Just Finished Reading: Zeebrugge – Eleven VCs Before Breakfast by Barrie Pitt (FP: 1958) [225pp] 

It was a thorn in the side. It was a thorn that needed to be withdrawn, no matter the cost in blood. The question, as always, was how? The Germans were using the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend to release U-boats into the English Channel to both threaten British supply lines to the Continental forces fighting there and for access into the Atlantic without going all the way around Scotland. How to stop them doing that exercised minds both in the navy and in both aviation branches – the RFC and the RNAS. Monitors had been used to shell the dock area at Zeebrugge with little effect. Wholesale bombardment was out as the civilian casualties would be an unacceptable cost for the questionable results envisaged. The Royal Naval Air Service (soon to join the RFC in April 1918 to form the RAF) had tried bombing the harbour area but the U-boat docks had been hardened and the bombload possible was just too small to make a difference. There was just one possibility left – a direct assault. 

The plan was as simple as it was brutal. Before the German U-boats and fast destroyers could exit Zeebrugge harbour they had to navigate a narrow shallow canal. This was the weak point – if it could be called that. This objective lay deep inside the harbour complex which would mean an assault on it would be attacked from all sides. In order for the British forces to have any chance of success the defences would need to be seriously degraded and that meant a ground assault. The call went out for volunteers. Told initially that they would be taking part in a dangerous operation “somewhere on the occupied coast” the navy had their pick of officers and men. When the volunteers were told that the likelihood of a safe return was minimal a scramble began to be on the first landing ship. Plans were finalised, men were trained, experimental smoke laying devices trialed and the armada set sail from Dover and other harbours – only to be called back at the last minute. Forced to wait for the next high tide, suitable weather reports and a moonless sky Rear-Admiral Roger Keyes must have smiled when he saw the proposed date for the attack – 23rd April 1918, St Georges Day. This time the full attack would go ahead. Forces would land on the Zeebrugge harbour wall to engage the guns directly, smoke would be produced by small fast craft and three aged destroyers, long past their useful life would be sunk in the canal, blocking the exit to the Channel. Or so the plan said. During that one, brief morning in April a total of 11 men won the Victoria Cross, a further 21 the Distinguished Service Order and another 29 the Distinguished Service Cross. Those numbers alone tell you that the fight was far from an easy one. 

After reading the previous novelisation of this event (which was the culmination of the novel ‘Sixty Minutes for St George’ by Alexander Fullerton) I was looking forward to a history of the actual event. Fullerton was VERY accurate in his description of that desperate attack down to the names and actions of some of the primary participants. Despite the fact that the casualty rate was high – although not so high by WW1 standards – the effect on U-boat deployments afterwards was significant, as this was despite the failure of the Ostend mission to have anything like the success of Zeebrugge. Being published when it was (a mere 13 years after the war had ended), and by someone who served in Europe and the Middle East in 21 SAS, it can be forgiven that the narrative sometimes drifts a little closer to jingoism than I would expect from a later more dispassionate historian. But that (very minor) quibble aside this was a fascinating examination of a (mostly) forgotten exploit. Well worth a read if you can find a copy. Part of the Cassell Military Paperbacks series.