Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  For Garstin and his men, their return to Fairfield would be something of a bittersweet homecoming. They’d already been listed as missing in action, so their reappearance was something akin to coming back from the dead. But that wasn’t so unusual: some SAS parties would be dispatched and returned half a dozen times, before finally getting to jump. Other Stirlings would be lost, one going down in the Channel without trace, and with all crew and passengers. Likewise, the SABU-70 stick – plus Sutherland and his crew – had narrowly escaped ending up in a dark and watery grave.

  But there was no time to dwell upon any of that now. As Lieutenant Colonel Mayne made clear, Garstin and his men were to turn right around, once a Stirling could be made available, and were to fly back to France to complete their mission. There was one other factor that might delay their departure. The weather that mid-June was proving horribly temperamental and theirs was not the only stick that hadn’t made it. Of the six that had set out that night, four had been forced to return, SABU-70 amongst them.

  Airborne forces HQ was reporting ‘weather conditions which could scarcely have been worse’, with little sign of them stabilising anytime soon. They were also warning that ‘there is a considerable strain on the personnel concerned if, owing to the weather, operations have to be cancelled several nights running, or if unsuccessful sorties are flown’. Add to that almost getting shot down and nearly ditching at sea, followed by a dramatic crash-landing, and the stress and strain was gargantuan, by anyone’s reckoning.

  Garstin and his men had maybe forty-eight hours in which to ready all the kit that had been lost at sea, and to prepare themselves to return. They’d best get cracking. But first, some amongst them were hell-bent upon their own tried and tested form of stress therapy. When Vaculik searched out Ginger Jones and Paddy Barker, they were nowhere to be found. Eventually he tracked them down to the Cage canteen manager’s tent, where they were halfway through quietly sinking a barrel of beer.

  ‘They had many ranks, but only one religion, and that was good strong drink,’ Vaculik recalled of the men with whom he served, ‘and it was with them that I first really learned to drink. In this respect they took after the colonel, who could give a good account of himself.’ By ‘the colonel’ Vaculik meant Mayne, a man he viewed with the zeal almost of a disciple.

  ‘Colonel M [Mayne] . . . saw to it that no weaklings got into his ranks. At the age of twenty-eight he already had the past of a hero, and the king had decorated him more than once. He took risks as another man went out for a cup of tea, and it was not long before he had communicated his dash and intrepidity to all of us and we swore by him. For my part, I was very proud to belong to a corps which had sown terror for months behind Rommel’s lines, not to mention the Italian lines.’

  Regarding the SAS’s propensity for ‘good strong drink’, the same could be said for the 190 and 460 Squadron aircrews, in the airbase next door. There the parties were legendary. While the loss rate amongst the airmen of 38 Group – the RAF parent unit – was a fraction of that suffered by RAF Bomber Command, every mission proved challenging and hazardous in the extreme, and alcohol was the drug of choice to dull shattered nerves.

  ‘Did I say clear the deck? Well! It’s been cleared!’ remarked one of the American airmen who flew with 38 Group. There were dozens of such American and Canadian flyers, for signing up with the RAF had been one of the few ways of getting into the fight, before America formally declared war on Germany. ‘I’ve never been so drunk in all my days. Pint after pint . . . all night long. I ended up throwing pints of beer on the mess floor. When that got too tame, buckets were used! My shattered nerves – what a night!’

  But despite the drinking and the inclement weather, some flights were still getting through. A handful of SAS sticks had made it onto the ground, and some had already sent back their first reports via radio. From those, Mayne and others in command concluded that there was everything to play for in the war-torn fields of France. The activities of the Resistance, in particular, were looking extremely promising, if only the RAF could ferry in enough men and supplies.

  If ‘adequately supported’, the Resistance could furnish ‘great assistance . . . to Overlord’, a ‘Progress Report on SAS Operations’ declared that month, stressing the ‘vital necessity of supplying resistance immediately with arms and equipment’. Certain areas, with the ‘support of uniformed troops and arms, could very soon be taken over and freed . . . from any sort of enemy control’. The handful of SAS parties already in the field were already sending back ‘useful intelligence . . . about enemy movements’, plus ‘information about enemy dumps, airfields, etc.’. Good communications had been established, and ‘messages had been coming through regularly’.

  Marked top secret, the report also bore the mysterious stamp of ‘BIGOT’. This was supposedly an acronym dreamed up by Winston Churchill, which stood for ‘British Invasion of German Occupied Territories’. In theory, there was no higher security classification, for ‘the Bigots’, as they were known, were privy to aspects of the Overlord plan, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. As Churchill had famously averred, the location and timing of the D-Day landings must be hidden from the enemy at all costs: it was a truth that had to be protected by a ‘bodyguard of lies’.

  To check if someone was on the BIGOT List – those privy to such ultra-sensitive intelligence – the question was supposed to be asked: ‘Are you a Bigot?’ Anyone with the appropriate security clearance was expected to reply, ‘Yes, I’m a Bigot, by Neptune,’ Neptune being a none-too-subtle inference to the coming amphibious landings. The BIGOT List was rigidly enforced. Supposedly, King George VI was turned away from the intelligence centre of a US warship, because nobody had realised that ‘he was a Bigot’.

  Of course, intelligence would be vital to securing the D-Day beachheads, and to winning the savage battles that followed. Fortunately, Mayne had just received a choice piece of intel about why his SABU-70 raiders had been turned back from their mission, and from none other than Special Operations Executive. SOE was a clandestine organisation known as ‘the fourth armed service’, after the army, navy and air force. Churchill had called upon SOE to ‘set the lands of enemy-occupied Europe ablaze’, and SOE agents had long been on the ground in France complete with radio sets. Not only were they organising SAS reception parties, they were also sending back reports on any problems.

  Garstin and his men were called away from variously packing their kit, grabbing some rest or sinking copious quantities of beer. Mayne, never one to shy away from a good round of drinks, allowed the same amongst his men, but only as long as they remained operationally capable. Over long years, Jones and Barker had proven themselves suitably ready for war, no matter what intoxicating liquors they might have imbibed.

  Mayne proceeded to explain why no reception party had been awaiting the SABU-70 raiders on either DZ. Apparently the terrain had been closely watched by the Gestapo – more formally, the Geheime Staatspolizei – the secret police force of Nazi Germany and the SS. It had been the Gestapo’s unwelcome presence that had prevented the forces of the Paris Resistance from keeping the planned rendezvous.

  Mayne had thought of a solution to this problem, which was as simple as it was stark. Garstin and his men were going to jump ‘blind’, without bothering with the niceties of any reception party.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures: they were to carry out their mission ‘at whatever cost’.

  Chapter 4

  On the afternoon of 16 June – the eve of their departure – the twelve men gathered for the all-important intelligence briefing, otherwise known as the ‘griff’, one of the most vital final stages of any such mission. On one wall of the ops tent was taped a massive map of the target area to the south of Paris, along with various operational instructions, while scattered across desks were envelopes stuffed full of reconnaissance photos. In addition to Garstin and his men, Mayne was present, though his would be a largely silent, watchful – almo
st fatherly – presence.

  The figure who had taken central stage in the SAS’s intelligence set-up was Major Eric ‘Bill’ Barkworth, a tall, steely individual, whose reputation almost rivalled that of Mayne. Barkworth was a man of iron will, unbreakable spirit and with a single-minded bent that could border on the eccentric. Intensely loyal and open-minded, Barkworth didn’t give a damn about stuffy tradition or the dumb privilege of rank. Charming and cultured and blessed with a brilliant mind, he was to prove something of a thorn in the establishment’s side, and quietly would enjoy being so.

  Above everything, Barkworth cared for the fortunes and the preparedness of the men in his charge, especially when he was speeding them into hostile lands on the strength of intelligence gathered at his own hand. Blessed with an incisive mind, the SAS major tended not to suffer fools, and once met was never to be forgotten. When Barkworth was serving in No. 8 Commando, prior to joining the SAS, none other than Evelyn Waugh, the acclaimed novelist, had warned: ‘Beware of Barkworth: he will lash you with his tongue.’

  Hailing from Sidmouth in Devon, Barkworth had enlisted first with the Somerset Light Infantry, earning the nickname ‘Bill’ from an American acquaintance, and was unfailingly courteous –until he was crossed. Barkworth’s irrepressible spirit shone through early in the war when, serving in North Africa, he’d had his appendix removed. Recuperating in hospital, he’d felt the need to ‘walk about a bit’. The fearsome matron had scolded him, warning that she did not want to even see his feet touch the floor. By way of response, Barkworth had marched determinedly back and forth upon his bed.

  From No. 8 Commando, he’d been recruited into a little-known outfit, the No. 101 Specialist Wireless Section. A mobile radio interception unit based in North Africa, the 101 was tasked to pluck from the ether the Afrika Corps’ radio communications. The fact that Barkworth was fluent in seven languages, including German, made him a huge asset, not to mention his innate aptitude for such work. On 10 November 1941 he received a telegram from HQ, conveying heartfelt congratulations for his invaluable work ‘breaking the German map reference code system. The additional information that will be obtainable through interception will be of the greatest value.’ In layman’s terms, breaking that code would enable the tracing of enemy aircraft, armour, troop convoys and shipping, and the planning of stealthy sorties against such targets.

  From there, Barkworth had taken his radio-intercept skills into the SAS, when founding its pioneering intelligence arm. In due course he’d detected enemy signals of profound importance. Listening in on a German military broadcast, in Italy, Barkworth had his second-in-command, Sergeant Fred ‘Dusty’ Rhodes, scribble down an urgent note of ‘what he’d just picked up off the radio’. Of stunning import, it concerned what appeared to be an order emanating from the very highest levels, decreeing that Allied parachutists captured behind the lines were to be shot, without trial and without mercy.

  Barkworth reckoned that he had caught the name of the directive –das Kommandobefehl, the Commando Order – and he passed on all that he had heard to Colonel Bill Stirling. But no one could quite be certain if all of this was true. The essence of the order was just so outrageous. It constituted a blatant and direct breach of the laws of war, which stipulate that soldiers taken captive in uniform should be afforded the protections of bona fide POWs. No one could quite believe that such a murderous directive might exist, and emanating from the highest levels of German command.

  Then had come the escape of SAS Lieutenant James Quentin Hughes. In January 1944, Hughes had parachuted into Italy on Operation Pomegranate, tasked with blowing up an airbase. But from the outset, his six-man patrol was hunted by the enemy, and only he and one other made it to the target. Regardless, they decided to attack anyway. Under cover of darkness they placed charges on the target aircraft, but the last went off prematurely, the resulting explosion killing Hughes’s comrade outright.

  Hughes himself was badly wounded in the blast, which left him half-blinded, and he was taken captive by the enemy. While being treated at a German military hospital, he was visited by a Gestapo officer, who warned him, ominously, that he ‘was not considered a prisoner of war’. Hitler had issued a ‘Commando Order’, the Gestapo man continued, under which all Allied saboteurs were to be executed. He warned Hughes to talk, or else.

  Of course, Hughes had never heard of any such ‘Commando Order’. Even so, with the help of a German medical doctor he managed to finagle his way onto a hospital train bound for a POW camp, before the Gestapo could liquidate him. En route Hughes flung himself off, after which he proceeded to execute an epic escape through the Italian mountains, reaching Allied lines in south-central Italy in May 1944. From there he returned to Britain, where he was awarded a Military Cross and bar, for the initial raid and the incredible escape that had followed.

  Like all escapees, Hughes was debriefed in detail, but his reports of the Commando Order were dismissed as being nothing more than a cunning interrogation technique, designed to force captives to talk. Then Hughes had got to speak to Barkworth. In a report entitled ‘Special Air Service Operations: Pomegranate’ Hughes laid out in great detail his experiences at the hands of the Gestapo, who had sought to seize him so that he might be executed.

  ‘As authority for this,’ Hughes noted, ‘they quoted an order alleged to have been issued by the Führer’s HQ, in October 1942, which stated that all saboteurs, whether wearing uniform or civilian clothes, would be shot.’ Repeatedly, the Gestapo had demanded that Hughes be ‘handed over for execution’. It was only due to the help of his German military physician, plus Lieutenant Gerhard Schacht, a sympathetic German parachute officer, that Hughes had been able to slip the Gestapo’s clutches.

  Barkworth little doubted the veracity of Hughes’s report. It chimed almost exactly with what he had detected, from the earlier radio intercepts in Italy. The question was, what to do about it? While they lacked an actual copy of the Kommandobefehl it seemed hard, if not impossible, to brief the men of the SAS in any detail. Still, they feared the effects of the order would prove dire on the ground in France. To counter that, they stressed how SAS raiding parties, even when working hand in hand with the Resistance, should take every precaution to be clearly identifiable as members of the British armed forces.

  They would deploy in full uniform and wear service identity tags. In some cases, admittedly, these might be somewhat falsified. For example, Corporal Serge Vaculik carried dog tags and papers identifying him as the French Canadian ‘Jean Dupontel’. This was because, by an unfortunate quirk of fate, since the French government had signed an armistice with the Germans, any Frenchman fighting on the side of the Allies was actually in breach of the rules of war – hence Vaculik needing a suitable cover. But in the main, identity tags and papers would be 100 per cent genuine.

  If captured, any SAS man was to stress to his captors that he should be afforded the full protections of the Geneva Convention. It was an internationally accepted right for any nation to deploy its armed forces into any part of enemy territory. Indeed, the German high command had itself issued an edict in 1941, ruling that behind-the-lines operations by their parachute forces were perfectly legal. It was only when the British raids had begun to bite hard that they appeared to have changed their minds.

  By the time of the D-Day landings, Barkworth – and Mayne –had decided that those deploying into enemy-occupied Europe should be made aware of ‘Hitler’s shoot-to-kill policy’, at least in its bare-bones detail. Men were told to expect no mercy, and consequently to avoid at all costs being taken alive. If any man was to be captured, he was advised to warn his captors that if anything untoward happened, the SAS would investigate, hunting down the perpetrators of any such crimes.

  Barkworth was a hard taskmaster, expecting of his subordinates a similar work rate to his own. In the run-up to the D-Day landings, the amount of intelligence required to underpin operations proved colossal, especially with the scope of deployments planned. The pace pr
oved extremely stressful for those in his team. One man who seemed to thrive under such pressure was Barkworth’s doughty second-in-command, Dusty Rhodes.

  Together, the two men formed a somewhat unlikely yet unbreakable team. One, Barkworth, was the well-educated, deeply intellectual scion of a wealthy Devonshire family. The other, Rhodes, was the son of a gardener from Barnsley who’d gone into the family profession prior to the war. Nevertheless, amongst the many qualities they shared was an innate propensity for bluff and cunning. Barkworth eschewed all violence towards captives, including physical torture. Guile and psychological trickery, however, remained very much in play.

  In Italy, a pair of German captives had been brought in, one an officer, the other a corporal. The former proved unwilling to talk. A simple ruse changed his mind. His comrade was marched outside, after which the SAS man holding him let out a long burst from his Sten gun, before returning and snapping off a salute, announcing that the job was done. In truth, the German corporal had been locked in a neighbouring hut. But upon witnessing the charade, the officer collapsed to his knees begging for his life. An otherwise brave man crushed by the power of his own imagination, he was ready to talk.

  The legacy of Barkworth and Rhodes would be long-lived, echoing through the years with the SAS. It would also end up having a very powerful and personal resonance for Captain Garstin and all eleven of his SABU-70 raiders. But first, those twelve men needed to get their feet on the ground in France.

  At their intelligence briefing on 16 June, they pored over maps of the area from which they had been forced to turn back. To the west lay the town of Dourdan, with its nearby railway line. Where the rail tracks snaked through thick woodland, disappearing at one stage into a tunnel, was the site of the planned attack. Intelligence reports suggested a large ammo dump was hidden in the woods, adjacent to the rail line. Garstin’s mission was to hit both simultaneously – derailing a train travelling north from Orléans loaded with war materiel, and blowing the ammo dump sky high.