Corporal 2723548 Cornelius Cuthbert Lynch, No3 Commando
Cornelius "Connie" Cuthbert Lynch enlisted in Irish Guards and was given the service number 2723548. He was one of six brothers, three of which would go on to serve in the British Army during the Second World War. Shortly after enlisting in the Irish Guards, he was identified as "a man with great potential for greater things" by his Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel J Vandeleur (who would later see fame during Operation Market Garden). After he had completed a six month tour on public duties (where he mounted the King's Guard at Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London), and with Lieutenant Colonel Vandeleur's blessing, Connie applied for a transfer to the commandos. He was accepted, and after completing his commando training, he was awarded the coveted Green Beret. He was assigned to No4 Troop of No3 Commando, and was even captured in an image of No4 Troop taken in the Limehouse region of London just prior to D-Day (see bottom). It was soon discovered that Connie was an outstanding marksman, earning him a Troop Sniper Badge, one of only 12 men in the entire commando to do so. These were sometimes known as "The 12 Apostles" or "The Primary 12", as these were the best snipers in the entire No3 Commando.
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After safely making it ashore on Sword Beach in the 2nd Wave on D-Day itself, Connie fought his way through along with his comrades in the Commandos through to the embattled men of the 7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment and D Company, 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who had been holding the bridges over the Caen Canal and the Orne River since midnight that day. It would be shortly following the link up of the Commandos and the Airborne forces that an event happened that would stick with Connie for the remainder of his life - he walked among the Airborne troops and came across a Captain of 7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment who wanted nothing but a cup of tea. Given that Connie had rather a lot of tea left over, he approached the Captain and offered to make him one. Using the barrel of a Bren gun that had overheated due to the amount of firing, he boiled up sufficient water to make two mugs of tea, one for himself and one for the Captain of 7 Para. The Captain later stated that it was the best cup of tea he ever had - that Captain was Richard Todd, the man who would go on to star in the film The Longest Day, where he would return to the bridge over the Caen Canal and relive the events of D-Day. Connie would go on to be involved in the various attempts to breakthrough the German defences and the capture of the city of Caen for 78 more days, before he and the remainder of the 1st Special Service Brigade were withdrawn back to the UK to refit. It was during this time that Connie was promoted to Guard Corporal - the equivalent of a Lance Corporal.
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With the German counter-attack in the Ardennes taking the Allied Forces by surprise, an order was sent from Field Marshal Montgomery himself, personally requesting that the commandos were immediately dispatched to the area to the North of the Ardennes. This resulted in the 1st Special Service Brigade, now renamed 1st Commando Brigade, being rushed to the battle area. The 1st Commando Brigade not only held the line, but started to push the attacking German forces back before the limit of the German advance had been reached. Following on from this success, there was a great reluctance on the part of the majority of British Generals to permit the withdrawal of the 1st Commando Brigade back to the UK again. In recognition of his service, and his ability to lead men in the field during the counter-attack against the Germans following the Ardennes Offensive, Connie was promoted to Lance Sergeant - equivalent of a Corporal.
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The men of the 1st Commando Brigade were later involved in Operation Plunder - the crossing of the Rhine, where they linked up with the men of the 6th Airborne Division, and were heavily embroiled in the street fighting during the capture the German town of Wesel. During the Street fighting, it was reported that Connie led not only Scouting Parties but also conventional infantry sections through the streets to encircle German positions.
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Connie stayed with No4 Troop, No3 Commando until the end of the war, when he was Returned to Unit with the disbandment of the Army Commandos on 25th October 1945. This is where Connie was in for a nice surprise. Since the time of Queen Victoria, there had been a directive that Foot Guards were prohibited from wearing a single rank stripe, as Queen Victoria had a strong dislike for seeing only one stripe on each arm. This directive is still in force today. In 1946, when he was demobilised, due to the paymasters seeing "SGT" entered in his paybook and his service book, Connie ended up leaving with a Sergeant's war pension.
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The Commandos had a higher NCO per section count than any other force in the British Army during the Second World War. One of the early volunteers to the commandos, Sergeant Major George Haines said in a postwar interview, "It was an honour to be a Sergeant Major amongst such men as these, who were so highly trained, so disciplined, so self reliant, and in fact, every man in my troop was fit to be an NCO." A fitting tribute was paid to them by Lord Louis Mountbatten, who on numerous occasions stated that when the Commandos deployed to South East Asia to combat the Japanese that "I have seen no finer collection of men fighting for the colours and the King than the men of the Commandos."
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Numerous memorials to the Men of the Commandos were been erected after the war, most notably at St Nazaire, the site of what became known as "The Greatest Raid of All"; and at Spean Bridge, close to the wartime training location of the Commandos at Achnacarry, in the Lochaber region of the Scottish Highlands.
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Officers & Men of No4 Troop, No3 Commando at Limehouse in June 1944
The Commandos came about at the behest of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. In an internal memorandum following the Dunkerque Evacuation, he called for a Corps of volunteers to be formed for "Service of a Hazardous Nature". These volunteers were drawn from every corps of the British Army, and some sections had so many volunteers there was little option but to grant them their each individual unit (No8 Commando for instance was comprised solely of volunteers from the Foot Guards, and as a consequence was titled No8 (Guards) Commando). The creation of the Commandos is generally accredited to the South African Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke, who at the time was the Military Assistant to the Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff. It was his plan was agreed upon, and it was the surprising figure of Winston Churchill who decided on the name for the new force. They were to be called Commandos, after the Boer mobile columns that had given the British Army such a headache during the Boer War (and to whose hands Churchill himself had become a Prisoner of War). The Commandos were each split up into units of 500 men, also to be known as commandos (later Special Service Battalions). It was from the Commandos that British Airborne Forces are descended, as it was from No2 Commando that the first Parachute Troops in the British Army were selected.
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In the Autumn of 1940, the Commandos and Independent Companies were organised into five Special Service Battalions under the command of a Special Service Brigade HQ. However these larger Battalions were felt too unwieldly and they were returned a few months later to their Commando designations. It should be noted that at this time these early Commandos were all Army Commandos rather than Royal Marines. A total of 12 Army Commando units were initially raised. The primary purpose of the Commandos was to mount raids on German held territory and to raise the morale of the civilian population, knowing that British troops were fighting back against the aggressor. However, these early raids achieved little, but one of the raids in 1942 would lead to one of the most blatant breaches of the Geneva Convention. This started from members of the Commandos tying up German prisoners in order to attempt to prevent them from escaping. However, when Hitler learned of this, he flew into a rage (as was his habit), and signed the Kommandobefehl into being, which stated that all commandos caught behind enemy lines or captured in combat were to be summarily executed. The first victims of this were 50 glider-borne Commando-trained members of the Royal Engineers, who were tasked to attack the Norsk-Hydro plant in Rjukan, in the Telemark region of Noway. The objective of the operation, code-named Freshman, was to land the 50 Engineers in Norway, then to attack the Norsk-Hydro plant, which was a hydro-electric powerplant that had a bi-product that could change the course of the war - Deuterium Oxide (also known as heavy water); a component that was vital for the controlling of a Nuclear reaction inside a laboratory. was a disaster - both gliders and their towing aircraft crashed, resulting in most of the Engineers dying in the crashes. Some though managed to survive, but were captured by the Germans, put through a very brief but brutal interrogation, then executed. This would be the fate for all captured Commandos and Special Forces for the remainder of the war.
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It is interesting to note that originally, the Royal Marines, who would have been the ideal choice to be the core of the Commandos from the outset, were prohibited from joining the Commandos, as the Royal Navy needed them to man the guns on their battleships and protect their dockyards and harbours. It was not until February 1942, with the appointment of Lord Louis Mountbatten (cousin of HM Queen Elizabeth II) as Chief of Combined Operations that the first Royal Marines were admitted for Commando Training at the Commando Basic Training Centre at Achnacarry, in the Scottish Highlands, which lead to the formation of the first Royal Marine Commando unit, No40 (Royal Marine) Commando. 40 (RM) Commando, along with 41 (RM) Commando were the only ones drawn from Royal Marine volunteers, as in line with their Army Commando counterparts. In August 1943, a further six Royal Marine Commando units were formed, but this was by the disbandment of Royal Marine Infantry Battalions, and re-desingating them as Commando units - these would be No42 through 47 (Royal Marine) Commandos. These were joined in March 1944 by No. 48 (Royal Marine) Commando. All the Royal Marine Commando candidates went through exactly the same selection process and training as their Army Commando counterparts - which would often lead to a 30% failure rate during training; the same average failure rate as what was experienced by the Army Commando candidates.
In August 1943, all the Commandos were grouped together into four new Brigades, known as Special Service Brigades. These four Brigades, each with their own command HQ, came under the auspices of a new HQ Special Services Group. Nos. 1 and 4 Brigades operated in North West Europe; No. 2 Brigade in Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Central Mediterranean area; and No. 3 Brigade in Burma. Initially, this re-organisation was welcomed, but when the Special Service Brigades were given insignia with the letters "SS" to wear, this welcoming attitude turn to one of disgust and outrage, leading to several commando units boycotting and refusing to the new insignia, as it reminded them of Hitler's hated troops. The High Command and HQ Special Service Group were initially unwilling to compromise, but they soon recanted, and withdrew the insignia for the vast majority of units. Much to the relief of all Commando personnel, all four Special Service Brigades were renamed Commando Brigades, and the last vestiges of the hated SS insignia worn by commandos were removed from their uniform.
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At the end of the war, and without notice, a decision was made to disband the Army Commandos. Demobilization commenced almost immediately with some Commando Units being merged for short periods as numbers dwindled. The Commando role would now be for the Royal Marines. Only three Commando units were initially retained, under the one Brigade, now designated as 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines. Their Commando titles also changed from, for instance, No. 45 (Royal Marine) Commando, Royal Marines, to 45 Commando, Royal Marines.
Notable members of the Commandos:
- Randolph Churchill (son of Winston Churchill)
- David Stirling (later Special Air Service)
- Blair "Paddy" Mayne DSO (later Special Air Service)
- Peter Young
- John "Jack" Macbeth DSC
- Frederick Hopkins MM
- Derek Mills-Roberts DSO, MC
- George Haines
- Bob Laycock
- Anthony Lewis DSO, MBE
- John Lash MBE
- Sid Hubbard
- Reg Mills
- Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat DSO, MC
- "Mad Jack" Churchill
- John Newman VC
- Anders Laarsen VC (originally from Denmark) (later Special Air Service / Special Boat Service)
- Phillipe Kieffet (France)
- Bill Millin - personal piper to Lord "Shimi" Lovat
- John Leech MM (bar)
- Colin Jones MM
- Donald Long MC
- William Lister MM
- Peter Loraine MM
- Cornelius Cuthbert Lynch
- Freddie Walker (became a Chelsea pensioner)
- James Edward "Jimmy" Dunning
- George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe KBE, DSO, MC, PC, FRS, FRGS, FRSGS
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In a development that we wouldn't normally be accustomed to doing, we also have Cornelius in his Irish Guards uniform prior to his demobilisation available for your event. If this is something that you would be interested in, then please state this when you book.