Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War (39 page)

Operation Tombola. Sketch map for the assault on the Villa Rossi and Villa Calvi, headquarters of the German LI Corps at Albinea.

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Italian partisans in the foothills of the Apennines.

A photograph from the war diary of Italian soldiers taken prisoner: “Fawning, friendly, smiling little creatures,” wrote one SAS officer.

Letter from Montgomery to the SAS, after his promotion to field marshal.

The SAS under fire in Germany: while the two men at left are taking cover under the jeep, Paddy Mayne, leaning up against a tree with his back to the camera, appears to be reading a book.

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Lincoln Delmar Bundy, the Arizona cowboy turned fighter pilot who was shot down over France and then unofficially enrolled in the SAS.

Bill Fraser, at the forefront of battle in Africa, Italy, and France, thrice wounded and highly decorated, but also tortured by “inner demons.”

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Colditz Castle, POW camp. David Stirling, one of its least cooperative inmates, called it “the Third Reich’s most closely guarded hostelry.”

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German boy soldiers conscripted to fight in a doomed cause in the grim final chapter of the war.

Liberation. SAS soldiers festooned with bouquets by French villagers as they pressed east.

Colonel Paddy Mayne, commander of 1SAS, decorated war hero and a far cry from the bearded, volatile ruffian of the desert war.

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Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, discovered by SAS troops in April 1945; SS guards being forced to bury the dead in mass graves.