Posted on 12/02/2002 5:14:55 PM PST by dighton
Last surviving Cockleshell hero who paddled 85 miles into France to blow up German merchant shipping
Marine Bill Sparks, who has died aged 80, was the last of the two surviving “Cockleshell Heroes” responsible for paddling a canoe 85 miles through enemy defences to cripple German merchant ships at Bordeaux.
During the night of December 11 1942, 10 Royal Marines set out in five craft; but eight of them were shot or drowned. Sparks and Major “Blondie” Hasler found themselves pursued through France and Spain by vengeful Germans for three months before they reached safety.
When Hasler summoned his marines to the forward torpedo room of the submarine Tuna before the operation, they were told that their mission was to attack a fleet of armed German merchantmen, which was preparing to raid British shipping. An attack using kayaks, known as cockleshells, was the only alternative to bombing, which would have caused heavy civilian casualties.
Hasler’s platoon spent five days in Tuna, escaping a U-boat attack en route. They reached their launch point in the Bay of Biscay, 10 miles from the river Gironde, but had to remain bottomed for 24 hours because of poor weather.
By the evening of December 7, the sea was calmer and Hasler and Sparks launched their cockleshell, Cachalot, first.
Sergeant Wallace and Marine Ewart were soon captured, interrogated and shot; Corporal Shard and Marine Moffatt were drowned. Lieutenant Mackinnon and Marine Conway went missing. Hasler and Sparks pressed on with Corporal Laver and Marine Mills. Although the Germans were now alerted, the two craft avoided sentry positions and three patrol boats in the estuary.
Sparks and Hasler were seen, but not compromised, by French civilians as they used the flood tide by night and lay in hiding by day. Sparks remembered savouring every brew of tea and the frequent use of Benzedrine tablets to stave off sleepiness: he also shared his illicit bottle of rum with Hasler.
On the third night, cold, wet and tired, the two boats lay up on the small Ile de Cazeau, which was home to a German anti-aircraft battery, but the marines’ fieldcraft was so good that enemy patrols failed to detect them.
At nightfall they realised that they were sharing the island with Mackinnon and Conway, but these two found their craft damaged by a submerged hazard; they were betrayed and executed.
On the last night of their paddle, Sparks and Hasler hid in tall reeds within easy reach of Bordeaux, where they could sleep, eat and prepare within yards of the bustling harbour. As the pair proceeded to place their limpet mines on the sides of ships, they thought that they had been seen by a sentry, and were crushed between two ships moving together. They managed to escape silently on the ebb tide, and soon found Laver and Mills, who had also successfully placed their mines. When the explosions took place, four ships were severely damaged and a fifth sunk.
William Edward Sparks was born in the East End of London on September 5 1922, and left school at 14. After three years as a shoe repairer, he infuriated his father on the outbreak of war by allowing himself to be persuaded to join the Royal Marines, instead of becoming a stoker in the family tradition. Sparks first served in the battleship Renown on convoys to Malta and in the hunt for the Bismarck.
When he heard of his brother Bonny’s death in the cruiser Naiad, he drowned his sorrows so well that his father had to persuade him to make tardy return from leave, when he was confined to barracks. There he read a notice calling for volunteers for hazardous service, and promptly volunteered as a way of avenging Bonny. He was delighted a few weeks later when Hasler selected him with 40 other volunteers. He responded to the informality and the hard work, as well as the pleasures of blowing things up. Hasler chose him as his crewman.
After completing their demolition the two remaining pairs of canoeists sank their boats and began a trek to Ruffec, 100 miles away. Sparks and Hasler spent the next two months in the hands of various agents, most notably Mary Lindell, a British agent who operated in the Lyon area. Great dangers were involved, though in one safe house Sparks felt more threatened by the overtures of the daughter of the family than by the Germans. Eventually he and Hasler were led over the Pyrenees to Spain; but Laver and Mills were captured and shot.
Hasler flew home, but Sparks was placed under close arrest and taken in a troopship to England, as no one remaining in Gibraltar could corroborate his story. On arrival he was placed on a train by military police, but escaped at Euston Station and went home to see his father, who had been told that he was missing in action. Two days later Sparks reported to the Admiralty where he was again threatened with arrest; but a naval intelligence officer encouraged him to slip out the back door and report to Combined Operations Headquarters, where he was greeted with astonishment.
George VI presented Sparks with the Distinguished Service Medal and Hasler with the DSO. Sparks served in Burma, Africa and Italy before becoming a bus driver in 1946.
He spent some time in Malaya during the Emergency as a police lieutenant. When the film The Cockleshell Heroes, with Anthony Newley playing him, came out in 1955, Sparks made a promotional tour in America, then became a bus inspector.
The one issue which upset Sparks was that his dead comrades were not properly honoured; and eventually, through the MP Sir Bernard Braine and The Telegraph, a fund to pay for a memorial was set up; the necessary money was gathered in a month.
Two years later Sparks’s invalidity pension was cut by £1,000 a year and, despite media coverage and family disagreement, he decided that he had to auction his medals.
“I have tried not to feel bitter about this,” he told The Telegraph. “But when I went to the DHSS and explained my case, I was told absolutely nothing could be done. How can I feel anything else but bitter and disappointed?”
The sale raised £31,000 at Sotheby’s from an anonymous bidder. But the pain was alleviated when the new owner placed the eight medals in Sotheby’s vault with instructions that Sparks was to be permitted to wear them whenever he wished.
Sparks was grateful to the French people who had helped him escape, and returned several times to Bordeaux. He met the Dubois family, who had sheltered him for some weeks, and Mary Lindell, who had survived being interned at Auschwitz; he also saw the bullet holes in the wall against which Wallace and Ewart had been shot at the Chateau Dehez.
When he was 61, Sparks re-enacted his epic journey by paddling from the mouth of the Gironde to Bordeaux to raise money for Cancer Research, with Gerry Lockyer of the Imperial War Museum as his companion.
Afterwards Sparks said that, although the trip was not so dangerous as in 1942, they had known about the tides then; this time the paddling was much harder. The escape route which he and Hasler used is now a footpath dedicated to the Cockleshell Heroes.
Sparks, who died on Saturday, is survived by three sons, one of whom became a colour sergeant in the Marines, and a daughter. After his first wife Violet died in 1982, he married again. His second wife Irene also survives him.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
They don't make'em like that any more.
The damned French.
It's hard not to note the casual mention of the other heroes and the offhanded mention "they were shot".
Taking nothing away from the hero at hand, we should pause a moment and remember that our freedom is the result of the price that these almost anonymous souls- who were shot- paid on our behalf.
God bless them
I'd also note that Hasler himself went on to help pioneer the sport of crossing oceans in small sailboats alone, and he practically invented the windvane self-steering device.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
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