The Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse 1943
'Shipping losses from German submarines in the Indian Ocean were threatening to cut off essential supplies of munitions for the defence of India against Japan. Intelligence had identified a network of informers from Shipping Offices in Bombay, organised by a German spy know as 'Trompeta' resident in neutral Portuguese territory in Goa. A transmitter in the German merchantman, the 'Eherenfels', interred in Mormugoa Harbour, passed the time of each sailing to the German U-Boats. Few ships using the port of Bombay escaped them' - from the forward to Lames Leasor's book, 'The Boarding Party - the Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse' published in 1978 .
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| MV 'Eherenfels' built 1935 of 7752 grt, with twin diesels |
At the the outbreak of WWII, a German merchant ship ‘Ehernfels’ was moored in Mormugao Harbour on the West Coast of India, in neutral Portuguese territory, secretly transmitting details of the movement of Allied shipping sailing in and out of Bombay to such effect that in the first 11 days of March, 1943, U-boats sent 12 ships and their crews and cargoes to the bottom of Indian Ocean.
The problem was first raised officially by General Wavell in 1941. He realised that the secret transmitter had to be put out of action and indeed ideally the ‘Eherenfels’ should captured in a ‘cutting out operation’ and refitted as an allied asset as she was fast and modern and could quickly be converted to an armed merchantman. But the Allies were constrained by the rule that a ship in neutral territory couldn’t be openly attacked.
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| Lewis Pugh in 1941 |
Lt-Col Lewis Pugh, my grandfather’s nephew and the nephew of Brig-General Lewis Pugh Evans, VC, CG, CMG, DSO was in 1942 Director of Country Sections with SOE’s Force 136, one of their most successful units based in Calcutta which specialised in placing agents and trained saboteurs deep behind enemy lines inside Burma and Malaya. He was tasked with the secret ‘cutting out’ operation or at least the silencing of the spying operation, without anyone being aware of any breach of Portuguese neutrality. In order to give maximum ‘plausible deniability’ by the authorities, nothing was said to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow and as far as the War Ministry and the Foreign Office in London were concerned, all that they were told was being attempted was to bribe the German crew, most of whom were not thought to be Nazis, to sail the ship into international waters where she could be ‘captured’. €100,000 was wired to India for that purpose.
The initial operation took place in December 1942 when Pugh took a fellow officer, Major Gavin Burton Stewart, to try and capture the spy running the wireless operation. He was a man called Robert Koch, codenamed ‘Trompeta’, who was known to be a member of the German military intelligence unit ‘Abwehr’ and who Pugh had nearly captured when the ‘Eherenfels’ called in Calcutta two days before war was declared. Since then, he had been living ashore in Goa with his wife. Pugh and Stewart travelled into Goa purporting to be representatives of ICI (on letters signed by Lt-Col William Grice, a director of ICI (India) and the current commandant of the Calcutta Light Horse) and, narrowly escaping being arrested by a suspicious British local garrison commander, kidnapped Koch and his wife at gunpoint before driving them to the Indian border - after which no record of what happened to them has been released*. Of course the disappearance of Koch provoked alarm among the Germans, but the wireless signals continued to be transmitted with the information provided by the agents in Bombay. The only consequence was that the Germans prepared incendiary devices on the ‘Eherenfels’ and three other Axis ships in the harbour and practised emergency scuttling in case they were attacked.
Thereafter, on 9th March 1943 Pugh led what came to be known as the ‘Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse’ against the ‘Eherenfels’. The regiment had been raised in 1872 and formed part of the cavalry reserve of the British Indian Army and coincidentally been commanded by my grandfather, Col AJ Pugh from 1912 to 1922. Its membership was voluntary and largely made up of former soldiers, businessmen and planters who received some training - but also hunted, played polo and provided an honour guard to the Viceroy.
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| Hopper barge 'Phoebe' of 1200 tons |
To carry out the raid on Mormagoa Harbour, Pugh persuaded the Calcutta Port Commissioners to lend him an old but serviceable 1200 ton hopper barge ‘Phoebe’ that had been built on the Clyde before being sailed to Calcutta under her own steam, where she was used to keep the Hooghly River clear of silt. A retired British naval commander, Bernard Davies, agreed to sail the old barge down the east coast of India via Trincomalee to Cochin with its Indian crew and with military materiel hidden onboard. On reaching Cochin, they picked up Pugh and the SOE troop of five officers and 14 men, drawn from both the Calcutta Light Horse and the Calcutta Scottish regiments and steamed on to Mormagoa Harbour. Among the SOE troop was Lt Col William Grice as well as Lt Colin Sandys-Lumsdaine, Charles Tindall, Capt Robert Duguid, William Miller, Gilman Wylie and James Patterson, a Lloyd’s Surveyor.
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This map uses the modern names Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), Kochi Cochin) . |
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| Mormugao Harbour from the air |
They reached Mormagoa under the cover of darkness and were able to tie up alongside the ‘Eherenfels’. As a diversion, Pugh had arranged for a fireworks display to be put on at the critical time, to draw away as many of the ships’ crews as he could and cover any noises, and it is also suggested that the town’s brothels had been pre-paid and declared ‘free’ for the evening by a mysterious wealthy visitor. However, despite these diversions, they were seen climbing aboard and the Master (who had never intended to accept the offered bribe) managed to raise the alarm before being shot. The Chief Engineer raced to the engine room and barricaded himself inside before setting off the incendiaries and opening the sea cocks to scuttle her. In all 16 Germans died in the raid and three were taken prisoner*. There were three minor injuries among the British force but all re-boarded the ‘Phoebe’ and cast off again, and after sailing up to Bombay to take on coal, she returned safely to Calcutta.
No one suspected what had happened and in Goa it was assumed that there had been some kind of mutiny on board the ‘Eherenfels’. The Consul-General, Bremner, who had helped with the capture of Robert Koch, had received an invitation to attend a meeting in Bombay that night with his wife, and being out of station could appear genuinely ignorant.
The operation was not confessed to until 1978, thirty-five years after it took place, but after the raid, in the remainder of March, only one Allied ship was lost to U-boat action in the Indian Ocean.
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| Lewis Pugh at the premiere of 'The Sea Wolves' |
Lewis Pugh subsequently became a Major-General with a CB, CBE and three DSOs. and this wartime incident was turned into a book in 1978 called ‘The Boarding Party – The Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse’ by James Leasor, and subsequently portrayed in a 1980 film, ‘The Sea Wolves’, starring Gregory Peck as Pugh, David Niven, Roger Moore, Trevor Howard, Patrick McNee and Kenneth Griffith with Barbara Kellerman as Mrs Koch. It has also been more recently researched by a military historian, Col David Miller, with my help and that of one of Lewis Pugh’s daughters, for his book ‘Special Operations South East Asia 1942-1945’, published in 2015. This now the most definitive account of the action.
There are a number of other accounts on the internet as well. This one is pretty accurate and adds some interesting details but interestingly and perhaps deliberately, avoids mentioning Lewis Pugh by name. .
* The National Archive files relating to the German spy, Robert Koch and his wife, will not be released until 2056. The German prisoners were either interned in India or declared that they would like to become British citizens, which in due time they did, changing their names and settling in Sussex.
