about giving him a call. As far as I know hes the only living person who remembers Bob and certainly the only one who has any recollection of him during the War. He picked the phone up and when I said is that Harry Pexton, he answered “depends on who wants to know”. 

He was expecting the call and straight away invited me up to his home in Knutsford.

Harry has lived in the same place since the war. He and his wife were the first and only occupants of the house built straight after the war. They were the first people to move into the street. His wife passed away three years ago and now he sits in a comfy armchair next to the bay window with a video phone to speak to his grandchildren in Australia and a very snazzy radio that he uses to pick up air traffic control conversations from nearby Manchester airport.

He’s only a stones throw away from the old training and landing ground and that’s the reason hes still in Knutsford – they were all billeted in local homes and he met his future wife in the local pub so he never never went back to his home town of Grimsby. Pre war and afterwards too, he was a painter and decorator by trade and also played in a dance band or two.

We sat for about three hours talking about the raid and life in general. He’s a mine of information. His walls are covered with pictures of the raid, comrades, planes and family and he has a treasure trove of press cuttings, reunion pictures and was the main source of the book Guinea Pigs written by Raymond Foxhall, much of which he says was written in his front room.

So, what does he remember about Bob? Well, not a great deal actually. He remembers him turning up at training camp. That he was billed with a local family like everyone else. That he did the 7 or 8 training jumps that they all did before the raid and then off they went.

The raid happened, they were captured and Bob became the camp barber. He wasn’t a barber and was useless apparently. But by the time they got out he had the hang of it and was charging two fags for a short back and sides. He also remembers that Bob spent a lot of time outside the camp doing building work with the local townspeople. He thinks they were building housing or a hospital.

Once they had got out of Sulmona they never saw each other again. After the war, when Harry was busy organising reunions he never managed to find Bob and nor did any if the others.

"...the story would not have been told at all but for the help given to me in escaping by others in our party which parachuted into Italy in February 1941. All are still alive and since the end of the war, I have seen all but one" (Except from Return Ticket. Anthony Deane Drummond. 1954)

Harry said he was a nice bloke though.

Further reading & information

• For a detailed account of the raid read After the Battle issue 81
• ‘The Guinea Pigs’ by Raymond Foxhall, 1983
• Anthony Deane Drummond 'Return Ticket' 1954
• Anthony Deane Drummond 'Arrows of Fortune' 1992
• Prelude to Glory. The story of the creation of Britains Parachute army. Group Captain Maurice Newnham. 1946

• On the internet find out more at http://www.paradata.org.uk/

• If you're on Facebook join the Operation colossus group

If you have any information relation to Robert Brimer Watson or Opertatrion Colossus in general please contact me at mikepackwood6@gmail.com

Pictures and Documents

A Painting of the troops being dropped. Norman Hunter 1983.

The Aqueduct today

Members of X Troop at Sulmona PoW camp

A First day stamp cover commemorating the raid