The Regiment

by Michael Asher

  The way Cooper remembered it, the moment the first lorry drew abreast of the timber-pile, two Gammon bombs sailed over the top. One hit the truck’s bonnet, the other the rear, crammed with enemy troops. The bombs cracked apart and blowtorched flame. The engine blazed up, smoke billowed, windscreen-glass slewed. Germans screamed, dropped weapons, sucked fumes. Charred bodies squirmed, burning men hit the road smoking and twitching. Bren-guns tattooed from up on the slope. Maquis rifles spattered.

  The second lorry, fifty yards behind, stopped dead. The civilian cars were riddled with shot. Bodies sprawled out. The light armoured vehicle did a U-turn and scooted off. The motorcyclist outrider swerved, wobbled and turned back. Germans scuttled across the road, dodging fire, one group shifting a Spandau machine gun. Bren-fire stitched patterns across their backs. Germans slumped into the ditch, where enfilade-fire jiggered them. Bodies jerked crazily, limbs squelched, frothing blood. ‘It was pandemonium …’ Cooper recalled. ‘Many were killed by fire from the Maquis as they fled across the road … it was a massacre.’6

  Wellsted and Sylvester, M1 carbines in their hands, wormed up through the ditch to see the first truck blazing. ‘The bodies of the men in the cab lolled grotesquely in their seats,’ Wellsted recalled. ‘It was the first time I’d seen a dead man, but I found myself strangely unmoved.’7 Hot cartridges in the burning trucks popped like corks. Ricochets whinged through the trees, spiffling leaves, grooving bark.

  The Spandau crew had made the forest and set up the gun. Spandau rounds burped across the road. An enemy soldier was immolated on the cab of the first truck, writhing and wailing. Wellsted, Middleton and Sylvester clumped Colt .45 rounds at him till he fell silent. Middleton snapped off carbine shots at helmets popping up from the ditch. Wellsted whaled No. 36 pineapples. The Bren-gunners moved out of position to clear the ditches. Nobby Noble hunkered down on the verge, thumped a Bren-burst at a Boche corporal in a thicket, shattering his arm. ‘My shooting was good that day,’ he commented. ‘I was awake.’8 A German jumped out of the ditch and darted across the road. Sylvester bopped him with a carbine-tap from the hip.

  Maquis swarmed out of the woods, picked up German weapons, yanked off dead Germans’ boots. One of the partisans had been drilled through the forehead – the only casualty among the ambushers. Someone shouted to the enemy in the ditch to come out with their hands up. No one came. They were all dead or too badly wounded to move. French hostages, serving with the Maquis, had been prisoners in the cars – a middle-aged man covered in blood, a white-faced youth, an old man who complained his rescuers had wrecked his motorbike, which had been in the truck. The Maquis laid the wounded man on a wooden gate and dollied him off. The others followed.

  Three German prisoners had been taken. Thirty-two were dead. Muirhead didn’t know if the motorcyclist had given the alarm, and ordered the SAS-men to pull out before back-up arrived. ‘We made off as quickly as possible,’ Cooper recalled.

  Next day, German reinforcements moved in. They torched La Verrerie, a farm near the ambush-site, and set ablaze the villages of Montsauche and Planchez, shooting dead two protesters. That afternoon, Maquisards jogged into the SAS camp near Vieux-Dun just as Padre McLuskey was holding communion, and begged Fraser for help. The Maquis medical post in a château near the village of Vermot had been bumped by ‘Grey Russians’. Sgt. Fred White, still paralysed, had been in the hospital at the time, and was woken by a blitz of Spandau MG34 rounds that ripped up his headboard. The Maquis medical staff had managed to dolly-out the stretcher cases, under covering fire from the local partisans. The Maquis were soon sent reeling by a mortar barrage, and melted into the forest, where the Germans were reluctant to follow. Instead, the enemy trashed and burned the château.

  Fraser agreed to help. At 1900 hours that night, in torrential rain, the SAS set out in two groups – one under Fraser, the other under Johnny Wiseman – to take the pressure off the partisans. After two hours’ trekking through dripping woods, Reg Seekings, lead-scout with Wiseman’s group, crawled up to a road. He found himself face to face with a German machine-gunner only fifteen yards away. Much to Wisemen’s later amusement, Seekings snapped his head back and yelled, ‘Look! Enemy!’

  He commented later that turning his head saved his life, because at that moment the enemy gunner fired and instead of hitting him square in the face, the bullet lodged between his spine and skull. He was spared further attrition, because the German machine gun jammed. The gunner lobbed two grenades that burst either side of him, but left him untouched. He tried to lift his carbine, but found his arm wouldn’t move. He was pulled out by Sgt. Jack Terry, DCM, Royal Artillery, ex-SRS, a distinguished combat veteran, and one of three survivors of the commando mission to assassinate Rommel. ‘I felt as if I was in an underground river,’ Seekings said. ‘No pain. Going like the clappers in this river, a raging torrent, but silent, going like the hammers of hell.’9

  The rest of the troop went to ground in the woods, and bugged out under covering Bren-fire from L. Cpl. David ‘Pringle’ Gibb, Royal Armoured Corps. While Seekings was dragged back to camp, Wiseman withdrew the group to a low hill, where they lurked until after dark.

  Seekings had used up another of his nine lives – a 9mm slug was jammed in his neck, but hadn’t done any permanent damage. A Maquis doctor tended him that night while the chaplain shone a torch. ‘Probe as he might,’ McLuskey wrote, ‘the doctor couldn’t get hold of [the bullet].’ Seekings had to be moved by stretcher next morning, but was on his feet again within a few days. The round wasn’t finally removed until he returned to the UK.

  Meanwhile, Fraser’s own party had approached Vermot and spotted a ‘Grey Russian’ battle-group, fifty strong, forming up in column of threes in the street. It was a perfect target. Fraser set up his pair of Brens silently on a hill overlooking the village. One of his gunners was his Squadron Quarter Master Sergeant Duncan MacLennon, the man who had distinguished himself at Termoli by pulling to safety all the other members of his section. The gunners flipped and slid sights. Fraser ordered, ‘Fire!’ The Brens clattered with the sustained blip-blip of double-taps. The effect was devastating. ‘The fire of … well-handled Bren-guns was poured down on [the enemy],’ Ian Wellsted recalled, ‘… all was disorder. Cries of the wounded and hoarse orders mingled with the wild racket of the Brens, and in the narrow streets there was little chance to get any cover, or put up an adequate reply …’10 Fraser commented that the Bren-gunners ‘had a field day’ – of the fifty enemy, only ten escaped unhurt.

  All night a battle raged in the woods around the SAS camp, and in the morning the Germans attacked with renewed vigour, obliging Fraser to pull his squadron out to a fallback base. Though the enemy discovered the deserted Maquis HQ, they failed to locate the abandoned Houndsworth camp. Frustrated, they returned to Vermot, where they looted and burned down every house, beat or shot six men, and raped a fourteen-year-old girl. They then moved on east to the larger village of Dun-les-Places, where they hanged the local priest from his own church tower, lined up men and boys and machine-gunned twenty-seven of them, dumped the corpses in the square and dismembered them with grenades. They then looted the houses, and set fire to them.

  Despite the repercussions, Fraser considered his actions a success. Not only had they taken out a hundred and fifty of the enemy, they had also dissuaded the Germans from pursuing the Maquis into the forests: they were never to attempt it again. The presence of SAS troops in the area had also remained unsuspected by German command.

  Houndsworth’s first consignment of jeeps was dropped on 5 July. One of Fraser’s men, Cpl. Eric Adamson, had been crushed when his jeep rolled, suffering a double fracture of the pelvis and severe damage to the urethra. The jeep was a write-off, but the other four had been put to good use in bumping roads and railways further afield. Fraser’s men cut the railway. They derailed six trains. They wrecked three locomotives and fifty wagons. They brought traffic on some roads to a standstill. They destroyed two gazogene – synthetic
petrol – plants. Alex Muirhead and Johnny Cooper mortared a plant at Autun. They fingered targets for the RAF. Sgt. Jeff Du Vivier, Fraser’s old mate from the Ajadabiyya raid, led a foray on folding ‘airborne bicycles’.

  The only major setback Houndsworth had suffered was when Capt. Roy Bradford’s jeep ran into a German convoy near Lucy-sur-Yonne, and Bradford was killed in a shoot-out, together with his REME mechanic, Craftsman Bill Devine. His gunner, Sgt. Fred White, now recovered from his paralysis, took rounds in the shoulder, hands and leg, and later had three fingers amputated. A Free Frenchman in the jeep, Jacques Morvillier, was injured in the arm. The only member of the party to escape unhurt, Sgt. Cornelius ‘Maggie’ McGinn, Gordon Highlanders, managed to lead the two wounded men to safety. He was later awarded the MM.

  Resupply and reinforcement drops kept coming. Jeeps were heavy-dropped. AT guns were parachuted in. Containers landed and were dragged away by bullock-cart. By the end of July, Fraser’s command consisted of a hundred and forty-four men, nine jeeps, and two six-pounder anti-tank guns.

  56. ‘Thank you, Madame, but I intend to attack them’

  Mayne was impressed. Houndsworth had scored more consistently than any other op, and suffered few casualties. He couldn’t tell Fraser the real reason he had been inserted. In Normandy, Rommel was hanging on by a thread. His men were fighting doggedly, but couldn’t hold out much longer against the massive air-power the Allies had unleashed. Every attack was preceded by a devastating air-strike by the British 2 Tactical Air Force, or the US 8 and 9 Air Forces. Rommel was short of guns, and the Luftwaffe was noticeable by its absence. The Germans had already lost the best part of a hundred thousand men. Even Hitler was worried. ‘In the east,’ he announced, ‘the vastness of space will … permit a loss of territory … without suffering a mortal blow to Germany’s chance of survival. Not so in the west! If the enemy here succeeds … consequences of staggering proportions will follow in a short time.’

  Allied command was expecting a breakthrough by mid-August, and was preparing a surprise for Rommel. When his Panzer divisions started to withdraw, they would find the ‘Orléans Gap’, south of Paris, blocked by a huge US and British Airborne force that had parachuted in behind them. Elements of both 1 and 2 SAS would be deployed as the patrol unit for this op, Transfigure, under the direct command of Mayne. Three troops of C Squadron, under Major Tony Marsh, and one troop of C Squadron, 2 SAS, under Major Roy Farran, with twenty jeeps each, would be landed by Airspeed Horsa gliders on the edge of the Rambouillet forest, not far from the Gain position.

  Mayne had intended to jump to Gain to check out the situation there as a recce for Transfigure. This was why Fenwick’s silence bothered him. Sadler and his chief, Melot, both knew about Transfigure. Melot had been inserted with a secret mission of his own – to recce a drop-zone in the Merry-Vaux forest for Op Kipling, a C Squadron recce-party under Derrick Harrison, tasked to prepare the way for one of the SAS glider-borne groups outriding the Airborne drop.

  Mayne told Fraser he wanted to go and investigate Gain himself, despite the risk. He left the same day, with Sadler and Melot, in three jeeps. While Sadler travelled independently, Mayne escorted Melot as far as Toucy, ten miles west of Auxerre. They left him there with a jeep and a crew that included his Intelligence Sergeant, Duncan Ridler, and his W/T op, Sgt. David Danger, both SAS veterans of Italy and the desert. By nightfall, Mayne had reached the Gain base near Chambon-la-Forêt, where he made contact with Jim Almonds and acting commander Captain Michael ‘Jock’ Riding, an Auxiliary Units officer. He learned with a shock that Ian Fenwick had been killed only the previous day.

  Riding reported that on the day Mayne had asked for DZ coordinates, their base had been banjoed by the Germans. By chance, Fenwick, Riding and Almonds had all been at the second base, sorting out the site for Mayne’s insertion. It was a hot Sunday afternoon. The Gain camp was occupied by Riding’s troop, who were chugging petrol into their jeeps, chocking carbine magazines, priming Lewes bombs, greasing weapons. There were no forward pickets out. They had been occupying this base for a month, and they knew it was too long. What they didn’t know was that the Germans had triangulated the location from intercepted wireless signals. Riding’s men were encircled by hundreds of troops.

  Fenwick’s first base in the Fontainebleau forest had been hit back in June. On an attempt to blow locomotive sheds and a railway turntable at Bellegarde in early July, Fenwick and Almonds had walked into a German ambush. They managed to vanish into the darkness without casualties, but Fenwick had been forced to relocate for the second time. Since then, his men had been making use of their jeeps, ranging far into the countryside, bumping isolated vehicles on the roads in the Orléans Gap. By the end of the month, though, Fenwick had started to hear whispers that his camp might be compromised again, and had dispersed his men to three separate locations. Only he, Almonds, and Riding’s troop remained at the old base.

  The first the SAS-men knew of the attack was when mortar rounds crunched into the trees. Machine-gun fire blipped. Field-grey figures popped up amid dapples of shade. The SAS-men grabbed escape-kits and went to ground in all-round defence. Any German who showed himself got greased. They held the enemy off skilfully for seven hours, slipping away one by one. Soon after dark, the Germans were lobbing mortar-bombs into a space that was completely devoid of SAS-men. Not a single man or vehicle was lost.

  Almonds and Riding had both heard gunfire and made their way to the base separately. Riding and his signals NCO, Sgt. Bunfield, managed to creep to the wireless jeep and manoeuvre it through the German cordon. Almonds, narrowly avoiding German machine-gun positions, arrived at the camp to find it deserted. He headed for the prearranged emergency RV, where he met up with Riding just before first light. Together, they drove back and retrieved Almonds’s jeep.

  Fenwick, still at the second base, had no news of the situation. Next morning he motored into the village of Nancray-sur-Rimarde, where he made contact with the Maquis. Their intelligence was that Almonds and Riding were both dead, and that all the jeeps had been lost. Fenwick decided to go and see if he could pick up any survivors. He set off in a jeep driven by Cpl. Simon Duffy, with Sgt. Frank Dunkley, Royal Tank Regiment, as rear-gunner on the Vickers K, and two Frenchmen, L. Cpl. Menginou, a linguist attached from 4 SAS, and a Free French sergeant working with the Maquis. On the way, the jeep was identified by the pilot of a Fieseler Storch spotter-plane. The Germans set up an ambush on a T-junction outside Chambon-la Forêt – the village closest to the base.

  Earlier, the Germans, furious that the SAS troop had eluded them, had rounded up the men and boys of Chambon and thrown them into the local church. They told the mayor of the village that unless he revealed the location of the SAS, all the hostages would be shot. The women fled. Outside the village one of them ran into Fenwick’s jeep, and flagged it down. The woman told Fenwick about the plight of the men, and that the Boche were expecting him. She begged him to turn back. Whether Fenwick underestimated the threat, was set on revenge for his reportedly dead comrades or was incensed by the enemy’s treatment of civilians, will never be known. ‘Thank you, Madame,’ he answered, ‘but I intend to attack them.’1

  Fenwick roared towards the first German machine-gun post with his Vickers K blazing. Miraculously the jeep got past, only to run into a wall of fire from a second position. A 20mm round smashed into Fenwick’s forehead, killing him instantly. The same burst killed Menginou and the French sergeant. Duffy was hit by a slug that sliced open his jaw, and the jeep careened off the road, crashing into a tree. The Germans closed in and pulled Frank Dunkley out of the wreckage. Duffy flickered into consciousness to see the sergeant being marched away, his face covered in blood. He was never seen alive again.

  57. ‘My wife will be furious if I get myself killed today’

  Mayne appointed Riding commander of Gain in Fenwick’s place, but instructed him to lie low for the next few days. He sent parties to watch the Orléans–Pithiviers and Orléans�
�Montarges roads. The first two parties brought back good intelligence, but a third, consisting of Troopers Long and Morton, failed to return. The two SAS-men finally tramped into camp twenty-four hours late, to report that the jeep sent to extract them, manned by Troopers John Ion and Leslie Packman, had been bumped by a company of about forty Germans. They had heard gunshots while making for the rendezvous at first light, and had seen the jeep abandoned in the road. They weren’t sure whether Ion and Packman were still alive.

  In fact, the two SAS-men had been hustled to a château at Chilleurs-aux-Bois, where they were tortured by the SS and shot in the back of the head. Their hands were cut off. Jim Almonds realized what had happened when he visited the deserted château a few days later and found a lock of Ion’s distinctive blond hair. When their graves were opened weeks afterwards, a third decomposed body was found with them – possibly that of Frank Dunkley, who had suffered the same fate.

  Mayne terminated Gain three days after Ion and Packman vanished. The Fenwick group had lost eleven men killed or missing, but had cut the railway sixteen times, destroyed two locomotives and fifty-six trucks, and derailed two trains. After Mayne and Sadler left, Almonds and Riding were picked up by the advancing Americans, who accused them of being spies. They were taken in front of the General Officer Commanding the US Third Army, George Patton, who told them, ‘If you’re Brits, you’ll be OK, if not, you’ll be shot.’ They were back in Britain by the end of August.

  While Mayne and Sadler were with Gain, Bob Melot had signalled Moor Park that the DZ in Merry-Vaux forest was ready. The Op Kipling recce party – Capt. Derrick Harrison and five men of C Squadron – dropped the following night. Harrison and his mates had adopted a new way of jumping – with their leg-bags hitched high across their chests. There were no problems on exit, but Harrison’s hand was caught in the uncoiling rope when he jettisoned his bag, and his middle finger was broken.