SAS Great Escapes

by Damien Lewis

  Two berths away was a much larger vessel, on which German sentries could be seen. They would have to slip anchor as silently as ghosts in order not to disturb them. One by one the escapees flitted aboard, only to discover another problem awaited. The teenage brother of one of their Greek resistance hosts had stowed away. Upon discovery, Spike – thus called due to his tearaway haircut – begged to be allowed to stay. Tearfully he explained that he was just another useless mouth for his mother to feed, in enemy-occupied Athens where food was becoming increasingly hard to come by. But if the escapees would take him with them, he could sign up to the British Army and fight.

  At first Farran was adamant: Spike had to go. Provisions were in precious short supply. They couldn’t afford another mouth to feed and water. But when they tried to eject Spike from the boat, he held on for dear life and made enough noise to awaken the nearby sentries. There seemed to be no option: Spike would have to become an extra member of the crew. That decided, they cast off silently, allowing the caïque to drift on the tide. Only once they were a good distance from shore did Lefteris dare to start the engine. As the citation for Farran’s MC noted, finally: ‘Farran and a party of escapees left for Egypt.’

  With the engine gently phut-phutting through the quiet of the night, Farran glanced around the crew. There was himself and Sinclair, the New Zealander and Commando; the Aussie and British escapee who’d joined them at the eleventh hour; the two Greek crew-members, who were the only ones who knew anything about seafaring – Elias their captain, plus Lefteris the engineer; Spike, the teenage stowaway, plus the eight mystery passengers – refugees – sheltering in the cramped hold. They were fifteen souls in all. Elias was their sea-captain, but as Farran was the senior rank on board, key decisions were bound to rest squarely with him.

  Farran had calculated they had just enough fuel to reach Alexandria, in British-held Egypt. For navigation all they had was a battered compass, plus an old school atlas, ‘which showed the shapes of the islands we were to follow’ until Crete. After Crete, it should be ‘plain sailing due south’. By way of supplies they had the bread the friendly policeman had given them, plus some extra loaves, and a few raw onions. For water, they’d filled an earthenware pot and an old olive oil barrel, which Farran hoped would be enough to last the journey.

  Once out of the harbour they hit the full swell of the open sea and almost all were violently sick, due to the pitch and roll of the caïque. They rounded the first island and immediately spotted a German patrol boat. In a hurried scramble fishing nets were cast over the side, and all but Elias and Lefteris hurried below decks. The enemy craft drew closer, but their bluff seemed to hold and, satisfied with the caïque’s apparent legitimacy, the E-boat roared away, seeking other quarry.

  On day two of their voyage, the distinctive form of a Dornier DO17 – a twin-engine German fighter-bomber – swooped low over the craft. The aircrews’ faces were clearly visible gazing down at them, the would-be fishermen gesturing at their nets. As no bursts of heavy cannon fire raked the length of the fragile craft, Farran and party guessed the ruse must have held good. In their disguises, tanned under the Greek sun and crewing a genuine Greek caïque, they seemed to be able to pass muster.

  Farran was initially delighted at how well the voyage progressed. But during their second night at sea one of the crew misread the shape of an island, turning them way off course to the west, instead of keeping on a south-easterly bearing. Some hours passed before Farran noticed that the islands they were passing didn’t match those shown on the atlas. He awoke Elias, who had been catching some much-needed sleep, but at first the ship’s captain refused to believe the atlas, trusting instead to his instinct that they were on the right bearing. Farran knew from first-hand experience how easy it was to stray off course if you failed to place complete trust in your maps and navigational aids.

  Before Crete, he’d seen action during Operation Compass, in the Western Desert campaign of the winter of 1940, forming part of a reconnaissance unit guiding a squadron of heavy armour. As a young and relatively inexperienced officer, Farran had had to lead the convoy through the desert south of Mersa Matruh, from the cab of an eight-hundredweight pick-up. He’d been put through a desert navigation course in Cairo, learning the method of ‘dead reckoning’ – calculating his position by taking a series of compass bearings and carefully measuring distance travelled. But as the convoy chugged through the desert Farran had allowed his intuition to take over. It told him they had strayed too far north, and so he had altered course to compensate.

  It proved a near-fatal error, for it resulted in the convoy becoming lost in the desert as night fell. Farran described himself as ‘panic-stricken’ at the time. He had driven around in the pitch darkness, hoping he might spot the lights of a camp, the convoy following doggedly after him. When he did finally lead the column to their proper destination, the following morning, he was severely reprimanded. From that experience he had learned a crucial lesson: ‘The only way to navigate is to have complete faith in your instruments.’

  Now, in the caïque, faced with the compass readings and the atlas, Elias finally had to concede that Farran was right: they had strayed far from their course. With dusk upon them and visibility dropping, the only option was to anchor and wait for morning, when they could get a better sense of their location. But with nightfall, someone noticed what appeared to be the form of another boat steaming out of the darkness. This late at night and so far off a bonafide Greek fisherman’s course, it would be hard to convince anyone that they were an innocent fishing party.

  But as time passed, the silhouette of the ‘boat’ seemed to come no nearer. At dawn, they realised their mistake: what they’d mistaken for the outline of a ship was actually a rocky crag rearing from the ocean depths. From plotting its position, Farran confirmed they were well out of their way. ‘It was a serious business this loss of course,’ he remarked, ‘since our fuel supply left no margin of safety.’ Taking stock of their precious diesel, to their utter consternation they realised that someone had pilfered three jerrycans from the hold. Somehow, the black-market fuel that had been so carefully purloined by Lefteris had been plundered at the docks, just prior to their departure.

  It was a dire predicament, landfall in Egypt now lying well beyond their much-depleted diesel supplies. But equally, it was too late to turn back. As escaped POWs with so much accumulated knowledge of the Greek resistance, all would doubtless face torture at the hands of the Gestapo should they be recaptured. Their only option was to press on and hope that on the far side of Crete a passing British warship might find them. Farran was the senior rank, and to a man they agreed that come what may, they had to continue.

  They set off once more, the rhythmic phut-phut of the small diesel engine providing the only beat to the passing hours. Shortly, they neared the chokepoint and real danger – the eighty-mile-wide sliver of water that separates Rhodes and Crete, two fortress-islands recently wrested from Allied hands by the Germans. Heavy enemy patrols were known to quarter the waters that lay ahead, known as ‘the Sea of Crete’. The escapees had planned to enter these straits at dusk, hoping to make it through under the cover of darkness. But having discovered their lack of fuel there was no time to delay: they would have to attempt to slip past in full daylight.

  A journey scheduled to last only four days was already creeping into its fourth with no end in sight. Farran’s MC citation described how ‘food and water were running short’. If they failed to brave the Sea of Crete and reach the open waters beyond, they had little chance of making the run south to Egypt. Farran decided they would have to risk putting ashore on Santorini, a nearby island, in search of extra provisions.

  They landed at what they thought was a deserted and unguarded stretch of shoreline, where the famished escapees were able to scavenge the discarded ears of corn from recently harvested fields. But it was precious little to keep body and soul together. Acting on instinct, Farr
an decided to approach a small church. A devout Catholic by upbringing, he stepped inside, said a prayer to grant them safe passage, and left the remainder of his drachmae in the collection box.

  His prayers seemed to be answered: one of the Greeks gave a shout that he had found a cistern of fresh water. Every man slaked his thirst with sweet, delicious water. They refilled their containers, and then a shout went up from further down the cliffs. On the beach, the fugitives had discovered what seemed like manna from heaven: fishing boats could be seen bobbing in the distance, and the fishermen had left baskets of fruit hidden in the shade of some rocks. Farran was up for taking it all, but Elias was adamant they should only take the one basket, lest they bring ill-fortune by ‘violating some unwritten law of the sea’.

  Farran relented, for here on the shores of the Aegean, home to legendary gods, goddesses, sirens and sea monsters, he had no wish to push their luck. Leaving whatever money they could spare as some recompense, they hurried back to their boat, where Farran decided to take charge of rationing their meagre supplies, with Wright – the RASC staff sergeant – assisting him. Over time, Farran was becoming increasingly impressed by Wright, who struck him as being an utterly reliable and resourceful individual. Indeed, Wright would turn out to be the real ‘tough egg’ among the escapees, as opposed to the Australian Army sergeant.

  The men aboard that boat – famished and fearful – sailed into the gauntlet of the Sea of Crete, Farran sensing it would take iron will to brave what lay ahead. As dusk fell, the powerful beam of a nearby lighthouse swept the waters. Sooner or later, they would have to venture into its pulse of light and the caïque was likely to be spotted. German warplanes could be seen, taking off and landing over Heraklion airfield. It would be a simple enough task to call them in to investigate the mystery vessel.

  But miraculously, just as they were about to nose into that beam of illumination, a ghostly bank of sea mist rolled across the waters, enveloping all. Giving thanks to the gods, Elias steered the caïque into its embrace, and they chugged onwards towards the open Mediterranean. Yet their relief was to be short-lived. In this part of the world, thick night fog invariably heralded a storm. Farran noticed the sea getting progressively rougher. Soon the ‘slight choppiness’ had been transformed into ‘a boiling cauldron’. In no time the wooden caïque was being tossed from one forty-foot crest to another, as it lurched and groaned its way up and down the towering swell.

  For two full days they braved the terrible storm – Elias, holding tight to the tiller and steering the boat into the wind, for if one of those waves caught them broadside on they would be smashed to matchwood. Countless times, it was only their skilled Greek captain’s use of rudder and engine that kept them from being dragged to the depths. As Elias battled the storm, the others desperately bailed water from the craft, hanging on grimly as each wave threatened to pluck them from the boat and hurl them into the sea.

  Battling the storm threatened to exhaust their meagre fuel supplies, but they couldn’t risk shutting down the engine – the one thing that enabled the boat to make headway and keep position in the terrible conditions. Finally, the tempest subsided, and – exhausted but elated – Elias steered them into relatively placid waters. Farran was hugely impressed by their captain’s seamanship, single-mindedness and stamina, noting that ‘only an expert sailor could have brought us through . . . such a sea’.

  Having braved the storm, it was a case of being out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire. As soon as they reached calmer waters, ‘the engine gave out’. They had run out of their diesel. Worse still, Farran discovered that all their food had somehow disappeared, and there was precious little water remaining. It turned out that even as the storm had raged, some of the crew had ‘mutinied’, polishing off what remained of their supplies. Farran’s response was to take up position beside their last remaining jerrycan of water, the Greek policeman’s pistol laid across his knees. If anyone tried to get any more than their meagre daily water ration, he would shoot them dead.

  This was no idle threat. Farran was only at the beginning of what he would go on to describe as a ‘long career of violence’ in the military elite, and he had already shown what he was capable of when his temper was roused. During the Battle of Crete, he had ordered his men to shoot a group of German parachutists who were attempting to surrender. While he did not think he ‘would make a practice of shooting prisoners’, Farran noted that ‘in the heat of the moment’, he had had ‘no time to think’ during the bloody and bitter fighting on Crete.

  Together with Sinclair, Farran would now maintain a permanent armed watch on what remained of their precious water supplies. Even so, on the morning of their sixth day at sea the ‘tough egg’ of an Australian sergeant seemed to lose it completely, yelling wildly that he had not received his fair share. Driven half-mad by thirst, he punched Farran in the face in an effort to get at the jerrycan. Farran made short work of subduing the man, after which the crew had to be talked out of throwing him overboard.

  Morale among the escapees plummeted. Most were in a state of ‘collapse, in resignation to their fate’ or were ‘staring moodily out to sea’, Farran noted. But he commanded a rump who were determined not to give up. They managed to cobble together a mast of sorts, using planks ripped from the deck, and hoisted their blankets lashed together as a makeshift sail. With that providing a little leeway, they tore-up more planking to fashion crude oars. It proved too hot and debilitating rowing by day – Farran’s MC citation described how most ‘were too weak to paddle’ – but during the relative cool of night they could make a little headway.

  As they limped southwards, Farran was ever more struck by Wright’s indomitable spirit and resourcefulness. He noticed how Wright began to time ‘how long it took for a cigarette packet to pass from the bows to the stern’. From that he figured the boat was making around one and a half knots’ headway. Wright also managed to make a rough estimate of their position, using a right-angle fashioned from two sticks. By studying the shadows so cast, he judged them to lie around a hundred miles off the North African coast.

  Despite the huge distance they had covered since leaving Athens – they had travelled many miles out of their way, and figured they were closer to Benghazi in Libya than to Alexandria in Egypt – there was little chance of making landfall before running out of fresh water. Sure enough, by the seventh day the final jerrycan – though rigorously policed – had run bone dry. Men lay helpless on the deck, dousing themselves in seawater to try to keep cool and wrapping wet rags around their heads. One or two lost it completely and tried to drink from the sea. Of course, it only served to make them violently sick.

  By the dawn of day eight Farran noted that all were ‘far gone with thirst and exhaustion’. With lips chapped and tongues swollen to twice their normal size they lay motionless. But as the sky above turned pink with the rays of the rising sun, Farran heard the thrum of an aircraft. Figures sprang into a frenzy of activity, shouting and waving handkerchiefs in the air. One scrawled ‘no water’ on a blanket with some old engine oil. Suddenly, the aircraft banked over. Not knowing if it were friendly or hostile, Farran could barely believe the sense of joy and relief he felt at spotting its distinctive RAF roundels.

  It was actually a seaplane, and for a blessed moment it looked as if it were about to alight on the water. But the pilot’s test-run showed the sea to be too rough: it would rip the floats from under his wings. Instead, he soared aloft again, waggled his wings and sped away. It could only be a matter of hours now, Farran reasoned, before a destroyer steamed into view, intent on their rescue. But by the morning of their ninth day at sea, there was still no sign of any Allied vessel. The escapees’ spirits ‘sank from the heights of joy to the depths of despair’, Farran noted. They were so weak by now that they could only move by crawling and even that seemed to take superhuman effort.

  Earlier in the voyage Farran had suggested they build a mechanism to d
istil sea water, but the idea had been rejected by the others as unfeasible. Now, with death from thirst staring them in the face, it seemed their only chance. With Farran’s help, Wright began scavenging parts from the dead engine, as he set about creating a basic still. ‘We hacked a petrol tin in half and punctured it with holes,’ Farran recalled, forming a rough-and-ready stove. A second tin was filled with seawater to make the boiler, from which a copper pipe ripped from the engine fed into an earthenware pot, which was cooled by wrapping a wet shirt around it, the junctions being sealed with scraps of rag. Around the outside of the pipe Wright fashioned a cooling jacket, using a component scavenged from the bilge pump.

  That done, they stuffed fragments of wood and oily rag into the DIY stove and set it aflame. Farran and Wright watched, hardly daring to breathe, as steam began to escape from chinks in the mechanism and slowly, wondrous beads of moisture began to run down the pipe and into the earthenware pot. Encouraged by those first faint trickles, they set about finding anything that could feed the fire. Within an hour they had distilled enough water to give every member of the crew a few precious mouthfuls.

  ‘We were saved,’ Farran remarked of this moment. ‘No doubt about it, we were saved.’

  With death by thirst defeated – at least for as long as they had fuel to fire the stove – their primary goal had to be to get rescued by a ship – any ship. By now the importance of slipping the enemy’s clutches had dwindled into insignificance, when faced by their own mortality. They had noticed aircraft passing overhead at night, which they assumed were Luftwaffe bombers on their way to hit targets in Egypt. They decided that if they heard them again, they would do all they could to alert the aircrew. They tied oily rags around some planks, fashioning basic signal flares, and awaited nightfall.