by Damien Lewis
All knew how vital was this mission. They were slated to drop near the town of Brétigny-sur-Orge, lying some 20 miles south of Paris, where a group of the Paris district Resistance would be waiting, showing the pre-arranged recognition signal. Once on the ground, they were to combine forces and blow up trains steaming through the area, and to wreak havoc upon nearby fuel and ammo dumps. That done, they were to be pulled out by an RAF aircraft that would land for the purpose of bringing them home, and at a destination as yet to be confirmed.
They weren’t about to give up on all that now. After all, during long months of training these men had been forged as one in fire and steel, which meant they could go through the likes of what had just happened and take it all in their stride. They could almost lose their lives, their kit, their drop-zone and their comrades on the ground, and still hunger to take the fight to the enemy. That was exactly the spirit the SAS training regime was designed to inculcate in each and every recruit: that no matter what obstacles were thrown in their way, the mission was still doable.
From the very outset, SAS training had stressed endurance, independence and the need to do and to think the utterly unexpected; to take everything and anything in one’s stride. The earliest recruits had hailed from all walks of life – from lawyers, merchant bankers and landed gentry to firemen, poachers, chip-shop owners and dockers. Over and above a certain level of physical robustness, the SAS’s founder David Stirling had stressed the need for psychological strength – self-discipline, imagination, intelligence.
Initially, Stirling and his small band of originals had had no base from which to operate. Someone had asked the obvious question – where was their camp? ‘Well, that’s the first job,’ Stirling had replied; ‘You steal one.’ That evening the men had headed down to a nearby military camp, ‘where we stole tents, we stole everything . . . we stole a piano’, Stirling recalled. ‘By the next morning we had . . . probably the best camp in the area.’
The strategic value of that first lesson – stealing a camp –wasn’t lost on anyone. From then on, recruits had to beg, borrow and pilfer wherever possible, for those would become vital skills when operating behind enemy lines. Recruits were given a list of things they had to purloin: ‘a lady’s bicycle . . . a cockerel, a hen, a bit of a car or a bus – anything’, Jim Almonds, another of the originals, recalled. The focus on thievery played a two-fold role. It was also designed to ‘find out what sort of people we were and what we were capable of’.
Encouraging individuality and initiative was key. So too was promoting the concept of merit-above-rank. Officers and men were subjected to exactly the same rigours in training, so that if only one individual reached the target he should still be capable of executing the mission, regardless of rank. The need to get along was paramount, especially when living together in small units for months on end, far behind enemy lines. The aim was to meld individuality and initiative with teamwork as never before.
Despite recent efforts to overhaul the SAS – to drag it into line – the peculiar rigours of the training regime remained largely unchanged. Captain Garstin and his men had enjoyed their own distinctive baptism of fire, starting off in the wild terrain around the Scottish town of Darvel in East Ayrshire, known locally as the Lang Toon – the Long Town – and the SAS’s base upon their return to the UK. There Colonel Mayne had proceeded to set them his incredible, one-and-only, around-Britain challenge.
From their Darvel camp – set in a pair of disused lace-mills, and surrounded by the rugged Cunninghame Hills – they were to make their way to leafy Chelmsford, lying just to the east of London, a journey of around 400 miles. It would prove to be a good deal longer the way that Mayne prescribed it: en route, they were to sign in at various hotels, post offices and town hall registers, starting first with Glasgow, some 30 miles to the north of Darvel, and all without being caught.
A hunter force of police, assisted by the Home Guard, would be on their tail, alerted to their likely route. To make matters worse, all they had to complete the journey were the clothes they stood up in, a few bottles of vitamin pills, a handful each of Benzedrine tablets – known colloquially as ‘bennies’, and a powerful amphetamine – their personal weapons, and that was it. No food, no money, no rail tickets. Nothing. The around-Britain challenge was to be completed in competition with several other similarly charged SAS parties. And so the race was on.
For Garstin and his men their odyssey began in a bus, with hail thudding like gunshots against the windows. Of course, the conductor wanted their fares, but they had no way of paying. They met his demands with a menacing silence – glowering eyes under red berets, Colt pistols strapped to their sides. They dismounted before the scheduled stop – no one was about to argue – and melted into a remote patch of woodland. While Rex Wiehe and Ginger Jones, the inseparables, went on patrol, Lance Corporal Howard Lutton, another Irishman and something of a restless soul, kindled a roaring fire, while Captain Garstin produced a goose – recently purloined – from his backpack.
Lutton was something of a poacher by choice, and only a soldier by necessity. Born in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, in January 1919, he’d falsified his age so he could sign up a year early with the Royal Ulster Rifles. He’d gone on to serve in Palestine and India prior to the war, but had found home duties irksome, spending time in detention due to his high-spirited ways. Having volunteered for airborne duties, he’d found his calling, being judged a ‘good average performer’ and to have ‘worked hard’ when training for 1 SAS in April ’44.
Once he’d rigged up a spit, Lutton soon had the goose roasting nicely, and the forest was thick with the mouth-watering aroma. By the time a squad of the local constabulary had put in an appearance, the fugitives were ready to jump them, whipping off their red berets and whipping out their weapons, which were jabbed into the captives’ ribs. Ginger Jones, who had a long-lived dislike of ‘coppers’, kept cursing in the makeshift German he’d learned during long years at war, telling the ‘prisoners’ they were about to be shot.
They in turn complained that they were out after poultry-rustlers and had come to investigate the smoke. Having spied the roasting goose, they declared that Garstin and his party were under arrest. One of Garstin’s men, Tom ‘Paddy’ Barker – another Irishman –was almost as large and fearsome as Lieutenant Colonel Mayne, who at 6 feet 2 towered over most. Three years back Paddy Barker, then working as a grocer’s assistant and known to all locally by the nickname ‘Tot’, had signed up with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, before volunteering for the SAS at age twenty.
Barker – an ‘average all round performer, always cheerful’, according to his parachute training records – tended to swear all day and drink all night, and as a result he – like Jones – had seen the inside of many a police cell. At his and Jones’s hands, the captured ‘coppers’ ended up lashed to some nearby trees, so the wanted men could enjoy their meal in peace, the roast goose being washed down with a ‘borrowed’ bottle of whisky.
Leaving the policemen tied up, the party of desperadoes set off into the night. A bridleway led to the police car, a glorious Humber with eight seats. All piled inside, and with twelve gallons of fuel in the tank they set off, intent on completing a good chunk of their journey in style. With Ginger Jones at the wheel they sped past several police and Home Guard checkpoints, returning salutes, and with no one seeming to realise that the ‘enemy’ was ‘passing under their noses’. Upon arrival at Glasgow, a phalanx of men in uniform piled out of ‘their’ police car and marched into the central post office to sign the register, and who was there that might venture to object?
Next, south to Kilmarnock, where their signatures were expected in the guestbook of the Bull Hotel. The hostelry’s main entrance proved to be menaced by an alert policeman, but Howard Lutton knew of a back entrance. Once they’d stolen inside, a friendly barmaid agreed to purloin the register, so they could sign in the privacy of the back bar, whereupon she proceeded to serve them with a round of beer, fo
r good measure.
South of Kilmarnock, the Humber finally ran dry. Not to be delayed, Garstin’s desperadoes hijacked a bus, leaving the driver yelling angry threats about police cells and more. After a night laid up in the vehicle, they reached the outskirts of Carlisle –just short of 100 miles into their journey – but were forced to abandon their transport, which was all out of fuel. Shortly they came upon an army truck with a burst tyre. A Free French parachutist was cursing away, as he tried to change the wheel.
Garstin and his men gathered, apparently innocently offering help, not a man amongst them letting slip that he spoke any French. As they went about changing the wheel, the Free French parachutist kept making wisecracks in French, all at Garstin and his men’s expense. When the work was done and the truck ready, Vaculik turned on the man and announced in fluent French: ‘Thank you for all your politeness. Now you’re going to get a good hiding.’
The terrified Frenchman was grabbed, bound and flung into a ditch. All that Garstin and his men really wanted was the truck, and the supplies of beer, bread and tins of Spam that it carried. Having got underway, and polishing off a good proportion of the food and drink en route, they made their way into Carlisle, whereupon the town hall register was duly signed without the slightest hint of any trouble.
Having reckoned they must have shaken off any pursuers, Garstin and his men trucked the hundred-odd miles south to York, whereupon they figured it was time for a little luxury. One man checked into a hotel, taking just the one room – a large suite complete with two beds and a magnificent bathroom. Then, one by one, they smuggled themselves inside, whereupon they spent a glorious night sharing the beds and even with two in the bathtub.
At the crack of dawn they filtered out again, washed, shaven and well slept, leaving the bill unpaid. Not far from the hotel they spied a double-decker bus, the driver and conductor sitting outside enjoying an early-morning cup of tea. Garstin eyed his men. The bus was perfect, especially as there were only one or two housewives with shopping bags waiting patiently inside. The fugitives filed casually aboard, before Ginger Jones slid into the driver’s seat and they were off.
The driver must have raised the alarm, for shortly a policeman stepped into the road and held up a hand to stop them. Jones’s only response was to gun the engine, driving straight at the ‘copper’, forcing the poor man to jump for his life. Figuring ‘things were getting hot’, Garstin and his party decided to separate for the next stage of their journey, fixing a spot in a wood just outside Sheffield as that evening’s rendezvous.
Hitchhiking the seventy-odd miles south, one of the fugitives managed to cadge a lift in a police car, manned by those who were charged with apprehending ‘a group of bandits in uniform’ who’d stolen a bus. The police didn’t think to suspect the lone hitchhiker, beyond taking a perfunctory glance at his papers. By the time all had gathered in the Sheffield woods, a purloined duck and a chicken were roasting over a fire, and only Paddy Barker, the giant Irishman, was missing.
No one was particularly worried. Barker was known to be able to look after himself. The Robin Hood warriors were tucking into their meal when a strange cry rang out through the dark woods. ‘Git up there! Gee up, old hoss.’ Sure enough it was Barker, riding a farmer’s nag laden down with a sackful of bottled beer. A contented night was had by all, but shortly after dawn the men awoke to the sound of the horse’s worried neighs. Fortunately they’d tethered her in a patch of nearby pasture and her early warning cries would serve to prevent their capture.
Melting into the trees, Garstin and his men watched as a party of the Home Guard marched into their camp – sleeping bags just vacated, fire still warm. ‘Might be Germans about,’ one declared, worriedly. ‘Better get in touch with HQ.’ A figure hurried off, but he was shortly rugby tackled by Barker, after which the others were surrounded by armed and dangerous men, who tied them up before breaking camp and setting off into the trees.
It was early by the time Garstin and his men made it to Sheffield, where the post office register had to be signed. In a nearby cafe they were served tea, as they waited for the post office to open. A group of RAF men were also in the cafe, and their gleaming car was parked right outside. Garstin eyed the vehicle and the RAF party, before announcing quietly: ‘Let’s hope they don’t head off too soon.’
At nine o’clock on the dot they filed into the post office and signed the register, before stealing the car, complete with a resident airman fast asleep in the back. By the time he’d woken up to his predicament, Garstin and his band were well on their way. The car ran out of fuel after about a hundred miles, after which they tied up their hapless passenger, and via a lift first on a Churchill tank, and then on a furniture lorry, they made their triumphant way into Chelmsford . . . journey’s end.
As a bonus, they were the first of the SAS bands to make it. But if they’d been expecting any kind of a prize – they’d been hoping for at least a few days’ leave – they were to be sorely disappointed. Orders awaited, complete with rail warrants to speed them back to their Darvel base. Upon their return, they were warned to prepare for departure. Their entire SAS regiment was being dispatched to southern England, to a secret base from where they would be deploying into Nazi-occupied Europe.
With any number of around-Britain challenges underway at any one time, Mayne was accustomed to irate military police turning up on his doorstep. A highly decorated lieutenant colonel in what remained a mysterious and little-known regiment – there had been little, if any, publicity concerning the exploits of the SAS – Mayne was resolute in defence of his men, no matter what they might have been up to. Raiding Kilmarnock police station; robbing a Home Guard’s armoury; hijacking a steam train – for Mayne, all was fair in love and war. He had become a dab hand at tearing up all sorts of charge sheets.
With suitably irreverent grit, SAS commanders had taken to giving their missions the most inventive of codenames: Operations Squatter and Bigamy in North Africa, and Narcissus and Candytuft for Mediterranean missions. Likewise, Captain Garstin and his men were part of a squadron-strength deployment codenamed Operation Cain, as in the biblical son of Adam and Eve who, in a fit of jealousy, had murdered his brother, Abel, and been condemned by God to wander as an outcast for eternity. In similar spirit, there was a standing joke that the codename SABU had been adopted from Sabu Dastagir, the Indian actor who had played one of the lead characters in the 1937 movie Elephant Boy, and Mowgli in the 1942 film Jungle Book.
There was also an Operation Abel, for good measure, and that codename would last the full course. But once in the field, early messages sent by Morse code would end up transposing ‘Cain’ into ‘Gain’ and vice versa, with Gain soon being adopted as the mission’s official codename. ‘Operation CAIN should read Operation GAIN,’ a top-secret order would determine.
Yet given SABU-70’s dark fortunes tonight, ‘Cain’ might prove infinitely more appropriate.
Chapter 3
‘Okay, boys, twenty minutes to the jump,’ the dispatcher announced, as the war-wounded Stirling limped towards the drop-zone. At last. The dispatcher had to laugh at the eagerness with which Captain Garstin and his men clambered to their feet. No disrespect to the RAF crew, but it was high time that they were shot of that warplane and got their feet on solid ground.
In a flurry of movement the men made their final preparations, fastening the straps of their leg-bags tighter and forming up in the order in which they were to jump. The tough canvas leg-bags were stuffed full of the heaviest kit, and each would be lowered via a drawstring release system on 25 feet of rope, just before the parachutist touched down. That way the bag made contact first, warning the jumper how close he was to landfall and also taking its own weight, so saving his legs from the worst of the impact.
As figures jostled closer together, the dispatcher hinged back the thick plywood covers that closed the Stirling’s trap. That done, he stepped down into the ‘bathtub’, keeping his feet balanced on the rims to either side, whil
e he unfastened a pair of wingnuts that held the bottom of the ‘bath’ closed. Once they were free, it was pretty much wind pressure alone that swung open the floor of the ‘bath’, at which stage it was locked into position via the wingnuts.
One RAF dispatcher, Sergeant John Lunt, spoke of clambering down into the trap to unfasten it in this perilous way, after which a paratrooper riding on the Stirling had remarked to him, in amazement: ‘I wouldn’t want your job for all the tea in China.’ Lunt was thinking to himself, wryly: ‘Well, I wouldn’t want your job dropping behind enemy lines!’
Either way, the route was now free for Garstin and his men to jump through what was essentially the Stirling’s bomb-bay, into the thin and raging blue. Of course, there were now two sources of icy blast tearing into the aircraft’s hold – the open trap, plus the ragged hole torn in the Stirling’s floor. The jumpers waited in position, silent, tense, expectant. Nervously, each checked the line of the man in front, ensuring it was firmly hooked up to the steel cable running the length of the hold, while the dispatcher walked along the columns of men, doing a final inspection.
Each SAS man wore a pair of rubber-soled boots – ideal for silent, stealthy operations – plus a Dennison smock, which came with a special strip of material that fastened between the legs, to prevent it from catching the air and billowing out during the descent. Bespoke, dome-shaped paratroopers’ helmets had replaced the wide-rimmed British Army ‘tin hats’ of earlier years, and secreted somewhere on their person each man had his SAS beret – the red version, for that was one battle the top brass had largely won. Utterly distinctive and iconic, the red beret was perfect for frontline combat operations, but with its high visibility it was hardly ideal for heading deep behind enemy lines.