Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  With David Stirling’s capture, his equally capable brother, Bill, had taken over 2 SAS command. ‘Colonel Bill’, as he was known, had been aghast at their 29 March ‘suicide’ orders. Deploying in such concentrated numbers in such a narrow, restricted area, the SAS would be tied down and cut to pieces. It would be a criminal waste of this highly trained specialist force. In order to underline his objections to what he rightly viewed as a senseless loss of life, Bill Stirling either resigned in protest, or was dismissed before he could resign.

  In the wake of his departure, unrest seethed, as did dissension in the ranks. A string of senior SAS officers queued up to follow Colonel Bill’s example and to fall on their swords. But thankfully, his sacrifice was not to be in vain. On 17 May high command cancelled their 29 March orders, accepting that a means needed to be found to use the SAS as they should be – crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war far behind enemy lines.

  In seeing good sense prevail, the SAS were fortunate to have backing from the very top. For months Winston Churchill had been agitating for the arming of resistance armies across occupied Europe. A die-hard advocate of special forces operations and guerrilla warfare, in the spring of 1944 he’d ordered arms drops to the French Resistance to be substantially increased. He’d cabled US president Roosevelt, urging him to help raise resistance armies across France ‘à la Tito’ – a reference to Yugoslavia’s wartime guerrilla leader.

  When the Stirlings of 190 Squadron – and its sister unit, 620 Squadron – weren’t flying parachutists into France, their holds were stuffed full of containers of arms and explosives, to be dropped into French hands. That way, when the first SAS units plummeted into hostile airspace, they would have heavily armed Resistance parties awaiting them on the ground. All being well, it was just such a force of men-at-arms that would receive the SABU-70 raiders, on a night-dark field lying a few dozen miles to the south of Paris.

  The Stirling was scheduled to be airborne for three hours before she reached the drop-zone (DZ). For some in Garstin’s stick, this was their first foray behind the lines, and their nervous energy was plain to see. This called for the rum-jar, to provide ‘a little Dutch courage’. But as Wiehe searched in his pack, the hapless lieutenant realised that amidst all the dash of their departure, he’d forgotten this most important accoutrement of waging war. He’d left it, full of rum and ready to go, in the mess. As the men threw angry looks in his direction, Wiehe – on his first ever SAS operation – felt mortified.

  With no rum, the old hands started to sing, to lift their spirits. Captain Garstin had split his SABU-70 stick into two sections, each of six men. One was commanded by himself, with Corporal Serge Vaculik – a Free French SAS man – as his second-in-command, while the other had Lieutenant Wiehe in charge, with a Brit, Corporal Jones, under him. That way, each stick had a fluent French-speaker within its ranks, which gave it the greatest chance of being able to operate as David Stirling had originally intended – as a small-scale and independent unit, hitting targets by stealth and surprise.

  Smoking was banned on the Stirling, but each man had his pockets crammed full of cigarettes. Every now and then a figure rose from his seat to stretch stiffened limbs, but weighed down under their bulky jump packs, plus the flight bags that were strapped to their legs, it was hard to do anything more than shuffle a few steps. Nervous individuals checked their watches: it was well past midnight. They knew it wasn’t long before they’d be over the French cliffs. What they wouldn’t give for a shot of that missing rum.

  For some rueing the loss of the rum-jar, this was just one more mission after so many. With his shock of unruly red hair, his powerful physique and squat, boxer’s nose, Corporal Thomas Jones had been with the SAS ever since the unit’s formation in North Africa. A former miner hailing from the gritty streets of Wigan, the twenty-eight-year-old prided himself on being a fine footballer and an equally capable street brawler when the need arose. With his blue eyes and freckled face, Jones was a rough diamond type, and he would find himself busted back to the rank of ‘trooper’ more than once during the war.

  On one occasion Jones would be in London on leave when an emergency order went out for all SAS troops to return to base. Stuck for transport, Jones grabbed the nearest thing ‘available’ –a US military policeman’s (MP) jeep parked on the Tottenham Court Road – and crammed it full of his mates. On the wild drive that followed Jones figured it was only right to ‘thank the Yanks for the loan of it. It’s just as well to be polite.’ They used the jeep’s radio to call the MP’s headquarters. ‘Sorry, old man, but we’ve had to borrow Charlie for a while,’ they announced. Charlie was the jeep’s call-sign.

  When Jones and his comrades reached SAS headquarters, there were twenty assorted cars and trucks – all purloined – lined up at the gates. Colonel Mayne greeted the sight with a fleeting smile. His only comment was to remark upon how ‘they’ll have me on the carpet’ for ‘all those cars outside’. The alacrity with which his men had returned, and the resourcefulness they had shown in finding transport by any means, proved how his regiment’s esprit de corps remained undimmed.

  Corporal Jones was known universally as ‘Ginger’, and most were ignorant of his real name – Thomas. He was even listed as ‘Ginger Jones’ on official SAS reports. Quick-witted and with a fast animal intellect, he was blessed with a typical British soldier’s sense of humour. ‘The wife says she’s going to make a man out of me or die in the attempt,’ he would remark, of his impending marriage. ‘I’ve already ordered the flowers’ – the flowers for the funeral.

  Jones, who loved his drink, was just the sort to kick up a stink about the missing rum-jar. But he’d formed a special bond with Lieutenant Wiehe, for whom he served as section corporal, a bond that was as strong as it was perhaps surprising. Though Wiehe appreciated how ‘Ginger was a real SAS “type”’, the two shared a camaraderie that was greater than the gulf in their backgrounds. As was so often the case in the SAS, to-the-manor-born public-school types would find themselves serving with those brought up on the toughest streets, yet the two rubbed along perfectly side by side.

  In light of that, ‘Ginger’ was less inclined to fret over Wiehe’s rare moment of forgetfulness. But perhaps the loss of the rum-jar was a bad omen for the coming mission.

  As the Stirling powered onwards towards the French cliffs, trouble would not be long in coming.

  Chapter 2

  With the evocative sound of bursts of song echoing back and forth across the Stirling’s shadowed hold, a figure enquired of the flight’s dispatcher – the member of the aircrew whose role it was to oversee the jump – if he might borrow his intercom, via which to communicate with the pilot in the cockpit.

  ‘Hello, Skipper, where are we now?’ he asked.

  Chatting away, he learned that the hitherto overcast sky ‘was pretty clear now’, and that the Stirling was making fine progress towards landfall over France. Handing back the intercom, he settled back with his thoughts. A clear sky – it was, of course, a double-edged sword. It should make it far easier to find the drop-zone, but it would also make it considerably easier for the enemy to see and to target the warplane. For Corporal Serge Vaculik, this promised to be one momentous jump, and he had more reasons than most to be both fearful and exultant at the same time.

  Czech by birth, but French by adopted nationality – Vaculik had moved to France with his family as a child – he was about to parachute back into his homeland, as part of the Allied forces charged with liberating it from Nazi Germany’s iron grip. That, for sure, was an exhilarating proposition. But on the flipside, the last time Vaculik had crossed swords with the enemy, he’d been part of a vanquished army that had awaited salvation at Dunkirk, and unlike Garstin, he’d failed to make it off those war-torn beaches.

  As with the SAS captain, Vaculik had given his all to prevent the Nazi blitzkrieg from steamrollering across Belgium, when he was serving as a member of the French armed forces. But at Dunkirk he’d found himsel
f in a rescue boat packed with would-be evacuees, which had capsized on a freak wave. Though half-drowned, somehow he’d made it back to shore, struggling through a sea churned white with explosions, onto a beach strewn with the ‘dead and dying’. Fighting for his life, as flight after flight of Stuka dive-bombers screamed overhead, Vaculik had been knocked unconscious.

  Wounded and floundering in a ‘black emptiness’, he had come to, only to realise that he had been taken prisoner along with thousands of other Frenchmen and Brits. Marched eastwards in a massive column of captives, Vaculik had risked a daring getaway by jumping into a river at night, before reaching the border with Germany, after which he figured any chance of escape was lost. Having been swept downstream and clambered ashore, Vaculik had embarked upon an epic journey, at first disguised as a tramp and even hitching lifts on German Army trucks to speed his way.

  During an incredible six-month odyssey he had crossed half of western Europe, being variously shot at by border guards, hunted by the Gestapo through the streets of supposedly neutral Spain, locked in a Spanish military dungeon, and beaten and placed before firing squads. Over that time he was forced to jump from the roofs of speeding trains, to fight and kill a feral dog, to endure weeks locked in a Portuguese prison, and to brave being lost at sea in terrible storms, before finally reaching British shores in December 1940 . . . only to be arrested as a suspected German spy.

  During one of his many incarcerations, Vaculik had met an Austrian count and fellow prisoner, who had given him a letter to carry to his sister, who lived in London. Having arrived in Britain with that letter – written in German – in his pocket, Vaculik had faced interrogation by Scotland Yard detectives about his alleged Germanic connections. He would spend forty-three days locked in a Pentonville prison cell.

  ‘Do you know we could shoot you as a spy?’ they’d warned him. ‘If that Austrian isn’t still in prison, it will be the worse for you.’

  Luckily, ‘that Austrian’ – a fervent anti-Nazi – was able to vouch for Vaculik from his Portuguese jail cell. Released from prison, Vaculik had duly volunteered for the Free French parachutists and in due course he’d earned his jump wings. He’d been recruited into 1 SAS prior to the D-Day landings, being one of those desperately needed individuals in precious short supply right then – a combat-experienced, jump-trained, fluent French-speaker who also spoke excellent English.

  Arguably, there was no one amongst the twelve aboard that Stirling who had suffered as much, or endured such a perilous or testing journey to make it to this moment, not even Lieutenant Wiehe or Captain Garstin. Vaculik couldn’t wait to get his boots onto French soil again and to take the fight to the reviled – and much-feared – enemy.

  For four long years his family had been mired deep in the conflict. His parents, living in a small village in Brittany, had been forced to endure the German occupation without either of their sons to hand. While Vaculik was variously fighting, evading capture or training to return to France, at age seventeen his younger brother, Antoine, had signed up with the Resistance. As the Stirling thundered ever onwards, Vaculik thrilled to the idea that all being well, he might shortly be ‘fighting side by side with’ Antoine.

  But hardly had he entertained such thoughts than the night sky to either side of the speeding aircraft was torn apart by the sudden roar of explosions. It could only signify one thing: they were over the French cliffs, and the German shore batteries had opened up on the British warplane. Each time a lone aircraft packed full of parachutists headed into Nazi-occupied Europe, it was forced to run the gauntlet, the German military having ringed the coastline with searchlights, flak nests and radar posts. Few amongst the SAS party had expected to get through without taking fire.

  But right now on the beaches below hundreds of thousands of men-at-arms were locked in a herculean struggle to the death, and tonight’s aerial onslaught had a special savagery to it. Vaculik had been on his feet stretching his legs, and he found himself flung from side to side, as the pilot executed a series of evasive manoeuvres, trying to steer the massive warplane along a path that avoided the worst of the flak. But all across the aircraft’s front the heavens seemed awash with a seething mass of fire, each burst appearing to grope closer and closer, each blast seeming to shake the Stirling ever more powerfully, as if she had been swept up in some giant’s angry grasp.

  It can only have been seconds after the first opening salvoes, although it felt far longer, when the very worst happened and a deafening roar seemed to tear apart the parachutists’ eardrums, a sudden rent being torn in the floor at their feet, shards of blasted metal and wood flying in all directions. As the twelve men gazed in abject fear, staring out through that jagged hole into the howling darkness, Vaculik was amongst the first to utter a cry of alarm.

  ‘Jerry’s got us! We’re going to break our—’

  His words were lost in the howl of straining engines and the thunderous on-rush of air, as the stricken Stirling began a nosedive towards earth. Pitched forward by the sudden lurch, figures grabbed at the ropes lashed to the Stirling’s sides, in an effort to prevent themselves from being thrown in a heap against the forward bulkhead. Even as the dive steepened, the concentration of enemy fire seemed to worsen, as if the pilot was flying down the enemy’s very gun-barrels, the screaming of the Bristol Hercules powerplants growing ever more intense.

  Pitched almost on the vertical, Vaculik feared they were done for. There would be no time to jump before machine and men ploughed into the unforgiving earth. Matters only worsened when the night sky to one side of the stricken warplane erupted in a blinding flash of fire and light. In an instant, the terrified men realised what had happened: one of their four engines had been hit and had burst into flame, the fiery conflagration licking past and almost through the jagged hole at their feet.

  Convinced that they were done for, Vaculik waited for the ‘final crash and death in this burning coffin of a plane’. But somehow, miraculously, the moment of impact never came. Instead, by superhuman effort Sutherland managed to nurse the Stirling back under control, and at what had to be treetop height he levelled out their flight, after which the Stirling began to claw her way skywards again, even as further bursts of enemy fire tore after the fleeing warplane.

  It was the turn of Garstin and his men to marvel at the sheer courage and steely nerve of the Stirling’s aircrew. Even before they’d gained altitude figures dashed aft, to battle with the flames. Fire extinguishers were wrenched off their mounts, and when those were exhausted the SAS men were prevailed upon to hand over their water bottles, to help douse the fires. The aircrew proved to be ‘supremely self-confident and cool-headed’, Vaculik observed. Their key priority had been to save the aircraft and the parachutists entrusted to their charge. ‘Their own safety didn’t matter.’

  But the drama was far from over. Once the fire was deemed to have been suppressed enough to risk a bailout, Garstin and his men were ordered to go.

  ‘Get to the trap, boys!’ the dispatcher cried. ‘Be ready to jump!’

  No one was about to argue. As every man had had drummed into him during training, it was 100 per cent the pilot’s decision when and where they should, or shouldn’t jump. They were still a good 150 miles short of their DZ, but if the pilot said leap, they were going through the trap like a dose of salts. Everything else – location, onward route, missing kit, etc. – they could deal with once they were safely down.

  As one, Garstin and his men levered themselves to their feet, reached upwards with free hands and clipped their static lines to the steel cable running along the roof of the Stirling. Like that, each line would go taut just seconds after jumping, ripping the parachute out of its pack to catch the air, even as the figure beneath it plummeted earthwards. None of their containers were likely to be coming with them – they were packed full of explosives, weaponry, ammo and assorted supplies – but this was an emergency, and far better that than to go down like a fiery comet hell-bent on death and ruin.

&
nbsp; For what felt like an age the twin lines of men stood there, ready to shuffle forward and leap through the trap. But eventually, a figure appeared from the cockpit. It was the Stirling’s co-pilot.

  Seemingly utterly unruffled, he gestured at the dispatcher and cried: ‘It’s all right, Jim. They needn’t jump! We’ll get the old bus through.’

  By ‘the old bus’ he meant, of course, the Stirling. It turned out that by one of those incredible occurrences that only ever seemed to happen during wartime, the fire had gone out by itself and before it had reached the aircraft’s fuel tanks. So, instead of leaping through the trap into territory unknown, the twelve men turned back to their seats, using their jackets and pullovers to douse what remained of the flames inside the fuselage.

  The note of the Stirling’s engines had changed markedly now. Three laboured mightily to do what four had before, meaning their airspeed was considerably reduced, and while the Stirling might not be on fire any more, there was still a hole rent in her floor which let the night wind whistle in most disconcertingly. As the aircrew darted back and forth, faces blackened by soot, Garstin and his men caught an utterly fabulous sight up front: Sutherland had turned in his seat and with a wide grin on his face was yelling something at them. At first they couldn’t catch the words above all the noise. But eventually they made out the gist: ‘Everyone okay?’

  As one, the twelve men raised their hands and gave the thumbs up. It was bitterly cold in the rear of the warplane, and their reduced speed and manoeuvrability had to make them a sitting duck for any enemy night-fighters that might be prowling the skies, yet Sutherland made it clear that he was pressing on with the mission. That took nerves of steel. It had to demand their ultimate respect. If the pilot and his crew could brave this out, so too could those twelve SAS men perched in that freezing hold.