The Zeemanshoop (left) and Atjeh (right) photographed by Lt Peter Kershaw RNVR on the 15 May 1940
Courtesy of Richard Kershaw
The Kent
Fortress Royal Engineers (KFRE) was established at Gravesend in 1932
when it was decided to replace regular gunner and sapper units manning
coastal defences with Territorial units. Gravesend in north west Kent
was the centre of the British cement industry and the Blue Circle
Cement Co was the largest employer. Clifford Brazier, the manager of
their biggest cement works, had served as a sapper officer in World War
I and was asked to raise and command the unit which was initially
almost exclusively drawn from Blue Circle employees.
The
KFRE was given the job of manning Grain Fort, the HQ of the Thames and
Medway defences, but early in 1940 during the nine months phoney war Lt
Col. Brazier received orders direct from the Military Operations Branch
of the War Office to prepare for XD Operations, the hugely challenging
job of destroying fuel reserves in Holland
and north France before they fell into German hands. On the 10 May, the day German forces invaded the Netherlands, three small units left for Dover and embarked on the waiting destroyers. Wild Swan was to go to the Hook of Holland to destroy fuel stores at Rotterdam, HMS Verity to Flushing and HMS Brilliant would try and reach Antwerp via the Scheldt.
Cdr Greenough's naval demolition team of eighty plus a sixteen strong Royal Engineers "demo team" led by Capt Peter Keeble embarked on HMS Whitshed which was repeatedly attacked by German aircraft during the crossing to Ijmuiden. On arrival the
demo team went by a specially laid on single carriage train to Amsterdam and after delicate negotiations
with the Dutch were given the go ahead to destroy the fuel reserves on
the 13 May. Dutch
accounts suggest they only partially succeeded (at this stage in the
war plastic explosives, magnesium incendiary devices and delay fuses
were not available). They returned to Ijmeiden on a commandeered lorry and split into two groups to assist the navy in destroying the port
instalations on either side of the harbour. There were no waiting destroyers to take them home.
Peter Keeble's second in command, Lt Don Terry, joined Cdr Goodenough on the Dutch harbour tug, Atjeh (named after a province in the Dutch East Indies) which was helping
the auxiliary mine sweeper M3 tow the SS Jan Pieterszoon Coen
into position to block the harbour entrance. A German sircraft
dropped two magnetic mines but they successfully blocked both harbour
entrances by sinking the SS Jan Pieterszoon Coen and the minesweeper. Willem Soolsma, the mate of the Atjeh, interviewed on Dutch Radio in 1989
described how a boat came alongside with fifty or sixty men aboard
including Cdr Helingman, the naval commander of Ijmuiden, and a Jewish
man who desperate to escape had jumped into the water from the dyke.
They transferred to the Atjeh and on the afternoon of the 14 May it left Ijmuiden heading west for the first hour to clear the coast and then changing course to the south west for England. The Atjeh was a harbor tug, not
sea-going and it had over seventy on board but was designed for no more than twenty five passengers plus the crew of three (the skipper, C.J. Straatman, the Mate W. Soolsma and the engineer P. Tienstra). They had almost ran out of coal and the crew were beginning to heat the boilers with wooden panels when they were spotted by Venomous, taken aboard and photographed in jublilant mood by Lt Peter Kershaw RNVR.
Captain Keeble's group left Ijmuiden after dark on a thirty foot motor launch and were picked up by HMS Havoc and landed at Harwich.
The Atjeh served in UK harbours throughout the war, at first in Portsmouth, later Greenock, and after the war returned to Amsterdam.
Cdr
Goodenough and Capt Peter Keeble were both awarded the DSO. In his
letter congratulating Keeble Goodenough said "after working in the
Plans Division in the Admiralty the Amsterdam party was just like a
paid holiday!"
Monday
was the traditional washing day in the Netherlands, the day when
housewives and maids hung their washing out to dry, and Monday 13 May
was the day when the "demo team" set fire to the oil storage tanks at
Amsterdam.
When Don Terry drove to the site of the refinery at Amsterdam in 1945
he met a group of middle aged women who remembered the firing of the
oil stocks and admonished him for not having warned them so that they
could get their
washing in; it was ruined as a result!
On
demobilisation most of the original members of the Kent Fortress Royal
Engineers returned to their jobs with Blue Circle, several of the
junior officers were made works managers and Peter Keeble became a
director.
Most of what is known about the tug, Atjeh, is from the English language Forum on the "War over Holland" website and the men on Venomous whose accounts can be seen in A Hard Fought Ship. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Jan Visser who supplied details from the three volume History of the Dutch Merchant Navy by K.W.L. Bezemer (Elsevier, 1987) and De Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog by J.W. de Roever (1951). His web site on the Royal Netherlands Navy Warships of World War II is a valuable resource for researchers.
An overview of operations by British forces during the invasion of Holland in May 1940 including the role of the "demo" teams can be seen on the War over Holland website. XD Operations - Secret British missions denying oil to the Nazi's by C.C.H. Brazier (Pen and Sword, 2005) is written by its former commander and edited by his son.
