No. 5 Commando
It was initially formed at
Bridlington 23 July 1940 from volunteers for special service from units in Western Command. In October, when the commandos were reorganised into "Special Service" Battalions, No. 5 Commando was amalgamated with
No. 6 Commando becoming a
company-sized element in the 5th Special Service Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Fetherstonhaugh, based at
Helensburgh in Scotland. In March 1941, the battalion was broken up again into its constituent parts and No. 5 Commando was re-raised under Lieutenant Colonel William Sanguinetti on 26 February 1941, formerly of the
Hampshire Regiment. They also moved to Barrhead and then
Falmouth. These men were attached to the force under
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Newman, who was the commanding officer of
No. 2 Commando, which provided the main assault force for the raid. Involving the ramming of a
destroyer, into the gates of the
drydock at
St. Nazaire in France in order to prevent it being used as a base for the
Tirpitz, the raid was later described as the "greatest raid of all".
Madagascar In early 1942, the British began an operation to seize the island of
Madagascar in the
Indian Ocean. Due to heavy German
U-boat and aerial activity in the
Mediterranean the main shipping route to
India at the time was around the Cape and there were concerns following the advance of the
Japanese throughout southeast Asia, that if the Japanese were able to capture the port at
Antsirane and the anchorage in Diego Suarez bay then they would be able to disrupt the
sea lanes of communication between Britain and the subcontinent. Following the British attack on the
French fleet at
Mers-el-Kebir a pro-
Vichy government had been installed on the island, and the British concern about the island being occupied by the Axis grew. For this operation, No. 5 Commando, numbering some 365 men under the command of Lieutenant Colonel W. Sanguinetti, was attached to the
29th Brigade and landing ahead of the main force near Courrier and Ambarata Bays on the northern tip of the island and roughly to the west of Diego Suarez, they carried out a raid on a French coastal artillery battery. It was the first major amphibious operation carried out by Allied forces in the war. No. 5 Commando then went briefly to
Mombassa where they carried out rehearsals for the next phase of the campaign which, for the commandos, came on 10 September 1942 when they carried out a landing at
Majunga, which was another port on the western coast of the island. As a result of this, now commanded by Lieutenant Colonel D.M Shaw, No. 5 Commando became part of the
3rd Special Service Brigade under the command of Brigadier
Wilfred Nonweiler, along with
Nos. 1,
42 (Royal Marine), and
44 (Royal Marine) Commandos. In November 1943 the brigade embarked for overseas and after a five-week voyage No. 5 Commando, as well as No. 44 (Royal Marine) Commando, arrived in
Bombay,
India on 19 December 1943 where they became part of
Mountbatten's South East Asia Command, which had been set up earlier in the year. They moved by rail from Bombay to
Poona where they took up residence at Kedgaon and undertook amphibious landing practice at the Combined Training Centre that had been established at
Lake Kharakvasla. In April, after the Japanese launched
Operation U-Go—the invasion of India through northern Burma and
Assam—No. 5 Commando were withdrawn from Maungdaw and moved to
Silchar, which was an important communications and logistics hub in southern Assam. For four months they were stationed there, carrying out long-range patrols into the surrounding hills and waiting for the Japanese to arrive. They never made it that far, having been defeated around
Imphal and
Kohima. After this a brief period of leave followed before the commandos were moved to
Trincomalee in
Ceylon, where they joined the rest of the brigade—No. 1 and 42 (Royal Marine) Commandos. In late December 1944 XV Corps, under Lieutenant General
Philip Christison, went on the offensive and on 29 December the 3rd Commando Brigade, then commanded by Brigadier
Campbell Hardy, carried out an unopposed landing on the island of
Akyab. Following this reconnaissance operations were undertaken around the
Myebon Peninsula and on the surrounding islands. During one of these patrols, a group of commandos from No. 5 Commando had a brief contact with a Japanese force during which they killed four of them without suffering loss themselves. across a number of waterways on the mainland, where Christison had decided that he wanted to cut the Japanese line of withdrawal. The terrain was difficult with no roads and consisting of mangrove swamps and rice paddies that prevented tanks or artillery coming ashore initially. The whole area was dominated by a small wooded ridge known as Hill 170. After this No. 5 Commando and the rest of the 3rd Commando Brigade moved back to Akyab, before embarking for Madras where, after a brief period of leave, they moved to Lake Kharakvasla again to begin training for
Operation Zipper, the invasion of
Malaya. In the end this operation did not eventuate, as war ended before it could be undertaken.
Disbandment Following the end of the war, No. 5 Commando undertook garrison duties in
Hong Kong. As the
demobilisation process occurred, the unit's numbers began to dwindle and it was amalgamated with No. 1 Commando. In 1946 the decision was made to disband the Army commandos and subsequently the 3rd Commando Brigade became a formation of the Royal Marines, which continues to exist today. As a result, No. 1/5 Commando was disbanded in February 1947. ==Battle honours==