by Damien Lewis
At the last minute, Ginger Jones realised that his military-issue watch was on the blink . . . again. Of course, a watch was a vital piece of kit on an operation wherein split-second timing might be everything. So Jones, the former miner from Wigan, confessed to Wiehe, the scion of a landed and wealthy colonial family, his dilemma. As Wiehe owned several timepieces, it wasn’t a problem, the SAS lieutenant declared. He’d loan his friend one of his own.
For tonight’s mission, Wiehe had decided to carry with him a tiny pocket-book, in which he planned to keep a diary of sorts. Deploying for a month, he felt compelled to keep some kind of a written record. He’d already made the first entry. Each page was printed with basic details. This one read: ‘Tues 4 July. Sun Rises, 3.49; Sets 8.19 (GMT).’ Below that Wiehe had noted: ‘Left Fairford AFB [Air Force Base] with Pat. Garstin and ten men for France.’
Prior to departure there had been an eleventh-hour change of plan. SAS veteran Lance Corporal Billy Hull, from Belfast –another Royal Ulster Regiment stalwart – had been slated to deploy, alongside Garstin’s men. But at the last minute, Mayne had had a change of heart. Hull was the SAS commander’s driver, and Mayne had him earmarked for another role. He planned to parachute in to join the Op Gain party himself, and he wanted a trusted pair of hands at the wheel of any vehicle he might beg, borrow or steal on the ground, so he could visit his various patrols. Hull was that man.
Regardless of that last-minute change of personnel, Mayne was on hand to give Captain Garstin and his men a final update and a personal send-off. This patrol had already proven one of his most hard-hitting in the field, and once again the SAS leader had high hopes for Garstin and his men.
At 23.34 the twelve raiders mounted up their Stirling aircraft, for their third flight into France in as many weeks. Garstin’s stick retained many of the old faces, plus a smattering of newbies. Wiehe, Vaculik, Ginger Jones, Paddy Barker and Howard Lutton were all present, plus there were also a Sergeant Varey, plus Troopers Walker, Young, Morrison, Norman and Castelow. The recognition signal to be flashed from the La Ferté-Alais drop-zone was ‘B for Bertie’, without which none of the men were likely to jump. As before, they might fly in only to have the mission aborted.
Of those on the patrol, two were from Ireland – in addition to Captain Garstin, Paddy Barker and Howard Lutton. Troopers William ‘Billy’ Young and Joseph ‘Joe’ Walker were both Royal Ulster Rifles, so they shared that regimental tradition with Captain Garstin and Lieutenant Colonel Mayne. For tonight’s mission, Garstin had formed an ‘Irish patrol’. Splitting his stick into two units of six, he’d kept all the Irishmen under his command, plus Vaculik, the lone Frenchman. Lieutenant Wiehe had got the remainder, including the redoubtable Ginger Jones.
In his Irish patrol, the SAS captain had a spirited bunch of fighters, Paddy Barker and Howard Lutton included. As with Garstin himself, Trooper Joe Walker had had a real battle on his hands to make it as a frontline soldier. A former farm labourer from County Down, Walker had spent considerable time in the brig, due to his restless soul. But once he’d volunteered for the SAS and been sent for airborne training, his ‘cheery disposition’ and hard-working nature won through. A year earlier, Walker had lost his older brother, Isaac, who’d been serving in Tunisia with the Irish Guards. Like Garstin, he had every reason to be hungry for action and driven to fight.
Trooper Billy Young, the eldest of five sons from County Antrim, was a dairyman by trade. He’d volunteered for 1 SAS on the same day as Walker, and they had passed through airborne training together and into Garstin’s patrol. Young’s father and four of his uncles had soldiered in the First World War, and he had a brother in the RAF, plus five cousins also serving. For all of Captain Garstin’s Irish patrol, soldiering ran deep in the blood.
Sergeant Thomas Varey, from York, was Wiehe’s second-in-command. As with Major Fenwick, Varey had served with the Auxiliaries, volunteering for the SAS when the threat of a German invasion had receded. With a younger brother in the RAF, Varey was the ‘old man’ of the patrol, being all of twenty-nine years of age. Also on Wiehe’s stick was Trooper Herbert Castelow, a former brick-maker from Stockton-on-Tees and another of the ‘old men’, being just a year younger than Varey.
The final two on Wiehe’s stick were Troopers Morrison and Norman, the latter being a ‘taciturn’ individual, according to Vaculik – a still-waters-run-deep type. As matters would transpire, Troopers Norman, Morrison and Castelow would prove themselves possessed of a rare tenacity and endurance in the face of extreme jeopardy, but all of that lay some time in the future. For now, these twelve men were heading into France on a mission to spread carnage and mayhem across familiar ground to many – Étampes airbase.
A thirteenth man had joined them on the Stirling, but only for the flight in. An SAS original and renowned desert navigator, Captain Mike Sadler had taken up the bomb-aimer’s seat in the aircraft, so he could better see Garstin and his men make their drop. Now serving as part of the SAS’s intelligence set-up, Sadler aimed to fine-tune such drops, by observing them for real in the field. That way, the SAS could learn from any mistakes and seek to do better in the future. On tonight’s mission there would be an awful lot to observe and to learn.
As the Stirling climbed to altitude, it proved cold on that warplane. The twelve raiders sat in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. As if sensing the danger they were heading into, Wiehe found himself playing with his rosary beads, and mouthing a silent prayer: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.’ The rosary was very dear to him. It had come into his possession in the most special of ways. It had been a gift from a Father Arrowsmith-Larkin, an army chaplain, in March 1942, when Wiehe’s then unit had been serving in the North African desert.
Father Arrowsmith-Larkin had told him that he’d placed the rosary on the Rock of Agony at Gethsemane, where Jesus was said to have prayed the night before his crucifixion. He’d given it to the young lieutenant at a time when he was at his lowest ebb. Wiehe had tried to volunteer for special duties the first time around by arguing that his bilingualism would be an asset to British forces behind the lines. But his kindly commanding officer had put the kybosh on it, arguing against him volunteering for a post wherein the ‘risks would surely be greater’, Wiehe had noted in his diary.
After such a let-down, the gift of that precious rosary had lifted the lieutenant’s spirits mightily. Ever since then he had turned to it, whenever he was faced with his greatest challenges – as he did now, on a Stirling heading into the darkness and the unknown. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death . . .
After running the gauntlet of the German ack-ack over the French coast, the Stirling droned onwards, mercifully unharmed. Shortly after 1.40 a.m., Garstin and his men felt the aircraft begin to lose altitude, which had to signify they were approaching the DZ. Momentarily, there was a distinct sense of the warplane hitting some turbulence, as it bumped and bucked its way across what appeared to be another aircraft’s slipstream.
This near to the drop, it was ominous. What could another plane be doing right here, if not waiting to pounce? But despite the pilot’s warning that there was ‘another aircraft around’, no cannon fire erupted from the dark night sky; no white-hot lead came tearing through the Stirling’s flanks. Instead, the pilot brought his aircraft down to 800 feet, with all seeming well. Studying the configuration of lights below on the ground, and the recognition signal, all appeared perfectly correct. Whoever was down there, they sure knew their craft well.
Moments later the jump-light winked red, and Garstin and his fellows hurried to the trap. It switched to green, and one after the other twelve men plummeted into the aircraft’s slipstream. The Stirling turned for a second pass over the DZ, a dozen containers stuffed full of weaponry, ammo, cash and other supplies being thrown into thin air, each falling beneath its own parachute. But even as those containers were shoved into the night, Sadler caught sight of som
ething far below – the blaze of a muzzle flash, amongst the darkened terrain. It was not unknown for high-spirited Resistance types to greet a drop with bursts of celebratory fire. Sadler had to hope this was that. If not, then Garstin and his men were in some kind of trouble.
Barely had Sadler had time to entertain such thoughts when the night-fighter was upon them, howling out of the darkness. The Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstörer (destroyer) came at the Stirling head on, its 20mm cannons and machine guns blazing. The combined velocity of the two warplanes meant that they blazed past each other at a speed in excess of 500 mph, meaning the exchange of fire was over in a flash. If it had come at them from behind, and given them a long burst, they might well have been done for.
Instead, the Stirling’s pilot dived to gain speed in an effort to lose the hunter, but the Bf 110 was still on their tail. ‘We dived down pretty rapidly into the clouds,’ Sadler recalled. ‘I thought the wings were going to come off.’ As the Stirling raced for the coast, the night-fighter began hammering out bursts of fire. The pilot kept weaving dramatically, in an effort to shake off his tormentor. By the time they’d reached British shores and had succeeded in losing the enemy warplane, the Stirling had taken a serious pasting. Still, they managed to make their home base with no loss of life.
All hoped that Garstin and his men had fared better, as they had tumbled into the darkness.
Chapter 12
Conditions on the night of 5 July ’44 would prove unkind to Captain Garstin and his men: the twelve figures drifted to earth amidst an eerily bright and moonlit scene. Garstin and his Irish patrol had jumped first. They’d been followed by Wiehe, Varey, Ginger Jones, Morrison, Norman and Castelow, who was jumper number twelve. The order of the drop would prove critical. The first seven, Wiehe included, would land in the open cornfield. The last five were swallowed by the Bois de Bouray, with Troopers Morrison, Norman and Castelow landing deep in the woodland.
At first, there appeared little that was wrong with the drop. As the lead figures touched down in the open and clipped out of their chutes, they could see the rest of the stick drifting towards them, and the Stirling making its second pass, disgorging the containers. All seemed peaceful and quiet. Garstin – typically, first down, expecting to be the rallying point for his men – spied a figure hurrying out of the woodlands. Instantly recognisable as a civilian, the man approached the SAS captain, crying out: ‘Vive la France!’
This was not an unusual way for a Resistance man to issue a salutation, and as they were expecting a reception party Garstin reached out to shake the man’s hand. But as soon as he was close enough the Frenchman hissed a desperate warning: ‘Be careful: there are Boches all around!’ No sooner had he said it than the stillness of the night was torn apart by a rattle of gun fire. Confused, but sensing trouble, Garstin allowed himself to be led by the Frenchman towards the cover of the dark fringe of trees.
For SS Sturmbannführer Hans Kieffer’s men – Haug first and foremost – this was not what they had been expecting at the Bois de Bouray. Anticipating only a container drop, they’d been surprised –very – when twelve parachutists had descended from the moonlit skies, and they had been caught somewhat unprepared. ‘At about the same time shooting broke out suddenly on all sides,’ Haug observed.
Vaculik had dropped third in Garstin’s stick, landing close on the SAS captain’s heels. ‘At once when I touched the ground I heard a burst of machine-guns [sic] coming in my direction,’ he remarked, ‘so I took my carbine . . . and answered, in the direction of the firing . . . They fired a few times like that and I answered. I wanted to get out of that field.’ All seven of those who’d been dropped in the open were desperate to get out of the line of fire, whoever it might be that was doing the shooting.
Falling to his hands and knees, Vaculik crawled towards his leg-bag, rummaging inside for what had to be the most vital bits of kit right now – spare magazines and grenades. All the time, sporadic bursts of fire cut the night air. As he rifled through his equipment, he was trying to figure out just where the fire was coming from and who on earth was shooting at whom. The bursts intensified, tracers lacing the night sky above him, and Vaculik was hit by a blinding realisation: ‘Suddenly, it occurred to me that we had dropped into an ambush. The Germans were expecting us.’
Like Captain Garstin just a minute before him, Vaculik decided to make for the cover of the trees – ‘the only chance of safety’. Abandoning the rest of his kit amidst the corn, he started the crawl of his life. He’d made around a hundred yards when a savage burst of fire tore out of the shadows. Ominously, it had come from the very patch of woodland for which he was making. Keeping low, he traded shots with an unseen enemy, moving after each burst so as to avoid making himself an easy target.
Shooting at night at hidden adversaries was no easy matter, as Vaculik well knew. He crept closer and lobbed two grenades into the dark wall of trees. The explosions ripped through the woodland, blasting off branches and leaves. Moments later Vaculik could hear panicked cries in German, plus the sound of boots crashing through the undergrowth, as if the enemy were retreating. On his feet now, he pushed forward, firing probing bursts into the treeline. Finally, he made the cover of the first of the trees, creeping ahead, ‘my ears cocked for the slightest noise’.
But what he had hoped to be a sizeable woodland – enough, perhaps, to lose himself in – proved to be nothing more than a small copse. On the far fringes he detected hostile voices – there was no escape that way. He did a mental count of his remaining weaponry: six mags for the carbine, six grenades, plus his Colt with five clips of ammo. Enough to go down fighting. ‘What could I do alone?’ Vaculik wondered. Where were the others? If only he could link up with the rest, at least they could fight it out together.
He turned back, heading into the open once more. Towards the south of the DZ he’d spied another patch of woodland. Maybe that offered the chance of linking up with his fellows, or of escape. As he crept ahead through the dark trees, a voice cried out in German: ‘Hands up! Drop the gun!’ Vaculik’s only response was to take to his heels, as a burst of fire slashed into the foliage behind him. Diving into the corn he crawled onwards, frantic to escape. In his mind a voice was screaming: ‘I don’t want to be taken prisoner. Not that, whatever happens.’
After he’d made a good few yards, Vaculik risked breaking cover, zigzagging through the field in an effort to avoid being hit. But suddenly his foot caught on something half-hidden in the corn, and he went sprawling. Reaching back, he tried to discover what had wrongfooted him. His hand touched . . . something soft. He withdrew it in shock. A body was lying face down. Horrified, Vaculik manhandled it around, until he found himself gazing into the features of Howard Lutton – soldier by trade, poacher by nature.
Lutton had been hit by a burst of fire, and the blood from his wounds was still congealing on his uniform. ‘His eyes were wide open and they looked astonished, as though he could not understand what was happening,’ Vaculik recalled. By the scale of Lutton’s injuries, Vaculik figured he wasn’t long for the world, if he wasn’t dead already. Reaching out, he closed those staring eyes. Lutton had jumped with four carrier pigeons strapped around his neck, held in special tubes designed for the purpose. They were lying close by.
Vaculik reached for the first, determined at the very least to send headquarters a warning message. They had dropped into a trap. Either they had been betrayed, or something else had gone wrong with the arrangements for the reception. For all Vaculik knew, he was the last of his stick left alive. Either way, SAS headquarters had to be alerted, or other parties might be delivered into the hands of the enemy.
Whatever dark skulduggery had transpired tonight, of one thing Captain Pat Garstin was certain: treachery was afoot in the Bois de Bouray. The first Frenchman to meet him on the DZ had been joined by a second, and together they had led the SAS captain towards what had seemed to be the safety of the woods. In truth, they’d delivered him into the hands of the enemy. With
out warning, grey-uniformed figures had pounced out of the shadows, seizing Garstin and twisting his arms behind his back.
‘Bring your men over here!’ Garstin was ordered, at gunpoint.
The enemy were trying to get Garstin to call to his fellows, to lure them further into the trap. Unsurprisingly, he refused. One of his captors proceeded to rip Garstin’s decorations and his rank slides from his uniform, declaring that the SAS captain was not a proper soldier, but a ‘terrorist’. If he refused to help, he was a dead man. Bristling with defiance, Garstin made it clear he would offer the enemy not the slightest hint of any assistance.
‘Right, we will shoot this officer anyway,’ his captors declared, amongst themselves.
Realising that he had nothing left to lose, Garstin seized the moment and wrestled himself free, yelling for any of his men within earshot to make a break for it. As he tried to dash away, the German soldiers turned their MP40 ‘Schmeisser’ sub-machine guns on him, and Garstin was riddled with fire. Two bullets struck him in the neck, two more in the arm, and a fifth tore into his shoulder, the burst of 9mm rounds throwing him to the ground. Grievously wounded, he was unable to get up again.
If anything, Garstin’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Wiehe, had suffered even greater ill fortune: the trajectory of his drop had deposited him on the very fringes of the cornfield, right beside the enemy’s guns. Once Wiehe had cut himself free from his chute, he’d noticed Paddy Barker just nearby. Together, the two men had crept towards the cover of the fringe of trees, but indistinct figures – ‘vague shapes’ – were moving in the shadows. They’d prowled closer, weapons at the ready, trying to make out if it was their people, or hostile forces.
