#literally how are spies real

once again i am baffled and blown away by the farce that is espionage.

quick history lesson: back during wwii the channel islands were occupied by the nazis. the population of the islands were the only british population living directly under nazi occupation, so as you can imagine churchill was pretty pissed about it. he devised a plan to fuck the nazis’ shit up by sending in spies to gather information and then dispatching men to create a ruckus in the dead of night – attack strategic places, destroy anti-aircraft guns, kill or capture as many german soldiers as possible, etc. he called them “nuisance missions”, because he was good at naming things.

anyway, the spies got in surprisingly alright and gathered enough information to launch one of these missions, but in classic espionage fashion the operation itself went absolutely, comicallywrong. 

the objective: 

• two boatloads of men land on guernsey and meet up to attack the airport
• a smaller boatload attack a machine gun outpost and kill or capture its crew

what actually happened:

• one boat landed on the wrong island
• the second boat saw the flashing lights of the spies they were supposed to meet on the beach and thought “oh fucc it’s the nazis” and just turned the fuck around and sailed back to their ship
• the third boat made it but ran aground and everyone had to bail
• these men then had to trek, soaked through in heavy clothing, up a 250-foot cliff and were fucking knackered by the time they got to the top
• but still! the show much go on! they attacked the machine gun post… only to find it was empty
• they did find a local old man though, who was so terrified at the sight of them that he couldn’t even tell them any information
• annoyed, they did what they could to be a pain in the germans’ asses, and managed to cut a couple of telephone lines
• “a youth in his teens could have done the same” – lieutenant-colonel john durnford-slater, head of this group of men, probably while making the :/ face
  
• they also kind of made a roadblock but somehow forgot all their barbed wire on the beach
• this was all they managed before it was time to go and on the way back down to the beach someone slipped and accidentally fired his revolver into the air
• the gunshot echoed all the way around the cliffs and a nearby german outpost was like “what the fuck” and started blindly firing out to sea
• despite this a dinghy was sent to collect the 40-odd men who were waiting on the beach but it was thrown against the rocks and sank
• everyone then realised they would have to swim
• they all stripped naked and got ready to go
• “uh, boss? i can’t swim” – three men to lieutenant-colonel john durnford-slater, with impeccable timing
  
• “go fucking hide” – lieutenant-colonel john durnford-slater, leaving them for tomorrow’s problem
  
• they left the fucking sunken dinghy and the discarded uniforms on the beach, as well as helmets and rifles
• “vat the fuck is zis Scheisse?” – the germans the next morning, probably 
  
• it was fucking clear a military operation had happened and within the day the three soldiers who couldn’t swim and a fourth who had fallen in when the dinghy sank and swam back to shore had been rounded up and sent to a pow camp in germany
• they were still in their fucking uniforms.
• churchill was reported to have been “unimpressed”.