Ghost Patrol: A History of the Long Range Desert Group, 1940–1945

by Sadler, John

  Now there was no alternative but to withdraw, and Wilson extricated his forces from the trap which the Aliakmon Line had become to establish a new position which, in the east, would stretch from the anchor of Mount Olympus to the Serbian border. This proved to be the beginning of a series of extended rearguard actions into which the campaign deteriorated, faced with the continuous advance of an enemy with an overwhelming superiority of men, guns and armoured vehicles, and an advance closely supported at every stage by the siren wail of the Stukas and the murderous strafing runs of Me-109’s.

  On the ground Wilson faced the unenviable task of attempting a fighting withdrawal from the ruptured position around Mount Olympus to a shorter line of no more than fifty miles running from the heroic outpost at Thermopylae to the Gulf of Corinth. Even when they reached their new positions the Allies were as exposed as ever. On 22nd April the Greeks formally surrendered, and by the 30th evacuation by sea from the beaches was largely complete, despite a successful attempt by German paratroops to seize a vital crossing at Corinth by a coup de main. The Royal Navy, not for the first, or last, time had delivered the rump of the army, some 80 percent, from certain death or capture. Behind them the defeated army left all of their vehicles, heavy guns, armour and anti-tank weapons, with great quantities of small arms, spares and supplies.

  Resistance

  Resistance to the puppet regime established by the Germans in Greece took a while to get moving. When it did, it moved with gusto but, as ever in the Balkans, political infighting marred any form of concerted action. For generations, bandits cum guerrillas had operated against Turkish overlords from the mountain ranges. These colourful Andartes were not frightened of their Italian or Bulgarian occupiers. Much outrage was caused by the Quislings’ secession of Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace, disputed lands seized by Bulgaria. The King of the Hellenes and his government in exile fled, first to Crete and, as that island was overrun, to Egypt. Many Greeks escaped to join Allied forces.

  From the outset, left wing factions who eventually coalesced to form ELAS were at odds with more nationalist groups such as Zervas’ EDES. The Allies, through British missions, sought to drag both elements into coalition. This enjoyed some success and the Italians were effectively driven out of certain areas. With their collapse, the Germans took over, as ever more thorough, more aggressive and more brutal. In July 1943, all factions had signed up to a ‘National Bands Agreement’ – putting political differences aside to pursue the common goal of victory and subordinating themselves to GHQ and ‘Jumbo’ Wilson. This did not long endure. By the end of the year, sectarianism led to clashes between rival groups, often very bloody. The seeds of the vicious post-occupation civil war were already sown.

  All of the army by that time was pretty well socialist. Everyone was of the view that the Conservatives were to blame for all sorts of ills that we had in the war, the general level of the economy and the way that people felt about the future, so that, by and large, they were all pretty well Labour. Even though people admired Churchill for his ability to lead the country, his politics were completely suspect – he was a Conservative. We felt that what the government was trying to do in Greece was to restore the monarchy, which we all surmised was really not what the people wanted, but was going to be imposed upon them. Therefore in the beginning there was a fair amount of favourable feeling towards this insurgency.18

  Any incidental sympathy British troops may have felt for ELAS quickly dissipated on first acquaintance. For the firebrands of LRDG, it seemed that by the autumn of 1944 the war was drawing inexorably to a close. Allied armies had breached Fortress Europe and were poised to assault the Reich itself. The Red Army was closing in towards the River Oder and, in the Far East, the hard fought battles of Imphal and Kohima had turned the tide against Japan.

  Lieutenant Michael Barker was the first to lead an LRDG patrol on the ground in Greece. He and his team were inserted by air to occupy or at least recce the island of Kithera, off the south coast of the Peloponnese. The notion was that if the place was empty of enemy, it could serve as a staging post for deeper raids into the mainland. As it turned out, all was clear; the Germans had pulled out beforehand.

  In the early days of October, Moir Stormonth-Darling was parachuted into the Florina region with two full patrols, led respectively by Gordon Rowbottom and Jack Clough. Their reception on the ground was uncertain, but the jump was a success and LRDG were soon in action against retreating German forces. The enemy might be running out of time but not the will to continue fighting. As ever, Wehrmacht units were well organised, comprised of all arms and not shy about scrapping. Stormonth-Darling had taken one engineer, Bill Armstrong in with his teams. This was the sapper who’d cheerfully volunteered for the, happily, abortive assault on the Brenner Pass.

  LRDG had prepared an ambush, the action to be triggered by the sappers blowing two culverts they’d mined. The fuse wire snaked into rough cover about a hundred and fifty yards back from the highway. Bill Armstrong was ready there with his box of matches. The rest of the raiding party was scattered amongst a riot of boulders, offering ideal fire positions. As the grinding chug of labouring engines approached, Armstrong coolly bided his time till two trucks were passing over the first culvert and a third astride the rearward.

  The explosions were timed just right. All three vehicles were engulfed in flames; a fourth driving in between was instantly disabled. The convoy ground to a halt and was systematically raked by sustained automatic fire. Fifty odd Germans were killed and there were no Allied casualties.19 Just when the enemy thought it couldn’t get much worse, it did, as the RAF, perfectly on cue, arrived and completed the work of destruction.

  John Olivey too was back in Greece, though not as a POW. He’d taken his Rhodesians to support SBS mayhem in the Peloponnese. His other task, assisted by RAF personnel embedded with the patrol, was to seize Araxos airstrip. He had to fight his way over the narrow isthmus of the Corinth Canal before he made his second wartime entrance into Athens – this time as conqueror. Olivey’s raiders were using ten jeeps and swept northwards to Florina to link up with the other patrols. This wasn’t entirely bloodless. Two men were lost, including Alf Tighe, who’d endured the earlier epic in the desert, killed by a mine just past Corinth.20

  The ‘clean’ war, one fought against an identifiable and repugnant enemy, was nearly over. Hostilities in Greece took a darker, shadier turn as the incipient civil war between communists and nationalists began to boil over into the streets, a developing conflict that would pitch Greece into a cycle of cruelty and violence. John Olivey found his second visit to Athens becoming as deadly as the first. During a routine jeep-mounted street patrol, LRDG was engaged by a sniper.

  Olivey’s driver was shot as a firefight erupted. In saving the wounded trooper, Olivey himself was twice hit, in head and arm. Undeterred, he managed to drag the injured man towards safety before a second bullet finished the driver off. John Olivey managed to reach a British armoured car ranging nearby and bring up additional firepower. He later had to be evacuated to Italy on account of his wounds.21

  Other patrols were still active in Albania, where their major opposition came from the treacherous intransigence of the nominal partisan allies who were rapidly losing any interest in fighting the retreating Germans. David Sutherland and an SBS team were looking to harass the enemy’s withdrawal along the country’s eastern flank. Lack of cooperation became a constant frustration and mounting headache. LRDG patrol leader Jack Aitken, a Kiwi in classic LRDG mould, full of fire and determined to bring his two Rhodesian patrols in to biff the foe, also found himself thwarted by the intercnine squabbling and persistent duplicity of his theoretical allies.

  Because the internal squabbling amongst the partisans was so byzantine, Aitken’s teams had to be inserted onto a stretch of coast held by royalist/nationalists under Abas Kupe. Despite his waning prospects, Kupe still merited the presence of a small mission under Billy Maclean, but they were exfiltrated by the same
schooners that dropped off Aitken’s patrols.

  ‘Jacko’ Jackson, leading one of the LRDG patrols, was tasked to recce a German position near the village of San Dovani. This necessitated a quick dip in the Drin River, almost under the guns of the enemy and nearly two hundred yards across. The heavy, sluggish waters, swollen by autumn rains (this was November) proved treacherous. Jacko, a very strong swimmer, was first over but his two troopers following behind got into difficulties. One of them, Sergeant Ryan, he managed to pull clear but the other man was lost to the current.22

  The next obstacle was a dense belt of mines covering the enemy defences. In the desperate race to save his two comrades, Jackson had lost his binoculars so had to creep between the mines to get close enough. Then there was the river again, jolly cold for a time as he modestly observed.23 This form of guerrilla warfare has an aura of romance, though the realities were rather harsher; constant dirt and lice, exhausting marches in dangerous country, fear as much of one’s supposed friends as the foe.

  Yet, despite all the hardships the commandos often found great kindness among the very poor hill farmers they were billeted with. They would dry our clothes and darn our socks. They might even stay awake the whole night through to watch for sounds which they knew to be alien. Then in the morning, when we woke from a stuffy slumber passed in an atmosphere of pine-savoured smoke, they would harness our mules and lend us their few implements with which to cook a meal.24

  This was a very different war to that experienced by regular forces. For all its hardships and dangers, the comradeship and sense of adventure which had impelled LRDG veterans at the start didn’t waver. Our allies at times might be questionable but there wasn’t any ‘bull’, no murderous barrages of enemy guns. These Balkan lands were hard, unyielding, with centuries of endless conflict seemingly embedded in the stones. Moreover, the tide of history was already moving on, into a new era of Cold War. Would there be any role for LRDG in a changing political and military landscape?

  Notes

  1 Ball, p. 31.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Neil Loudon Desmond Maclean (1918–1986), latterly Unionist MP for Inverness, commissioned into the Royal Scots Greys in 1938, he moved to SOE in 1941, seeing service with Wingate’s Gideon Force in Ethiopia.

  5 Palmer, post-war, became chairman of the famous Huntley & Palmer’s Biscuits Company.

  6 Lloyd Owen, p. 180.

  7 Ibid., p. 181.

  8 Ibid., p. 182.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Ibid., p. 189 – the Balkan Air Force (“BAF”) was composed of elements from both the RAF and South African Air Force under the overall command of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces command. It was active from 7 June 1944 until 15 July 1945.

  11 Although his condition had improved, Lloyd Owen wasn’t out of the woods. Back in Italy he’d need surgery and came close to being invalided home. He remained encased in spinal plaster for several months but managed to remain with the unit.

  12 Ibid., p. 192.

  13 Ibid., pp. 194–195.

  14 Ibid., pp. 196–197.

  15 Ibid., p. 197.

  16 Ibid., p. 199.

  17 Held to determine the defence plans for Greece, dominated by Foreign Secretary Eden’s hopes for an alliance with Yugoslavia and Turkey.

  18 Durham Light Infantry Sound Recording Project, courtesy of Durham County Record Office.

  19 Lloyd Owen, pp. 202–203.

  20 Ibid., p. 203.

  21 Ibid., p. 204.

  22 Ibid., pp. 205–206.

  23 Ibid., p. 206.

  24 Ibid.

  CHAPTER 9

  On the Shores of the Adriatic, 1944–1945

  We are the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy,

  Always drinking vino, always on the spree,

  Eighth army skivvies and the Yanks,

  We live in Rome and stuff our pants,

  We are the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  We landed at Salerno, a holiday with pay,

  Jerry sent the band to cheer us on our way,

  He showed us the sights and gave us tea,

  We all sang songs and the beer was free,

  We are the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  Naples and Cassino were taken in our stride

  We didn’t go to fight there; we just went for the ride,

  Anzio and Sangro were just the same,

  We did nothing there to prove our fame,

  For we are the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  On the way to Florence, we had a lovely time,

  They ran a bus to Amalfi – through the Gothic Line,

  Soon to Bologna we will go

  When Jerry pulls back beyond the Po,

  For we are the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  Now Lady Astor please listen to this lot,

  Don’t stand on the platform and talk a lot of rot,

  You’re such a sweetheart, the nation’s pride,

  But your damned mouth is far too wide,

  That’s from the D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  If you look around the mountains, in the mud and rain,

  You’ll see a lot of crosses,

  Some that bear no name,

  Health, wreck and toil and suffering,

  The boys beneath shall never sing,

  That they were D-Day dodgers out here in Italy.

  —Anon: D-Day Dodgers (sung to the tune of Lili Marlene)

  In order to nip disorders in the bud the sternest measures must be applied at the first sign of insurrection. It should also be taken into consideration that in the countries in question a human life is often valueless. In a reprisal for the life of a German soldier, the general rule should be capital punishment for 50–100 Communists. The manner of execution must have a frightening effect.1

  General Keitel’s order, and he would be duly called to account for it at Nuremburg, reflects the stir that Tito’s communist partisans had and were causing in Yugoslavia. After the lightning invasion and apparently equally rapid collapse, two very distinct and mutually antagonistic partisan groups emerged. Josef Tito, a convinced communist, was already a wanted man in his own country. Following Barbarossa he raised the red flag officially on 27th June. Well organised and highly motivated, his cadres recruited from their home bases. In Tito’s case, this was Serbia proper. By September, he could count as many as seventy thousand fighters beneath his banners.

  White Eagles in Serbia

  Tito’s recruits, unlike Mihailovic’s Chetniks who were royalists and nationalists, were active in killing Germans. In Montenegro, Tito’s forces routed the Italian occupiers, capturing four thousand of them, together with all their weapons and gear. Success brought retribution from the Germans – regular and damaging sweeps were scorched across the hills but Tito evaded conventional battle. Nonetheless, casualties were high and this spurred a need to reorganise.

  Local militias were vulnerable to just this type of riposte, so he forged a more professional mobile force, some officers being recruited from those who’d fought with the international brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Training was thorough, discipline strict; Tito even managed to build a fledgling navy which operated off the coast and among the necklace of islands. By November 1942 his re-branded People’s Liberation Army (“PLA”) could boast a complement of over a hundred thousand men and women under arms. Until 1943, the Allies had naturally inclined towards Mihailovic, but his total lack of any shadow of enterprise, and the favourable reports of SOE liaison teams persuaded Allied planners that Tito, for all his communist affiliations, was still the right horse to back.

  As the invasion of Italy drew near, Tito’s partisans were holding down half a million Axis troops. In the course of their fifth great anti-guerrilla sweep, the Germans nearly bottled up a large proportion of Tito’s fighting strength in the harsh Montenegrin uplands. The odds were depressing but the partisans fought their way clear, earning well-merited plaudits from SOE. Attempts to brok
er an understanding between the rival groups failed. Their aims were too divergent and, this being the Balkans, a civil war between partisan factions was soon underway. By 1944, Tito was the clear favourite and, although a dedicated communist, would never be Stalin’s stooge.2

  Crossing the Adriatic

  In Italy, putative LRDG missions were still being planned and then discarded at a furious rate – largely because the front line kept advancing. As the long attrition at Monte Cassino was finally drawing to a close, Stan Eastwood, at that point new to LRDG, was dispatched on a recce to a small island lying just off Corfu. The main island held a garrison of two and a half thousand Axis, and the patrol was to investigate a radar station on the northern side. The RN ferried them to the RV and they then rowed the couple of miles to Corfu itself.

  Their contact had identified the enemy installation and one of Stan’s troopers, Private Marc, went with him for a closer look. The enterprising Marc realised he would gain far more intelligence from inside the defensive ring. So he disguised himself as an impecunious local fisherman, eking a crust selling his catch. He made no sales and got booted around by contemptuous Boche but did discover much.

  Eastwood himself had not been idle and had taken careful note of wire, mines and the rest, and the patrol was successfully ex-filtrated. They came back a man stronger – a young Greek volunteer, Spiro, who’d taken a shine to the patrol and the LRDG life, came out with them and was by alchemy taken on the payroll thereafter!3 Jacko Jackson, another new boy at this point, carried out a successful recce for an intended raid on Axis posts near Himara in Albania. In the event, once again, the raid never got off the drawing board.