Allegiance United Kingdom Battles/wars Second World War Battles and wars World War II Service/branch Royal Navy | Years of service 1926-1945 Died 1945 Rank Lieutenant commander Other work Intelligence officer | |
Commands held HMS Dolphin
HMS Hedgehog Awards Distinguished Service Order, Decoration for Officers of the Royal Naval Reserve | ||
Lieutenant Commander Claude Michael Bulstrode Cumberlege DSO* RD (26 October 1905 – 1945) was a British Royal Navy officer and Special Operations Executive agent of the Second World War. He was tortured, and eventually executed, by the Germans after being captured while on Operation Locksmith in Greece.
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Early life
Cumberlege was born into a naval family, the son of Claude Lionel Cumberlege (1877-1962), and Sarah Laetitia Crossley Couldwell (1883-1929), of Gibraltar. Both his father and grandfather had attained the rank of admiral in the Royal Navy. He was educated at The Nautical College, Pangbourne, before entering the Merchant Navy as a midshipman on 1 May 1922. In 1926 he became an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. Between 1937 and 1940 he lived in Antibes, and spent his time skippering yachts in the Mediterranean.
War service
In 1940 he was called up for active service. For the first six months of that year he was attached to a French anti-smuggling unit based in Marseilles. After the Fall of France he served briefly as a liaison officer to Charles de Gaulle. He then worked with British intelligence in Cape Verde. Late in January 1941 he was transferred to the Special Operations Executive's (SOE) Middle East section, and a few weeks later he was appointed to lead para-naval SOE operations in the Middle East based in Haifa and Alexandria (Force 133).
Cumberlege was tasked with undertaking covert and disruptive action in Greece during and after the Battle of Greece. For this purpose, he and his team operated a lightly armed caïque called HMS Dolphin. In April 1941 Cumberlege secretly navigated the Corinth Canal and laid a time-delayed mine and depth charges; however, the charges failed to detonate. The failure of the mission was a major blow to British intelligence, but in his report the Director of Naval Intelligence went out of his way to exonerate Cumberlege from blame. Dolphin continued to operate along the Greek coast, particularly in the role of harassing German aircraft over the Aegean Sea.
After the Battle of Crete, Cumberlege aided in the evacuation of dozens of Allied personnel who were stranded on occupied Crete. HMS Dolphin, operating alongside the caïques HMS Escampador and HMS Hedgehog (which were also under the command of Cumberlege), successfully rescued 550 Allied troops from the Cretan coast. Once pre-arranged evacuations became impossible, he spent three weeks surreptitiously mapping the deserted south coast of Crete between Cape Litinon and Tsoutsouros Bay, looking for landing beaches and hide-outs for small craft and landing several SOE agents and supplies, without being detected. For this work he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 20 January 1942. The success of the operations led to the immediate expansion of para-naval SOE operations in the area. In the spring of 1942, Cumberlege took medical leave and spent time in London with his wife and son, before returning to the Mediterranean.
Operation Locksmith
On 8 January 1943, Cumberlege and his SOE team of three others embarked on Operation Locksmith. The operation was a fresh attempt to block the Corinth Canal, applying the lessons which had been learnt from the failed 1941 attempt. Cumberlege was centrally involved in the planning process, and led the mission. On 5 March, having travelled to the canal and set up a hideout, the explosives were placed in the canal. The explosives failed to detonate, and ten days later SOE HQ in Cairo concluded that the mission had failed.
On 19 March, Cumberlege, still at his hideout, reported that he was aware that Italian secret police were searching for his party. In early April his hideout was discovered by a German patrol, probably due to local Greek collaboration. Cumberlege and his group managed to escape, but most of their communications equipment was captured. Three days later the group received a message ostensibly from SOE Cairo that a British submarine was coming to rescue it. On the night of 30 April, the group was captured by German forces who had lured them into a trap using the captured communications equipment.
Prisoner of war
At the beginning of May 1943, Cumberlege and his colleagues were taken to Averoff Prison in Athens. Despite the German policy of summarily executing captured Allied commandos, Cumberlege was not immediately shot. He was tortured, before being transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. There, under duress, Cumberlege signed a statement confirming that the Locksmith group were saboteurs – despite having being captured in uniform. In January 1944, Cumberlege was moved to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was held in solitary confinement and refused Red Cross parcels. At some point in March or early April 1944 he was shot dead by the Germans, although the exact date and location are unknown.
Cumberlege was awarded a posthumous Bar to his DSO in 1946 for second attempt to attack the canal.
Personal life
He married a Canadian, Nancy Wooler, in 1936. Together they had one son, Marcus.
He is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.