The Regiment
Page 57
Ratcliffe’s patrol was assigned to relieve Delta Three Bravo in the ‘Iron Triangle’, but returned to the Wadi Tubal two days later to find that the resupply convoy had arrived, with fuel, ammunition, stores, fresh food and cigarettes. Tubal now held three full SAS sabre-squadrons, plus R Squadron reserves and HQ personnel: the largest gathering of SAS-men in the field since A and B Squadrons, 1 SAS, encountered at Bir Zaltin in 1942. Ratcliffe celebrated the occasion by holding a historic meeting of the Sergeants’ Mess. The senior NCOs thought they were coming for an operations-briefing. When the RSM started to ask for ideas for the summer ball, and whether the mess could afford a new suite and curtains, some of them thought he’d finally flipped. ‘Disbelief. Anger. Laughter. Hysteria,’ Sgt. ‘Serious’ Spence wrote. ‘It took most of the rest of the afternoon to stop crapping ourselves.’1 It was only later that they began to see what Ratcliffe was getting at. This display of British bureaucracy at its most footling was cocking the ultimate snook at Saddam Hussein’s ‘Mother of all Battles’. As Spence wrote, ‘The SAS had some new curtains to choose. Saddam could go swivel.’2
On 23 February the squadrons were ordered to return to al-Jauf. The Coaltion’s land offensive had started up, and the SAS was no longer needed. The Regiment hadn’t prevented the Iraqis from firing Scuds at Israel, but from the time they entered the field, the number of launches had fallen by 50 per cent. They had done the business. The withdrawal was marred by the death of L.Cpl. ‘Shug’ Denbury, of Alpha Three Zero, killed in a contact two days before the SAS pulled out.
99. ‘More than a Regiment’
The Squadrons returned to Hereford in March 1991, just four months short of fifty years since Lieutenant David Stirling had hopped over the barrier at GHQ, Cairo, with his badly-penned proposal for a new type of parachute force. Since then, the SAS Regiment had come full circle, from desert raiders to sea-commandos, to guerrilla fighters, to counter-insurgency troops, anti-terrorist squads, long-range reconnaissance patrols, seaborne assault troops and back to desert raiders once more.
Back in 1941, before the SAS carried out its first raid, Jock Lewes experienced a vision of remarkable prescience. He saw that the SAS concept would not be limited by the personalities of the dreamer, the thinker and the fighter who created it, but would live on in the imagination of others, long after the Originals had passed away. ‘[It] cannot now die,’ he wrote, ‘… it is alive and will live gloriously … it has caught hold on life.’1 Within fifty years of its foundation, the SAS idea had opened up a whole new approach to warfare. Special forces existed in almost every nation on earth. These new elites were the ultimate answer to the massed citizen-armies of the First and Second World Wars – a return to the specialized, highly trained, professional warriors of feudal times: the new Samurai.
The Gulf war was a watershed for the SAS. Bursting into international consciousness just over a decade earlier, during the Iranian Embassy siege, its popularity reached unprecedented heights. The war was followed by a spate of sensational books by SAS soldiers that for the first time revealed details of its operational methods. There had been SAS books before, but what was notable about the new crop was that they pandered to the public ‘tabloid’ conception of the Regiment as a force of supermen.
David Stirling had not lived to see the SAS fight in the Gulf. He would have been proud of their achievements, but probably wouldn’t have recognized the bravura style of the post-war publications. He had always extolled modesty as a prime virtue, and said that it was an SAS tradition ‘never to be heard in public boasting about our Regiment’s past or present perfomances’.
Some felt that the Regiment’s accomplishments in the Gulf had actually left much to be desired. In the North Africa campaign during the Second World War, Wilfred Thesiger wrote that A Squadron, 1 SAS, had a ‘quiet confidence’ that he thought derived from the fact that they had ‘mastered the desert and learned to use it as their hideout’. They had what a later generation of SAS-men would call ‘ground feel’ – a sense of being at home in the extreme conditions of the desert wastes. The post-war SAS had developed ‘ground feel’ in Malaya, Borneo, Oman and other theatres. It was lacking in the Gulf, where, as Peter Ratcliffe himself admitted, the men felt ‘uneasy’. Mike Coburn wrote that he had done so much of his training in the jungle, that in the desert he felt dangerously exposed. This was a far cry from Mike Calvert’s concept of a force that would be as comfortable in its surroundings as the natives. Many of the bad decisions made on SAS ops in the Gulf war were due to this lack of ‘feel’ for the environment.
This wasn’t entirely the Regiment’s fault. They had trained for desert warfare in areas that were geographically very different from the desert of Iraq. There was also a failure of intelligence. The British had records of fighting in this region going back two centuries, yet they were ignored. Ryan’s assertion that the unit’s original E & E plan had been to ‘jog to the border wearing shorts and running shoes’ showed an alarming lack of touch with reality.
The SAS ‘did the business’ in the Gulf, but there was also a sense in which it was out of place. This was partly because its soldiers were children of a more automated world, and had been brought up with less contact with the environment than their predecessors. It was at least partly, though, because the ‘imaginary SAS’ of public perception had begun to seep inexorably into the way some SAS soldiers saw themselves.
Ken Connor felt that the Regiment’s headlong ascent to celebrity status had attracted recruits who were mainly interested in its ‘macho image’ – a tendency that, he believed, had been borne out by the events of the Gulf war and its aftermath. ‘The Regiment that I knew and served with,’ he wrote, ‘has effectively been disbanded …’2 Connor’s view is extreme, but Stirling himself observed obliquely in his speech commemorating the opening of Stirling Lines, in 1984, that celebrity brought with it certain hazards. He warned the assembly that the SAS must never regard itself as a corps d’élite. ‘Down that road,’ he said, ‘would lie the corruption of all our values. A substantial dash of humility, along with an ever-active sense of humour, must continue to save us from succumbing to that danger. Only then can we be sure of consolidating the foundation of these splendid new lines, and shielding the spirit of integrity of those setting out from here on their exacting tasks.’3
It was a timely warning. Stirling confessed that he felt fit to burst with pride at what his small Detachment had become, but he also took the opportunity to note that he had never regarded himself the sole founder of the SAS. He said that the Regiment had been co-created by five other individuals – Jock Lewes, Paddy Mayne, Georges Bergé, Brian Franks and John Woodhouse. He added a list of those he thought had made major contributions to the development of the SAS, including Johnny Cooper, Reg Seekings, BobBennett, Jim Almonds, Pat Riley, George Jellicoe and Fitzroy Maclean, of L Detachment; Roy Farran of 2 SAS; Ian Lapraik of the SBS; Eddie Blondeel of 5 SAS; Christodoulos Tzigantes of the Greek Sacred Squadron; Mike Calvert of the Malayan Scouts; Johnny Watts, Dare Newell, Peter de la Billière, Tanky Smith and Geordie Lillico of 22 SAS. He said that to mention everyone who’d played a part in the SAS story would have meant calling almost the entire roll of past and present members.
In fifty years, the SAS Regiment had indeed come a long way from its roots, yet had remained unchanged in its conviction that a great fighting unit is made, not by technology, but by the quality of the men who comprise it. ‘Our Regiment,’ said David Stirling, ‘has a special magic in generating for itself an intense loyalty in all who have served it. Indeed we are more than a Regiment – we are a family.’4
1. David Stirling. The ‘irresponsible and unremarkable soldier’ whose vision of a small airborne raiding unit in North Africa created the concept of modern special forces.
2. Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne. Mayne was the fighting man whose dazzling performance in combat ensured the continuing existence of the SAS. Mayne ended the war one of only eight men to have won the DSO four times.
4. Bill Fraser, left, is presented to Colonel Gigantes and General Leclerc, with cane. Perhaps the most enigmatic of the original SAS officers, Fraser had an intuitive sense of battle. His brilliantly executed raid at Ajadabiyya was a major coup for the SAS.
5. SAS mobile patrol, North Africa, 1942. In this famous image of the wartime SAS, David Stirling poses with a patrol led by a bearded Lt. Edward MacDonald, the ex-sergeant whose performance on Operation Copper impressed Paddy Mayne.
6. Johnny Cooper and Reg Seekings, Cairo, 1942. The two enlisted men who perhaps most personify the exuberant spirit of the wartime SAS, Cooper and Seekings hated each other at first sight, but became inseparable after the second raid on Sirte. Both are seen here wearing L Detachment’s short-lived white berets.
7. Mike Sadler. One of the LRDG’s star navigators, Sadler had an almost uncanny ability to find his way in the desert by night. He guided many of the early SAS raids, including the assault with armed jeeps on Sidi Haneish.
8. Some early members of L Detachment. Back left to right, Rose, Austin, Seekings, Cattell, Johnny Cooper; front row, Rhodes, Baker, Badger.
9. Bob Bennett. A mercurial Cockney from London’s East End, Bennett was considered the ‘steadiest’ of the Originals.
10. New Year’s Eve at Aghayla, 1942. Left to right, Trooper Jeffs, Charlie Cattell, Bob Lilley, Malcolm Pleydell and Johnny Wiseman.
11. Bob Melot. A Belgian former air-ace, Melot was a fluent Arabic speaker who worked as a lone agent for the intelligence unit G(R) in Libya, and was seriously wounded while attached to the SAS during the Benghazi raid.
12. Charles ‘Pat’ Riley. Riley was an unflappable ex-policeman who gained his first patrolling experience with Jock Lewes as one of his celebrated ‘Tobruk Four’. He became L Detachment’s sergeant-major and training officer, and was later commissioned.
13. George, Earl Jellicoe, on the right. Jellicoe was recruited by Stirling as L Detachment’s unofficial second-in-command. One of only two survivors of the SAS raid on Heraklion airfield, Crete, he later took command of the Special Boat Squadron.
14. L Detachment sergeants at Kabrit. David Stirling always considered his sergeants the powerhouse of the unit and often relied on their judgement, even in assessing officers. Squatting front left, Dave Kershaw; squatting right, Reg Seekings; at the wheel, Pat Riley; on bonnet with arm in sling, Bob Tait; right, Johnny Cooper.
15. LRDG Ford truck in the desert: L Detachment scored its first great successes against Axis airfields when ferried in by LRDG patrols. The idea almost certainly came from LRDG commander Lt. Col. Guy Prendergast - an unsung co-creator of the SAS.
16. Ferried to their targets originally by LRDG patrols, the SAS acquired a consignment of jeeps in mid-1942, at the suggestion of Paddy Mayne. The vehicles were designed to carry only two men and their kit, but had 4-wheel drive, and were fitted with sun-compasses, extra fuel-tanks, and radiator-condensers to prevent over-heating.
17. Eighteen men of Bill Fraser’s troop, and several civilians, were killed at Termoli when this SAS truck exploded. The truck was thought to have been hit by a German artillery shell, but most casualties may have been caused by the armed anti-tank grenades the SAS were carrying.
18. Paddy Mayne commanded his first defensive action here at Termoli, when 1 SRS, now part of a commando brigade, was joined by a handful of men from 2 SAS. The action was brilliantly successful, but the SRS lost sixty-nine men, killed, wounded, or missing, during the three days of battle.
19. Ian Wellsted, left, and Alex Muirhead in France 1944. ‘Bertie Wooster’ Muirhead, a former medical student, commanded the SRS mortar section in Italy, and fought with A Squadron, 1 SAS, on Operation Houndsworth. Wellsted, an ex-Royal Tank Regiment officer, saw his first action when A Squadron men assisted the Maquis in ambushing a German convoy.
20. Kipling patrol in the Morvan, France, 1944. This photo was taken shortly before Capt. Derrick Harrison’s two armed jeeps steamed into the village of Les Ormes, inflicting sixty German casualties, destroying three vehicles and liberating eighteen French hostages. Harrison is in the jeep on the left, his driver L.Cpl. John ‘Curly’ Hall was killed.
21. ‘Gentleman’ Jim Almonds, front left, with Gain patrol in the Orleans Forest, 1944. One of Jock Lewes’s ‘Tobruk Four’, Almonds was a talented engineer who constructed most of the parachute training equipment at Kabrit. Captured on the Benghazi raid, he escaped in time to join 1 SAS for post D-Day ops in Europe.
22. Johnny Cooper, Johnny Watts and Tony Jeapes, c. 1960. With SAS experience spanning two decades behind him, Cooper is on the eve of departure, while both Watts and Jeapes will go on to command 22 SAS, and will retire generals.
23. John Woodhouse instructs recruits in Malaya. A quiet, reserved man, Woodhouse was a superb training officer, and one of the best commanders 22 SAS ever had.
24. J. M. ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert. A guerrilla genius, Calvert’s influence on the development of the modern SAS has been underrated. Asked to devise a strategy to flush out Communist insurgents in Malaya, he envisaged a force that would ‘live, move, and have its being in the jungle, like the terrorists’. Originally named the Malayan Scouts, the force became 22 SAS.
25. Johnny Cooper, right, in Malaya. Having fought throughout the war with L Detachment and 1 SAS, Cooper later sought a commission with 22 SAS. He served as a squadron commander in both Malaya and Oman.
26. Sgt. Hanna with parachute harness, Malaya. ‘Tree jumping’ in Malaya was a legacy of B Squadron’s drop in the Bellum Valley, when most of the sticks landed accidentally in forest. Casualty-projection was only 1.3 per cent, but any injuries sustained were likely to be serious.
27. Helicopter in Malaya. The Malayan Emergency saw the first use of helicopters by the SAS, mainly on search and rescue missions. Patrols used marker-balloons to guide the aircraft to gaps in the jungle-canopy, but disliked calling in helis on operations because of the risk of compromise.
28. B Squadron, 22 SAS, before a jump in Malaya. In the early days of 22 SAS, ‘Big Time Bravo’ was the only parachute-trained squadron, as most of its personnel had come from 21 SAS (Artists’) or had served in special forces during the war.
29. SAS Patrol in Malaya. Calvert’s concept was to insert whole squadrons into the jungle, where they would fan out in small patrols from a central base, re-supplied by air. The squadrons would remain in the jungle for up to three months, developing the ‘ground feel’ crucial to anti-guerrilla ops.
30. Wadi Maidan, Jebel Akhdar, Oman. The Jebel Akhdar assault was the first deployment of 22 SAS outside Malaya, and was crucial to the long-term establishment of the Regiment. Originally asked for a handful of SAS-men, CO Tony Deane-Drummond eventually brought in both A and D Squadrons, a total of eighty sabre personnel.
31. Sabrina or the ‘Twin Tits’, on Jebel Akhdar. Johnny Cooper’s A Squadron launched an impressive assault on this natural defensive position on the northern side of the Jebel, led by Tony Jeapes and Ian Patterson. The attack was a feint to distract the rebels from the real assault, which was to go in further south.
32. Tanuf Slab, Jebel Akhdar, Oman. Considered impregnable by locals, the Jebel Akhdar was a convoluted landscape of ridges, peaks and perpendicular slabs, reaching a height of over 19,000 feet. The final assault by the SAS required a ten-hour non-stop climb carrying loads of fifty kilos, to be made at night in complete silence, under constant threat of attack.
33. Johnny Watts, in front, and Peter de la Billière on Jebel Akhdar, Oman. A party of twenty-two men of D Squadron, led by Watts and de la Billière, made the summit just as dawn was breaking. The exhausted troops went quickly into all-round defence, but the expected counter-attack failed to materialize.
34. Alf ‘Geordie’ Tasker, the Radfan, Aden. One of a nine ma
n A Squadron patrol led by Captain Robin Edwards, Tasker was pinned down with his men on Jebel Ashqab by hundreds of local tribesmen. They made a fighting withdrawal by night, after Edwards and radio-operator Nick Warburton were killed; their severed heads were later put on display in Ta’izz.
35. SAS forward operating base, Habilayn/Thumier, the Radfan. It was from the command tent here that A Squadron commander Peter de la Billière stayed in contact with the Edwards patrol, until their radio was destroyed by enemy fire. An attempted helicopter rescue by other members of the squadron was aborted when the heli’s tail-plane was hit.
36. Billy White, left. Lead scout on the four-man Blackman patrol in Borneo, White came face to face with an Indonesian soldier. He shot the enemy, but was hit in the thigh by rounds from a platoon-strength ambush. White bled to death, but the rest of the patrol escaped.