Tales from the Special Forces Club

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Sean Rayment. Tales from the Special Forces Club

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. The Secret Life of Noreen Riols. Training SOE Agents

CHAPTER 2. The Two Wars of Jimmy Patch. The Long Range Desert Group

CHAPTER 3. The Greatest Raid of All. Corran Purdon with the Commandos at St Nazaire

CHAPTER 4 ‘The Best Navigator in the Western Desert’ Mike Sadler with the SAS

CHAPTER 5. Popski’s Private Army. John Campbell’s Italian Jobs

CHAPTER 6. The Moonlight Squadrons. Leonard Ratcliff on Flying the SOE and the SIS

CHAPTER 7. Jungle Warfare behind Enemy Lines. Bill Towill with the Chindits

CHAPTER 8. The Jedburgh Teams. Fred Bailey in France and Burma

CHAPTER 9 ‘We weren’t bloody playing cricket’ Harry Verlander in the Far East

CHAPTER 10. A Radio Operator at War. John Sharp with the Jeds

Acknowledgements

Picture Section

Copyright

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In memory of all the members of the special forces who sacrificed their lives during the Second World War

Title Page

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‘Afterwards I was called back into Woolly Bags’ office and in his very blunt way he said: “There’s no point being upset about it. If he can’t resist talking to a pretty face in Denmark he won’t last an hour. He more or less told you that he was going to be an agent after dinner and a few drinks. Imagine what you could get out of him if you had a week, or if he was threatened with torture or execution. And remember it’s not only his life he’s putting in danger, he could bring down an entire network.” I did realise that, of course, but Woolly Bags’ words were of little comfort to me. The poor chap had gone through six months of very tough training, and Beaulieu was by no means a holiday camp.

‘Beaulieu was known as the Finishing School for Spies – it was where everything they had learnt for the last six months was supposed to come together, so that the agents could deploy into the field and hopefully survive and carry out the tasks for which they had been trained. But it was also a very tough place, and if the students weren’t up to the task then they could be failed at any moment. Some students were failed on the last day because the instructors could not be sure that they would survive as an agent.

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