SAS Great Escapes

by Damien Lewis

  Indeed, the havoc wrought by these swift, wide-ranging attacks proved so daunting that German commanders began to fear a far larger Allied force was concealed within the dark forests. Not unreasonably, German officers began to argue that if the SAS possessed the capacity to carry out such brazen missions across so large an area so far behind the lines, surely they must constitute a force at least several hundred strong. Meanwhile, the German rank and file began to fear that no one, no matter what their status, was safe. The SAS had accomplished exactly what they had set out to achieve.

  ‘On the whole the Germans seemed very scared of us,’ Franks reported. ‘Judging by local reports our numbers had been much exaggerated . . . the appearance of the jeeps astounded and irritated the Germans, and made them redouble their efforts to destroy our party.’ The SAS’s summary report noted of the successes scored: ‘The parties sent out were able to do considerable damage and kept a large number of enemy troops occupied.’

  Unsurprisingly, senior enemy commanders seemed to have had more than enough of these fearsome raiders who struck by surprise from the shadows. Struggling to seek out and destroy the SAS force, they reasoned that such a fighting unit could not be operating without help from the locals. Accordingly, they began to take savage reprisals, rounding up villagers accused of supporting the SAS and despatching them en masse to the concentration camps.

  On the 24 September, German commanders unleashed their dark predations on Moussey, the village that lay closest to the SAS base, not so far away in Les Bois Sauvages. At gunpoint, the inhabitants were herded into the square. As luck would have it, at that very moment Druce happened to be heading into the village, returning from a jeep sortie. As his two-vehicle convoy drove into the village square, the German troops gathered there momentarily mistook them for friendly forces. That gave Druce and his men the chance to open fire, unleashing a devastating broadside from the jeep’s machine guns.

  The two vehicles made it through to the far side unscathed, whereupon they hightailed it to the SAS base, to warn Franks and the others. Back in the village, the surviving German commanders were seething. They proceeded to order all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty to be deported from Moussey and environs. A total of 210 were shipped off to the concentration camps, and only a few dozen would ever return, earning this area the poignant nickname the ‘Valley of the Widows’. Yet in spite of such horrors, members of the resistance continued to take the gravest risks imaginable, in order to assist the SAS and to provide them with vital intelligence.

  It was thanks to their ceaseless efforts that Colonel Franks came into possession of a sheaf of papers of incredibly high value to the Allies. It consisted of documents outlining the complete order of battle for the 21st Panzer Division, a formidable armoured unit that had achieved a near-legendary status during the German expeditionary campaign in the North African deserts. Pulled back to occupied France, the 21st had reformed on the flanks of the Vosges, charged with achieving similar levels of success against the Allies here as they had when serving with the Afrika Korps.

  The papers were too detailed and complex to transmit via radio, and in any case Franks’ wireless sets had proven temperamental and highly unreliable. Yet he knew that he must somehow get them into Allied commanders’ hands. They constituted a crucial source of intelligence via which to locate and obliterate a key asset of Nazi Germany’s defences, detailing just about every position held by the 21st in the Vosges. US General George Patton’s forces were situated just to the west, facing the German frontline defences, where they had become bogged down due to fuel and ammo shortages, plus the intensity of the fighting. But if Patton had these documents, he could target the enemy’s armour with airstrikes and artillery barrages, so hastening a breakthrough.

  Franks knew there was only one viable option: the documents would have to be taken on foot to Patton, the hard-charging American general. The only way to attempt such a fraught journey would be to pose as French civilians, the risks of which were legion. If the courier were caught, he would very likely get classed as an ‘unlawful saboteur’ or ‘spy’ and sentenced to death without trial. It was a horrendously risky mission, and as far as Franks was concerned there was only one choice for such an undertaking – Captain Henry Carey Druce.

  When asked, Druce readily accepted. Franks requested a volunteer to accompany him. This would be no easy task, he explained, for it would involve traversing an area that was crawling with enemy troops, with no chance of backup or rescue. Once the party left Les Bois Sauvages they would be entirely on their own. They would need to move many miles undetected to approach the German frontline, and somehow to slip beyond it unseen. Even if they made it that far, they would then be faced with a death-defying dash across no-man’s-land, to reach the Allied frontline. And there, they might even encounter ‘friendly fire’, for the Americans would have no idea they were coming.

  Over the weeks that he had spent soldiering with the SAS, Fiddick had grown very close to Captain Druce. Having heard Colonel Franks’ appeal, he initially ‘hesitated, to see if anyone would put up their hands’. When nobody did, the Canadian airman-turned-SAS-trooper did the only right and proper thing and volunteered, declaring simply: ‘I’ll go with Henry on this journey.’

  ‘On 29 Sep Captain Druce, 2SAS, and I started off to try to get through to the American lines,’ Fiddick’s escape report noted. At 0300 hours, the two men set forth, moving stealthily through the dark forest in a westerly direction. It was now fully two months since Fiddick had bailed out of his stricken warplane over France, and it was a bonus that this Canadian farmer’s son felt so at home amid such dense and isolated woodlands.

  At first, he and Druce made slow progress across the heavily wooded terrain. Even when it became less thickly vegetated and easier to navigate, enemy patrols thronged the area and spotter aircraft criss-crossed the sky. If nothing else, the ever-increasing German presence told them that they must be nearing the frontline. By the following evening, Fiddick and Druce found themselves approaching the village of Saint-Prayel. It lay less than ten miles from their point of departure as the crow flies, but up hill and down dale it had proven a far longer journey.

  Saint-Prayel was little more than a scattering of farms and cottages, but the hamlet marked a key point on their journey, for adjacent to it lay the only bridge thereabouts that crossed the River Meurthe – a major tributary of the River Moselle – beyond which lay their objective. The official Operation Loyton report noted how ‘the American advance had been halted west of the River Meurthe,’ and as Druce and Fiddick knew full well, the German frontline lay somewhere on the far side. The banks of the Meurthe were sure to be bristling with German defences, yet if the two men were to have any chance of delivering their documents, they must risk a dash through the village and over the bridge.

  As they observed the hamlet from cover, Saint-Prayel appeared quiet enough, but its strategic position meant it simply had to be well guarded. When darkness fell, Druce motioned Fiddick forwards. Sticking to the darkest terrain, they darted from the cover of buildings to trees and to more buildings. They had almost reached their objective when they heard the pounding of footsteps from behind. The noise of their footfalls must have attracted hostile attention. Fiddick looked to his partner and following Druce’s lead he stepped into the deepest shadows, making ready the submachine gun that he carried.

  Two black-clad members of the Milice Française – the local militia of French Fascists, raised in part to combat the Maquis – came rushing down the road, each brandishing a pistol. Clearly, they had heard the sound of someone moving through the village after curfew and had come to investigate. The two figures slowed as they neared Druce and Fiddick’s place of concealment, their voices ringing out, demanding that their quarry show themselves.

  Without warning Druce and Fiddick stepped out of the darkness, each with their weapon trained on the chests of their pursuers. They uttered no words, bu
t their steely expressions conveyed that they were more than ready to shoot. ‘We were armed and they were armed,’ remarked Fiddick, ‘so we had this kind of cowboy-style stand-off where we just stared at each other. Then they backed slowly off.’ Faced with what appeared to be two seasoned fighters wielding formidable-looking firepower, the two Frenchmen seemed to lose confidence in their pistols.

  ‘We clung to our guns and were ready to shoot our way out,’ Druce recalled, ‘which I’m glad to say we didn’t have to do, because we were not very good shots and we couldn’t see in the dark. Anyhow, they disappeared and we went on . . .’

  As they edged towards the bridge, the blackness of the night provided welcome cover. Fiddick and Druce were certain they could hear a German patrol moving on the far bank. They waited for the moment when the noise seemed to die away, before creeping forward to cross the bridge, but barely had they started to scurry over when a voice called out a challenge from the opposite side. Both men dropped to the ground. Fiddick scanned the far end of the bridge, desperate for any clue as to who had spoken, but he could make out very little. He turned to Druce, the more experienced of the two, seeking an indication as to what they should do next.

  But the SAS captain seemed rooted to the spot. When ‘that bloody man on the river’ threw out his challenge, Druce found himself frozen with indecision, fearing that he and Fiddick ‘really had had it’. They had an enemy patrol moving backwards and forwards ‘within . . . yards of us’, and now a sentry had yelled out a direct warning. It was ‘a bad moment’, Druce declared. But luck was with them, for no one seemed able to locate the hiding place of the two SAS fugitives. Indeed, it went back to being ‘mousey-quiet’ all along the banks of the Meurthe, as Druce remarked.

  ‘It was ticklish for a little while,’ Fiddick added, with typical Canadian modesty, but finally they were able to set off again and crept across the bridge. Having flitted over the river like hunted fugitives, Druce and Fiddick managed to slip into thick foliage on the far side. They were now in the heart of the German military’s frontline positions here on the western wall of the Vosges. Pushing on through the darkness at a painfully slow pace, inching ahead at a stealthy crouch, they half-stumbled and half-fell into an unseen ditch.

  ‘We encountered . . . slit trenches and several Germans,’ Druce reported. ‘We decided this was the frontline . . .’

  ‘Stumbling into the German trench was . . . unsettling,’ Fiddick added, as they feared discovery at every move. ‘We retired back into the bush a little distance.’ There they decided to lie low and observe the passage of German patrols, to try to ascertain the best route ahead. Eventually, senses on high alert for any sign of the enemy, they picked their silent way forwards once again.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the two figures reached the last trench, before what appeared to be no-man’s-land. Ahead stretched the churned and blasted territory lying between the opposing sides. The once-fertile earth had been torn up by explosions, crops were scythed by shrapnel, and everywhere the terrain bore the scars of war.

  Druce cleared the final parapet, crawling on his stomach like a stalking cat with his body almost entirely flat to the ground. After about ten yards he became still again, checking the lie of the land. Friendly forces had to be somewhere up ahead, but he had no way of knowing how far away, or how watchful they might be for enemy patrols. Behind him, Fiddick kept watch from his position in the final trench. When he saw Druce move off again – their prearranged signal to follow – he pushed himself up over the edge and began to slither after him.

  ‘A thing I guess I’ll always remember was crawling across that open field just on the far side of the trenches,’ Fiddick recalled. The two men remained as low as possible, sticking to the cover of what remained of the furrows. Moving like that, crawling on their bellies, they finally reckoned they’d covered enough ground to be out of the enemy’s line of sight. They were leaving one threat behind, but their problems were far from over.

  There was a high likelihood that either one side or the other would have sown this no-man’s-land with landmines that, if disturbed by scrabbling hands and knees, would detonate with deadly force. Fiddick and Druce pressed onwards through the peaks and troughs of churned-up earth, fearing at any moment that a hand or knee placed down might meet with an excoriating explosion. But finally, seemingly miraculously, they reached the cover of some trees on the far side.

  They crawled in the woodland, Druce reported, remaining there ‘until the morning’ to ensure they ‘really were past the frontline’.

  Come sunrise, they reckoned it was time to face the next potentially deadly challenge: to make contact with whatever ‘friendly’ forces might lie ahead. As matters transpired, they had crawled across no-man’s-land to end up at a section of the Allied front held by ‘the 1st Spahis Regt. of General Leclerc’s Division’, Druce recalled. The 1st Spahis were a battle-hardened element of the Free French forces, commanded by veteran French leader General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, who had been one of the first to make his way to Britain to raise an army under De Gaulle.

  The 1st Spahis had fought with distinction in North and East Africa, before forming part of the British Eighth Army to secure victory at El Alamein. Now tasked to help liberate France, they were standing shoulder to shoulder with the American troops of General Patton’s forces. A tough, well-experienced and disciplined fighting unit, the men of the 1st Spahis took Fiddick and Druce into their lines, holding their fire until the two mystery arrivals could properly identify themselves. Fiddick could barely believe that they had completed the fabled ‘home run’, as it was called among fliers – an epic escape from enemy territory, to arrive safely back with Allied forces.

  But his elation was tempered with regret. Although he had been a wholly accidental and honorary member of the SAS, he had been thrilled by the weeks that he had spent soldiering with them in the Vosges. Hitting targets from 10,000 feet in a Lancaster had been all well and good, but operating with the British raiders had proven so much more real and visceral. Despite the intense discomfort, and the near-permanent fear of being hunted, ‘cutting the head off the Nazi snake’ had proved to be heady and intoxicating work. Now, for Fiddick at least, all of that was over.

  Fiddick and Druce were taken direct ‘to a French Headquarters, and from there to the American . . . HQ’, where Druce was able to hand over the all-important documents. Unsurprisingly, for his actions in the Vosges he would win ‘not only the admiration of all British troops with whom he came into contact, but also of the local French people amongst whom his name became a byword’, Druce’s later medal citation would state of his actions. For now at least, this was to be his and Fiddick’s parting of the ways. Incredibly, while Fiddick was ordered to return to the RCAF, Druce was poised to make an about-turn and head back the way he and Fiddick had just come.

  ‘I decided to return to the Colonel and put him fully in the picture of the situation for our future operations,’ Druce remarked, of his move back towards the SAS base. ‘Also to take . . . [the] badly needed [radio] set and new crystals.’ Colonel Franks’ last working radio had just gone on the blink, leaving him with no choice but to ask this quite extraordinary SAS captain to sneak back across the lines, bringing with him the spare parts that he so desperately needed. Druce had also learned what he deemed to be vital information regarding General Patton’s impending offensive. And so, laden with his precious cargo of radio spares and armed with this new intel, Druce headed back via ‘the same route’ but this time alone and ‘moving rather slowly in view of a 60–70lb pack’.

  Unscathed, undetected, Druce returned to the last known location of his unit, only to find the Bois Sauvages camp deserted and a key French resistance leader’s ‘house burned’, plus Moussey village itself swarming with Germans. From a trusted member of the Maquis he learned that the SAS had been attacked and that Franks and the others had split into small groups to attempt to sli
p back to the Allied lines. The official Operation Loyton mission report states that, ‘on the 9th October, as the winter was approaching in this inhospitable area which was now being prepared by the Germans as an alternative frontline position, Col. Franks decided to order his parties to exfiltrate independently.’

  However, during the time that Druce had been away, the resistance had ‘procured further information about the arrival of three new German Divisions near St Dié’. Knowing that ‘the Americans were supposed to be starting an attack’ in that area very soon, Druce decided that this intelligence ‘was so important that it had to be transmitted to the Americans immediately’. With that priority spurring him on, Druce returned through enemy lines ‘on the same route for a third time’, an utterly extraordinary achievement by anyone’s reckoning.

  Having made it back to the Allied forces in the same manner as before, Druce ‘met the French, who were alarmed at the information and passed it on to the Americans’. The citation for Druce’s Distinguished Service Order, earned during Operation Loyton, sums up his absolutely astonishing achievements: ‘29 September, Capt. Druce was ordered to contact 3 US Army carrying important documents and much useful information of enemy dispositions. Not only did he succeed in this mission but on receipt of information from 3 US Army which he considered vital to his Commanding Officer, he decided to attempt to pass through the enemy lines once more. This was accomplished successfully. In all, Captain Druce passed through the enemy lines on no less than three occasions.’

  The citation goes on to praise Druce effusively, highlighting ‘this officer’s skill, energy, daring and complete disregard for his own safety’. Druce was also awarded a Croix de Guerre with Palm for his services to the French people, who would never forget the SAS captain’s courage and sacrifice during the long weeks that he had spent in their midst.