X was the first secret-agent training establishment in North America. It opened on December 9, 1941, and trained individuals according to their cultural groups. The officers, less the camp adjutant, were all British; however, the senior non-commissioned officers were all Canadian. Camp X closed on April 20, 1944.
Throughout the war, 227 Canadians served in the SOE in the various theatres of the conflict. In addition, Canadian personnel in the Royal Canadian Air Force and those posted to Royal Air Force units also served in the Special Duties Squadrons used to drop weapons and insert and extract SOE personnel.[28] In the end, the value of the SOE was immense. In a Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on July 18, 1945, General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s staff noted, “without the organization, communications, training, and leadership which SOE supplied … resistance [movements] would have been of no military value.”[29]
The SOE, however, was not the only innovative, unconventional effort. In a remarkable display of military efficiency, by June 8, 1940, two days after Churchill’s directive, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, received approval for the creation of the Commandos and, that same afternoon, Section MO9 of the War Office was established. Four days later, Churchill appointed Lieutenant- General Sir Alan Bourne, the adjutant-general of the Royal Marines, as “Commander of Raiding Operations on Coasts in Enemy Occupation and Advisor to the Chiefs of Staff on Combined Operations.”[30]
The men drawn to the commando idea very quickly brought into being the concept that was expected. Raiding was their primary role. In essence, they were to be trained to be “hard[-]hitting assault troops” who were capable of working in co-operation with the navy and air force. As such, they were expected to execute plans from headquarters and capture strong points, destroy enemy services, neutralize coastal batteries, and wipe out any designated enemy force by surprise.[31] They were also told that they would have to become accustomed to longer hours, more work, and less rest than the other members of the armed forces.
Predictably, the commando units attracted a like-minded group of aggressive, action-oriented individuals. “There was a sense of urgency, a striving to achieve an ideal, an individual determination to drive the physical body to the limit of endurance to support a moral resolve,” explained one veteran officer. “The individual determination,” he added, “was shared by every member of the force, and such heights of collective idealism are not often reached in the mundane business of soldiering.”[32] Together they forged a “commando spirit,” one comprised of determination; enthusiasm and cheerfulness, particularly under adverse conditions; individual initiative and self reliance; and, finally, comradeship.[33]
Canada, however, was initially slow to react to the commando concept. Moreover, its commitment to creating an elite commando unit in World War II did not last very long, a reality that betrayed the nation’s underlying sentiment toward SOF-type units. In fact, the government’s creation of the Canadian “Viking Force” was actually a response to public criticism at home and the opportunity the British raiding program provided. Major-General Harry D.G. Crerar, reacting to public criticism and government pressure to get Canadian troops into the fray, since they had been in England for almost two years and had still not engaged in battle with the enemy, took the initiative as the acting commander of the Canadian Corps and spoke to his immediate superior, Lieutenant-General Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of the South-Eastern Army in England, about utilizing Canadian troops in a commando role.
Montgomery was not a proponent of SOF forces, but he did see raid ing as a means to instil offensive spirit and combat experience within his command. As such, Crerar did not have a hard sell. “I believe that occasions will increasingly present themselves for small raids across the Channel opposite the Army front,” Crerar argued, “in default of a reputation built up in battle, the [Canadian] Corps undoubtedly would receive great stimulus if, in the near future, it succeeded in making a name for itself for its raiding activities — a reputation which, incidentally, it very definitely earned for itself in the last war.”
Montgomery replied, “Your men should be quite first class at raiding” and he gave Crerar the green light to run Canadian raiding activities from the port of Newhaven.[34]
Crerar lost no time and on March 6, 1942, discussed raiding operations with the director combined operations, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Mountbatten was initially reluctant to accept Canadian participation in raiding because he felt that it would dilute the role of the British Commandos, who had a monopoly on the activity. However, Mountbattten was well attuned to political realities and made an exception. He laid out two conditions for the Canadians:
1 ample time should be allowed for proper organization and training — this was stated to be six to eight weeks; and
2 the enterprise should be known only to the Corps commander, BGS (brigadier general (staff)), and a limited number of his own (Mounbatten’s) staff.[35]
That afternoon, a second meeting between Crerar, BGS Guy Simonds, and Brigadier J.C. Haydon, commander of the special service force (SSF), transpired.[36] In this forum the senior officers present reached a decision to create a Canadian commando unit of two hundred men, who were to start training by mid-March .
The Canadian commando unit, named Viking Force, was based on 2nd Division. Within a fortnight, 267 volunteers from the division were training at Seaford in the muddy estuary of the Cuckmere River in Sussex. The Viking Force organization was based on the British Commandos but was on a smaller scale. The headquarters section was led by a major and comprised twenty-four all ranks. A further thirty-six officers and men staffed the support squadron (i.e., intelligence, signals, and medical). The remaining 130 personnel were divided into two troops, each consisting of five officers and sixty men. The Viking Force placed heavy emphasis on firepower. In addition to the standard .303 Lee Enfield rifle, each troop carried four Bren light machine guns and eight Thompson submachine guns, as well as two anti-tank rifles and a two-inch mortar.
Within days of the commencement of training, instructors whittled the large group of volunteers down to its official strength of 190 all ranks. From April 4, 1942, personnel from the SSF joined the men of Viking Force to increase the intensity of the training and begin to turn them into hardened commandos. The commanding officer (CO) responsible for whipping the Canadian neophyte commandos into shape was Major Brian McCool of the Royal Regiment of Canada.
During the last half of April 1942, training intensified. It now included speed marches with weapons and sixty-pound rucksacks, river crossings, leaping from crags into sand pits fifteen feet below, cliff climbing, and night manoeuvres. If the men did not get back to the beaches in time to be ferried to the mother ship during these training exercises, they had to swim back with their full equipment .
On April 30, Montgomery visited Major-General Andrew McNaughton, the Canadian Corps commander, and they agreed that the Canadians should form the main striking force for a planned raid on the French port of Dieppe. That same day, McNaughton’s headquarters issued a training instruction to enlarge the scale of combined operations training. This new direction was designed to cover the training of 4 and 6 Brigades for the large conventional raid planned on Dieppe. Therefore, before Viking Force was even fully established, BGS Simonds already laid the blueprint for its demise. “Personnel of detachments which have completed [combined operations/commando] training in accordance with Instruction No. 7,” he ordered, “will be returned to parent units and employed as a cadre to develop combined operations techniques within the latter.”[37]
As a result, Viking Force became swept up in the preparations for Operation Rutter (i.e., the Dieppe raid), and the intensive training that had been reserved for the elite of Viking Force was now extended to the entirety of 4 and 6 Brigades. Quite simply, Major McCool and his cadre became instructors for the others. In this regard, from the end of May to the beginning of July the Viking Force cadre became key to the efforts
