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Obituary: Brigadier Michael Calvert by M. R. D. Foot
MICHAEL CALVERT, who survived both the Chindit expeditions into Burma, was one of the outstanding leaders of irregular troops during the Second World War, though born into the old officer class and himself a regular army officer.
He was the youngest son of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service, who rose to be acting governor of the Punjab; his mother was Irish. He was himself born in the Raj, near Delhi; went to school at Bradfield; and followed his brothers to “The Shop”, the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Though he cared little for smartness he passed out seventh and was commissioned a second lieutenant Royal Engineers in 1933. He then spent a year at Cambridge reading Mechanical Sciences at St John’s and securing a swimming Blue. He was also a boxer, later the Army’s middleweight champion.
His first Army posting was to Hong Kong where he raised a force of coolies. He was then moved on to Shanghai in time to witness its conquest by the Japanese in 1937: an early lesson in the horrors of war. He reported in detail on the infantry landing craft, with hinged front panels, which he saw the Japanese using; his report lay forgotten in a pigeon-hole in the War Office.
The outbreak of war saw him adjutant of a London RE battalion, work so dull that he volunteered for the Fifth Battalion, the Scots Guards (though well under the proper height for a guardsman). This battalion consisted of men preparing to fight beside the Finns against the Soviet Union during the winter war of 1939 to 1940. They spent weeks at Chamonix learning to ski, and were then disbanded as the Finns had given in.
Calvert missed the fighting in France next summer but was an early member of the Commando training school at Lochailort in the Highlands, which he left to assist Peter Fleming in preparing the stay-behind parties in Kent who were to try to upset the communications and petrol supplies of the German army that, thank goodness, never invaded.
He was then sent out to Australia to help set up a school similar to Lochailort there. From one of his fellow instructors, Freddie Spencer- Chapman (later author of that marvellous book, The Jungle is Neutral, 1949), he learned a lot about jungle warfare; and he helped to train Australian special forces. He was moved on to set up a bush warfare school at Maymyo in Burma, east of Mandalay – in fact a school to train guerrillas to fight in China.
There he was surprised by the Japanese invasion in the winter of 1941/42. Off his own bat he dressed his staff and pupils in Australian bush hats and mounted a raid by river craft behind the Japanese lines, intended to lead them to think that the Australian army was already present in Burma in force. He got no thanks in the short run – indeed he was reprimanded for damaging the property of the Burmah Oil Company without permission. He discovered in the long run that he had indeed done a little to hold up the Japanese advance. His casualties were light and he had managed some important demolitions.
Moreover he next met Orde Wingate, that formidable pillar of unconventionality; who had read a paper Calvert had scribbled in 1940, about the way raiding parties could be kept supplied by air, far behind any existing fighting line, and was looking forward to implementing that then quite novel idea in the field. Calvert was one of the few regular officers whom Wingate was prepared to treat as an equal. That their ranks at the time were major and brigadier made no difference at all; the two of them got on splendidly.
Before he could rejoin Wingate, Calvert had a couple of months hard fighting in the rearguard of the army retreating from Burma, with such wild men as he could find to undertake tasks that were at first glance hopeless. In his autobiography, Fighting Mad (1964), this is the point at which he lays down a principle. “I have always maintained that the men in a fighting unit must be led from in front by a commander they know is willing and able to do everything he asks them to do and probably more.”
Nelson would have approved; this is the way real leaders lead. Once Calvert paused to bathe in a river, and met a Japanese officer who was doing exactly the same. He won a quarter of an hour’s wrestling match, drowned his opponent, and had his patrol kill the whole Japanese patrol whom they surprised in the next bend of the river.
He then got back to India, with infinite difficulty through the monsoon, and was at once summoned by Wingate to help train his first Chindit expedition. “God often gives men peculiar instruments with which to pursue His will,” Wingate remarked; “David was armed only with a sling.”
In August 1942 Calvert joined 77th Brigade which Wingate commanded; in it Calvert commanded a column of some 400 men when it went into Burma six months later. This first attempt at Long Range Penetration – its official name – had little strategic impact but was a colossal propaganda success: home morale in Great Britain was much boosted by the idea that our men were attacking the Japanese in the jungle and the name of Chindit became famous. Casualties were heavy, at about 30 per cent of the force; Calvert, though emaciated after a march of over a thousand miles through jungle, survived.
He was indeed promoted brigadier – thus winning a bet he had made with a schoolfriend when he was 12 – and took 77th Brigade into Burma again by air on 5 March 1944. He established a stronghold and landing ground codenamed Broadway well behind the Japanese lines, and another called White City a little farther south; and held both of them against sustained Japanese attacks. This operation was of far more use than the previous one – it dislocated the Japanese assault on Imphal, that threatened India; but the fire went out of it when Wingate was killed in an air crash, and Calvert found himself under the orders of the American General Stilwell – passionately anti-British – and forced to fight a conventional war for which his men were neither equipped nor trained.
This time Calvert lost over nine-tenths of his Brigade, but his leadership kept the survivors together as a formidable fighting force however weakened, and he pulled through himself. For each of these Chindit sorties he was appointed to the DSO. Absurdly enough he then injured his Achilles tendon in a football match. He returned to the United Kingdom and in March 1945, was picked to succeed Brigadier R.W. McLeod in command of the Special Air Service brigade. Leading again from in front he took two French parachute units of that brigade into eastern Holland and north-west Germany in the closing stages of the war. For those actions he was awarded a French and a Belgian Croix de Guerre.
Thereafter his career went downhill. He had a spell helping to administer Trieste while its ownership was in dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia. In 1950 he was posted to command a new SAS unit called the Malayan Scouts in a colony already troubled by Communist subversion. Many men posted to him from elsewhere in the Army were discards from their former units and with this material even he could do nothing useful. He fell ill; returned to England; and was posted – in his substantive rank, still major – to a corner of the control commission in Germany.
He did not get on with his fellow officers and took to drinking by himself in a bar in Soltau (though he spoke no German). Some young men called on him and accused him of trying to seduce them. He was court-martialled for conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman – his biographer David Rooney strongly suspects that he was framed – and dismissed from the service.
He tried business in Australia; it did not succeed. He then took to drink in so big a way that he was reduced to methylated spirits in the slums of Glasgow. His fellow drinkers abused him – what was an educated man like him doing among such down-and- outs as themselves? This shocked him back on to the water wagon; and for a few years he worked as a temporary lecturer in Military Studies at Manchester University. A book he then projected on the theory of guerrilla warfare was never finished; and he retired to the Charterhouse. Alas what the temperance movement used to call the “Demon Drink” reasserted its hold.
Though he never rose above brigadier anyone who served under him knew that Michael Calvert was a tremendous leader of men; quite careless of his own danger and taking care not to put his troops into worse trouble than he could help.
James Michael Calvert, soldier: born Rohtak, India 6 March 1913; DSO 1943, and Bar 1944; died London 26 November 1998.
Seaborne troop movements and massive military imports were critical to both sides in the Spanish Civil War, 193639. This triggered two unique undersea campaigns, each involving foreign submariners. The Republican Submarine Force consisted of 12 boats built in Spain to U.S. designs in the 1920s. They were manned by crews loyal to Madrid’s leftist government, but the officer corps was so decimated by executions and defections that the boats were ultimately commanded by Soviet captains overseen by Spanish political commissars. Franco’s Nationalist submarine force, on the other hand, included 2 submarines transferred from Italy and 4 “Legionary” submarines flying the Spanish flag, but manned by “volunteer” Italian officers and crews. In addition Mussolini secretly ordered other units of his large submarine force to sink neutral ships with cargoes destined for Republican Spain. Outraged neutrals cried “Piracy”, and also organized international naval patrols to combat the anonymous Captain Nemos.
The Naval Situation
The Spanish Fleet remained largely under the control of the Naval Ministry in Madrid, including the battleship JAIME PRIMERO, 3 cruisers, 15 destroyers and 12 submarines. Most naval officers sympathized with the Franco-led revolution, however, creating mistrust and hostility between commissioned and noncommissioned ranks. In view of the uncertain allegiance of the officers, Minister of Marine Jose Giral y Pereira abruptly dismissed them by radio, appointed Chief Engineers to command, and ordered arms distributed to crewmen. A tragedy followed. Of the 764 officers and midshipmen on active service at the outbreak of the revolution, 320 officers were executed by lower deck committees within three months, and 290 more resigned or were expelled. This catastrophe destroyed the effectiveness of the Republican Navy, and gave Minister Giral notoriety as the assassin of the officer corps. The Nationalists soon overran the naval bases at Ferro) and Vigo, where they took over the old battleship ESPANA and the modem cruisers ALMIRANTE CERVERA, CANARIAS and BALEARES. From these circumstances the opposing submarine campaigns developed.
The Republican Submarine Campaign
The oldest submarines in the Spanish Navy were six B-Class boats built at Cartagena in 1921-23 to Electric Boat Company designs. They were 210-foot, 835-ton submarines, somewhat similar to American R-Boats. They were capable of 16 knots on the surface and were armed with four 18-inch bow torpedo tubes and a three inch gun. Manned by a crew of 28 under the command of a Lieutenant, their rust-pitted hulls were not considered safe below a depth of 66 feet.
Six C-Class submarines had also been built at Cartagena in 1928-30 under Electric Boat license. They were 247-foot, 1144-ton boats with a speed of 8.5 knots submerged and had a three-inch gun and four bow and two stem 21-inch torpedo tubes. With an operating radius of 4000 miles and a complement of 40 men under a Lieutenant Commander, they could operate safely down to 270 feet.
In the early morning hours of July 18th the Naval Ministry in Madrid ordered the submarines at Cartagena to load warheads and sail immediately to blockade the port of Melilla, Morocco. Since the Minister of Marine was unsure of the allegiance of the officers, he ordered the boats to report directly to him every four hours. The submarine radiomen had been cleared by Madrid for loyalty to the government, and were told to pass operational orders to lower deck committees to ensure compliance.
Off Melilla the Flotilla Commander disposed his wolfpack on a nine-mile semicircle, with instructions to dive on station at dawn on the 20th. He ordered his captains to intercept the rebel transport MONTE TORO, to ascertain whether she carried troops, and if she resisted to sink her.
The Flotilla’s officers were reluctant to open fire on a Spanish transport, but all submarines were in position by 0900 on July 20th. Conflicting orders then arrived from naval headquarters, instructing the Aotilla to abandon the blockade and recross the Straits to patrol off Malaga, Spain. Commander Bosch requested confirmation of these contradictory orders, but in Madrid senior officers were defecting and the naval staff was clearly in chaos. He therefore continued to blockade Melilla. This decision sparked dissension aboard the submarines, however, as suspicious crewmen argued with the officers about which of the conflicting commands was authentic and should be obeyed. At 1440 Madrid reconfirmed the orders to withdraw northwest to Malaga, and the subs departed. The bungled blockade of Spanish Morocco lost the Republican Submarine Force its one opportunity to contain the revolution, and exposed the wavering allegiance of its commissioned ranks.
Disaster then struck the Spanish Navy from within. On July 21st, 9 officers from four B-Ciass boats were arrested along with 6 submarine base officials; all 15 were then executed for treason. Three weeks later 20 officers from the Cartagena submarines who were incarcerated aboard the prison ship ESPANA No.3 were shot along with 132 other naval officers. These atrocities destroyed the Republican Submarine Force’s leadership, professional competence, morale, discipline, and aggressive spirit.
A grave strategic mistake followed in August when the now decimated Submarine Force was ordered north to show the flag off politically important ports in the Bay of Biscay. Remote from base support in the Bay of Biscay the Republican submarines achieved nothing.
The experience of two Republican submarines are of particular interest:
• C5 departed Cartagena for the Bay of Biscay on August 22, 1936. On the night of August 31st off Cape Mayor she fired a torpedo that hit the 15,700-ton Nationalist battleship ESPANA, but the warhead failed to detonate because of a defective exploder or too large a track angle. Ordered back to the Mediterranean with her sister ships, C-5 vanished with all hands off Ribadesella about December 30th. The cause of her disappearance is unknown, but her captain, Lieutenant Commander Jose Lara y Dorda, is said to have stated his intent to overpower his crew and defect, which may have precipitated C-5’s loss.
• C-6 was dispatched to the Bay of Biscay on August 15, 1936, but the crew arrested the captain and sailed back to Cartagena, where they charged him with failure to attack the ESPANA and CERVERA when the warships were within range. Under a junior officer C-6 again sailed for Biscay on September 1st, but was recaJJed to the Straits on October 2nd. She returned north to the Biscay campaign under Captain Burmistrov of the Soviet Navy, but stiJJ achieved no results. An aircraft bomb put her out of action at Gijon, where she was scuttled on October 20th, 1937.
Obsen,ations on the Republican Submarine Campaign
The Spanish Civil War demonstrated again the critical need for professional competence and leadership in undersea operations. The tragic Joss at the outset of experienced submarine officers destroyed the Spanish Navy’s morale, discipline and offensive spirit, leading to malingering, sabotage and defection. Although ideological fervor ran high in the crews, the failure of the campaign demonstrated that submarines cannot be commanded by committees, nor by unpopular foreigners monitored by political commissars. The absence of high-level direction in Madrid and Cartagena also doomed the Republican submarine campaign. With no consistent strategy against Nationalist warships or supply Jines, submarines were dispatched to areas chosen for political effect where they were employed against unsuitable targets. Without logistic support, and exposed to air raids in unprotected ports, they were put out of action or defected. The net result was 8 submarines lost with over a, hundred men, and no damage to the enemy.
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The Nationalist Submarine Campaign
Concerned over growing military shipments from Moscow, General Franco declared a blockade of Loyalist ports in the Mediterranean and Bay of Biscay, and directed Nationalist warships to intercept cargoes destined for the Republicans.
To carry out the naval blockade Mussolini transferred two ARClllMEDE class submarines to the Nationalist Naval base at Palma. Before their transfer to the Spanish Navy these boats had already carried out three patrols for the Nationalists totalling 48 days at sea. Their names were not stricken from the Italian Naval List but were assigned to two new BRIN class submarines on the ways at Taranto. Mussolini also supplied four Spanish “Legionary” submarines: !RIDE, ONICE, FERRARIS, and GALILEI. He loaned these boats to the Nationalist Navy with a crew of Italian “volunteers” operating under Italian control, and in addition secretly ordered other submarines to attack designated neutral ships carrying cargoes destined for Madrid. While these clandestine boats operated under Italian control, they were instructed to fly a Spanish naval ensign if forced to the surface to give Mussolini deniability for their actions. This unorthodox blockade was not popular with the naval high command in Rome.
The Nationalist submarine antishipping campaign got off to a fast start. Three Republican ships were torpedoed: The Spanish merchant ship CIUDAD de CADIZ was sunk off the Dardanelles, and the Spanish merchant ship AMURO destroyed. Before the end of August, a Spanish steamer was shelled by a submarine off the French coast, a French passenger ship chased into the Dardanelles by a submarine, and the Soviet freighter TUNIY AEV departing Algiers for Port Said was sunk by an Italian “Legionary” submarine.
August ended in an explosion of depth charges after the “Legionary” submarine IRIDE fired a torpedo at the British destroyer HMS HA VOCK on passage in the Western Mediterranean. The torpedo narrowly missed HA VOCK, which then picked up !RIDE on sonar and called other destroyers to the scene. A deliberate depth charge attack followed that shook up IRIDE but failed to put her out of action (HAVOCK got her revenge in October, 1940, by sinking IRIDE’s sister submarine BERILLO off Sidi Barrani). London vigorously protested the attack on HA VOCK, but Rome denied responsibility.
In the first week of September, the British tanker WOODFORD was sunk near Valencia, and the Soviet steamer BLAGAEV sunk by a submarine in the Aegean off Skyros. Moscow claimed that it had “indisputable proof” that Italy was responsible for sinking the TUNIY AEV and BLAGAEV, and broke off relations when Rome denied involvement and the attacks continued.
British and French diplomats, anxious to dissuade Mussolini from forming a closer alliance with Hitler invited Italy to participate in an international conference at Noyen, Switzerland to organize anti-piracy measures.
On September 14, 1937, in the absence of Italy, the Noyen Conference authorized patrolling British and French warships to counterattack submarines or aircraft attacking neutral vessels in international waters. On that day Mussolini secretly called off his undersea campaign except for the four “Legionary” submarines. The Noyen decision in effect restricted Nationalist submarines to attacks within Spanish territorial waters.
Rome decried the Noyen Conference, but, not wishing to be excluded, demanded that Italian warships participate in the anti-piracy patrols. The British agreed, knowing from decoded messages that Italian submarine attacks had now been suspended.
On November 21st a prowling Italian submarine torpedoed the 7975-ton Loyalist cruiser MIGUEL de CERVANTES off Cartagena, putting her out of action for months. At the end of January another British ship was sunk off Valencia by a Nationalist submarine, and on June 15th the British ship DELL WYN was destroyed off Gandia.
A total of 91 Italian warships and submarines participated in the Spanish Civil War, during which Italian “Pirate” submarines are said to have sunk 72,800 tons of shipping without suffering any losses. Audacious covert operations by clandestine submarines with “volunteer” crews on loan from a neutral power proved highly effective in the Spanish Civil War. Similar undersea guerilla warfare based upon the covert nature of submarine warfare could well be repeated in a future naval conflict.
Tom Paine
[The above article is digested from “Chapter I 0 – Spanish Submarines” of Tom Paine’s annotated submarine bibliography] .
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In other of my yarns I’ve covered the lives of Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas–two of the fighting marshals from the frontier days of old Oklahoma. This story of Deputy U.S. Marshal Chris Madsen rounds the tale out. Collectively, these men were called the “Three Guardmen of Oklahoma.” And while the first two men were raised on the American frontier, Madsen had a whole different, and most interesting, background.
Born in Denmark around 1851, Christian Madsen is reputed to have had a lengthy career in the Danish army. One source even states that he served in the French Foreign Legion and saw action in Algeria. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Madsen returned to Europe and took part in much of the fighting.
For some unknown reason, Madsen came to the United States in 1876 and immediately enlisted in the U.S. Cavalry. His assignment to the 5th Cavalry put him right in the middle of the ongoing war with the various Plains Indian nations. On July 17, 1876, he was on War Bonnet Creek in western Nebraska when a civilian scout, William Cody, fought a hand-to-hand duel with a Cheyenne fighter known to the whites as Yellow Hand. Upon killing his adversary, Cody is supposed to have lifted his scalp and declared, “Here is the first scalp for Custer!”
By 1891 Madsen had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant, awarded the Silver Star, and transferred to El Reno, Oklahoma. Tiring of the military life, Madsen had decided to start a third career. Of course, this one involved fighting too, because Madsen had accepted a position as a deputy U.S. Marshal.
GRITTY GUNFIGHTER
In November 1892, Madsen, Thomas, and Tom Houston were in the area of Orlando, Oklahoma, looking for Ol Yantis, a wanted bank robber. At Yantis’s sister’s house the officers jumped the outlaw and called on him to surrender. Yantis’s pistol shot was answered by shots from Madsen’s Model 1886 Winchester rifle Deputy Houston’s gun. The lawmen tried to care for the wounded outlaw, but he died later in the day.
Another time that Marshal Madsen showed his grit was in 1893, while escorting a judge on his rounds. At Beaver City, Oklahoma, they found lodging in a room above a popular saloon. During the night, the cowboys got to celebrating by shooting holes into the ceiling of the saloon and, thus, through the floor of Madsen’s rented room. Madsen went down to the saloon and corralled a trio of exuberant cow herders.
He buffaloed one with his Colt Single Action and wounded another in the shoulder before the affray was ended. Legend has it that one of the cowboys had hollered, “I’m a wild son-of-a-bitch from Cripple Creek!”
To which, Madsen is supposed to have replied, “I knew who you were, I just didn’t know where you were from.”
In May 1894, Madsen met an informant in El Reno, Oklahoma. The informant told him that a wanted train robber, Felix Young, was out on the street. As Madsen approached the wanted man, the outlaw recognized the officer and ran for a nearby horse. Madsen fired five shots, probably from his Colt sixgun, and killed the horse. The stout Dane then ran down the wanted man and took him into custody.
Madsen’s final gunfight of record occurred in March 1896 near Cheyenne, Oklahoma. Red Buck George Weightman had been a member of the Doolin and Dalton gangs and was reportedly hiding in a dugout near Cheyenne. Madsen was part of a posse that surrounded the dugout and called on Weightman to come out with his hands up. Instead, the tough outlaw tried to shoot his way to freedom. Madsen is supposed to have fired one rifle shot and, as the old-timers would put it, Weightman’s case was automatically appealed to a higher court.
SKILLED ADMINISTRATOR
By the time the Spanish-American War broke out in Cuba, Marshal Madsen was a widower with two children to raise. However, he was called on by Colonel Leonard Wood to come contribute his military skills to the campaign. The fighting Dane couldn’t turn down such a call and immediately was made a sergeant in the quartermaster department.
It is not reported that Sgt. Madsen saw any action in Cuba, but he spent his time trying to bring order to the quartermaster’s nightmare that existed. Cavalrymen were sent to Cuba without their horses, they were issued winter wool uniforms instead of the tropical variety, and Madsen had his hands full trying to keep worse errors from happening.
Madsen lived a long and eventful life. In later years, he was involved in giving technical advice to the growing motion picture business. And while in California, he was introduced to a nice young actor named Roy Rogers. Death came for the old lawman in 1944 at the Masonic Home in Guthrie, Oklahoma. He was 92 years old.
Besides having lived an exciting and eventful life, Madsen is also interesting because he did not have the looks or background of the traditional frontiersman. Raised in Denmark instead of having a frontier childhood, Madsen was short and stockily built and did not have the tall, dark look of Tilghman or Thomas.
However, he clearly showed that good fighting men come in all sizes. His reply to the drunken cowboy (“I knew who you were, but I didn’t know where you were from.”) has become a classic piece of western lore. Chris Madsen’s life and career are a clear indication that the true stories of the West are much more exciting than the best fiction.