SAS Great Escapes

by Damien Lewis

  To his relief, Almonds heard the truck’s engine growl into life as it got underway. Once it was gone, Almonds clambered to his feet, brushing the muck from his civilian clothing. He locked eyes with the farmer. There was a brief look of acknowledgement and understanding: while he did not know exactly who Almonds was, the farmer realised he was no friend to the German occupiers.

  Almonds smiled his thanks: ‘Grazie.’

  The farmer shrugged: ‘Prego’ – You’re welcome.

  With that, Almonds hurried off across the field, seeking the cover of the woodland on the far side. He made it and headed cross-country, picking up his pace once more and running whenever he could. Before long he became aware of a mass of enemy troops all around him, as convoys of trucks snaked through the landscape. The Germans were readying a series of massive fortifications lying to the south of Rome. These would become known as the Gustav Line, the Bernhardt Line and the none-too-subtly-named Hitler Line. But it was the Volturno Line – which stretched from Termoli on the eastern coast, over the Apennine Mountains to the mouth of the Volturno River on Italy’s west coast – that Almonds was fast approaching.

  In his diary entry from the time, Almonds estimated that he had walked about 200 miles. But it was clear that he could not press on through terrain crawling with enemy troops. He would have to find a place to hide while he waited for the Germans to pass. He reached the outskirts of the village of San Giuliano del Sannio, and just managed to avoid blundering into a section of enemy troopers manning an 88mm field gun – the superlative German anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon. Though the Allies owned the skies over Italy, having almost total air superiority, the eighty-eights had proved a menace both on the ground and in the air. The gun could be deployed for action in less than two minutes, which made it far more mobile and versatile than any equivalent Allied weapon.

  From his hiding place Almonds heard an aircraft engine and scanned the open sky, hoping to spot the warplane. Ever since he was a child he’d loved aircraft. He had even built one with a friend, using scavenged wood and fabric and attaching an old motorcycle engine as a powerplant. He had savoured every moment of designing, assembling and testing their DIY flying machine, taking huge delight in carving a two-bladed wooden propeller entirely by hand. Sadly for Almonds, neither he nor his friend had had the money to get the plane airborne, but he’d felt certain – if he’d had the funds – that they would have made it fly.

  The form of a lone P-47 Thunderbolt, with its unmistakable fat and stocky fuselage, hove into view. The warplane’s powerful Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engine was used in two other American fighters – the Grumman Hellcat and the Vought Corsair – and it made an utterly distinctive, ear-splitting howl. Bulky and bull-like, as opposed to the sleeker German Messerschmitt Me 109 or the Focke-Wulf 190, the P-47 was known as the ‘Jug’ – short for Juggernaut – and was a veritable flying tank. Boosted by that Pratt & Whitney powerplant, it boasted a top speed in excess of 400 miles per hour, and its guns could unleash a torrent of lead that would tear up anything in its path. A real work horse, it had a hell of a bite.

  But worryingly, Almonds could tell that this one was in some kind of trouble. Grey-black smoke billowed from one of its wings, leaving a dirty trail in its wake. He imagined it must have been hit, most likely by shrapnel from a shell fired from the eighty-eight that he had just recently avoided. Almonds watched, transfixed, as the pilot fought a losing battle to maintain altitude. With his heart in his mouth, he saw a tiny figure bail out, the plane still gushing smoke as it went down. Moments later there was a flash of grey-white in the sky and the parachutist’s canopy blossomed, as the stricken aircraft plummeted out of view.

  For long moments the pilot drifted on the air. In a diary entry, Almonds noted that he watched the man make ‘a successful parachute landing’, a good distance away. Relieved, he turned back to his journey, pressing onwards with the utmost caution. On the outskirts of San Giuliano village lay a farmstead, built directly into the hillside. It seemed like the perfect place to lie low as the Germans passed, but still Almonds was unsure whether to approach it. The local people so far had proven mostly friendly, but Almonds remembered a time when he had suffered absolute brute savagery at Italian hands.

  After his capture in Benghazi, and being shackled hand to foot, Almonds had been taken out at gunpoint and forced to kneel on the flatbed of an open pick up. Three Italians joined him, pointing their loaded rifles at the back of his head. Then the truck had proceeded to drive slowly around the city streets, exhibiting the prisoner for all to see, thus ‘proving’ his captors’ proficiency at keeping the citizens ‘safe’ from Allied forces. Almonds was pelted with rubbish and spat on by crowds of onlookers. All the while he had no way of knowing if this shameful show of public humiliation would end with his own execution. It had not come to that, but Almonds had been left deeply scarred by the experience.

  Despite the vividness of his memories, he decided that he should take a risk on this hillside farmstead. He approached carefully, finally making his presence known to the farmer, an Italian in his forties who introduced himself as Liberato Coapaulo. Coapaulo had a friendly face and Almonds felt instinctively that he was trustworthy. He lived there with his wife and nine-year-old daughter, he explained, tending a small flock of sheep and some chickens.

  Coapaulo indicated the hayloft, which was entered via a door set higher in the hillside, offering it to Almonds as a hiding place. There he concealed himself among the bales. From the hayloft, another door led directly into Coapaulo’s simple kitchen, and that evening the Italian invited Almonds to join his family for a meal. As the mouthwatering smell of roasted mutton filled the air, Almonds realised – with mixed feelings of guilt and tremendous gratitude – that Coapaulo had slaughtered one of his precious sheep.

  It was clearly a considerable sacrifice, for Coapaulo and his family did not have much to feed themselves. Almonds ate heartily, but before he could finish the meal, his host’s attention was drawn to something outside. Moments later, Coapaulo signalled that Almonds should return to the hayloft. As he bolted for his hiding place, he glimpsed his host’s wife removing any evidence of there ever having been a fourth place at dinner.

  His heart pounding, Almonds lay completely still on the hayloft floor. Peeking through the narrow gaps in the boarding, he spied a group of enemy soldiers. As far as he could tell they were not in search of any Allied POWs: it was supper they were after. A squad of tired and hungry German troops were seeking provisions for their journey. They appeared oblivious to the fugitive staring down from above. Almonds watched as the grey-clad figures cut some kind of deal with Coapaulo. Remaining utterly silent and still, he waited for them to finish their haggling, after which he hoped they would be on their way.

  Coapaulo, knowing full well the dire penalty for assisting an Allied escapee, figured he would provide something extra to sweeten the deal. He brought the German troop leader a brace of live chickens to add to the parcel of roasted mutton. Watching from above as the German soldiers wrung the necks of the hens, Almonds felt doubly tortured: yet more of the family’s precious food supplies had been sacrificed in order to shield him from harm.

  The troop leader dug out a fistful of Third Reich ‘requisition slips’ and handed them to Coapaulo. These ‘bank-notes’ were issued for soldiers to use in occupied territories, to ‘pay’ for confiscated goods. But everyone knew they were essentially worthless. Even so, no Italian farmer – no matter how poor he was – could afford to say no to such occupying troops. As for Almonds, he vowed that his presence should not endanger the kind farmer and his family any longer than was absolutely neces­sary, deciding to press on as soon as he could.

  The following day – 10 October 1943, just over a month since Almonds had made his escape – Coapaulo approached him with unexpected news. It appeared that the downed Thunderbolt pilot was also in hiding quite near by. Interest more than a little piqued, Almonds acc
epted Coapaulo’s offer to get a message to the man. For this Almonds used one of his most treasured resources – a page of the paper torn from the priest’s Bible – penning a note to the pilot, which Coapaulo would deliver by hand.

  As Almonds awaited Coapaulo’s return, he used a piece of his precious paper to write a diary entry to his wife Lockie: ‘In a hayloft of a little farm . . . hiding from the Germans . . .’ Almonds was so near, and yet still so far from reaching the Allied lines, but even so his confidence was steadily growing. He recorded in his diary how ‘an American pilot’ was in hiding somewhere near by, and pondered if he would make it to friendly lines this time, concluding: ‘Yes, I think so . . .’

  A while later Coapaulo returned, bearing a reply from the American, signed by ‘Captain M. Neilson’. Neilson stated that he was happy to make contact with an ally. He wanted to meet Almonds as soon as possible so they could journey onwards together. Almonds suggested they rendezvous that very night: that way, he could quiz the American pilot – if he truly was an American pilot – under cover of darkness, and determine whether or not he could be trusted.

  During his time as a POW, Almonds had experienced first-hand the use of ‘stool pigeons’ – spies pretending to be Allied prisoners, in order to win a POW’s trust and so extract valuable information. There was always a chance that the ‘American pilot’ was not who he claimed to be and was being used to entrap Allied escapees and resistance fighters alike. Either way, Almonds was not inclined to take any chances. Via Coapaulo’s efforts he received a reply that Neilson would be happy to meet.

  Almonds duly met the pilot – dressed now in civilian clothes – at a midnight rendezvous. After grilling him, Almonds concluded that Captain M. Neilson was genuine, and he accepted the man’s offer to press onwards to the Allied lines together. But they would need to leave right away, Almonds insisted, for he was not prepared to intrude on Coapaulo’s hospitality any further. Neilson agreed and, after bidding a heartfelt farewell to their host, the two men set off southwards.

  For a while, they forged ahead in silence. But as they crept through the blackness of the moonless terrain, they became aware that they might not be alone. They could see very little except ghostly shapes, which were somehow even blacker than the darkness that enveloped them. Suddenly, the eerie quiet was broken by the harsh sound of something metallic striking something hard. Almonds suspected they had stumbled upon a hidden enemy camp. Both men could sense the danger. Almonds remarked that he and Neilson had ‘hairs standing up’ on the back of their necks. But if there were hostile troops lurking near by, had he and Neilson been detected?

  As luck would have it, they managed to slip through whatever perils had lain around them, apparently without being noticed. As the dark night bled slowly into dawn, the two fugitives reached a gravel track running downhill. Neilson made as if to start down it, but Almonds thrust out one arm in an unconscious movement, halting the American in his tracks. Something about the ground ahead had alerted him to danger . . .

  Almonds was reminded of a night in August 1941, the day before his twenty-seventh birthday, one that he had almost not lived to see. He had been with Jock Lewes on a Commando reconnaissance mission, in the no-man’s-land of the Tobruk perimeter, probing for enemy troops. He, Lewes and three others had stumbled into a freshly laid minefield. The terrifying munitions had been spread out over a large expanse, with trip wires stretched between them. One of their number had caught a wire with his foot, causing a tremendous blast. Though all five had been blown off their feet, miraculously nobody had been injured. Lewes had explained that to make their way out of the minefield, they would have to crawl ahead in single file, the man at the front feeling in the sand before him to locate the mines, or any trigger wires that might be attached to them.

  It had made for agonisingly slow progress. When it had come to Almonds’ turn to take point, he’d inched forwards tentatively on hands and knees, fingers feeling gently, fearfully, in the sand. Before long he had made contact with the hard, metallic, alien form of a landmine lying just beneath the desert surface. Checking the surrounding area for tripwires, they had carefully circumnavigated the mine. As the sky had begun to lighten, it had become easier to locate the mines, due to the tell-tale lines left around them where the ground had been smoothed flat. But with daylight, the men in the minefield had become more visible. Before long they were spotted, enemy troops taking pot-shots at them with their machine guns.

  Incredibly, they had all made it out alive. But ever since, that memory – those scenes – had been etched deeply in Almonds’ mind, which was what had somehow alerted him to danger right now: the track ahead bore all the signs of being sown with mines. Almonds figured that he and Neilson must be nearing the frontline. The Germans were retreating and, aware that the Allies would be pushing up from the south, they were likely laying minefields in their wake. On closer inspection, it appeared that parts of the gravel track had been disturbed and then replaced, but in a slightly unnatural way.

  With utmost care, Almonds knelt at the first obvious disturbance – not so near that it might trigger the device, but close enough so that he could probe carefully with his bare hands. Slowly, gently, sifting the gravel away with his fingers, he grasped the cold metal casing of a German landmine. He paused for an instant, wondering how it was that in the half-light he and his American companion hadn’t pressed onwards and blown themselves to pieces. Even if they had not been killed outright, these devices were designed to cause terrible wounds, and they would very likely have bled to death.

  Replacing the dirt with the utmost care, Almonds scanned the area, trying to establish the full extent of the minefield – how deep and how far it stretched. He made a detailed mental note of the lie of the land, committing every physical feature to memory with all the skill and practice that SAS training afforded him. He was determined to pass on an accurate picture of the minefield’s location and dimensions to the first Allied troops that they encountered, in the hope that it could be de-mined before claiming any lives.

  Skirting around it, he and Neilson took to open country. Before long they came upon another road that they would have to cross. They made several attempts, but each time were forced to retreat for there were enemy troops everywhere. They walked parallel to the road until they came to a point where a bridge forded a shallow river. That bridge, of course, was closely guarded. Come nightfall they edged slowly into the water upstream, trying not to cause the slightest disturbance. Once they were deep enough, Almonds and Neilson lay on their backs, bodies half-submerged and each draping some greenery over his head, to mask the ‘glint of a white face’ in the moonlight. In that way they allowed themselves to drift silently downstream, propelling themselves along by grasping the stony riverbed below with the tips of their fingers. They passed under the bridge unnoticed, and when they were well out of sight they clambered onto the far bank and continued on their way.

  At last, they reached the outskirts of Benevento, an ancient hilltop city around thirty miles north-east of Naples. According to the limited information they had been able to glean, this was the last location of German frontline troops. From his original starting point of Porto San Giorgio, Almonds had covered a distance of some two hundred miles as the crow flies, but considering his route had meandered through the mountains and around countless enemy positions, he’d travelled at least twice as far, over a period of thirty-two days.

  The two men approached Benevento with caution, spying a small military force camped in some bivouacs on the city’s outskirts. Whether they were friendly or not was impossible to tell. The pair ventured into a nearby village in the hope of gathering some intel. There, via a local intermediary, they were able to make contact with that mystery force: it turned out to be an advance party from the 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite American reconnaissance unit. Almonds and Neilson had reached friendly lines.

  Founded in 1942 as the American equivalent of the Brit
ish Commandos, and modelled along similar lines, the Rangers were a fearsome military outfit. Working in small independent teams, Rangers acted as the spearhead of any American thrust, tasked with testing the ground ahead, just as this small party, no more than a dozen strong, was doing now. Their role was to gather intelligence on the whereabouts and strength of the enemy and report back to headquarters, which is what had brought them to Benevento.

  One of the first things Almonds did was to report details of the minefield. A discussion ensued with the Ranger commander as to what to do next. It was imperative to get a warning to Allied commanders of that deadly hazard, one that could otherwise cost many lives. The Ranger commander decided to return to their HQ forthwith, with Almonds and Neilson in their party.

  As they set off, Almonds noticed that one of the Rangers was laden with a heavy Bren gun. Struggling under the load, he kept complaining of the distance that he had walked carrying that burden. Ever the gentleman, Almonds politely offered to shoulder the light machine gun. After all, how was the Ranger to know that this SAS veteran had just walked halfway across Italy in a little over a month, after a year spent in captivity?

  Once the Ranger unit made it back to their forward headquarters, Almonds was promptly arrested by the Americans, who could not understand how someone who looked so much like an Italian could speak with such a natural English accent, concluding that he had to be an enemy spy. Eventually, the truth was established and Almonds was released and despatched to England, where he arrived shortly after Christmas day, 1943. He spent a brief rest period at home with his wife and son, before he returned to his parent unit, the Coldstream Guards. There, all his thoughts were of the SAS, longing for the companionship and brotherhood that he had experienced in their ranks.