ROYAL MARINES
FORCE VIPER

Graham Bull writes "I am currently researching, for an independent TV co, the background of an elite group of RM volunteers know as 'Force Viper', a group of one hundred volunteers taken from Moile Naval Base Defence Org 1 (MNBDO1).

They were a mobile river unit covering the rearguard retreat on the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers.

Is there any chance of a call for information from your site on these amazing guys ?"

Graham is contactable on graham_bull@europalula.demon.co.uk 

The following is a response by Malcolm Little of the Royal Marines Museum in answer to a query by Graham:

Thank you for your email. EX2329 Mne Harold Leslie Dunkley was killed in action on 24th April 1942 as part of 'Force Viper', a unit formed from volunteers from Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation 1 (MNBDO1) in Burma.

He has no known grave but is commemorated on the naval war memorial at Plymouth.  The enclosed files will give further information.  If you are next of kin, you can enquire at the Historical Records Office Royal Marines, Centurion Building, Grange Road, Gosport, Hampshire, PO13 9XA, for a copy of his service record.

MNBDO I/Force Viper

Formation was approved as of 12 September 1939,6 with an establishment of 78 officers and 2,150 other ranks, but the equipment available was only a fraction of that authorised (e.g. six searchlights out of 48, 17 vehicles out of 75). Arrangements were made to train tradesmen, AA gun crews, searchlight crews, and gunnery and wireless instructors, at army establishments. 

The establishment was reviewed by a small HQ set up on 29 January 1940, when a provisional strength of 202 officers and 4,089 other ranks was proposed. During February HQs were also set up for the Air Defence Group, the Land Defence Force and the Coast Defence Group. Brig Weston took command on 1 March and four days later the HQ Wing was formed with a Provost Company, Survey Section, HQ Defence Platoon and some other administrative Sections. 

The Landing and Maintenance Group was formed in May 1940,8 absorbing officers and men with experience of building piers, and handling stores and vehicles over open beaches, etc. Other subunits were formed from time to time, as shown in the unit history summaries for beach units, artillery regiments and battalions. 

The majority of men in the Organisation were 'HOs', as were eventually nearly all the junior officers. The first 2,010 recruits9 joining the organisation in mid-February 1940 went from depots and their homes to: 1st RM AA Rgt at Arborfield, Carlisle and Blandford; 11th RM Searchlight Regiment at Taunton and Yeovil; the Land Defence Force (later 11th RM Bn) at Browndown; and the Coast Artillery Brigade with its HQ at Fort Cumberland and Hayling Island camp. 

The MNBDO HQ in 1940 provided a training party10 in June - about the time of the retreat from Dunkirk - to advise army coastal batteries on techniques and equipment. Many subunits were detached; and, under army command, were employed in AA and other Home Defence deployments (see subunits' history summaries). During the invasion scare the HQ stood to for 72 hours from 7 to 9 September. 

On 21 November the AA units with the army were put at seven days' notice to revert to RM command. Exercises and training continued; then from the strength of 4,501 on 1 December 1940,11 500 experienced men were provided for MNBDO II and replaced by recruits. 

The HQ at Fort Cumberland was closed on 4 February 1941,12 and the Organisation sailed for the Middle East. After a five-day visit to Durban (South Africa), the men reached Tahal Camp in Egypt on 23 April and came under command of the C-in-C Middle East.

Three ships carrying heavy gear reached Haifa (Palestine) the next day, and the equipment, guns, etc. were reloaded tactically during the next few weeks by men from the MNBDO, Meanwhile General Weston took elements of the Organisation to Crete, where they landed on 9 May and were in action as infantry during the German airborne landings and subsequent fighting (see chapter 3). 

There were nearly 1,200 casualties,14 mostly prisoners, from the MNBDO units. During the rest of 1941 the units were brought up to strength and reorganised. 

General Weston hoped to use the Organisation in the Far East and resisted attempts to have subunits detached,15 but in February 1942 1st RM (Heavy) AA Regiment went to Ceylon. 1st Coast Regiment with the Landing and Maintenance details, fortified island bases in the Indian Ocean. Various subunits had been in action while MNBDO I was in the Mediterranean, but the majority of time was spent in anti-aircraft defences and in training. All the searchlight units in the Canal Zone came under the command of the RM searchlight group for a time. 

The stores depot from Fort Cumberland moved to Geneifa (north of Port Tewfik) in 1941, and its staff, along with other elements then in Egypt, followed the AA Regiment to the Far East in 1943. Major General W. B. F. Lukis16 took over from general Weston in April 1943; and the HQ of MNBDO I closed in the middle east on 16 June 1943 and reopened in Colombo (Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka) on 27 June. This HQ commanded two Mobile Naval Base Brigades organised for the defence of Ceylon and training for operations in Burma. 

The two AA regiments - 1st RM Rgt in India, 2nd RM Rgt in Ceylon - were also administered by the HQ of MNBDO I in Ceylon, until they returned to the UK, along with the personnel of the two Brigades, during the spring of 1944.17 The personnel were remustered that summer for landing craft, commando and other duties, the HQ finally being disbanded in September 1944,12 when the principal AA units formed 5 RM AA Brigade. 

In January 1942 Marines of 1st RM Coast Regiment sailed for Ceylon, leaving behind the intense heat of Addu Atoll and a monotonous diet of tinned food and biscuits. Not long after reaching Ceylon they had a call for men for 'special service of a hazardous nature' and some 100 men were picked from the volunteers, their selection being made on the basis of their fitness, their age, their experience and suitability for operations requiring personal initiative. 

By 8 February, after three weeks of intensive infantry training, they sailed from Colombo in the cruiser Enterprise, and their CO, Maj Duncan Johnston, learnt for the first time that they were off to Rangoon. Although conditions were crowded aboard Enterprise, they continued their training, but the details of their intended role were not yet known to this Force 'Viper'. Duncan Johnston had named them 'Viper' after the only poisonous British snake, as these three Platoons, with some machine guns and a few 2-in mortars, were expecting 'to bite the enemy hard'.

When they disembarked, each man received a welcome 50 cigarettes from the ship's store, but ashore the job for which they were intended could no longer be carried out, since the Japanese were already established on the southern coasts of Burma, east of the Irrawaddy Delta, and the Force's original task of reinforcing the Navy's coastal patrols in the Gulf of Martaban, at the head of the Andaman Sea, was therefore cancelled. No immediate job was found for them by GHQ, for Rangoon was practically deserted 'with a derelict appearance - piles of garbage in the streets'.

Most of the townsfolk had fled after 4,700 were killed in the first two air raids of many in the previous two months. The Fourteenth Army at this time was pulling back to the Sittang river, and two small recce patrols from 'Viper' were sent to 17 Indian Division and I Div (Burdiv) headquarters in search of boats, although their use on the Sittang and Salween rivers seemed unlikely to Duncan Johnston. A proposed raid with four companies of Gloucesters was discussed at this time, but no pilot could be found to take boats by night up the Moulmein river to the Japanese divisional HQ, their intended target, and crossing the Gulf would have attracted enemy aircraft, for the round trip was some 300 miles. 

After being in Rangoon for a week, the Major acquired a 35ft diesel-engined boat for training, and Lt W. Guthrie Penman, Burma RNVR, joined them. Fluent in Burmese and Hindustani, he was a keen yachtsman who had been working as a senior engineer with a teak company. Sub/Lt Wikner, BRNVR, joined a few days later and was sent by Maj Johnston to Mandalay, where, with a corporal and four Marines, he fitted out armoured boats and a depot launch with workshops. 

During the next couple of weeks the Force provided patrols for the town after the civil police had evacuated the area, and guards were required on the demolition charges set at the oil refinery three miles up river. 

On 18 February the Force had been ordered to form a Flotilla for river work, and Lt Penman, BRNVR, requisitioned four government touring launches, which became the nucleus of the Flotilla, and some smaller motorboats. The launches' crews, natives of Chittagong, came with them, and their 'loyalty was to stand us in good stead throughout the campaign'

Each launch also had a Vickers machine gun, an Aldis signal lamp and a 'China' Mk I W/T Set 8. The Marines in the boats had some hair-raising moments 'in the racing tides of Rangoon river ... but the troops were intelligent and keen to learn'.4 Many of them were in for the 'hostilities only' but the Sergeant-Major, Harry Wonfor, and most of the NCOs were long-service Marines. Their boat training had to be fitted into their guard duties, in which Brens were fired to keep looters from the docks, and 'offenders caught by the patrols were flogged in the town square'.

But as 2,000 civilian prisoners and criminal lunatics had been released to fend for themselves,6 such action hardly stemmed the reign of terror, although it cut down the cases of arson to one big fire every other night. The effects of the Japanese successes, however, had emboldened those Burmese who wanted the British to quit Burma. They and other nationalists, therefore, helped the Japanese; and in the coming months throughout south-east Asia and the Dutch East Indies, local populations' cooperation with the Allies could be fickle. The Force began to patrol the river in its launches on 4 March, covering also the docks and Twante canal; with each launch was a motorboat crewed by Marines, and all sailed under the White Ensign. Their orders - subsequent changes only by chance passed to Major Johnston - were to carry demolition parties to a transport ship on 7 March after oil installations, dock services and stores were destroyed, including 20-million gallons of aviation fuel at one refinery. 

There was considerable confusion in the dark as launches came alongside this transport, and only with difficulty were the launches of the Flotilla collected together to anchor until the moon rose. But by 0300 hours (8 March) the fires from the successful demolitions gave sufficient light to see the marker buoys of the channel and the launches headed up-river for Prome. On this passage up the Irrawaddy the Marines established their routine. 

After reveille at 0600 hours, it was scrub decks till 0645, by which time there was sufficient light to get underway. (They did not normally attempt night passages, as the navigable channels could not be seen.) The forenoon continued with breakfast, 'quarters clean guns', and the routine called for lookouts to be on watch at all times.

Among the rations they had acquired before leaving Rangoon were 50 crates of beer and some Australian hock, by courtesy of Capt Herbert Alexander, the second-in-command and OC now of the demolition party with him in the stores launch Delta. But later, difficulties in getting hold of diesel led to some reorganisation of the Flotilla: Delta was scrapped and replaced by Cynthia, a steam launch; two of the diesel motorboats were replaced by armoured boats prepared up-river by Sub/Lt Wikner's party; and the motorboat Snipe was added to the flotilla. Their first job in protecting 17 Indian Division's right flank along the river was to support Burma II Commando, 30 men under Maj M. (Mike) Calvert, RE, who were sailing some 100 miles back down-river8 to demolish Henzada oil rigs. Their double-decked steamer Hastings and the launch Rita arrived together at the rigs and the Commando sent a patrol ashore. 

The men had gone barely 200yds towards the village, when they were called on by a Burmese civilian to surrender. He was given a gruff refusal, whereupon Japanese appeared all round the patrol. The commandos had no choice but to fight their way down to the river, as Rita - pulling out into the stream to get a clear view of the village - began firing when large numbers of Japanese appeared. Her Vickers and five Brens were aided by the crew's Tommy guns, firing on single-shot settings to conserve ammunition but nevertheless getting in some rapid fire, while the Vickers gunner, L/Cpl Marriott, caused many of the 100 or so enemy casualties. Hastings, skillfully handled by her skipper, also put off early in the action, going back twice to pick up commandos and men of the Marines' demolition party who had landed. 

The raiding craft came away under mortar fire, having had two commandos and a Marine killed.10 Burma II Commando then went north for further demolitions, but the remainder of 'Viper's' Flotilla came down-river, and for most of the next week patrolled to within 6 miles of Henzada. 

The action by Rita had given Duncan Johnston confidence in the launches' ability to engage shore targets, since, among other reasons, he found that Japanese bullets had poor penetrating power, 'being stopped by such unlikely things as a rolled blanket and a tin of sausages'.

Patrols were made at irregular times, the launches obliged to keep to the main channels; motorboats then followed river boats into creeks to destroy them, as all boats were a potential means for the Japanese to infiltrate across the river. But the river was falling in the first two weeks of March, and its navigation became more restricted, especially when buoys were cut adrift and crossing markers cut down on the banks - shades of the Yangtze in the 1930s. Ambushes, especially by field-guns, were a distinct possibility, as the launches were slow, making only a few knots against the swifter current, which at times set a launch down stream as the crew used a sounding pole to feel for the channel where it crossed from one bank to the other. 

At the time when some 2,000 Japanese and Burmese nationalists (Thakins) were coming north up the river during mid-March, Lt-Col G.S. Musgrove (an army officer) took command of 'Viper' and Burma II. He later interrogated three Burmese civilians caught by Stella when they were carrying Japanese grenades - they were shot as spies. Others picked up by the patrols included wounded and stragglers from 17 Division who were taken to the comparative safety of the next Indian army unit which the Flotilla visited. 

During all these patrols they had been able to buy vegetables and chickens from villagers along the river, but there were increasing signs of the activities of Burmese nationalists, who welcomed  Japanese advanced parties into several villages. Attempted ambushes on these units came to  nothing because the launches ran aground in difficult conditions or the  enemy by-passed the ambush area - as they did when two platoons and a  Vickers section were landed at one village. On 26 March 1942 the Flotilla landed the commandos and a company of  Burmese military police at Padaung, ferrying the men ashore in canoes, 'a slow ... tiresome business'.

The next day, therefore, when Force 'Viper' sent two platoons and a Vickers section to this small town, they marched down the west bank some 6 miles, with the machine gun in a bullock cart. They were 8 miles south of Prome, and on the opposite (east) bank a major battle was in progress, but the villagers welcomed them and all was quiet. Lt Cave took his platoon down the river bank, the Vickers was mounted near the police compound by a bungalow just outside the town and sentries were posted. At 0030 hours there was a burst of Tommy gun fire, the Major dashed down the bungalow steps and made out three Japanese on the road. Dodging behind a latrine, he made his way back to the compound. It was filling with Japanese troops, and after a quick word with Col Musgrove, Duncan Johnston led No.2 Platoon as they raced 50yds to a dry gulley.

Firing from this position they took the attention of the Japanese machine gunners.14 Meanwhile Lt Douglas Fayle (OC, No. 2 Platoon) had rolled under the compound huts, which stood 3ft above the ground; with him was Cpl Harry Winters with a rifle and Mne R.J. Shaw with his Bren. They lay quiet while the men in the gulley were firing, then the Lieutenant opened fire  with his Tommy gun, supporting the Bren and rifle, which at this close range killed many Japanese. They fought off a Japanese attempt to rush their position, held their fire when cattle were stampeded through the compound, fired on an officer who shone a torch, and stopped another rush by tossing  grenades, all the time shifting their position to keep in the shadow as the moonlight spread under the huts. They found some ammunition but by 0430 hours - they had been under the huts for 4 hours - with ammunition again getting low, they slipped away unnoticed to the river. 

The main party had disengaged from the fight some hours earlier, as its men had only one magazine of Bren ammunition and not much else after being attacked from two sides. Other small groups made their way back to the launches and the Platoon did not have a single casualty. But fifteen commandos were missing and all Lt Cave's No.3 Platoon.

No. 3 was moving back towards the firing when a large body of Japanese were found between it and the compound.

Lt Cave then followed his orders to make for the hills if cut off. The Platoon lay low at daybreak, and then moved north, met six Gurkhas and was running short of food on the second day when three Indian Army 15cwt trucks appeared down the road heading for Prome. Having shared out the rations, the party, numbering now about 40, camouflaged the trucks by the roadside, and, after posting sentries, had some sleep. Late in the afternoon they were motoring north, however, when two Japanese planes machine-gunned the road, killing some ten men. The remainder then went on in two trucks, and were told by some Burmese that Prome had been captured. Peter Cave led them north again, hoping to rejoin the river beyond the enemy's lines, and the trucks were immobilised. 

They carried the more seriously wounded and men who had gone down with malaria - the anti-malaria mepacrine supplies were long gone, and two of several cases died. Others  died of their wounds, which quickly festered in the heat. By now they were moving by  night and hiding up during the day. 

After eight weeks they reached Toungoo, over 80 miles east of Prome, and at dawn on 26 May they found some defence works. Here Peter Cave hoped that they would be able to join Indian units, as by this time there were only ten Marines and three Gurkhas, the Sikh truck drivers having left quietly one night and others having died or been left by the track too weak to go on. 

While a reconnaissance was being prepared from the new positions, a mortar and machine gun opened fire on them, for this had been a Japanese defence system and they were in strength in the area, but after the Marines returned what fire they could, all was quiet. 

That night two Gurkhas went out and silenced the machine gun, coming back just before dawn with their enemy's ears. With the sun came more mortar fire and the Lieutenant was hit in the knee, but despite the obvious pain, he continued to direct the defence. Suddenly Japanese burst from dense cover on the left, ending the resistance, and mortally wounding one Marine. The others were taken off in a lorry, their feet roped together. Several of them died later of their wounds but Chinese troops released six survivors some 11 months later, when their prison camp north-east of Mandalay was recaptured.

Force 'Viper' had reorganised after being ambushed. The Japanese had been hidden in the houses of villagers before the Marines arrived at Padaung, and Rita went down river to machine gun the village. Stella went upstream on 31 March to destroy all boats on the river for 10 miles. The launches now came under fire in the river off Prome, and although there were no orders for them, they later destroyed all the launches and boats they could find in the area. They were then ordered to patrol from Kama to within two miles north of Prome, and an army W/T set was taken aboard so they could be on 17 Division's 'net'. 

Early in April a number of volunteers 'for river commando work' joined the flotilla from the Army's inland water transport companies, and about this time a commando NCO who had escaped after being captured at Padaung reported that several Marines had been bayoneted while they were prisoners, but one had escaped inland.

The retreat was now moving jerkily northward, and the launches came up river burning boats along the banks; but a few miles south of Allanmyo they were fired on. The culprits were from Burdiv, coming in to relieve 17 Indian Division, and Force 'Viper' was to act as the river link between Burdiv's three brigades. As it withdrew, the Flotilla destroyed more boats, but now ran into its first serious engine breakdowns and devised a substitute for the 'high speed' diesel - 2 parts light diesel and 1 part kerosene. The Flotilla made forays down river - 30 miles on 11 April 1942. A standing patrol, so to speak, was maintained by one launch, which was often withdrawn up river only when the Japanese were in sight. They were machine-gunned and bombed from the air, they ferried troops across the river, acquired replacement boats and blew up oil barges. 

On 20 April the Chittagonians who wished to leave were paid off, as they were near the Chindwin, a tributary of the Irrawaddy leading to the Indian border. The boats ferried rations to the brigades, Marines by this time were manning the engines, with some consequent reduction of fire-power up-top; but now in late April the river was at its lowest and the last major job they did on the Irrawaddy was to ferry Burdiv's 320 carts, 640 bullocks and some 500 mules across the river at Sammeikkon. The Royal Engineers had made good jetties, with a large flat barge each side of the river, but the job took some 36 hours. During this time the troops were brought out by a separate ferry, and the motor transport by 'a very odd contraption' of local boats with a platform lashed over them and towed by a launch. 

Next day, 30 April, the big launches and other boats acquired by Force 'Viper', all too deep-draughted for the shallow Chindwin, were sunk to block the Irrawaddy channel.

Force 'Viper' eventually came out of Burma after working on the Chindwin. Three 47-mm Breda anti-tank guns were added to the Force at one time. The Force worked again with men of Burma II Commando, and gave out silver rupees to refugees and not to the District Officer, when these could not be delivered. On one of these ventures L/Cpl Parratt and Mne Lough were last seen in small motorboats on the Chindwin 'firing their Bren guns into the Japanese motor transport' which was coming down to the road by the river with seven tanks. Brave acts such as these must often have gone unrecorded, for some small parties just vanished into areas known later to have been strongly patrolled by the Japanese. 

M G Little 
RM Museum Archivist