Cockleshell Heroes: The Final Witness is without doubt the definitive
account of a mission thought to be an impossible one. This is not just an
authoritative story about thirteen ‘black-faced villains’ embarked on a secret
mission via T-class submarine. It is a powerful depiction and an astounding tale
of courage and bravery by men and women of both Britain and
France – one which is graphic in its telling. This is the complete ‘no holds
barred’ record and is a deeply researched, highly detailed, intricately woven
account of a Combined Operations Clandestine Raid, with men who volunteered for
Hazardous Service, who sought challenges rather than avoid them. They paddled
105 land miles in canoes to place Limpet mines on Axis blockade runners deep
inside enemy-held territory.
Led by ‘Blondie’ Hasler – from an English seaside resort in the
Solent via a secret secluded bay, the icy temperatures of Scottish lochs and the
unpredictable waters of the Bay of Biscay – into the Nazi-occupied harbours of
Bordeaux, the story takes us from MI9 to an escape network care of a Countess,
punctuated by the love of a fifteen-year-old girl and the forlorn future hopes
of young men, through the vineyards and dwellings of the French heroes and
heroines to incarceration in the Gestapo-controlled prisons as well as over the
Pyrenees, into Concentration Camps, out of Gibraltar and, for many, death by
firing squad. By ‘cigar-shaped coffin’ and ‘Cockle’, by Shanks’s pony, on
starlit night, and with determination and by guile, this is the story of another
‘Few’, a group that mattered, a team that helped shorten the war – they were the
Cockleshell Heroes.
Never before has this narrative been told in its entirety. Never
before have all the individuals concerned been named. Never before have all
those that played their part in this historic ‘little event’ had each of their
stories told; coloured and crafted with actual words written and spoken by these
notables, the very essence of their being. Here laid bare are life stories,
intertwined with these commandos, leading into the indelible part of history
that is and will remain the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’. This is their ‘Final
Witness’.
