Skorzeny was distraught at the order. ‘Captain Von Fölkersam fully understood my dismay,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘though he regarded the Führer’s word as law. “Soup’s never hotter than when it’s first made,” he said in his dry Balt way. “Wait a bit.”’16
On 13 December the 150th Panzer Brigade left its training base at Grafenwöhr and arrived at Münstereifel, 15 miles from the German border with Belgium, the following day. At 0500hrs on 16 December the German offensive began and Skorzeny’s three battle groups headed west towards the three bridges across the Meuse. From the start the operation began to flounder. The heavy rains of the preceding weeks rendered some roads impassable, not helped by the sheer weight of traffic the commandos encountered. At the Losheim Gap, a few miles south of Münstereifel, Battle Group X lost its commander when his vehicle ran over a mine. In his place, Skorzeny appointed von Fölkersam. ‘This meant the loss of my best staff officer,’ reflected Skorzeny, ‘but I knew that I could do him no greater service and that he would make a fine job of it.’
By the end of 16 December none of the 150th Panzer Brigade’s objectives had been taken, and on the following day Skorzeny received permission to combine his three battle groups into one and attach them to the 1st SS Panzer Division; together they would strike for Malmédy,* a strategically important Belgian town 18 miles from the German border. But even that plan ran into difficulty when Battle Group Z radioed Skorzeny that they were unable to reach the rendezvous point on schedule because of the congestion on the roads.
The attack on Malmédy began at dawn on 21 December. One force of Germans launched an assault on the town itself while another attempted to secure the bridge over the river Warche. Fierce fighting raged for hours, with the Germans slowly advancing despite the heavy American artillery fire from the high ground overlooking Malmédy. Around noon as the weather lifted and visibility improved, the American artillery became even more accurate and the Germans fell back. That evening Skorzeny and his commanders attended a briefing at the headquarters of the 1st SS Panzer Division. Skorzeny arrived at the same time as von Fölkersam, and just as an American artillery shell landed on the truck carrying von Fölkersam. Skorzeny helped pull von Fölkersam from the wreckage, commenting that ‘he had been remarkably lucky as a splinter the size of a short pencil had penetrated his back without reaching any vital organ’.17
Minutes later another salvo of shells landed and this time Skorzeny was hit, a splinter almost removing his right eye. Despite their wounds the pair remained at their posts the following day as another attempt was made to seize Malmédy. Again they were repelled and the bridge over the Warche was destroyed by American engineers.
Skorzeny knew that Operation Greif had failed, as had Hitler’s last, desperate attempt to avoid a humiliating defeat for Germany. The offensive in the Ardennes had stalled short of the Meuse on 24 December, and the following day Skorzeny paid a visit to his old friend to wish him a Merry Christmas. ‘I made a call on Von Fölkersam at his command post,’ recalled Skorzeny, ‘which, as usual, was right forward, barely 300 metres behind the front line. On my way there I was frequently flat on my face as shells of every calibre simply would not leave us alone.’
It was to be one of the last times Skorzeny saw von Fölkersam. On 28 December the 150th Panzer Brigade was withdrawn from the front line and in early January it was disbanded. Two weeks later, on 21 January, Adrian von Fölkersam was dead, shot in the head by Russian troops near Hohensalza, modern-day Inowroclaw in Poland. He was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) at the time, in command of an SS-Jagdverband Ost, and it was believed he had requested a posting to the Eastern Front because his family lived close to the border with Poland.
Von Fölkersam’s capture of the Maikop oil depots was one of the boldest Special Forces operations of the war, more so than Skorzeny’s rescue of Mussolini or Carlson’s raid on Makin Island, both of which benefited from their respective countries’ propaganda machines. The Maikop operation combined meticulous planning and nerveless execution, with von Fölkersam and his men fully aware that death awaited them if they failed. That he accomplished his mission was testament to his courage and resourcefulness, and the reason why he was so highly regarded by Otto Skorzeny.
Yet von Fölkersam’s contribution to Special Forces soldiering has been largely overlooked, in part because no detailed records of his early operations with the Brandenburgers survived the war. In addition, von Fölkersam was not a charismatic leader in the mould of Paddy Mayne or Baron von der Heydte. Bookish in appearance, von Fölkersam combined great bravery with deep intelligence, but in character he was overshadowed by Skorzeny – a man whose force of personality attracted attention away from others equally worthy of praise. Yet as Hans-Dietrich Hossfelder recalled years later, von Fölkersam and Skorzeny deserve equal praise for their exploits in World War II. ‘Both of these men were characters, but as different as night and day,’ he reflected. ‘Skorzeny was much taller, very boisterous, always energetic and the life of any party… Fölkersam was short, shy, very quiet and analytical to the final degree.’18
* So was Ernst Prohaska, although his award was posthumous as he was killed later on 9 August.
* Horthy remained a prisoner of the Germans until the end of the war, while Hungary continued in the Axis under a pro-German prime minister called Ferenc Szalasi.
* The infamous massacre of Malmédy, involving the execution of 84 American prisoners by German SS troops on December 17, was not carried out by members of Skorzeny’s unit.
ORDE WINGATE
CHINDITS
In the summer of 1978 an unsightly row erupted in Britain, played out in the public eye in the newspapers and on the radio. At the centre of the furore was a man who had been dead for 34 years – Major-General Orde Wingate, founder of the Chindits, the Special Forces unit that had waged war against Japanese troops deep in the Burmese jungle during World War II. The discontent among Wingate’s supporters had been rumbling away for 16 years, ever since the publication in 1962 of the third volumne of The Official History, The War Against Japan, an account of the campaign commissioned by the British government and paid for by the taxpayer.
In The Official History Wingate is more often than not condescendingly damned with faint praise for his innovative establishment of the Chindits, a Long Range Penetration brigade that, like the Special Air Service in North Africa, operated deep behind enemy lines. ‘No one can deny that Wingate understood the art of guerrilla warfare,’ opined The Official History (headed by Major-General H. Woodburn Kilby, a distinguished author and soldier), ‘but … he was unwilling to cooperate with anyone not directly under his command and maintained an extraordinary degree of secrecy and furtiveness in his planning and in the conduct of his operations…Wingate had many original and sound ideas. He had the fanaticism and drive to persuade others that they should be carried out, but he had neither the knowledge, stability nor balance to make a great commander. He never proved himself to be the man of genius.’1
This last comment was a deliberate contradiction of what William Slim, commander of Fourteenth Army, had said of Wingate in the eulogy published shortly after his death in March 1944. ‘Genius is a word that should not be easily used,’ said Slim, ‘but I say without hesitation that Wingate had sparks of genius in him.’2
The publication of The Official History had enraged many of Wingate’s friends and former comrades within the Chindits. Official Histories were traditionally balanced and objective accounts of battles and campaigns, not personal attacks on generals and commanders. It was only in 1978, when the expiration of the 30-year secrecy rule permitted Wingate’s supporters to browse reams of documents relating to the war in Burma, that they launched a vigorous defence of their man. Brigadier Peter Mead, a Chindit staff officer under Wingate, published a 45-page paper in which he rebutted all the aspersions cast in The Official History. There was a frank exchange of letters in The Times between those who supported the criticism made of Wingate and those who d
idn’t. On 16 August, Brigadier Michael Calvert, DSO and Bar, a Chindit commander, wrote to the paper endorsing Wingate’s reputation as a brilliant exponent of Special Forces warfare, saying ‘the number of men of our race who are really irreplaceable can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Wingate is one of them’.3 That prompted a response from Ronald Lewin, a soldier, author and broadcaster, who belittled Calvert’s arguments and Wingate’s reputation.
The ruckus was becoming all a little ungentlemanly, a fact which had he been alive would no doubt have amused Wingate. For whatever his strengths and weaknesses as a military commander, he was unequivocally a man who relished confrontation and never shirked from speaking his mind.
Orde Wingate was born in India on 26 February 1903, the son of an officer in the Indian Staff Corps. There were military roots on the maternal side, too, but it was the Scottish Presbyterian influence of his father that most influenced Wingate’s formative years. Like Evans Carlson, Wingate was subjected to mild religious indoctrination as a boy, and his sense of righteousness remained with him until his dying day. So did his fear of sin, and his belief that he failed to live up to the standards expected by God.
When Wingate was two, the family returned to Britain, setting up home in Worthing on the Sussex coast. As an adolescent he attended the prestigious Charterhouse school, where he was considered an outsider for his dislike of organized games and his odd dress sense. On leaving school Wingate enrolled at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, graduating in July 1923, 59th out of a class of 70. As a consequence he was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery and posted to a battery stationed on Salisbury Plain.
Throughout the 1920s Wingate’s military career was unremarkable. Though he learned to ride and hunt, he was always on the periphery of his regiment’s social life, preferring to read and study military history than drink in the mess into the small hours. He attended various courses, including one to become proficient in Arabic, and then, in 1926, he fell in love for the first time. Just as the relationship began to get serious, however, Wingate was posted overseas to take up a secondment with the Sudan Defence Force, formed in 1925 to control the turbulent East African country.
Wingate arrived in the Sudan in early 1928 and in June that year he wrote to his father, telling him about his new life: ‘It is satisfactory to find myself in command of 275 men but as this is the rain season there’s little to be done unfortunately. However I’m setting seriously to work at Arabic in order to put that behind me and turn my attention to promotion exams and Staff College.’4
It was in the Sudan that Wingate first confessed to suffering bouts of depression, what he referred to as ‘nervous melancholia’, or what Winston Churchill called his ‘black dog’. The attacks of depression would descend without warning and last two or three days, leaving Wingate alone and afraid. ‘I could do nothing but sit by myself and hold on to my reason as best I could,’ he confided to his girlfriend back in England.
When free from despairs, however, Wingate put his time in the Sudan to good use, learning much about soldiering and about soldiers. He discovered that with adequate training even the most mediocre of men could be turned into decent soldiers, while he also realized that the desert of Sudan was not the brutal, merciless environment that many British officers considered it to be; if the desert was harnessed in the right way, it was possible for small units of men to operate deep inside its interior for weeks on end.
Wingate returned to Britain in 1933, where he was promoted to captain and posted as adjutant to the 71st Field Brigade, Royal Artillery. It was a tedious appointment and Wingate chafed for something more challenging, something that would enable him to fulfil the potential that he was convinced lay within. In the summer of 1936 Wingate bearded Sir Cyril Deverell, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, when he visited the regiment to observe some manoeuvres. Wingate asked to be sent overseas to utilize his skills as a fluent Arab speaker. It was impudent on the part of Wingate, not the sort of brazen behaviour expected of a junior officer, but the gamble paid off. The following month Wingate was posted to Haifa as an intelligence officer to the British Mandate of Palestine.
Palestine at the time was riven by fighting between the Jews and the Arabs, with two British divisions trying to maintain order in the middle. Wingate arrived in Haifa as a Scottish Presbyterian with no strong views on the Palestine question, but within months he was supporting the Zionist cause. Some of Wingate’s contemporaries, including the great African explorer and wartime SAS soldier Wilfred Thesiger, stated their belief that Wingate espoused the Jewish cause so readily because ‘he admired their resilience in the face of the world’s hostility and could relate it on a smaller scale to his own experiences’.5
That was only part of the explanation as to why Wingate proposed to raise a unit of counter-insurgency troops to protect Jewish settlers from terror attacks in Palestine. Imbued as he was with an intimate knowledge of biblical history, Wingate believed that the Old Testament was the incontrovertible proof that Palestine belonged to the Jewish race.
In June 1938 Wingate submitted a paper to the British High Command in which he outlined his idea for Special Night Squads, the purpose of which was to conduct ‘night movements by armed forces of the Crown with the object of putting an end to terrorism in Northern Palestine’. Authorized to proceed, Wingate formed his squads as units of 12 men (ten soldiers, an NCO and an officer, all British) but in the first three months of the Night Squads’ existence he also recruited more than 100 Jewish volunteers to the force.
At their base at Ein Haroad, Wingate oversaw the training, drilling the 300 men in close combat, explosives and silent patrols. Many of his men found him eccentric and driven, but they admired his thoroughness and his determination that the Night Squads would succeed.
The Night Squads operated in an area between Haifa in the south and Nahariya to the north, protecting oil pipelines from sabotage by Arab guerrillas and engaging the enemy whenever possible. The unit quickly made a difference, killing more than 70 Arab fighters in a few weeks, and Wingate was awarded a DSO for his ‘consistent and arduous’ conduct in raising the Night Squads and turning them into such an effective force in a short space of time.
Gradually, however, Wingate’s activities aroused suspicion and eventually disapproval within the British headquarters in Jerusalem. It was considered that Wingate was fighting more for the Jewish cause than protecting British interests in Palestine. Wingate was relieved of his command and posted back to Britain, much to his disdain and the sorrow of the Jews, who had come to revere the Scottish Presbyterian as one of their own. He returned to England in the summer of 1939 to find an assessment of his work written by Wing Commander A.P. Ritchie, head of intelligence in Palestine:
Captain Wingate possesses many exceptional qualities; however his ardent nature which gives him the power to pursue an objective enthusiastically often obscures his judgement and distorts his sense of proportion. He has a first-class brain, is exceptionally well read and has great mental energy but he is liable to employ these gifts for the furtherance of some idea which he has adopted because of its emotional appeal. While he has been in Palestine he has given his sympathy so wholeheartedly to the Jewish cause that his service to the intelligence branch has become valueless. He is an exceptional linguist, possesses great physical energy and powers of endurance and has proved himself to be a tactician of outstanding ability.
It was a prescient report by Ritchie, one that infuriated Wingate but which nonetheless could be said to have characterized Wingate’s military career in the tumultuous years that lay ahead.
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 Wingate was serving with the 56th Light Anti-Aircraft Brigade, a mundane posting after the excitement of his work in Palestine. He spent his time during the Phoney War, the dragging winter months that followed the outbreak of war, devising methods of how best to shoot down enemy bombers, and also conjuring with the possibility of raising a Jewish army in Palestin
e. Following the occupation of the Low Countries by German troops by June 1940, and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, Wingate instead turned his mind to the feasibility of waging a guerrilla war in Britain in the event of a Nazi invasion.
By September 1940, however, the RAF had defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain and the threat of invasion had diminished. On 18 September Wingate was posted to Middle East Headquarters (MEHQ) in Cairo under the command of Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief of Middle East Command. His task upon arriving at his new post was to wage an insurgency war in Ethiopia using local militia against the Italian forces.
Wingate embraced his new mission. As he had done in Palestine, he had found what he viewed as a noble cause to espouse, and, in Emperor Haile Selassie, Wingate had someone he respected and admired. Upon meeting Selassie for the first time on 6 November 1940, Wingate wrote: ‘I told him that the liberation of Ethiopia was an indispensible part of the British war aims; that it was also of the greatest importance that the Ethiopians themselves should play a leading role in the coming campaign, and, finally, that he should take as his motto an ancient proverb found in Gese: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”’6
Wingate began raising what came to be known as ‘Gideon Force’ (in honour of Gideon, whose story in the Old Testament was one of Wingate’s favourites). Consisting of two Ethiopian battalions and a battalion from the Sudan Defence Force, under the command of British NCOs and officers, the force planned to attack the Italians in the kingdom of Gojjam in north-west Ethiopia, while simultaneous attacks were launched by two Indian divisions in the north and three African divisions in the south.
The offensive began on 18 January 1941 and Wingate, promoted to temporary lieutenant-colonel, split Gideon Force into two as they entered Ethiopia, one half to cut the Dessye to Gondar road and harass the Northern Italian Force, the other half to wage a guerrilla war against the Italian garrisons and also seize the Nile bridge at Safartak. Before the attack commenced, Wingate instilled in his British officers the new concept of warfare upon which they were about to embark, reminding them that ‘surprise is the greatest weapon of the guerrilla; that it is far easier for him to obtain surprise against the enemy than vice-versa; that to obtain value for the surprise achieved the commander must think out carefully beforehand how he will exploit the enemy’s confusion’.7
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