MEMBERS OF INDIAN TERRITORIAL ARMY CONDUCTED A TRUE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The volunteers (Territorial Army of modern India) have performed some of the most outstanding feats of gallantry in the history of Indian military warfare. Unfortunately these acts were either ignored by our historians or not considered worth enough to be studied at India’s military institutions. In a nutshell, we can broadly say that volunteers were responsible for shaping the glory of Indian Army right from its inception days. They were the largest officer producing units during the first world war and in the second world war, they created history, when few middle aged part time soldiers from the Calcutta Light Horse and the Calcutta Scottish formed their own boarding party and destroyed the secret transmitter aboard a German Ship which had sought shelter in the neutral territory of Goa, a Portuguese colony. This was perhaps one of the best operations of the Second World War which remained classified till 1978.

Calcutta Light Horse

The Calcutta Light Horse was raised in 1872 and formed part of the Cavalry Reserve in the British Indian Army. The regiment owned its origin to the first British Governal General , Robert Clive, who in 1759 raised a formation of irregular cavalry from Europeans in Calcutta to frustrate a Dutch attack on what was then a new British settlement.The Calcutta Light Horse was disbanded following India's independence in 1947.It is pertinent to mention that Robert Clive was a clerk in the East India Company before volunteering part time in Army.He can truely be hailed as the FATHER OF INDIAN TERRITORIAL ARMY.

Operation creek

Inactive since the Boer War, they were the most noted for their attack with members of the Calcutta Scottish against the German ship, Ehrenfels that was sending coded messages to German U-boats in the Indian Ocean. These messages revealed the location of ships, which were then torpedoed and sunk. The problem facing the British was that the radio transmitter was on a ship that was interned in a neutral territory, Goa, on India’s western coast.
This was a true “mission impossible.” The British did not want to violate Goa’s neutral status, so they devised a plan to destroy the transmitter by using civilian volunteers. The remarkable thing about the volunteers was that they were all retired military men, members of the Calcutta Light Horse, which last saw active service in the Boer War in 1900. Simple mathematics tell us that in 1943, these men were all in their sixties or even, perhaps, in their seventies.
They were advised that they would get no recognition, no pay, no medals, and if they were caught, they would be on their own. Still, they willingly risked their lives to serve their country.
The operation was organized by SOE's (SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE UNDER MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC WARFARE) India Mission. It was kept covert, to avoid the political ramifications of contravening Portuguese neutrality in Goa, and was not revealed until thirty-five years afterwards, in 1978. The Ehrenfels was known to be transmitting information on Allied ship movements to U-boats from Marmagoa harbour in Portugal's neutral territory of Goa on 9 March 1943.The Light Horse embarked on the barge Phoebe at Calcutta and sailed around India to Goa. After the Ehrenfels erupted in a fireball and was sunk by the team of British saboteurs, British intelligence dispatched an open message over the wire falsely warning that they would invade Goa. The crews of the other two German ships in the harbor, the Drachenfels and Braunfels, received the message and scuttled their ships in Goa's harbour in the belief that they were protecting their ships from capture by the British. Italian ships in the harbour were also destroyed. In 1951 all three ships were salvaged.

Prominent Members

Honorary Colonel Louis Mountbatten (1947)
Corporal John Raymond
Colonel Bill Grice
Colonel Lewis Pugh, Commander of covert mission in Goa
Sir Owain Jenkins

James Leasor, an ex British Army officer who participated in the second world war wrote the book Boarding Party :The Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse in 1978. The Hollywood film The Sea Wolves based on the book was made in 1980, with actors David Niven, Gregory Peck, Trevor Howard and Roger Moore .The movie recounts how these men commandeered a river barge in Calcutta and a few of them sailed it around the tip of India. They briefly stopped to pick up the rest of the volunteers, who had traveled by train to the meeting place. The entire group then sailed to the harbor at Goa, boarded the German ship, restrained the crew, found the hidden radio room, took the code books, and then destroyed the vessel.
One of the technical advisors of this movie was Major General Lewis Pugh, who was the military leader of this 1943 mission as Lt Col. Also credited as technical advisor's were four survivors of the German ship. Consequently, In fact, it is assumed that most of the details of this mission were accurate.
The mission was a huge success. The movie ends with the following statement: “During the first 11 days of March 1943, U-boats sank 12 Allied ships in the Indian Ocean. After the Light Horse raid on Goa, only one ship was lost in the remainder of that month.”

NOTE: Above writeup has been taken from my book "INDIA'S TERRITORIAL FORCES" (to be published soon)