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officer of a destroyer in support of the efforts to rescue the legations besieged in Peking (Beijing) during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, was eager to get into the fight. He “handed over command of his destroyer to his First Lieutenant and joined an army column [marching on the Chinese capital]…. He was the first man into the city [Beijing], climbing a 30-foot wall.”¹¹ He survived the naval battles at Gallipoli in 1916 and was best known for planning and conducting the raid on German U-boat pens in Zeebrugge harbor in 1918. He had retired in 1935 but returned to active duty in 1940. He also served as a member of Parliament from 1934 to 1943. A friend of Churchill’s, he became director of Combined Operations in July 1940.

      Within a week, Churchill was asking Keyes for proposals for medium-sized raids using between five thousand and ten thousand men, to be launched in September or October at the latest. When Keyes received the memo, the strengths of the Commandos and independent companies that had been formed for raiding “were 500 and 750 respectively, and of the latter 250 were earmarked to go to Gibraltar.”¹²

      Keyes’ fifteen months as director were contentious, at best. He set up Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) as an independent entity, moving out of Admiralty offices and into the newly built and as-yet unoccupied New Scotland Yard building in Richmond Terrace, near Downing Street. This was a mixed blessing. The benefits of an independent command are many, but “from the material, naval personnel and psychological aspects, separation at this particular time, when everything depended on Admiralty effort, was a misfortune and led … to a good deal more than separation. The day of private navies and armies had dawned.”¹³ Not just the famous Commandos, which were the COHQ’s operational units, but eventually groups such as the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service, the Long Range Desert Group, and even Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits in Burma were all part of a range of special operators that siphoned off some of the best small-unit leaders to what were arguably peripheral operations. Whatever their value may have been, they certainly appealed to Churchill’s late-Victorian sense of combat—just the thing for a former subaltern of cavalry who fought at Omdurman in Sudan in 1898 and who, as a war correspondent, was captured and then escaped from a Boer prisoner of war camp in 1899 and then wrote about the adventure for the newspapers.

      While Keyes was in charge, there were advancements in the thinking about special ships and craft, particularly the LST (landing ship, tank), and the establishment of operational training centers. There were, however, few raids. “Plans were discussed, but the answer was always the same: you cannot assault an enemy coast without the proper number of special craft and until the crews have been trained.”¹⁴

      Keyes went to Churchill and proposed that Commandos take the small island of Pantelleria, just south of Sicily, in order to improve the sea transport situation in the central Mediterranean. Both the COS and the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham, doubted that the island could be held.

      Churchill gave Keyes permission to conduct the operation with two thousand commandos under his direct command. At the last minute, in December 1940, the operation was cancelled. Keyes was furious and blamed everyone from the COS on down, venting his anger in a string of memoranda to Churchill.¹⁵

      There was also a fundamental organizational disagreement that could not be resolved. Keyes believed that as “director” of Combined Operations, he should have control over the planning and preparations for any amphibious operation and should be responsible for the training of all the naval personnel involved. This meant that on occasion, the idea and the planning for a raid originated in Combined Operations, as was the case for Pantelleria, and then it had to be “sold” to the appropriate commander in chief for execution. Consequently, coordination with the joint planners and any connection with strategic goals was not always achieved. Additionally, Keyes’ opinion of the COS bordered on contempt (in the midst of one meeting, he accused them of being “yellow”¹⁶), and he was inclined to give his opinions freely and directly to the prime minister, among others.

      The COS took the view that only they were to give advice to the prime minister or the War Cabinet regarding strategy, that commanders of various operations or organizations were responsible to them not to COHQ, and, as for the reentry into the Continent, that “the planning and training for this must be the job of the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, with his appropriate naval and air opposite numbers” (soon to be called the Combined Commanders).¹⁷ Consequently, the COS believed that the exact role of the head of Combined Operations needed to be redefined. Keyes was notified by Churchill that his title was now advisor of Combined Operations, not director. Keyes would not accept what he saw as a demotion and resigned.

      On 27 October 1941 Lord Louis Mountbatten, captain in the Royal Navy, cousin to King George, and longtime friend of the Duke of Windsor, took over as advisor of Combined Operations. Selected by Churchill without consulting the COS, he was “many ranks and 27 years junior to Keyes, but all this was reckoned an asset.”¹⁸ Mountbatten brought great energy and enthusiasm to the project and set about building up his staff and strengthening his hand, ensuring that the COS and everyone else knew that he had the full support of the prime minister. While no expert in combined operations, he was a fast learner, able to effectively represent the amphibious warfare views at major interallied conferences, had great charm, was liked by the Americans, and had what in different circumstances could be described as a knack for effective presentation.

      The exchanges between the COS, Keyes, Mountbatten, and Churchill had the seeds of future difficulties embedded. The Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, and his naval and air equivalents were, according to the COS, responsible for the planning and training of forces related to some future, as-yet-unplanned or agreed-on reentry into the Continent. They would report directly to the British COS. When the Americans arrived, planners at ETOUSA had an informal liaison relationship with the planners of the Combined Commanders, but all plans still went through them to the British COS.

      Mountbatten and COHQ felt, as had Keyes, that they existed as the depository of all knowledge and doctrine related to amphibious operations and, as the duty experts, would have to play a major role in the planning and conduct of any amphibious attack launched from Great Britain. After the entry of the United States into the war, some American officers served at COHQ, but it remained a British organization.

      The Casablanca conference established a planning staff related to cross-Channel operations, initially to catalog and bring some organizational structure to whatever studies and concepts had been put forth so far. Headed by a British staff officer but without a commander, this staff, near as anyone knew, was to report to the CCS in Washington and was tasked with planning both a deception operation in the Channel and reentry into the Continent under two possible sets of circumstances. The resolution of this tangle was neither easy nor quick.

      In March of 1942 Mountbatten was promoted from captain (acting commodore) to vice-admiral, with the additional ranks of lieutenant general and air-marshal. His title was changed to chief of Combined Operations and he now joined the COS as an equal member whenever either combined operations or the general conduct of the war were discussed, which is to say, for almost every meeting.

      By now there were trained troops, specialized assault craft, and experience from smaller raids in the Mediterranean and Norway. From the relatively simple and straightforward creation of small landing craft that began in 1938, by 1943 there developed an entire range of specialized craft types, each designed and built to address a specific need or provide the means of moving some of the various components of an invasion force from ship to shore. There were the LCA (landing craft, assault), which were small craft for infantry initially designed for raiding; the LCC (amphibious command ship), which were control craft; the LCH, the headquarters craft; the LCI(L), landing craft infantry (large), which carried up to two hundred men and their equipment; the LCM, which were for mechanized equipment like vehicles and tanks; the LCP(L), also for personnel; the LCS (Landing Craft, Support); the LCT, which carried fifty-five men plus vehicles; and the LCVP, landing craft designed for either vehicles or personnel. There was also the LSI(L), the landing ship, infantry (large), which carried assault craft and men. And there were the LSM (landing ship, medium), a larger, oceangoing version of the LSI, and the famous LST. This was in addition to the AKA (amphibious cargo) and APA (attack transport) ships, which carried

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