by Tom Keene
In present circumstances I should feel bound to advise the First Sea Lord that the danger to SIS communications caused by very small raids would outweigh the value of those raids. I feel, therefore, that it is within the spirit of the Chiefs of Staff decision that these very small raids should give place to SIS communications for the present.18
Eighteen months earlier, when March-Phillipps’ pygmy force had been thwarted by Commander Frank Slocum in their plans to use their spigot-armed ‘Q’ ship Maid Honor against unsuspecting German shipping outside Cherbourg, they had turned their gaze towards the distant shores of West Africa. Now SSRF found itself looking towards Africa once more. With the Channel effectively closed to them – again – might there not be a role for the SSRF harrying Rommel’s Afrika Korps in North Africa?
In fact, even before Operation Huckaback, SSRF had taken matters into their own hands. A month earlier, on 23 January 1943, Lt Col Bill Stirling had sent Lt Anders Lassen and Capt. Philip Pinckney to Cairo to assist his brother with amphibious operations and sense out the raiding possibilities in what, for SSRF, would be a new theatre of operations. SSRF was to become part of ‘a special raiding force [under General Eisenhower] in North Africa on the same lines as that now operating under General Alexander in the Middle East.’19 The name of that unit was the SAS, formed by Bill Stirling’s brother, David, in 1941. Already, it seems, the Stirling name was opening doors.
But, before one set of doors was finally closed, there was a final tribute to all that had been achieved by SSRF under March-Phillipps when it had been based at Anderson Manor. On 28 January 1943 the London Gazette20 announced the recommendation that a Bar to the DSO be awarded to Major Gustavus-Henry March-Phillipps, Service No 39184, for ‘gallant and distinguished services in the field.’21
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And so to Africa.
For months, David Stirling’s SAS had been harrying the German’s extended supply lines along the coastal rim of North Africa as the fortunes of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and Montgomery’s Eighth Army swung back and forth between Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. First on foot – then carried deep into the desert behind enemy lines by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), whose peace-time experts had long mastered the arcane arts of desert survival, sand-dune driving, soft-sand extraction, and sun-compass and astro-navigation – Stirling’s now jeep-borne, twin Vickers-firing raiders attacked airfields, blew up fuel dumps, shot up transport and destroyed hundreds of German aeroplanes on Axis airfields. In November, US and British First Army forces had landed far to the west in Operation Torch with Allied troops coming ashore in French Morocco and Algeria. Now both British armies – Anderson’s First and Montgomery’s Eighth – planned to squeeze Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the jaws of an allied vice whose screws would be turned from both ends of the Mediterranean.
To David Stirling, that expanding and contracting Axis supply line stretching across Tunisia and Libya and eastwards to threaten Cairo had offered limitless scope for small scale, behind-the-lines, hit-and-run raiding operations. Sending his own SSRF into the same theatre, reasoned Bill Stirling – who had sat in his younger brother’s flat in Cairo all those months ago, in July 1941, when David had first conceived the idea of the SAS – might perhaps offer his own men similar opportunities on the North African coast. Bill Stirling’s early ideas found favour with Brigadier Charles Haydon, the Commanding Officer of the Special Service Commando Brigade. He wrote just before Christmas:
I feel and always have felt that there is a genuine need for the formation of a unit to carry out irregular warfare in the true sense of the word by putting into practice a policy of long range sabotage … The activities of such a unit should primarily be conducted in strategic support of a large scale operation such as the re-entry into France or the Invasion of Italy, though its employment should not necessarily be limited in this respect … Thus, whilst the employment of the commandos proper should be tactical in aspect, that of No 62 Commando should be strategic … No 62 Commando would undertake to paralyse communications 200 or 300 miles behind the enemy lines. Establishing themselves by any conceivable methods in close proximity to their objectives considerably prior to D +1 of a major operation, their activities would be directed against airfields, industrial targets, etc., in enemy base areas … In conclusion therefore, although I am very adverse to the formation of new specialised or semi-technical units whilst we have yet to find full-time employment for those already formed, I am nevertheless convinced that No 62 Commando could and would make a really valuable contribution to the war effort, provided that its terms of reference are widened and its war establishment increased as indicated in Lieutenant Colonel Stirling’s report.22
Copied to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of Combined Operations and one of Stirling’s two commanding officers, Brigadier Haydon’s memo was a useful endorsement.
Mountbatten, it transpired, had already been to North Africa on a high-powered salesman’s drive on behalf of SSRF and Special Forces. There he had met both General The Honourable Sir Harold Alexander, the British Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Command, and General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in North Africa. At a meeting at Camp Amfa on 16 January, Mountbatten opened by saying experience suggested Combined Operations could offer Eisenhower considerable assistance when it came to small scale raiding – particularly amphibious raiding once the Germans had been pushed out of Tunisia – and pressed the American general to decide whether or not he intended to create another SAS-style unit. If he did, then he, Mountbatten, would undertake to provide the men and equipment the American needed. Eisenhower stated that, yes indeed, he would welcome the addition of a force in his command along the lines of 1 SAS. General Alexander concurred. It was all Mountbatten needed to hear.
According to one account, Lt Lassen and Capt. Pinckney’s initial overtures were well received in both HQ Cairo and Eisenhower’s headquarters.23 Thus encouraged, on 2 February 1943, Lt Col Bill Stirling handed over command of SSRF in England to Peter Kemp at Anderson Manor and set out for Africa.
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In summer 1941 West Africa had offered Maid Honor Force all the space and scope it could have wished for – General Giffard and Admiral Willis notwithstanding. But North Africa in early 1943 was a different place altogether. Rommel’s Afrika Korps was retreating westwards towards Tunisia, its extended supply lines with that open southern flank to a vast and empty desert now a thing of the past: trapped between two great armies, in May 1943, 275,000 Afrika Korps troops would surrender and be shipped across the Atlantic to POW camps in Mississippi.24 As German units retreated into Tunisia and supply lines shortened, the land became increasingly confined and unfavourable for jeep operations. SSRF came to North Africa in January 1943 hoping to find bountiful harvest. Instead, they discovered lean pickings. The suggestion, therefore, that Lassen and Pinckney found themselves welcomed and badly needed new arrivals knocking at an open door is contradicted by the SOE War Diary:
B [Stirling] is sadly disillusioned partly through his own fault and partly owing to the CCO’s [Chief of Combined Operations] excessive enthusiasm. There is at this moment no job for SSRF here. AFH [Allied Forces’ Headquarters] felt that CCO sold them SSRF against their better judgement but as too late Recant [sic] they must do something with it … 1st SAS had already informed the 1st Army [to the west] that the country and the largely hostile Arab population almost prohibited operations of the kind carried out by them already in the desert. There was no opening either for raids by sea.25
In England, SSRF had been thwarted by Slocum, the Admiralty and a set of initials – ACNS(H). In North Africa it seemed destined to be hostile Arabs, the Tunisian terrain and the speed of Montgomery’s advance westwards that might frustrate their ambitions: ‘Stirling’s command would only be his own small party plus possibly a small detachment of the 1st SAS who were there and at present there was little future for him’ records the SOE official history.26 While there was a future for SSRF – albeit one that
would emerge under a different set of initials – Stirling’s attempts to locate his unit within the existing matrix of irregular units already operating in North Africa met with limited success and clashed with SOE’s Brandon mission.27 Stirling himself was described by one of his opposite numbers as ‘a really bad piece of work’.28 Like Layforce before it, SSRF as originally conceived was struggling to find a role. And, like Layforce, it too was destined to disappear, services no longer required.
Back in England, the days of Anderson Manor as a powerhouse of cross-Channel raiding were also waning. Between March and April 1943 one SSRF/SBS raid, Operation Backchat, would be compromised – possibly by enemy radar – and aborted before troops could be landed;29 another, Operation Pussyfoot – a second attempt to recce parts of Herm unvisited on Huckaback – would be cancelled because of thick fog; an ambitiously planned Operation Kleptomania – a radar station and garrison assault/prisoner-snatch on Ushant, hardly a small scale raid, involving four Hunt Class Destroyers, eight MGBs, No 1 Commando and up to fifty SSRF, was eventually abandoned as impracticable; two further undated raids – Operations Hillbilly and Mantling – were destined to be ‘cancelled … owing to interference with SIS’.30 Now, with the French coastline closed and with other units like COPP31 weaned away from No 62 Commando to take on the specialised business of stealthy beach reconnaissance on their own, there was little left for SSRF to do in either England or North Africa. On 19 April 1943 the Small Scale Raiding Force was quietly disbanded, its former members dispersing back to the Commandos SAS and SOE.
By then Appleyard’s childhood friend and the comrade posted Missing since Operation Aquatint, Capt. Graham Hayes, had made his way first to Paris and then, with the help of the Resistance, down an escape corridor to Spain. But safety there was illusionary. Soon after crossing over into Spain in November, Hayes had been betrayed and handed back to the Germans. Post-war research revealed the Resistance circuit Hayes had turned to for help in Paris had been hopelessly penetrated by the Gestapo. Thereafter, his every step towards freedom had been tracked and observed, his unwise letters of thanks to friends in Normandy intercepted, photographed and turned into death-sentences for those who had risked their lives to help him. Back on French territory, Hayes was taken back to Paris and imprisoned at Fresnes.
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Out of the ashes of the Small Scale Raiding Force, Bill Stirling – his brother David had been captured in January whilst he was asleep in a wadi by a startled German dentist out on exercise – was given permission to form another SAS Regiment, 2 SAS. The name and its connections – the brothers’ cousin was Lord Lovat – evidently still counted for something. Before his capture by first the Germans (escaped) and then by the jubilant Italians, Lt Col David Stirling had laid plans to expand 1 SAS into a formation of brigade strength: ‘Now I know what SAS stands for,’ confided one of Bill Stirling’s comrades as the light dawned – ‘Stirling and Stirling.’32
Thanks to the January promise wrung out of Eisenhower by Lord Louis Mountbatten, Major Appleyard and a few other SSRF old hands had followed their Colonel to Africa by sea, sailing from the Clyde in mid-February. Appleyard, meanwhile, considered himself still part of SSRF – for the moment, at least. Arriving there in March 1943 – 2 SAS would not be formed until May, the month the Germans surrendered in Africa – he set about creating a new camp, just as he had in Freetown, for the men of SSRF he anticipated would soon be joining him in Africa:
Our base is a most delightful place, right on the sea amongst the sand dunes and about ten miles from the nearest town. A really healthy spot (all in tents, of course) and in an excellent training area. We are making it our permanent base, rest camp, training, holding and stores depot. Wonderful surfing and great fun with the boats for training in surf work, etc., and the length and height of the surf is about Newquay standard … The weather is very variable, some absolutely heavenly days, like the very best days of an English summer and of a perfect temperature, so that we are all already very brown about face and hands, and then there are other days like today, wet and dull with low, driving clouds.33
The camp was at Philippeville, 40 miles north of Constantine, in Algeria. Former SAS soldier and chronicler of the first fifty years of his regiment’s history, desert veteran Michael Asher described it as ‘a huddle of tents pitched in a grove of cork-oaks between the beach and dense maquis scrub that hid a malarial salt marsh. Beyond the scrub, forested hills rose to a height of a thousand feet, their knobbly peaks stretching across the skyline like knuckles.’34 In that time and in that place, Appleyard found himself enchanted by the countryside:
This is a very fascinating country. It really is absolutely beautiful and infinitely varied – at times almost desert, and then a few miles later one could be in England on the Downs and then for miles it will be Mexico with dead flat plains stretching away to sudden scraggy bare rocky hills, and then suddenly one sees views of blue hills and valleys for all the world like Scotland … As regards natural life, there are a lot of birds, some very English – swallows, martins, skylarks – and some very foreign – vultures, hawks, eagles, storks (all standing on their nests on one leg, etc). Flowers are not really out yet, but there are quite a lot of small spring wild flowers, mostly very small, but at times, looking across the ground, you get the most lovely ‘patch’ colour effects with the myriads of tiny little flowers – great yellow, brown, pink or purple patches cover the hillsides in places. But most lovely of all are masses of most gloriously scented wild narcissi … Scorpions (yellow and black) abound in stony places and later there will be a lot of snakes … At night the jackals come and howl round the camp (a weird and chilling sound).35
Once Stirling’s new – and old – recruits for SSRF/2 SAS36 began to arrive, there would be little time for them to admire spring flowers, narcissi or scorpions of either hue:
The training matched the course at Kabrit [1 SAS training base on the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal Zone] – infantry skills, PT, demolitions, Axis weapons, route-marches and parachuting, which was run at a parachute school in Morocco. Final selection for 2 SAS depended on the ability to run to the top of a nearby six-hundred foot hill and back in sixty minutes. Failures were RTU’d [Returned To Unit].37
Plus ça change.
Yet, despite its pedigree, its intimate link with the founder of the Special Air Service Regiment, 2 SAS was slow to find its feet. According to Michael Asher ‘[2 SAS] was never to achieve the cachet of 1 SAS … If 2 SAS had never quite lived up to its promise, it was mainly because many of the tasks it was handed were pointless or badly planned by outsiders.’38 To begin with at least, that was not how it appeared to the men on the ground. Appleyard wrote:
As regards prospects, they are good, and things will be very busy soon. I think now that I shall not be coming home again quite so soon as I indicated at first. We can do such a really useful job here and there is so much co-operation and keenness … after all, this is where the war is now and is going to be in the future.
The job Appleyard and his men trained for was small unit behind-the-lines reconnaissance, sabotage and disruption of enemy communications. Training for what, by June, would have become the new A Squadron, 2 SAS, translated into toiling up and down murderous countryside in broiling heat each carrying an explosives-laden rucksack whose webbing straps bit deep into aching shoulders:
I think you would be surprised to see me now! I am sitting, with a 5-days growth of beard on my face, stark-naked in the sun on a rock in the middle of a little stream with my feet in the water, cooling off some of the blisters! We are in a tiny little wadi in the midst of a cork forest and there are dense bushes of juniper, thorn, bamboo and broom all around, making this a perfect little hide-out for the day. We got in here about 5 this morning after being on the move since 7.30 last night and shall be off again as soon as darkness falls tonight … I think this is quite the toughest thing physically I have ever done. We are each carrying 65 lbs (sixty-five) packs (rucksacks) and if y
ou want to know just how heavy that is, Ian, [his younger brother] try it! This country is most incredibly difficult to move over and through, and the maps are abominable … We started this scheme last Monday and now, with only fourteen more miles to go, should be back in camp just before dawn tomorrow. So far in our four night’s travel we have covered about forty miles as the crow flies, but you cannot measure distance in this country in miles, as in that time we must have climbed between 6,000 and 8,000 feet.39
A little later in the same letter Appleyard’s mood changes as a love of a home sorely missed bubbles to the surface:
I even heard a cuckoo the other day, and saw swallows and pied wagtails, going north presumably. I’ll send my greetings with them! Linton must be looking very lovely now and when you get this the daffies will be out and April will be with you. The first nests – and the dippers. Tea at Malham, and perhaps ham and eggs. I suppose I’ll miss all that this year. Still, there’s a job to do here first and then, perhaps, a year hence it will all be over.40
Training soon gave way to live operations in early April with a raid on the island of La Galite off the coast of Tunisia. On the way to embark, Appleyard was shot – by an American. He was in a jeep which was passed by a large US truck going the other way, in the back of which sat a bored American plinking at passing road signs with a .45. The shot went through the jeep’s dashboard and then entered and exited his shoulder without breaking bone. Shrugging off the suggestion of a stay in hospital, Appleyard got the wound strapped up and carried on with the night’s raid: ‘a very amusing night’s entertainment with a few I-ties!,’ as he later described it.
