Back on the river, the unprotected wooden motor launches had suffered terribly under the hail of German fire. Several had sunk or were afire and sinking by the time Campbeltown slammed into the great dock. Flaming gasoline spread across the river surface as commandos and sailors struggled to swim ashore in the freezing water, towing their wounded comrades. No survivor would ever forget the cries of men trapped in the flaming gasoline. Regimental Sgt. Maj. Moss’ launch went down without getting near shore, and her survivors abandoned her. The gutsy Moss swam toward land, towing the raft himself-he died, with every man on the float, in a torrent of machine-gun fire.

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One of the launches caught fire and blew up, taking with her 15 of the 17 commandos on board and most of her crew. Another launch stopped to fish survivors out of the blazing gasoline on the river’s surface, caught fire and was shredded by German guns. Still another ML lost an engine and steering gear and had to withdraw, and three more were on fire. The ML that took off the survivors of Campbeltown tried to escape downriver, zigzagging and making smoke, but there were too many German shore batteries. Hit repeatedly, the launch drifted helplessly down the Loire, a burning beacon in the darkness, her captain dead. Save for Beattie and one other man, every one of Campbeltown’s officers died on board her, including the gallant Tibbets.

Ryder’s battered MGB was filled with dead and wounded, and out on the river five motor launches were burning fiercely in the night. At the pom-pom on the forward deck, Seaman William Savage poured a steady and accurate fire into the German shore batteries. Completely exposed, without even a gun shield for protection, Savage coolly hammered the German guns for 25 terrible minutes.

As German fire continued to sweep the MGB, many of the wounded aboard her were hit for the second or even the third time. To save his hurt men, Ryder reluctantly gave the order to withdraw, and the gunboat, her remaining weapons still shooting, turned downriver toward the sea. Some of the surviving launches turned for home at about the same time, making smoke to cover their withdrawal. As the MGB at last headed for home, a splinter from a final German salvo killed Savage.

Micky Wynn turned MTB-74 to his secondary target, the lock gates leading into the St. Nazaire Basin. Wynn heard his missiles hit the gates and turned for home, his mission accomplished. He and MTB-74 had a clear path to safety, running hard down the Loire at 40 knots-until Wynn came upon two British survivors clinging to a Carley float in the river. Unwilling to abandon them, he skidded his little boat neatly alongside the float, but before the men could be pulled aboard, a torrent of German fire tore MTB-74 apart. The brave Wynn, minus one eye, was rescued along with two other men by German boats. Everybody else on board died.

On shore, the surviving commandos began to rally around Newman, who collected about 70 men, more than half of them wounded. Newman gave them the bad news that all the launches had either been sunk or had pulled away from the hell along the riverbank. He told them to break up into small parties and head for open country, not to surrender while they still had ammunition, and to try to make for the Spanish frontier. He quickly appointed leaders for each of the breakout parties. ‘Their salutes,’ he wrote later, ‘and bearing might well have been back in Scotland, and the orders to fight inland were receive with grins.’

‘It’s a lovely moonlight night for it,’ said Newman, and his men began to split up, jumping garden fences and scuttling up alleys. German fire was coming from everywhere, including an armored car charging down the darkened streets. The commandos fired on anything that moved as they worked their way through the east side of the basin area, shooting up a German motorcycle and sidecar en route, clearing pockets of German resistance. Some of the fighting was hand to hand. But the area was crawling with the enemy by now, and a few at a time the raiders were shot or taken prisoner.

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