Daring Raids Of World War Two (five); A Letter To Lilli (BBC1): THE first mission by Britain's new wartime fighting force was not a successful one. Or, to put it in military terms, as presenter Major Gordon Corrigan did, "It was a complete and utter cock-up".

The commandos raided German-occupied Guernsey. Three parties landed on the wrong beach and one on the wrong island altogether. They couldn't find the barracks, and then discovered that the Germans were out.

Getting home wasn't easy. The tide had come in, the wind got up. The only way to the boat was to swim, and those who couldn't swim were left behind.

Corrigan related all this in no-nonsense way that made him the perfect guide for this new series about fighting forces in the Second World War.

After the Guernsey debacle, a new training school for commandos was set up on the Scottish coast. There were high hopes for the next mission to blow up oil installations and fish processing plants in Norway.

Some 1,000 battle-hungry men landed - and were greeted not by fighting Germans but cheering locals. The only casualty was a Brit who shot himself in the leg with his revolver.

Finally a Christmas 1941 raid, again in Norway, gave the commandos their big chance and, for many, their first time in action. Germans heard the eerie sound of bagpipes coming across the water as British forces advanced. This was "Mad" Jack Churchill playing the bagpipes and brandishing a highland sword which, to be honest, sounds pretty dangerous to be doing both at once.

The mission, Major Corrigan reported from the site of the battle, was a resounding success. And a film crew recorded it all, including a shot of a German sign prohibiting photography.

The war theme continued in A Letter To Lilli, oddly scheduled in a late night slot. This moving documentary told how a Jewish doctor, Lilli Jahn, corresponded regularly with her five children from the labour camp where she was imprisoned.

The secret letters, and those her children had written to her, were found six years ago and used as the basis of a book by her grandson Martin Doerry.

He and Ilse Doerry, his mother and Lilli's eldest daughter, were shown revisiting the places in the story, as extracts from the letters were read.

Understandably, Isle, who recounted the painful story with love and dignity, didn't feel able to visit Auschwitz, where her mother died.

She wrote her last letter on the train to the camp and, even then, refused to condemn her husband, a German Christian who divorced her and remarried, for not attempting to get her released.

Ilse said it was easier for strangers to condemn him than her or Martin. "He deserted her but he did not kill my mother. It's the Nazis who killed her," she said.

Published: 08/04/2004