Operation Frankton - Aftermath

Aftermath

On 10 December the Germans announced that a sabotage squad had been caught on 8 December near the mouth of the Gironde and 'finished off in combat'. It was not until January 1943 in the absence of other information all 10 men on the raid were posted missing, until news arrived of two of them. Later it was confirmed that five ships had been damaged in Bordeaux by mysterious explosions. This information remained until new research of 2010 revealed that a sixth ship had been damaged even more extensively than any of the other five reported. This research also revealed that the other five ships holed were back in service very shortly afterwards.

For their part in the raid Major Hasler was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Marine Sparks the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM). Corporal Laver and Marine Mills were also recommended for the DSM which at the time could not be awarded posthumously, so instead they were mentioned in dispatches.

Of men who never returned Sergeant Wallace and Marine Ewart were captured on the 8 December at the Pointe de Grave (near Le Verdon) and revealed only certain information during their interrogation, and were executed under the Commando Order, on the night 11 December in a sandpit in a wood north of Bordeaux and not at Chateau Magnol, Blanquefort. A plaque has been erected on the bullet marked wall at the Chateau, but the authenticity of the details on the plaque have been questioned. A small memorial can also be seen at the Pointe de Grave, where they were captured. In March 2011 a major c.100,000 euro memorial was to be unveiled at this same spot. After the Royal Marines were executed by a naval firing squad, the Commander of the Navy Admiral Erich Raeder wrote in the Seekriegsleitung war diary that the executions of the captured Royal Marines were something "new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms". The American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder's remarks about the executions in the Seekriegsleitung war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment, which might had reflected a bad conscience on the part of Raeder.

After having been set ashore, Lieutenant MacKinnon and Marine Conway managed to evade capture for four days, but they were betrayed and arrested by the Gendarmerie and handed over to the Germans at La Reole hospital 30 miles (48 km) south east of Bordeaux, attempting to make their way to the Spanish border. Mackinnon had been admitted to the hospital for treatment for an infected knee. The exact date of their execution is not known. New evidence shows that Lieutenant Mackinnon, Corporal Laver, Marine Mills and Marine Conway were not executed in Paris in 1942 but in the same location as Wallace and Ewart under the Commando Order.

Corporal Sheard and Marine Moffatt were not drowned on the first night but died of the cold. The body of Marine Moffatt was found on the Ile de Ré on 14 December but Corporal Sheard’s body is believed to have been recovered and buried elsewhere further up the coastline Corporal Sheard is remembered on the Hero's Stone at his place of birth, North Corner, Devonport.

In 1955 a fictionalised version of the story was told in the film The Cockleshell Heroes made by Warwick Films, and starring Anthony Newley, Trevor Howard, David Lodge and Jose Ferrer who was also the Director.

In June 2002, the Frankton Trail was opened, a walking path which traces the 100 miles (160 km) route taken through occupied France, on foot, by Hasler and Sparks. The Frankton Souvenir is an Anglo-French organisation, set up to keep alive the story of the raid. It plans to develop the trail, and install explanatory plaques at key points.

On March 31, 2011 a memorial to the Cockleshell Heroes and three French individuals was dedicated. Made from Portland Stone it was transported across care of Brittany Ferries. The memorial cost about £80,000.

On 1 November 2011, a BBC Timewatch television documentary called "The Most Courageous Raid of WWII" was presented by Paddy Ashdown. Lord Ashdown, a former SBS Officer, tells the story of the 'Cockleshell Heroes', who led one of the most daring and audacious commando raids of World War II. Ashdown describes as "a Whitehall cock-up of major proportions" the fact that there was a duplicate and simultaneous mission to sink the ships in Bordeaux, led by Claude de Baissac of Special Operations Executive, which Hasler's team and Combined Operations knew nothing about because of SOE's policy of secrecy even from other parts of the British Forces; de Baissac was preparing to take explosives onto the ships when he heard the explosions of Hasler's limpet mines. The loss of the opportunity for Hasler and de Baissac to work together to strike an even harder blow against the Germans in a combined operation led to the setting up of a Controlling Officer at Whitehall, responsible for avoiding inter-departmental rivalry, duplication or even conflict.