Mike Cumberlege

Cumberlege was born into a naval family, the son of Claude Lionel Cumberlege (1877-1962), and Sarah Laetitia Crossley Couldwell (1883-1929), of Gibraltar.[1] His father retired as a Rear Admiral in 1926 having served in the Royal Australian Navy in World War One on secondment from the RN. Mike was educated at The Nautical College, Pangbourne, before entering the Merchant Navy as a midshipman on 1 May 1922.[2] 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.[3]

In 1940 he was called up for active service. For the first six months of that year he was attached to a British anti-smuggling and intelligence naval 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).[4]

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 II. 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 blow to British military strategy in North Africa, but in his report the Director of Naval Intelligence went out of his way to exonerate Cumberlege from blame. Meantime, Cumberlege had participated in Operation Demon, the Allied evacuation from Greece. Dolphin II ferried troops from the beaches of Navplion and Monemvasia to British transports before sailing for Crete. In Canae, Cumberlege met with Captain Nicholas Hammond and Rhodesian private James 'Jumbo' Steele, the latter would eventually join him for Operation Locksmith. Mike had befriended the archaeologist John Pendlebury before the war and they planned to raid the Dodecanese islands but the German airborne invasion of Crete prevented the operation from being carried out. The engines of Dolphin II having given out, Cumberlege commandeered the caique Athanassios Miaoulis and escaped from Crete with his cousin Major Cleland Cumberlege, Hammond, Steele, Able Seaman Saunders and a Greek crew. After they crossed the Kasos Strait, they were machine-gunned by a German aircraft, Cleland and Saunders were killed and Mike wounded but they managed to reach Mersa Matruh.[5]

After the Battle of Crete, Cumberlege aided in the evacuation of dozens of Allied personnel who were stranded on occupied Crete. The caïques HMS Escampador and HMS Hedgehog (which were 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.[6] The success of the operations led to the immediate expansion of para-naval SOE operations in the area. In the spring of 1942, Cumberlege contracted paratyphoid took medical leave and spent time in London with his wife and son, before returning to the Mediterranean.[7] for a second attempt to blow up the Corinth Canal.

He married a Canadian, Nancy Wooler, in 1936. Together they had one son, Marcus, a poet, who was born in Antibes, France, and died in 2019 at the age of 80 in Bruges, Belgium. He was survived by a daughter, Eunice.[14] In 1947, Nancy married Lt.-Col. Lennox John Livingstone-Learmonth, M.C., D.S.O.[15]

He is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.

He is commemorated on Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp memorial plaque for British and Commonwealth forces Operation Checkmate (commando raid).

His biography was published in 2018 – The Extraordinary Life of Mike Cumberlege SOE – written by Robin Knight and published by Fonthill Media.