The Battle For Leros

The 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers left Malta in June 1943, having survived the siege of that island and all the privations that a siege and blockade normally entail. The Faughs arrived in Port Said after a sea journey via Tripoli. After leave, and two months of hard training in mountain warfare and practice with landing craft, speculation about its destination was rife.

The Faughs were in fact destined for the Aegean, which had been the scene of intense fighting between Axis and Allied forces in 1941. By early October the Battalion had established itself on the island of Leros. One of the Dodecanese, or Twelve Islands, in the Aegean, Leros is situated a few miles from the Turkish coast, with the islands of Samos and Kos close by. The island had been garrisoned by the Italians until Italy surrendered to the Allies.

The Faughs’ Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice French, judged this rugged, hilly little island difficult to defend against sea or air invasion, and the Germans had total control of the air. Although he proposed a plan for the defence of the island, Brigadier Tilney, the garrison commander, chose not to implement it.

The Germans overran Kos at the start of October and closed in on Leros. On 12 November, after a fifty-day aerial bombardment of the island and its defences, 700 German paratroopers made the first of a series of landings. This attack resembled the famous airborne invasion of Crete and, unfortunately for the Faughs, the outcome would be very much the same.