Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War (9 page)

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Auchinleck’s offensive would be the largest armored operation undertaken by the British to date. The aim of the commander in chief was to push Rommel out of Cyrenaica, relieve Tobruk, and retake the coastal airfields in order to provide vital air cover for the convoys to Malta. Code-named Operation Crusader, it would be launched on November 18.

On November 10, Brigadier Galloway of Middle East Headquarters issued an outline of Operation Squatter, enlarging on the plan laid out by David Stirling in his original memo: on the night of November 17, the night before Auchinleck’s tanks began to roll west, fifty-five men of L Detachment would take off from Bagush airfield in Egypt, fly over enemy territory, and then parachute to the desert twelve miles from the coast. A heavy air raid on the airstrips beforehand would create fires that would enable the pilots to navigate toward the drop zone, which would also be identified by the RAF’s marker flares. On landing, five teams of eleven men would then attack five forward airfields in the vicinity of Timimi and Gazala, with the aim of “destroying as many aircraft as possible.” They would deploy Lewes bombs with staggered timers to ensure that they all detonated at roughly the same time. “The destruction of fighter aircraft is of greater importance than bombers, and German aircraft are of more importance than Italian,” the order advised. There were estimated to be some three hundred planes on the five airfields; each team would carry sixty Lewes bombs. In theory, therefore, they should be able to destroy the lot.

Having completed the mission, the men would march some fifty miles inland to a point three miles south of the crossroads on the Trig al Abd, an ancient desert trading track running parallel to the coast. There, they would be picked up by a unit of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a reconnaissance unit, transported to Siwa Oasis, and then flown back to Kabrit by transport plane. The LRDG would keep a watch by day for the returning SAS units, and hang a red hurricane lantern at the rendezvous point visible at night; they would wait for three days; and if at the end of that period the SAS had still not appeared, the LRDG would bury two twelve-gallon water containers and some tinned dates at a prearranged spot, and leave. The men would then be on their own in the desert.

The contribution planned for L Detachment would be small but important: a low-stakes gamble for potentially high returns. If it worked, it might seriously degrade enemy airpower at a pivotal moment; if it failed, at worst a few dozen men would be lost, a small drop in the great military wave surging westward.

Lewes was elated at the prospect of action at last. His letters home ring with the chivalric tones of a Crusader: “We wait to prove ourselves….This unit cannot now die, as Layforce died, it is alive and will live gloriously. Soon our name will be honoured and our ranks filled with those who come seeking honour and nobility.”

Two hours before takeoff, the RAF laid on what was, by wartime standards, a banquet. There was as much food as the men of L Detachment could eat, and a bottle of beer each. It was even served by RAF officers. This “dinner fit for a king” was intended as a tribute to the departing parachutists, but some detected a melancholy aspect to the elaborate send-off: “We were treated like men going to the gallows.” A small flicker of premonitory anxiety, like the rising wind off the desert, wafted through the RAF mess tent at Bagush airfield as the men ate their meal, and with good reason: Operation Squatter ought never to have taken place.

The weather forecast was atrocious. Winds of at least thirty knots were predicted, twice the maximum speed for safe parachuting, with heavy rain. Whirling sand could create serious navigation problems for the pilots, while the gusting wind would probably blow the parachutists, and the canisters containing their equipment, far off course. Visibility on this moonless night would be limited anyway, but in the midst of a desert storm regrouping on the ground would be a severe challenge. Brigadier Galloway of the general staff advised calling off the operation, but the final decision was left to Stirling. He consulted his officers. There was no question of postponement, since Auchinleck’s main Eighth Army offensive would be taking place the following day, whatever the weather: the parachute drop would either have to go ahead or be canceled. The men had signed up because they were frustrated by the endless delays that had plagued Layforce; the effect on morale of another cancellation could be terminal. Stirling feared that his enemies at Middle East HQ might take the opportunity to disband his detachment altogether. He would later frame the decision as one in which the very future of the unit was at stake, although he cannot have been certain of this at the time. At the back of his mind must have been the knowledge that his own leadership status would suffer badly if he pulled the plug. “I swore when I started SAS that if we undertook to take on a target on a particular night, we’d do it utterly regardless,” he told his biographer. “It seemed to me we had to take the risk.” Jock Lewes and Paddy Mayne agreed; the decision was popular with the men. Stirling’s choice was prompted by conviction, audacity, and hope. It was a brave decision, but the wrong one.

The day before the operation, Stirling wrote to his mother, with a jauntiness he may not have felt, revealing that he would soon be taking part in “the best possible type of operation [which] will be far more exciting than dangerous.”

The five sticks of parachutists would be led by Stirling, Lewes, Mayne, McGonigal, and Bonington. Once safely on the ground, each group would split into smaller units of between four and six men, before moving on to attack the five separate airfields. Each plane also carried parachute canisters containing explosives, weapons, spare ammunition, fuses, and extra rations. The men were each equipped with an entrenching tool and a small haversack containing grenades, a revolver, maps, a compass, and rations (these consisted of dates, raisins, cheese, biscuits, sweets, and chocolate). They were dressed in standard desert uniform of khaki shorts and shirt, with rubber boots, helmets, and mechanics’ overalls. The American Pat Riley and young Johnny Cooper would both jump with Jock Lewes; Seekings was under Mayne’s command.

“The wind is getting up,” one of the pilots remarked gloomily as the men climbed aboard.

Of the officers, Fraser was absent, left behind on account of a wrist broken in parachute training; he planned to travel with the LRDG and join the others at the rendezvous. Jim Almonds was also forced to remain in camp, since his young son was gravely ill with suspected meningitis and he expected to be recalled to Britain at any moment. “Watched them embark and the planes take off,” Almonds wrote in his diary. “They are a fine crowd of lads. How many will I see again?”

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David Stirling hit the desert floor with such force that he blacked out. Just a few minutes earlier, the pilot of the plane, unable to navigate accurately in the storm, had asked if he should abort the jump. “No, certainly not,” said Stirling. Then he jumped. When he came to, he found he was being dragged along by his parachute “like a kite” in a forty-mile-per-hour wind, whipped and grated across sharp gravel and rocks. After a struggle he managed to twist the clip of his parachute release, and the canopy flapped away into the storm. Stirling staggered to his feet in the darkness, covered in lacerations and pouring blood but otherwise unharmed. He switched on his torch and began shouting into the wind. The pilot had told him which compass bearing the men had been dropped on: by following that bearing, the first man dropped should come across the second, and so on. It took two hours to gather what remained of his team. One man had vanished; apparently unable to release himself from his parachute, he had probably been dragged to death. Another had broken an ankle and could not stand. The worst injury was to Sergeant Jock Cheyne, a tall twenty-five-year-old Scotsman from Aberdeen, “full of quaint Scots humour.” Cheyne had broken his back on landing. The men had all been told that in case of serious injury their best chance of survival would be to “crawl to a roadside and hope.” There was no road for miles, and poor Cheyne was unable to crawl anywhere. The supply canisters had vanished. Armed only with revolvers and a handful of grenades, and barely a day’s supply of water, Stirling’s unit was now useless as an attacking force.

Once his dismay had subsided, Stirling became practical. He would continue toward the coast and try to carry out a reconnaissance of the target airfield, and perhaps an attack, along with Sergeant Bob Tait, who, like himself, seemed to have suffered only superficial injuries. Sergeant Yates, the company sergeant major, would make for the LRDG rendezvous with the four men still able to walk. The two most badly injured men would be left behind. “It’s an awful feeling,” one of the departing men recalled, “to leave two friends, but you had to, couldn’t carry them, just had to hope they would be picked up by the Germans.” The two men were left with a supply of water and two revolvers. Few words were said. There was little to say. Cheyne lay unconscious, “huddled in the blankets that were brought him.” The injured men were never seen again.

Paddy Mayne’s team fared little better. Reg Seekings, to his intense and vociferous fury, was dragged across the desert for fifty yards and straight through a thorn bush, flaying hands, arms, and face. “I could feel the blood running down, and Jesus that got my temper up.” Finally he wrenched himself free of the parachute. Mayne had landed unscathed, and gathered his bedraggled troop. They had come down, he estimated, at least a dozen miles from the drop zone. Dave Kershaw, a veteran who had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, had broken an arm. Two other men were too badly injured to walk. Only two of the canisters were located, containing two tommy guns, eight bottles of water, six blankets, and some food and explosives. Mayne insisted the mission would go ahead as planned. The most injured men would be left with water and rations. “We shook hands with them, wished them luck, and set out to find our objective.” (The two men were captured by an Italian patrol the next day.)

Of the five parachuting parties, only that of Jock Lewes had landed more or less intact. Their plane had come under attack from the coastal antiaircraft batteries, and the pilot, dodging searchlights and fighting the wind, shouted that he had only a vague idea of where they were. “We’re jumping blind,” thought Johnny Cooper as he leaped into the dark. The only sound he could hear as he descended was the wind howling though the rigging lines of his parachute. Below was pitch-darkness. The sudden impact with the ground knocked the wind out of him but, staggering to his feet, Cooper was astonished to find he had broken no bones. The dozen men in his team all survived the jump uninjured, despite discovering that extrication from a parachute harness in a raging wind was “a job for Houdini.” Only two of the canisters were located, but at least these contained Lewes bombs and machine guns. They were still combat capable. “Well, fellows,” said Lewes with unfeigned cheeriness, “I don’t know where we are, so we can only carry out the operation assuming that we may be within five to ten miles of our original dropping zone.” Led by the burly and reassuring figure of Pat Riley, they headed north, in what they hoped was the direction of the airfields.

The plane carrying Charles Bonington and his party was flown by Charlie West, a regular RAF pilot from Devon and a favorite with the men of L Detachment. With black storm clouds rolling in off the Gulf of Bomba, West flew in low, crossing the coast at three hundred feet, and immediately came under heavy attack from the ground; antiaircraft fire tore through the port engine, the cockpit instruments, and the fuel tanks. With the plane crippled, the mission was aborted and West wheeled eastward toward home—or what he thought was east, unaware that a piece of shrapnel had lodged beneath the compass. The plane was flying in a circle. Running low on fuel, West landed on a patch of scrubby desert, in the dark, in the teeth of the worst storm in the area for thirty years, an achievement later cited as an “impeccable feat of flying.”

As dawn rose, the party discovered that they had come down just a few miles from the coast. They now faced imminent attack from the very planes on the Gazala airstrip they were supposed to be destroying. West immediately took off again, with what little fuel remained, in the hope of being able to “flop” the Bombay into Tobruk harbor, still in British hands, some thirty miles to the west. West had wrestled the plane to a height of about two hundred feet when an Italian Breda gun opened fire from below, sending bullets thudding into the fuselage. Moments later a Messerschmitt 109, dispatched from Gazala, joined the attack. West’s navigator was killed beside him. Several of the men were hit. West attempted evasive action and then somehow managed to land the stricken plane, which hit a series of low sandhills and slewed to a stop after a “violent tobogganing over the rough sandy ground.” Some of the men were thrown clear; several more were trapped beneath the burning fuselage; West himself, with a fractured skull, broken ribs, and internal injuries, was still in the cockpit, miraculously alive. The soldier who had walked forty miles in his socks during training was mortally injured and would die the next day. The men prepared to make a fighting stand, but when the plane came under attack again from ground forces it became clear that the situation was hopeless. The unit surrendered to a Luftwaffe pilot at 7:00 a.m. Lieutenant Charles Bonington and the other survivors were all made prisoners. (West spent a year in various POW camps, before escaping from a train taking him from Italy to Germany by cutting through the floorboards.)