A CROWD gathered at Woodside Ferry this weekend to remember a group of Royal Marine canoeists who were behind one of the most daring raids of the Second World War.

Operation Frankton, which took place between December 7-13 1942, involved a team of ten courageous Marines who launched from the submarine HMS Tuna, into the Atlantic Ocean at night, from where they paddled 60 miles up the river Gironde, to Bordeaux, to cripple or destroy six Nazi ships.

The Marines included Birkenhead-born Corporal Albert Frederick ‘Bert’ Laver, whose relatives still live in Wirral.

Corporal Laver was aged just 22 when he signed up for the top secret mission but he never made it home.

Only two of the ten men who launched from the submarine survived the raid: Of the other eight, six, including Laver, were executed by the Germans and two died from hypothermia.

Bordeaux was very important to the Germans as many merchant ships used it to supply the German Army stationed not only in France but also elsewhere throughout occupied Europe.

The Marines faced 70 miles of paddling upriver in their Cockle Mk II canoes. After moving by night and hiding by day, they reached the target.

They succeeded in sinking one ship and severely damaging four others and doing enough damage in the port to greatly disrupt the use of the harbour for months to come.

Such was the significance of the raid that Winston Churchill said that it helped to shorten the Second World War by six months.

Following the raid the plan was for the men to split up and escape to Spain but after two days, Laver and Marine William Mills were captured as Montlieu-la-Garde by the Gendarmerie and handed over to the Germans.

In 2012 a memorial to the men who became known as ‘The Cockleshell Heroes’ was unveiled on the promenade at Woodside Ferry by then Mayor of Wirral, Cllr Gerry Ellis, and former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, who was a member of the Special Boat Service and wrote a book about the mission, ‘A Brilliant Little Operation.’