On their rounds of London last week, visiting U.S. Army chiefs sought out a very lean, very tall (6 ft. 4 in.) Englishman with a graceful name, royal blood, and one of the key posts in warring Britain. If, as some people thought, the U.S. officers were in London to sell the Imperial General Staff a second front, they did well to look up Vice Admiral, Lieut. General and Air Vice Marshal Lord Louis Mountbatten.
For, to Britons a-clamor for Continental action, Lord Louis personifies the second front. They know him as the chief of their savage specialists in hit-&-run invasion, the Commandos. Actually, he has a larger and more complex job: he is Chief of Combined Operations, directing not only the Commando troops themselves but the naval and air units which share the labor, glory and death of Commando raids.
Nothing annoys Lord Louis more than this public clatter for immediate, all-out invasion. To him, it smacks of wishful bunk. He knows all about the days and weeks of reconnaissance, the painstaking study of land maps, ocean charts, weather cycles and models of likely invasion points, which it takes to prepare one of his quick stabs at Nazi Europe. So it is only natural that when second-front talk comes up, Lord Louis' long face tightens.
His dark, grey-green eyes turn icy. Show him—they seem to say—the transports to move armies, more transports to replace the certain losses and keep the invaders supplied, warships to protect the transports. Show him the million-&-one items and preparations necessary for invasion.
But, first and above all, show him the ships. Show him the second fleet which must shuttle the Atlantic, between the U.S. and Britain, while the first plies between Britain and the invaded coasts.
Perhaps Lord Louis can be shown. When he is, the Imperial General Staff and the British Government are likely to be convinced. Then, behind the massive air assaults which the R.A.F. reopened and stepped up last week, U.S. and British troops will move into Europe. When that day of wrath comes, Lord Louis' terrible boys in blackface, the men of the Commandos, will be there to help undertake the first daring assault.
Butcher and Bolt. It was Winston Churchill who gave Britain's Commandos their name.— After Dunkirk, when these special units were first formed, Churchill remembered his Boer War days and the Boer Commandos: irregular, ill-trained, but well-equipped bands of 300 to 400 Boers, with less regard for the niceties of war than for ambushing and killing British soldiers.
There was nothing unduly nice about the British Commandos, their job, or their first leader. Aging Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, famed for his raid on a German submarine base at Zeebrugge in World War I, formed and trained the first Commandos in Scotland. His men were to be simply raiders. Their job was to shake Nazi morale, collect information, do what damage they could, and give Britons something to cheer about. Soon the Commandos had a phrase to describe their task: "butcher and bolt."