Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War (53 page)

After a lunch with Franks, Galitzine agreed to keep the unit going by means of some subterfuge. “Because there was obviously quite a lot of administrative confusion, one managed to keep the momentum going of pay and rations and everything else.” With Galitzine arranging administrative and logistical support, the SAS war crimes unit was maintained and paid directly by the War Office, long after the SAS itself had been disbanded. Through Franks, a direct radio link was maintained between London and the hunters in the field. Galitzine was impressed by the zeal of the unit—“The SAS team are all personal friends of the missing men and are inspired by the esprit de corps of their regiment”—but he was particularly struck by Barkworth’s sense of mission, describing him as “a mystic, a thinker,” with an otherworldly air that appealed to the Russian’s sense of magic.

At one point, Barkworth’s spiritualism got out of hand, when he resorted to an Ouija board in an effort to track down suspects. The Ouija, or talking board, is marked out with the letters of the alphabet through which departed spirits communicate with the living by guiding a heart-shaped piece of wood toward individual letters. Galitzine, initially skeptical, soon became an enthusiastic supporter of this unlikely form of Nazi-hunting. Barkworth insisted, “If people were killed, presumably they want to tell us what happened to them.” The team later claimed that two bodies were located in this way, along with a prisoner accused of war crimes—though not one they were looking for, which suggests that the spirits may not have been very good at spelling. The higher-ups were not impressed by Barkworth’s resort to spiritual assistance, and Galitzine was accused of “conduct unbecoming in an officer and a gentleman.”

In a memo sent to Franks, Barkworth laid out the mounting evidence so painstakingly assembled, and expressed the high moral purpose of his endeavor. The legal proceedings against the accused, he wrote, “will be conducted in such a manner that when the popular clamour of this century has been replaced by that of another, the proceedings will be regarded as an example of strict impartial justice and not of revenge.”

But justice can be a messy business, particularly in the aftermath of war. “Nazi-hunting” may sound glamorous and dangerous. In fact, much of the work was boring and frustrating. Many suspects and witnesses had vanished. Those that could be identified were often wholly unreliable, lying as if their lives depended on it, which they did.

Oberleutnant Vogt, the former clergyman who had organized the executions of the Bulbasket prisoners, was dead. The intelligence officer Erich Schönig, his immediate boss, was found to be working as a dentist in Ebingen and arrested in October 1946. General Gallenkamp, their corps commander and the senior officer in charge, was already in custody, picked up by British troops in May 1945. His chief of staff, Colonel Herbert Köstlin, who had witnessed the executions, was also arrested. The case split into two: the executions of the captives in the Saint-Sauvant forest, and the killing by lethal injection of the three SAS prisoners too badly injured to leave the hospital. Shortly before their trial was due to start, General Gallenkamp attempted suicide and failed. In his suicide note he insisted, “My voluntary departure from this life takes place under the impression of the terrible things which have happened in the Corps HQ which I commanded.” He admitted authorizing the killings by lethal injection of the three hospital inmates, but insisted that this was an act of mercy as he had been told the wounded men were “beyond saving.” He denied ordering the other executions. The trial, in March 1947, was a clutter of claim and counterclaim, with the accused blaming one another and using the familiar defense that they had been obeying orders that could not be refused. “An order of the Führer was binding on those to whom it was given,” said Gallenkamp’s lawyer, “even when the order was contrary to international law or other traditional values.” Köstlin insisted that the crime in question was “incompatible with his Christian belief ” and had been carried out only because Gallenkamp had issued “a very clear and unmistakable order.” Erich Schönig did not deny involvement, but declared, “I was frankly revolted.”

Gallenkamp was sentenced to death, along with the doctor accused of administering the lethal injections. Köstlin got life in prison, while Schönig was sentenced to five years. But on review the Commando Order was accepted as a mitigating factor: Gallenkamp’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison, and the hospital doctor was freed. A petition requesting clemency for Gallenkamp was signed by thirty-one former German generals. The sentence was reduced to ten years, and in 1952 Gallenkamp was released on grounds of ill health. He died in 1958.

The Loyton case was not much more definitive, though the hangman claimed some victims. Wilhelm Schneider, the Gestapo officer who had interrogated Kenneth Seymour, was executed in January 1947 in Hamelin prison. Barkworth and Rhodes witnessed the execution of Heinrich Neuschwanger, the officer convicted of the killings at Gaggenau, but it appears to have afforded them little satisfaction, as the murderer seemed blithely unrepentant: “Right up to the moment he was hung I don’t think it worried him one little bit.” Karl Haug, the executioner of Pat Garstin and the other captives taken in Operation Gain, met the same fate.

Many of those involved in the SAS killings were given light sentences, or escaped justice completely. But, just as John Tonkin had prevented reprisals against the camp guards at Belsen, so Barkworth had insisted that his investigation be carried out with judicial impartiality and without revenge; and in that he had succeeded. The War Crimes Investigation Team stood down in 1948.

By that time, the SAS itself had come back to life. With British military commitments changing in a postwar world, the authorities had belatedly realized that a long-term, deep-penetration fighting unit would be not only useful but essential. The 21SAS Regiment (so called because it amalgamated 2 and 1SAS) came into being in January 1947, as part of the Territorial Army. A squadron became the Malayan Scouts (SAS), renamed 22SAS Regiment in 1952. The SAS regiments would go on to see action around the world, becoming increasingly active in counterterrorism operations and hostage-taking situations during the 1970s.

The SAS idea swiftly spread. The Canadian Special Air Service Company was formed in 1947, the New Zealand Special Air Service Company in 1955; Australia’s 1st SAS Company was created in 1957, becoming the Australian Special Air Service Regiment seven years later. The Special Forces Group of the Belgian army, with the same cap badge as the British SAS, traces its origins to the Belgian wartime volunteers of 5SAS. The French 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment has the motto
Qui ose gagne
(Who dares wins), and is directly descended from the French wartime 3 and 4SAS. Israel’s special forces unit Sayeret Matkal is modeled on the SAS, as is Ireland’s Army Ranger Wing.

In 1962, a young US Army officer, Captain Charles Beckwith, served with 22SAS as an exchange officer. On his return to the US, Beckwith began a long campaign to persuade the US military of the need for a similar unit. “What the [SAS] regiment ended with, I thought, were men who enjoyed being alone, who could think and operate by themselves, men who were strong-minded and resolute,” he wrote. “These were the characteristics I thought should be transferred to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces.” Beckwith envisaged small, autonomous teams of men highly trained in combat, reconnaissance, hostage-rescue, and counterterrorist missions. The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D), better known as Delta Force, was finally formed by Beckwith in November 1977.

In tactics and intentions, American and British special forces still follow the principles pioneered by the SAS in the desert more than seventy years ago: attacking the most valuable strategic targets without warning and then melting away again, forcing the enemy to remain on constant, debilitating alert.

The SAS changed the face of warfare, by pioneering techniques of long-term, deep penetration that are more important today than ever. The experience of the SAS proved that, as the Second World War wore on, growing grimmer, bloodier, and more ruthless, the need for a specialized and sometimes brutal form of fighting became ever more urgent. The SAS began the war fighting a gentlemanly foe, and ended it locked in a struggle with the pure evil of the SS. If there were ever doubts that SAS tactics were justified, they evaporated in the mephitic horror of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The postwar history of the SAS lies outside the remit of this book, but the style and secrecy of the wartime SAS endured. In 1989, Stirling wrote an address to be delivered to the SAS sergeants’ mess that seemed to capture the essence of the regimental ethos:

Let me remind you that you must never think of yourselves as an elite. To do so would be bad for you and bad for your relations with the army and it would undermine those splendid qualities, to which you are wedded, of humility in success, and of a constant sense of humour. No, you are not an elite force. You are something more distinguished. Something of which you can be far more proud. The SAS establishment constitutes the smallest Corps in the British Defence Forces but with a special strategic role which is probably unique among all the armies of the world, and one which could save an incalculable number of lives. Hence the need for you to keep a “low profile,” for reticence, and for the practice of security at all times.

On January 16, 1944, the
Sunday Graphic
ran the headline “Secret Airmen: They Will Amaze the World.” The report, long on drama but notably short on detail, promised that “the exploits of men in Britain’s Special Air Service whose work is a close secret will make amazing reading after the war…the day-by-day history of the Service will be published after the war.”

It has taken more than seventy years for the SAS to end its reticence, and for that promise to be made good.

This book was made possible by the full cooperation and assistance of the SAS Regimental Association. I am particularly grateful to Chris Dodkin, Howard Ham, Tracy Hawkins, Terri Hesmer, and the SAS Association archivist. Gavin Mortimer kindly read the manuscript at various stages of writing, and Alan Hoe and Gordon Stephens cast expert eyes over it at the end, identifying a number of important errors and omissions. The remaining mistakes are entirely my own. I would also like to thank the following for contributing, variously, their expertise, hospitality, memories, and other assistance in the making of this book: Kildare and Sarah Bourke-Borrowes, Robert Hands, Keith Kilby, John Lewes, John McCready, Martin Morgan, Mike Sadler, Alison Smartt, Archie Stirling, and Edward Toms, as well as the numerous individuals who helped but have asked not to be named. Caroline Wood performed great feats of picture research. My publishers at Viking and Crown have been remarkable in their efficiency, imagination, and patience: Joel Rickett, Venetia Butterfield, Poppy North, Peter James, Molly Stern, and Kevin Doughton. It has been a pleasure to tackle this project in concert with a most talented BBC team: Matthew Whiteman, Eamon Hardy, Katie Rider, and Martin Davidson. Ed Victor, my agent, has been, as ever, a fund of enthusiasm and good judgement. I am indebted to my friends and colleagues at
The Times
for their encouragement, and above all to my beloved family, for their unfailing tolerance, support, and humor.

David Stirling
was appointed OBE in 1946 and initially settled in Rhodesia, where he became president of the newly founded Capricorn Society, an idealistic scheme to unite Africans without regard to racial, political, and religious divisions. When that failed (he blamed the Colonial Office), Stirling returned to the UK and set up a series of television stations around the world, mostly in developing countries, another project that was as imaginative as it was unprofitable. “I had the biggest collection of the most bankrupt television stations in the world,” he said. Later he ran Watchguard (International) Ltd., a secretive company through which he helped train security units for Arab and African countries. He was also associated with several instances of covert military action in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the 1974 miners’ strike, he set up GB75, “an organization of apprehensive patriots” who would help keep essential services, such as power stations, running in the event of a general strike. He then turned to fighting left-wing extremism in trade unions, by backing the Movement for True Industrial Democracy (Truemid). In 1984, he gave his name to the Hereford headquarters of the SAS, the Stirling Lines. He was knighted in 1990, and died later that year.