by Pete Scholey
The activities of the SAS were to be augmented by the arrival of three armed jeeps on 19 September. Each jeep was parachuted in on a special palette designed to act as a kind of shock absorber and minimize the impact to the jeep on landing. The vehicles were partially dismantled – the steering wheel and the fuel tanks, for example, had to be reinstalled by SAS fitters to make the vehicles operational. Of the first three jeeps to be dropped, one landed on target, one landed way off target in a field and one ended up in a tree. It was eventually recovered and two nights later three more jeeps were dropped along with 20 men as reinforcements. Operation Loyton had been under way for almost six weeks, but now the SAS was able to change tactics and attack German vehicles on the roads in the area with the formidable firepower of the jeeps’ Vickers and Browning machine-guns. They shot up convoys, destroyed several staff cars and on one occasion even ventured into the village of Moussey, coming across an SS unit assembling by the roadside. They drove straight through, blasting the Germans with their machine-guns before disappearing back into the hills.
The Germans realized that the SAS could not be operating without the knowledge of those who lived in the area. They knew that the unit had to be cooperating with the local Maquis and suspected, quite rightly, that the locals were being given things like soap (which was in very short supply in occupied France) by the British in return for fresh food or even as a reward for hiding members of SAS patrols being hunted down by German troops. What the Germans did not know was the precise location of the main SAS base. They decided to find out by asking the villagers of Moussey. All of the men and boys of the village between the ages of 16 and 60 were arrested and taken for ‘questioning’ at various locations in the area, including the Château de Belval, just a couple of miles outside the village, which now bears a plaque to that effect. Even under the most brutal of torture, none of Moussey’s men would talk. They were threatened with execution but still remained silent. Eventually, all 210 of them were transported to concentration camps. Nine months later, when the war was finally over, only 70 of their number returned to Moussey alive. Some of these were so ill, disabled by the deprivation in the camps, that they also died soon after. The valley in which Moussey nestles is still referred to by some as ‘The Vale of the Widows’.
By the end of the first week in October, it was decided that Operation Loyton should be brought to an end. There was little chance that General Patton would be in a position to relieve the British any time in the immediate future and the operation that had been intended to last just two weeks had now stretched on to ten. Lieutenant-Colonel Franks ordered his men to split up into patrols of three or four men and make their way individually towards the American lines. That meant a journey of around 40 miles (64km) westward towards Nancy through enemy-held territory. The weather, too, was turning against them and the prospect of a forced march, lying up by day and travelling by night through the cold and rain, held little appeal for Len. Nevertheless, he set off with one small group, moving as quickly and as quietly through the countryside as they could, making full use of all available cover, ever alert for German patrols. Every man knew by then what it meant to be captured by the Germans. Hitler’s infamous ‘Commando order’ had been issued in October 1942, demanding that any raiders or saboteurs, whether in uniform or not, even if unarmed or attempting to surrender, should be immediately shot. Some commanders in the field, including Rommel, took the brave decision to ignore the order, but the SS troops who were sweeping the countryside searching for the SAS would gleefully comply with the Führer’s command.
Len was separated from Lieutenant Peter Johnsen, his immediate superior, who took with him Privates Peter Bannerman and George Johnston, choosing a slightly different route. His group was ultimately ambushed by a German patrol just a stone’s throw from the American lines. All three were hit: Bannerman and Johnston were killed but the lieutenant, with wounds to one arm and one leg, managed to escape. He was one of the lucky ones. In the systematic search the Germans were now conducting, 31 of the Phantom and SAS troops, among them some of Len’s closest friends, were captured and tortured by the Germans before being executed. Len is still haunted today by the memory of first hearing about their appalling treatment at the hands of the Germans, knowing that those brave men endured great cruelty and humiliation, fully aware throughout that the best they had to look forward to was the inevitable bullet in the back of the head. The villagers of Moussey buried ten in their churchyard. At the same time, four young women, members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), were also captured. They were interrogated before being sent to concentration camps. They were given knockout injections and were then burnt alive. One of them, however, regained consciousness as she was about to be bundled into the incinerator. She clawed her guard’s face so badly that at the end of the war an unofficial SAS team hunting war criminals was able to identify him from the marks. He was arrested, stood trial and was hanged.
Len joined Lieutenant-Colonel Franks and Major Peter le Power during their escape attempt, making their way through the German lines and arriving on the Americans’ front doorstep to looks of utter disbelief. The Americans couldn’t believe that such high-ranking officers were operating behind enemy lines. Once safely in friendly territory, they mustered as many of 2 SAS as they could and managed to hitch lifts on various trucks and jeeps heading back in the general direction of the English Channel. From there they intended to join a troop ship for the trip back to England. Len remembers seeing the Mulberry Harbour, the great prefabricated temporary docking facility used to feed supplies in to the D-Day beaches. He should remember it. He had several days to take in every detail because the landing craft that was ferrying his party out to the troop ship hit an underwater obstacle and was stranded there, unable to move. Its passengers spent five days baling out the water in shifts, waiting for a crane ship to arrive to lift them off. By now, as you might imagine, Len’s burning desire to join the navy was just about extinguished.
The end of Operation Loyton did not spell the end of Len’s active service during the war; far from it. In April 1945 he and the fully recovered Lieutenant Johnsen were forging a route into Germany with Lieutenant-Colonel Paddy Mayne, blazing a trail for the 4th Canadian Armoured Division. As a Phantom, Len’s job was to relay messages between the mobile units as well as maintaining communication with the Canadians and the War Office back in London.
The 40 jeeps of B and C Squadrons travelled in two columns, packing a powerful punch with their massed arrays of machine-guns, yet they were nonetheless plagued by ambushes. The terrain around the area of their advance near Oldenburg was a maze of narrow roads, streams and canals, making for dangerously slow progress. As the lead four jeeps of B Squadron passed through one crossroads, they came under fire from machine-guns and Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons. The rest of B Squadron’s jeeps, including the one from which Lenny was now reporting the contact by radio to C Squadron’s column, deployed at the crossroads and began pouring covering fire into the enemy positions. The crews of the lead jeeps who had survived the initial onslaught threw themselves into roadside ditches and two managed to crawl back to the crossroads to report that the squadron commander, Major Bond, had been killed.
The Germans, well entrenched in a wood to one side of the road as well as in a small group of farm buildings slightly closer to the crossroads, kept the ambush survivors pinned down in the ditches. It was then that Lenny heard the roar of an approaching jeep. The vehicle shuddered to a halt at the crossroads and Paddy Mayne leapt out from behind the wheel. Len watched as Mayne calmly took in the situation, barked a few orders then sprinted off towards the nearest of the farm buildings. Len and his companion in their jeep, Dave Danger, opened up with their twin Vickers to provide covering fire for Mayne. Although Danger fired short bursts to avoid overheating the Vickers, the machine-gun’s thunderous roar deafened Len to the sound of the spent brass shells tinkling to the floor of the jeep, but he could see the .303 rounds hammering into the f
arm building where the machine-gun nest was sited, gouging out chunks of masonry around the window.
Mayne reached the first of the buildings in seconds and took only a moment to confirm that this one was unoccupied. He then dashed back towards Len at the crossroads, with Len continuing to plaster the building that housed the German ambushers. Grabbing a Bren gun and a clutch of magazines, Mayne then ran back to the empty building. Len watched as he paused under cover at the corner of the structure, checked his weapon and then began moving forward, firing the Bren gun from hip and shoulder into the building where lurked the Germans. While Len and Danger did their best to help keep the Germans’ heads down, Mayne pressed on, firing bursts and changing through the Bren’s magazines until he had taken the stronghold, having killed or wounded all of those inside. Mayne then signalled for a jeep to come forward and take over this fire position. The next task he set himself, as detailed in chapter 1, was to drive forward along the road, engage the enemy in the woods and rescue the men pinned down in the ditches. Len counted himself privileged to have witnessed Paddy Mayne in action and winning the third bar to his DSO.
Len has a fine display of medals himself, including the Military Medal (MM), a decoration that was awarded to warrant officers, NCOs and lower ranks for distinguished conduct in the field. Len wears his MM and his impressive array of campaign medals for some of those special occasions where old soldiers feel it is appropriate, but he is actually far more proud of his father’s medals from World War I, which he generally wears at the same time as a mark of respect.
As far as I am concerned, Len’s bravery, his great fortitude and undiminished energy rank far higher than any award that could be bestowed upon him. He is one of my heroes not only because of the things he did during his service in World War II, but also because of the things he has achieved since. He worked hard as a farmer, married a wonderful woman and raised a family, but he never forgot his friends who were left behind in the Vosges mountains.
In early 2003, Len asked the Allied Special Forces Association (ASFA) if they might know how he could get a sizeable piece of coral granite from a quarry near Moussey up to the Phantom Memorial Garden situated within the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire. Members of ASFA Richard Marshall, Scarf Jones and the secretary, Mike Colton, promptly went over to Moussey and organized the shipment of a large granite block that is now in place in the Phantom Memorial Garden. The granite represents the solid resolve of the French resistance not to betray the Phantoms and SAS men. The memorial commemorates those friends of Len who did not return from Moussey:
Sergeant Gerald Donovan Davis
Signalman George Gourlay Johnston
Signalman Peter Bannerman
31 men of 2 SAS Regiment
One British and two French servicewomen
140 men and women of the French resistance
Pete Bannerman, Gerry Davis and George Johnston each have a tree dedicated to them. Plaques have been prepared commemorating the SOE and SAS personnel and 140 rosemary bushes have been planted in a ‘P’ formation, one for each of the men and boys from Moussey who were killed. Len’s late wife, Tess, was a member of the Control Commission for Germany and a seat has been placed in the garden in memory of her. The garden was entirely funded by Len, the late Lieutenant Peter Johnsen and other surviving members of Phantom. It was designed and built by Robert, Len’s son, with help from all the family and was opened on 14 June 2003 with a memorial service for those who lost their lives in Operation Loyton. Sadly, Peter Johnsen passed away a few days before the ceremony.
At the sprightly age of 85, Len is now raising funds to pay for two flagpoles to be erected in honour of the bond between the French people and the Allied armies during the war in eastern France. He has more life in him than a man less than half his age and makes the most of every day, having long since earned the hero’s right to live a long and happy life.
MAJOR MICHAEL ‘BRONCO’ LANE
We used to joke with ‘Bronco’ Lane, teasing him mercilessly on the firing range if he had a stoppage with his weapon, as we all did from time to time, that his rifle wasn’t jammed, it just wasn’t firing because he couldn’t reach the trigger. Bronco, you see, had lost significant portions of the fingers on his right hand. Was it cruel to make fun of him? Not at all – Bronco has a robust sense of humour and he was tough enough to take it. He was, and still is, one of the toughest, fittest men I have ever met, serving in the Regiment not only with portions of his fingers missing, but also with no toes. In Bronco’s position, any ordinary worker in any ordinary job would have been ushered out of the door and packed off home fully deserving of a proper disability pension. Bronco was no ordinary worker, however. Bronco Lane is something special and the pride he took in everything he did with the Regiment demonstrates that he understood that being in the SAS was far from an ordinary job.
I had first-hand experience of how seriously Bronco took his work when I was teamed with him on a training jaunt in the late 1970s. We were in civilian clothing operating freely somewhere in the East Midlands of the UK, conducting a special exercise designed to test personnel from various units who had been selected for anti-terrorist training in surveillance and covert operations.
Bronco and I were given the task of walking around together in different town centres, visiting pubs and showing our faces in public buildings – all the time posing as terrorists. We were not to act deliberately suspiciously, but our activities were meant to arouse the suspicions of the students on the training course if they were properly observant. Their task was to identify us, then carry out surveillance on us without our knowledge. They then had to send a constant flow of intelligence on our movements and activities back to the operations centre.
Now, Bronco was a very laid-back, low-profile chap who could easily merge into the background or melt into a crowd. I, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. Whenever we entered any premises like pubs or restaurants, Bronco would be his normal quiet self, hardly noticeable, whereas I would be chatting with all and sundry and sharing a joke with anyone who would listen. I wasn’t completely crazy. I knew that I was making an exhibition of myself – although no more so than any normal, gregarious sort of bloke like me does every day. My reasoning was that on an active operation nobody would suspect a person who so blatantly drew attention to himself. Poor Bronco winced at my antics and tried hard to dissociate himself from me.
At the end of the exercise, when we returned to base for a debriefing, Bronco ran straight into the ops room and, without waiting for the debriefing to begin, shouted, ‘Scholey’s mad! I’m never going out with him again!’ A few days later, however, Bronco did concede that, ‘Your way could work, Pete – but only if you were on your own!’ He had obviously been thinking long and hard about how to improve operational effectiveness, both on his own and as part of a team. We certainly weren’t best suited to work together on that sort of operation, but if I had to choose someone to stand by my side in a tight spot, a life-or-death situation, Bronco would be right up there at the top of the list. He has proved many times over that he has the courage and determination to overcome any challenge that is laid before him (except, perhaps, covertly touring pubs in the East Midlands with yours truly) and was awarded the MM in 1979 for his bravery while on active service in Northern Ireland.
The green, rolling countryside of Northern Ireland is a patchwork of wide fields bordered by miles of hedgerow and winding country lanes. The hedgerows, roadside ditches and stone walls combine to limit visibility when you are driving along one of the narrow roads. A foot patrol, mobile patrol or vehicle checkpoint on the road could have a severely restricted view of the surrounding terrain and, when stationary, soldiers had to use whatever vantage points there were to allow for good all-round observation. It could often be difficult to see what was coming towards you, a situation that created countless ideal ambush points and also made it easy for any quarry you were pursuing to vanish without trace.
The
Regiment was officially deployed in the province in 1976, although it had previously been involved there with 14 Intelligence Company, the primary SAS roles being gathering intelligence and mounting surveillance operations. SAS personnel in Northern Ireland became very familiar with the ditches and hedgerows of the farming country, regularly secreting themselves for days on end in carefully concealed hides to keep watch on the homes of suspected terrorists or to monitor weapons caches that had been discovered buried in the countryside. Rather than risk keeping weapons, ammunition and explosives in their homes, where they would easily be found if the premises were raided by the police or the army, terrorists on both sides of the divide would weatherproof their guns and bombs before burying them out in the countryside. They would then retrieve whatever they needed prior to embarking on an attack. It was close to one such arms cache that an ordinary saloon car pulled off the main road late at night in the spring of 1979.
