WITH Technicolor violence, mind-blowing action and outrageous daring, director Guy Ritchie’s latest movie has exploded on to TV screens.
It is a World War Two blockbuster that would seem far-fetched even for James Bond.
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Five maverick warriors sail halfway around the world in a wooden fishing trawler, the Maid Honour, on a mission to steal three ships responsible for re-supplying the Nazis’ deadly U-boat subs.
They must strike under the noses of German and Italian forces operating the ships from a Spanish colonial island off Equatorial Guinea, West Africa — without giving away any British involvement, which could drag neutral Spain into the war.
Viewers of the tongue-in-cheek war romp, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, will be amazed to learn the unlikely adventure is based on a real-life Second World War raid code-named Operation Postmaster.
They will also discover that Bond writer Ian Fleming, then a Naval Intelligence Commander and one of the planners of the top-secret mission, later used those lawless warriors as the inspiration for his 007 spy novels.
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History purists may decry the liberties Ritchie takes as a cast, including British star Henry Cavill, Mexican actress Eiza Gonzalez and Alan Ritchson, go into action.
But author Damien Lewis, who wrote the non-fiction book on which the film is based, loves it.
He said: “The more people who watch the movie and get inspired to discover the incredible truth just widens the pool of knowledge about what went on in the war.
‘Stakes were incredibly high’
“With what is happening in Ukraine and the rise of the Right in France and elsewhere, we need to remember what sacrifices were made and risks taken by those who went into harm’s way to fight the Nazis. Anything that drives that message home is good.”
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Damien, who met the cast on set, also believes they captured the pirate-like nature of the raid.
He said: “They really got the essence right. The guys, and Eiza as well, somehow recreated the spirit of what it was like to be one of those raiders in World War Two.
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“There was this free-wheeling, fun, crazy, think anything, try anything sense of a shoot, which echoed what it was like being in the Maid Honour Force at the time, and I think that comes through on screen.”
It was the summer of 1941 when the war in the North African desert hung in the balance and British efforts to get vital aircraft and spare parts to its forces via friendly West African ports were under severe threat from German U-boat attacks.
Although Spain was officially neutral in the war, its neo-fascist leader, General Franco, supported the Axis powers, and the port of Santa Isabel on its colonial island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) was suspected of being a clandestine U-boat refuelling and rearming depot.
Permanently moored in the harbour were an 8,000-ton Italian ship, the duch*essa d’Aosta, packed with war materials; a 200-ton German tug boat, the Likomba; and a motorised barge, the Bibundi.
A year earlier, in the wake of Dunkirk, Winston Churchill had founded the highly secretive Special Operations Executive to “set enemy-held Europe ablaze”.
Loathed by the regular military, it would become known as Churchill’s Secret Army or The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the Royal Navy had got its agents banned from all European theatres of action, but not Africa.
For its first deniable operation, SOE operations director Brigadier Colin McVean Gubbins, known as “M”, just like the James Bond hero years later, had planned the Fernando Po raid.
Avoid a fight if possible, resist capture to the last
Advice from the British government
He had recruited British eccentric Captain Gus March-Phillipps, 33, a battle-scarred Dunkirk veteran, to lead the mission and pick his team.
In turn, he had chosen 23-year-old Lieutenant Geoffrey Appleyard, who he shared a foxhole with at Dunkirk; Appleyard’s friend, Lieutenant Graham Hayes, 27; and 20-year-old “Viking” Anders Lassen, a Danish aristocrat determined to fight the Germans occupying his homeland.
All four understood they would be disowned by the British government if caught.
They were given suicide pills to take if they were about to be imprisoned and told: “Avoid a fight if possible, resist capture to the last.”
March-Phillipps had also recruited Private Frank “Buzz” Perkins, 17, the son of a friend, to help their cover story of being a group of Swedes on a pleasure cruise if the Maid Honour was confronted en route to West Africa.
Author Damien said: “The stakes were so incredibly high that it was almost unbelievable that Churchill actually got it green-lit.
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“The chances that it would go wrong were very high and, if it did, then Spain’s neutrality would have been violated and it would likely be provoked to join the Axis powers of Germany and Italy in the war.
“If Spain gave the Nazis access to attack Gibraltar, that would have closed the Mediterranean to British shipping and would have changed the course of the war.
It was testament to Churchill’s belief in special small-scale operations that it went ahead — in spite of senior military comman- ders and senior politicians who tried to torpedo the mission — and that they pulled it off.”
The five mavericks reached Lagos, Nigeria, picked up two tugs they were going to use to steal the enemy ships and liaised with 12 SOE agents for the mission.
But a small force of British soldiers, without which they would be massively outnumbered, never joined them.
Teachers, engineers, doctors — they got 48 hours’ training on the high seas, courtesy of the Maid Honour Force, and off they went to carry out the raid
Damien
Damien said: “The overall British military commander in West Africa refused to provide any troops. ‘No, you’re not having any! Shouldn’t be happening!’.
“So they went to the British Governor in Nigeria and he said, ‘No problem’, and he put a message out to his diplomatic service staff — ‘Volunteers required for a hazardous operation’ — and all these First World War veterans stepped forward.
“Teachers, engineers, doctors — they got 48 hours’ training on the high seas, courtesy of the Maid Honour Force, and off they went to carry out the raid. It was mind-blowingly Heath Robinsonesque, yet they still pulled it off.”
Damien also hailed the deception operations by SOE agents.
Trying to sink the ships was not an option as they would settle on the shallow harbour bed and be easily refloated, so they — and their crews — had to be captured under cover of darkness.
To ensure German and Italian commanders were absent when the Maid Honour Force struck, a party was held on shore by undercover SOE agent Richard Lippett.
He even managed to get it fronted by prominent local German doctor Heinrich Luhr — portrayed as a German officer in the movie — but when, at the last minute, the booked restaurant was unavailable, Lippett had to use the terrace of the town’s casino, which overlooked the harbour.
He had table places set so officers had their backs to the harbour, and lighting arranged so the ships could not be seen when the town’s lights went out at midnight to save power.
In the film, Eiza Gonzalez plays an SOE femme fatale, Marjorie Stewart, brought in to distract Luhr, though no SOE women took a prominent role in the real Operation Postmaster.
That didn’t mean sex didn’t play a part in the real-life plot.
The island’s Spanish governor, a die-hard fascist, had men watching the British consulate so the SOE agents obtained photographs of the governor, naked, in the bath with his local lover, showering her with a watering can.
They then blackmailed him to withdraw his men, and even got him to lend them his private plane to do aerial reconnaissance of the harbour.
Though not on the Postmaster raid, there were countless heroic female SOE agents and Gonzalez’s character represents them.
Indeed, Marjorie Stewart, who worked for the SOE, married March-Phillipps. Damien Lewis said: “I think Eiza Gonzalez’s performance was mind-blowingly good. When I went to the New York premiere after-party, I had brought some commemorative coins from the Special Forces Club in London for each of the cast.
“When I gave Eiza hers, I told her, ‘This is from the SF Club in London, formed in World War Two for people like the character you play’.
“She was very touched and she said, ‘It was an honour and a privilege to play a female agent from World War Two because those individuals were the bravest of the brave and risked everything to do the kinds of things I portray. They did those things with nothing to protect them but their guile and their beauty and their intelligence and courage’.”
Damien had previously talked to hulking Hollywood actor Alan Ritchson on set, revealing: “He’s 6ft 4in and almost as wide, so I was staring up at him and I asked, ‘What’s it like playing a whippet-thin Dane like Anders Lassen?’. He’s a lovely guy and he said, ‘My accent probably sounds more German than Danish, and I’m completely the wrong fit physically but . . . I’m great with a bow and arrow!’.”
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In the film, Lassen kills numerous Germans with his bow and, in real life, the Special Forces hero was a master archer.
But the War Office, while letting soldiers kill with knives, bombs, flame-throwers and guns, found the bow and arrow “inhuman” and barred Lassen from using it.
Remarkably, in spite of the killings in the film, the Maid Honour warriors pulled off the Postmaster raid without a single casualty, inflicting only bruises to a few Italian crewmen.
Little wonder, then, that Ian Fleming, the liaison between SOE and the Admiralty, after the war chose March-Phillipps as the blueprint for James Bond, as well as aspects of Lassen, Appleyard and Hayes, and the wartime MI6 station officer in Paris, Wilfred “Biffy” Dunderdale.
Damien said he was staggered to come across archives which showed March-Phillipps’ code name for Operation Postmaster was WO1 — ‘W’ for the West Africa region; ‘1’ as the first SOE agent assigned there; and ‘0’ as he was trained and licensed to use all means to liquidate the enemy.
He said: “March-Phillipps was among the first ‘00’ agents. Henry Cavill, who plays him perfectly, is a real gentleman.”
Captain March-Phillipps, Distinguished Service Order, MBE; Major Appleyard, Military Cross and bar — meaning he won the MC a second time — and Captain Hayes, MC, were all killed, or captured and executed as a result of subsequent missions.
But Lassen, Victoria Cross, MC and two bars, went on to kill more German soldiers than just about any warrior of his kind, before his own death a month before the war’s end.
So Guy Ritchie fans can look forward to the sequels.
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Damien said: “There’s any number of crazy, crazy operations to follow, they’ve got a smorgasbord of material to dip into.”
- The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is out on Prime Video now. The book, by Damien Lewis (Quercus), is available at all good bookshops, £10.99.
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