Who dares swims: The heroic officers who braved freezing seas and force five gales on one of the war's most improbable missions

By Amanda Cable for the Daily Mail
Updated: 16:50 EST, 17 July 2009

Spirits were high in the early hours of 1 January, 1944, as the scores of German soldiers guarding the beaches of Normandy raised toasts to their families back home. Singing familiar German folk songs, their drunken voices carried across the dark beaches and crashing waves.

But lying just feet away from the occupying army were two young British officers, charged with one of the most important missions of World War II. Their fate was uncertain, but their orders were clear – to swim onto the beaches of Normandy, and collect and label samples of sand and peat to help British scientists and military experts plan how to land their tanks in a D-Day invasion.

The story of how these men sailed and then swam to occupied France, six months before the Allied invasion was, until now, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. It was only when researchers from the TV series Coast were investigating the extraordinary history behind the Normandy beaches, for a special one-off programme based in France, that this remarkable story of bravery and an almost impossible mission emerged.

Presenter Dick Strawbridge says, 'Winston Churchill and the US president Franklin Roosevelt had long been planning an invasion of Normandy, but aerial shots of the five landing beaches showed that large sections consisted of peat, which would be too soft to bear the weight of military vehicles. If they sank into the sand, the soldiers would be gunned down by the enemy.

Loss of life would be devastating, and could well have swung the fortunes of war back in favour of the Germans. British military experts had to know for sure what lay under the sand on those heavily mined and guarded beaches.'

The two men chosen for the mission were Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith and 23-year-old Major Logan Scott-Bowden, who is now 89. He recalls, 'We knew the mission was dangerous, but there was no time for fear.

I remember being offered cyanide tablets, in case we were caught and tortured to reveal our mission. But Ogden-Smith told our superiors that he thought he'd cope with the torture, so I turned down the suicide pills too. We set off in a small boat, and there wasn't time to talk.

We knew what we had to do, and we were more concerned about the sea conditions, because a gale was blowing. Two miles from shore, we jumped in and swam to shore.'

The men carried with them a special instrument that looked like a pogo stick, designed by racing hero Sir Malcolm Campbell, who adapted it for the mission. 'Campbell used it to test the sand at Daytona Beach in Florida, before winning the land speed record in 1931,' says Scott-Bowden.

'It had a spring, and you could shoot it into the sand, where it would pick up a 14in layer. He redesigned it so it made no noise when fired into the ground. We then sealed and labelled the samples.'

But, on that freezing New Year's Eve, the young soldiers found that the fierce winds had blown them a mile off their target beach. 'We had to creep past the searchlights to make our way to the correct beach, dropping down on our stomachs every few minutes when the sea rchl ight came back round,' says Scott-Bowden.

'When we reached our destination, we started gathering samples. Once, a guard came close, standing about 20 yards away from where we lay, frozen in the darkness. We both had our pistols in our hands, and I really thought I was going to have to shoot him. But after a few minutes he moved on, and we just continued our work.'

Weighed down by their samples, the two men had to swim back to their boat, some two miles out at sea. But crashing waves flung them back onto the shore. 'We were thrown back again and again,' says Scott- Bowden, 'and, of course, we needed to be quick. So we sat in the water and studied the sea until we worked out the pattern of the waves. We saw that our best chance was to leap in just after the main breaker had gone, so we tried again and swam through.

'We had been going a few minutes when I heard Bruce shouting. I thought he was in trouble, and I swam towards him. I then realised he was shouting, "Happy New Year". I cursed him and said, "Swim, you bugger, or we'll be thrown back on that beach."'

Once the men were back on British soil, the samples were analysed by the Army's scientific team, confirming that large areas of the landing beaches were made up of peat and soft clay. Within weeks, British engineers came up with a solution to stop heavy tanks sinking in the mire: 'Bobbin' tanks, designed to unroll reinforced canvas carpet over soft ground. This would give extra strength to support the landing vehicles following behind.

Six months after the secret midnight mission, these 'Bobbin' tanks landed on the Normandy beaches, laying the ground for the Allied tanks and troops that followed. By midnight on D-Day, 150,000 troops were already ashore – among them our two heroes.

Telling the remarkable story of their bravery was a highlight for Coast's Strawbridge, 'I'm not afraid to admit it was an emotional story to tell. Two young men who set off alone and saved their country. We've covered some incredible stories in our journeys for Coast, but they don't get much better than this.'