by Damien Lewis
The ‘Special Interrogation Group’ (or SIG) were described by Stirling as ‘consisting mostly of ex-German soldiers who had got out of Germany before the war,’ seeking to escape Nazi persecution. They had been recruited into this top-secret unit, charged to pose as bonafide German troops. For months they had been speaking nothing but German, training with German weaponry, wearing German uniforms, and even learning the swearwords and insults then popular among the Afrika Korps. To all appearances they were a highly trained Afrika Korps unit, although their loyalties rested staunchly with the Allies.
Langton described their mission as being ‘to drive into Tobruk . . . disguised as British prisoners of war, with a guard made up of the SIG Party in German uniforms’ as their escorts. It was a high-risk strategy and would doubtless mean execution if they were captured, yet it embodied the kind of audacity that characterised the operations of the Special Forces raiders: seemingly impossible missions were an SAS speciality. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardise the secrecy of the raid, for its success hinged upon the SAS’s founding principle: ‘the fullest exploitation of surprise’.
On the evening of 13 September the Long Range Desert Group parted ways from the raiding party, having spent weeks guiding them across thousands of miles of inhospitable desert, so as to approach enemy lines from the point least expected. It was an emotional farewell for LRDG commander, David Lloyd Owen. ‘For a few minutes we stood and watched them go, feeling bare and huge on this naked, scrubby waste,’ he wrote. ‘I had become particularly attached to John Haselden . . . Leaving him alone and unsupported at the moment when he might most want our help . . . was the hardest decision I have ever had to take.’
Driving down from the high escarpment where they had parted company with the LRDG, the three army trucks painted in Afrika Korps colours nosed onto the dusk highway. It was thick with enemy traffic making for Tobruk, but the SIGs in their dusty Afrika Korps uniforms blended in perfectly, as did their vehicles. In the trucks’ rear, the eighty-odd raiders adopted as cowed a demeanour as possible, their Tommy guns and grenades secreted beneath blankets, their heads bowed in supposed defeat.
Shortly, the empty desert scrub filled with a vast tented encampment, where enemy forces sprawled beyond the outer perimeter of Tobruk’s defences. Incredibly, the SIG convoy sped through the heart of the ranks of grey, sun-bleached canvas, seemingly undetected. Dressed in an Afrika Korps greatcoat and cap, Langton kept his weapon trained on the ‘captives’ in the rear of his truck, playing the part of a ‘German’ guard, his features suitably hard and merciless. Out of the corner of his eye he spied cookhouses, medical tents, orderly rooms and sleeping quarters, with everywhere enemy soldiers wandering to and fro.
Momentarily, the distinctive form of a German spotter plane soared from the skies, executing a low-level pass over the road. As it did, Langton could see the twin black dots of the pilot’s head and that of his navigator peering down. Twice the aircraft seemed to circle their small convoy. For an instant, Langton wondered if the enemy somehow had been forewarned. There was little point worrying about it now: the Tobruk perimeter was fast approaching.
A wall of intertwined fortifications reared out of the gathering darkness. As the trucks decelerated, hands fingered safety catches nervously beneath blankets. In the lead vehicle, a distinctive figure leaned out of the window. Captain Herbert Buck was the commander of the SIG, and he waved about his – forged – papers imperiously. During his time leading the unit, Buck had talked his way through countless enemy checkpoints, at one stage even dining in a German officer’s mess deep behind the lines. Though an Englishman through and through, Buck was a fluent German speaker – he had learned the language while living as a child in Germany. He was also blessed with an icy self-possession and was not about to be stopped now.
Straightening his cap – that of a lieutenant in Rommel’s Afrika Korps – he eyed the approaching sentries, relief flooding through him as he realised they were Italians. German soldiers tended to look down upon their Axis comrades, often treating them with outright disdain. For their part, the Italian troops often lionised the Afrika Korps forces who had ridden to their rescue in North Africa. Buck intended to use that to the maximum now.
As the Italians called out greetings to their German brothers-in-arms, the figure hunched over the wheel of Buck’s truck fired back a string of curses: ‘Dummkopf! Schweinhund! Flachwichser!’
That man, Private Charlie ‘Chunky’ Hillman, was Austrian by birth and a native German speaker. He had made a close study of the kind of expletives Afrika Korps soldiers were wont to use – hence his firing off a string of them right now. The Italians, suitably cowed, raised the barrier and, with barely a cursory glance at Buck’s papers, waved the convoy through. Moments later, the raiders were heading into Rommel’s stronghold Tobruk, armed to the teeth and ready to raise merry hell.
There was a momentary panic, as the convoy drew away from the checkpoint. A convoy moving in the opposite direction – no doubt headed for the front – thundered past, and as bad luck would have it the second truck in Buck’s convoy struck one of those vehicles a glancing blow, almost veering off the road as a result. Behind them, the enemy column ground to a halt. Enraged voices rang out through the night. Buck urged greater speed, as the SIG operators yelled back in suitably dismissive fashion.
Once inside the Tobruk perimeter the raiders’ orders were to seize control of a bridgehead at Marsa Umm Es Sciausc, a small bay surrounded by fortified headlands lying just east of the main harbour. This would allow British motor torpedo boats to land and disgorge the lead troops. It would fall to Langton, plus one other man, to signal from the headlands, calling in the MTBs to land. Swift, sleek and manoeuvrable, they were ideal craft to deliver troops to shore.
That objective, Marsa Umm Es Sciausc bay, was taken in a series of bloody and murderous actions. The defenders turned out to be Italian troops, and the raiders caught them by total surprise – mostly in their barracks and guard rooms – lobbing grenades through doors and down ventilation shafts, killing scores as they slept. The fighting proved fierce but short-lived. At one stage a group of bewildered Italian officers were captured, asking of the wild-looking, bearded raiders: ‘Tedeschi? Tedeschi?’ – Germans? Moments later the bitter truth had dawned on them: these were the much-feared, much-dreaded pattuglia fantasma, as the Italian troops had nicknamed Britain’s desert raiders – the ghost patrol.
Once the bay was taken, Langton had made his way along the darkened coastline to a clifftop position from ‘where he was to signal in the MTBs’, the citation for the MC that he would later earn stated. From that vantage point, flashing his signal torch out to sea, he was ideally placed to observe the approaching vessels. But they were nowhere to be seen.
Some distance offshore, HMS Zulu and HMS Sikh – the two Tribal-class destroyers carrying the bulk of the fighting troops – were steaming in to release their landing craft. Spotted by the enemy, the warships had come under fierce fire from Tobruk’s coastal defences; it was becoming clear that the raiders had lost the all-important element of surprise. The German and Italian garrisons were now fully alert to the attack.
Finally, Langton succeeded in signalling in the first of the MTBs. He scrambled across the rocks to meet it. The boat disgorged infantrymen of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, whose smart uniforms and clean-shaven faces felt almost surreal to Langton, after so many weeks spent in the wilds of the desert. He instructed the new arrivals to unload their weaponry and ammunition and link up with the forces above. He glanced inland and could see Haselden’s men exchanging heavy fire with the enemy. Out at sea, searchlights illuminated the waters and fierce gunfire raked the bay.
In an incredible show of do-or-die soldiering, Haselden’s force ‘remained in possession of the bay area from midnight until after 0600/14th September’. But as the sun rose it was evident that all was lost. From his position at the water’s edge, Langton could
tell that few of the Allied ships had managed to land their troops. Barring a few dozen reinforcements, Haselden’s unit was alone inside an enemy-held fortress hundreds of miles from the nearest friendly lines and surrounded by vengeful German and Italian troops.
Langton noticed that one MTB had become stranded on the beach. If he could refloat it again perhaps some of the unit could escape. He dashed across to where it lay. As he climbed aboard and studied the boat’s unfamiliar controls, more men joined him. They had been engaged in a bitter shoot-out with the enemy, but – heavily outnumbered – were forced to withdraw. Private Ronald Walter, another of Haselden’s raiders, came to Langton’s aid and together they attempted to make sense of the MTB’s myriad switches and dials.
‘I’m a mechanic,’ Walter announced, ‘but damned if I can work that lot out!’
Above them on the deck, the second in command of the German-speaking SIG unit, Lieutenant David Russell, brought the MTB’s guns into action against the enemy, sweeping the high-ground with heavy rounds from the deck-mounted twin Brownings. He was aided by Commando Lieutenant David Sillito, plus Private Charlie ‘Chunky’ Hillman – the SIG operator who had talked them through the Tobruk perimeter, and who now ‘kept the guns supplied with ammunition until no more could be found’.
When it was clear that little more could be done, the four men clambered into the small craft that had been used to ferry the troops ashore and began to edge away from the battle-torn beach. A natural sportsman, rowing was in Langton’s blood. Yet even when he’d competed for Cambridge in the University Boat Race – the annual competition against Oxford, on the River Thames – he’d never pulled as furiously as he did then.
Their intention was to head for the open sea, hoping to be picked up by one the MTBs, but any attempt to do so was met with a fusillade of enemy fire. Instead, they were forced to put ashore a short distance to the east, landing their boat in the mouth of a wadi – a dry ravine that cuts through the desert, but which flows with fierce torrents on the rare occasions it rains.
Langton sought out a place to hide. There they met up with Sergeant Evans, ‘a large, tough, Welshman’ who was a close friend of Langton’s. They had sailed together from England and had served alongside each other in the Commandos. Evans explained that he had been ‘sent on ahead with some men’ but they had been ‘split by enemy fire’. He had just succeeded in making his way through to the wadi in search of reinforcements, when he’d spotted Langton’s party.
Together, the five men headed inland. As they crested a hill they saw Tobruk harbour spread out below them. The Sikh and the Zulu were well in range of Tobruk’s coastal guns and one of the destroyers seemed to be trying to take the other in tow. The naval ciphers sent back and forth between the vessels told a bleak tale.
‘0526/14 Sept: From Sikh: Force A failed to land SIKH hit aft and disabled am endeavouring to withdraw.’
‘0636/14 Sept. From Zulu: Have been hit.’
‘0655/14 Sept. From Zulu: Must leave you.’
‘Force A’ were the hundreds of raiders the destroyers had been supposed to put ashore, to wreck Tobruk’s defences. Very few had made it.
Langton and his fellow escapees turned their backs on the stricken warships, hurrying into the next ravine, which turned out to be occupied by more of their number – burly Commando officer Hugh ‘Bill’ Barlow and battle-hardened New Zealand Lieutenant William ‘Mac’ MacDonald, plus around twenty men. From them Langton learned that their brave commander, Lieutenant Colonel Haselden, had been killed while leading ‘the charge towards the enemy’, in an effort to buy time for a truck laden with their wounded to escape.
They talked things over ‘quickly and urgently’, Langton recalled. Tired and short of ammunition and food as they were, it was clear that they could offer ‘little or no resistance’.
They decided to split up. Lieutenants Sillito and MacDonald took their respective sections, hoping to move further down the coast and get picked up by a roving MTB. Langton figured it would be safer to head inland, for enemy forces were bound to be scouring the coastline. So, together with Barlow and Russell – the SIG’s second-in-command – plus eight men, Langton ‘decided to take to the hills’.
Langton and Barlow found a small cave and fell into an exhausted sleep. The two men had left Cairo together almost a month earlier, and over time they had become firm friends. They’d enjoyed similar upbringings and shared fond memories of the Henley Regatta and other boating events. Barlow – an artillery officer and a giant of a man – thrived in the harsh wilderness of the desert. He had been stationed in North Africa for two years, engaging in countless skirmishes with the enemy, and he felt at home in the baking heat, blasted by wind and sand. Yet when he awoke a few hours later, he was uncharacteristically downbeat, fearing it was only a matter of time before they were caught and shot.
‘It was an awful position,’ Langton would later write to his parents. Between them and the frontline lay over 300 miles, most of which was ‘waterless desert’ and all of which was held by the enemy.
They decided to split into smaller groups to reduce the risk of capture. ‘At dusk we disposed of everything we did not require, divided what food we had into three and ourselves into three parties,’ Langton recalled. He took with him the Welsh Commando Sergeant Evans, Private Hillman of the SIG and Private MacDonald, a member of the Northumberland Fusiliers who had made it ashore on one of the MTBs.
‘We split up and made for the perimeter that night,’ Langton recalled. Before long they encountered their first sentry post, a hut set halfway up the side of a deep wadi. They made it down the western side and past the guard post without incident, but the eastern side of the ravine was steeper, and as they climbed it brought them within sight of the hut once more.
Just as Langton drew level with the guard post, a challenge rang out in Italian. Inspired by the success of the SIG the night before, when they had masqueraded as German forces, Langton tried to stall for time, crying out that they were ‘Deutsches Mobilische’ – Langton’s garbled attempt at ‘German troops’. The Italians clearly weren’t buying it, for they opened fire. Luckily, the shots went wide and Langton made it over the ridge, where he waited for the rest of his men. They all made it, out of breath but unharmed, except for Private Hillman.
When Hillman eventually appeared, he was breathing hard and seemed to be in real trouble. Langton demanded of Hillman why he was finding it so hard to keep up. By way of response, he pointed to his feet. He’d ripped open his boots on some barbed wire, injuring his foot. It was causing him a lot of pain. Langton handed him a handkerchief to bind his wounds, urging him to hurry on as best he could.
Just then they noticed a line of shadowy forms moving up ahead. Fearing an enemy patrol, they went to ground. With Hillman injured, there was little chance they might run or fight their way out of any coming confrontation. It was several tense minutes before they recognised the mystery figures – it was Barlow and his party of escapees. The two forces joined up, pushing on towards the Tobruk perimeter, but shortly the darkness was rent apart by enemy fire. Machine guns roared and grenade blasts echoed through the night, as Langton dived for cover, yelling for the others to follow. By the time the enemy firing had ceased, he noticed that big Bill Barlow was missing.
Langton tried calling ‘Bill, Bill!’ as loudly as he dared, but after ten minutes they were forced to press on without him. With Barlow missing, Langton was now in command of six men. He would write about them in a letter to his parents, describing the ‘practical and down-to-earth’ Commando Sergeant Evans, who ‘was immensely brave and never complained’. Then there was Private Charlie ‘Chunky’ Hillman, who had served with the top-secret SIG. Langton would quickly warm to this ‘warlike little man’ who was struggling with his injured foot.
Hillman, an Austrian of Jewish descent and son of a Viennese storekeeper, had fled to Palestine to escape persecution when Nazi German
y had seized control of his native Austria. At war’s outbreak he had enlisted, despite being only seventeen, blagging his way into the Commandos. While serving in their number he had heard about the SIG, a shadowy intelligence unit seeking to recruit fluent German speakers ardently opposed to the Nazi regime. Hillman had volunteered, spending the following months undergoing rigorous training to pass as a member of the Afrika Korps.
During an earlier SIG mission, many of Hillman’s comrades had been betrayed by a German turncoat in their midst. Thanks to this treachery, Hillman was sure that the enemy knew every detail about the SIG, including his own name and personal history. He knew that the very worst kind of fate awaited him should he fall into enemy hands and his identity be revealed. To prevent that, Langton and party decided to change Hillman’s name there and then to Kennedy. ‘He’ll always be known as “Ken” to us,’ Langton recalled.
Making up the remainder of the party were four Northumberland Fusiliers who had come ashore aboard the MTBs. Corporal Wilson was a twenty-six-year-old Lancastrian who had been a greengrocer before the war, whom Langton described as being charming, but ‘somewhat ineffectual’. In fact, in the coming days he would change his view of the man markedly. Private MacDonald was a ‘Geordie black sheep’, Langton remarked, adding with a sense of foreboding, ‘I liked him at first . . .’ And then there were the twins – thirty-year-olds from Newcastle – G. Leslie and T. Leslie, who had been miners before the war. Langton confessed that he had some problems in understanding them, because of their accent.
Crawling and scrabbling for hours through the darkness, Langton was able to lead his party of six out through the wire. Miraculously, they had slipped through the Tobruk perimeter, which left their most pressing problem being food and water. Unfortunately, the missing officer, Lieutenant Bill Barlow, had been carrying most of their rations. All told, the six men had one chocolate bar, a handful of Army biscuits, plus three water bottles between them. Langton knew that there were Arabs living in the area who were ‘friendly to the British’, but he had little idea as to ‘where they were exactly, and how many there were’.