Orders, Decorations and Medals

A superb Dieppe Raid D.S.M. group of nine awarded to Captain T. J. Badlan, 40 Commando, Royal Marines

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (Ply.X.345 T. J. Badlam, Sgt. R.M.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star, clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals, M.I.D.; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, S.E. Asia 1945-46 (A/Capt. T. J. Badlan, D.S.M. R.M.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue (Ply.X.345 T. J. Badlan, Sgt. R.M.) very fine or better and a unique award to the Royal Marines for this historic raid (9)

D.S.M. London Gazette 2 October 1942. ‘For gallantry, daring and skill in the combined attack on Dieppe.’ Note that the D.S.M. is named to Badlam, as Gazetted, and that a correction was published in the London Gazette 27 October 1942, correcting it to Badlan. This D.S.M. and three M.M’s were the only awards to the Royal Marines for the Dieppe Raid.

The great contribution of Combined Operations to operation ‘Jubilee’, the raid on Dieppe, 18-19 August 1943, was the new type of special landing craft which had been developed after months of research and experiment. The armament of these craft was manned entirely by Marines whose task it was to close the beach and to destroy the enemy’s forward positions at close range. Behind the landing craft came the assault craft carrying infantry and followed by the tanks and then by the Landing Craft Flak which put up a close-range barrage over the whole party. Finally came the barges with the main body of the infantry and other craft with heavier armament. Farther back off shore the battleships and cruisers of the Fleet covered the whole operation, while six squadrons of the Royal Air Force provided fighter cover against German air attack.

Early in the operation there was some initial success. The Canadians were landed, and the Landing Craft Flak, used for the first time at Dieppe and known popularly as “winkle barges”, gave valuable cover, their Marine gunners doing good work in bringing down a considerable number of German Aircraft. Later, however, the enemy brought heavier guns to bear. Many of the landing craft were hit and sunk; others were forced to open out seaward and casualties were very heavy.

Sergeant Thomas Badlan was embarked aboard LCT 8 which made a successful landing early in the raid without suffering casualties. On the second occasion they went in alone and much closer to the guns of the West headland. ‘We were really catching it this time,’ said Sgt Badlan, ‘During the final approach we were repeatedly hit.’ Badlan was a member of the Beach Provost Party under Lt-Col. Bobby Parkes-Smith, the oldest serving officer at Combined Operations Headquarters. Parkes-Smith, who had helped Sir Roger Keyes build up the organisation and was described by Lord Mountbatten as ‘the one really live wire at the time I joined Combined Ops’ should never have left his duties in London but he insisted in going along on the raid, a decision which cost him his life. Parks-Smith was wounded twice and was looked after by Badlan. ‘I gave him a cigarette and assisted him to the starboard side which afforded greater protection from the shellfire. As I did so I saw four or five people in the water. Apparently the order to abandon ship had been given.’ No such instruction was given. The men had been blown there by shells hitting the landing craft.

During the approach the chains were blown off the ramp door which fell open, touching down in eight feet of water. Believing that a normal landing had been made, Colonel Andrews drove off in his tank which was entirely submerged except for the turret and, like Captain Purdy’s tank earlier, was ‘drowned’ since the rough waterproofing which had been applied to the Churchills only extended to a height of six feet. Though he managed to successfully evacuate his tank, Andrews was killed on the beach. For the rest of the action his commanding officer’s pennant on the wireless mast fluttered over his otherwise submerged tank. The third Churchill aboard LCT 8, Major John Begg’s, never got ashore.

So heavily battered was LCT 8 that Lt-Col. Robert King, assistant quartermaster of the Canadian 2nd Division, who had taken over command of army personnel aboard after Colonel Lett had been wounded, insisted that the ship was literally blown off the shore by the volume of shell fire directed at it. All the naval personnel both on the bridge and in the engine room were put out of action and the shattered craft was eventually taken away from the beach by a Canadian Major, Paul Garneau, and the Marine Sergeant, Tom Badlan, neither of whom possessed the slightest navigational experience. Garneau threw the engines into reverse and managed to get them started by pulling every switch in sight.

Badlan, who had been about to abandon the LCT with his mortally-wounded colonel, Parkes-Smith, noticed that the starboard screw was turning and the vessel was slowly going astern. ‘So I went to the bridge, where I found everybody dead. Then I went to the wheelhouse, after finding out where it was from Colonel Parkes-Smith. There I found the helmsman minus a leg. The wheelhouse was shattered, there was a small fire which I put out with a helmet full of water and the compass was broken but the wheel itself was undamaged. I was able to steer clear of the beach with the assistance of another marine sergeant on the port side and a Canadian officer on the starboard side giving me verbal orders trying to keep me in the centre and out of the way of the guns. We went out of the bay zig-zagging.’

Eventually a naval mechanic who had been blown overboard but climbed back aboard, took over the engines from Garneau, while Sub-Lt. Whitehead, wounded when the ramp was lowered, made his way to the bridge and, despite a broken arm and severe eye injury, helped Badlan navigate the ship away from the danger zone. The painful retreat of LCT 8 marked the end of the part played by the tank landing craft at Dieppe. It had been an impossible task, for in that rain of steel it was bound to fail; and fail it did, but not for want of desperate bravery. As the official report put it, “with a courage terrible to see, the Marines went in to land determined, if fortune so wished, to repeat at Dieppe what their fathers had accomplished at Zeebrugge.”

Thomas James Badlan joined the Royal Marines in 1927 and served at sea throughout the thirties being aboard H.M.S. Courageous when war broke out. He was one of the survivors when she was sunk in September 1939. Two months later, as a Sergeant, he joined the Valiant where he remained until 1942 when he took part in the Dieppe Raid, winning the D.S.M. He was commissioned in July 1943, and served on the staff of H.M.S. Helder and other landing craft bases until the end of the war by which time he was Acting Captain. Promoted substantive Captain in 1951, he was serving at PRORM when he retired in 1954. Captain Badlan died on June 24, 1968, aged 58.