Читать книгу Night Fighters in France - Shaun Clarke, Shaun Clarke - Страница 6

The men crowding into the briefing room in their heavily guarded camp near Fairford, Gloucestershire on 10 August 1944 were not ordinary soldiers. They were men of uncommon ability, members of the Special Air Service (1 SAS), which had been formed in North Africa in 1941 as a self-contained group tasked with clandestine insertion, long-range reconnaissance patrols behind enemy lines, and sabotage and intelligence-gathering missions, often with the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).

Originally, 1 SAS had been conceived and formed by Lieutenant David Stirling, a former Scots Guard who, having joined No. 8 Commando, was promptly dispatched to the Middle East on attachment to Colonel Robert Laycock’s Layforce. After taking part in many relatively unsuccessful, large-scale raids against German positions along the North African coast, Stirling became convinced that raids with small, specially trained units would be more effective. In the spring of 1941, hospitalized in Alexandria after a parachute accident, he passed the time by formulating his plans for just such a unit, based on the belief that 200 men operating as five-man teams could achieve the surprise necessary to destroy several targets on the same night. Subsequently, with the support of Deputy Chief of Staff General Neil Ritchie, L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade, was born.

The new SAS Brigade’s first raids behind enemy lines in November 1941, which involved parachute drops, were a complete failure. However, later raids against Axis airfields at Sirte, Tamit, Mersa Brega and Agedabia, during which the men were driven to their targets and returned to base by the highly experienced LRDG, were remarkably successful, gaining L Detachment a legendary reputation. By October 1942, when L Detachment was given full regimental status as 1 SAS, it had grown to include the 390 troops of the existing 1 SAS, the French Squadron of 94 men, the Greek Sacred Squadron of 114 men, the Special Boat Section of 55 men and the Special Interrogation Group.

Lieutenant Stirling was captured in January 1943, incarcerated in Gavi, Italy, from where he escaped no less than four times, then transferred to the German high-security prison at Colditz. In April 1943, while Stirling was embarking on a series of daring escapes from Gavi, the French and Greek Squadrons were returned to their respective national armies, the Special Boat Section became a separate unit, the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), under the command of Major Jellicoe, and 1 SAS became the Special Raiding Squadron. In May 1943 2 SAS came into existence and, later that year, the Special Raiding Squadron reverted to the title of 1 SAS. Finally, in January 1944, the SAS Brigade was formed under the umbrella of 1st Airborne Corps. It consisted of 1 and 2 SAS, 3 SAS (3 French Parachute Battalion), 4 SAS (4 French Parachute Battalion), 5 SAS (Belgian Independent Parachute Company), HQ French Demi-Brigade, F Squadron, GHQ Liaison Regiment and 20 Liaison HQ, which was the SAS link with the Free French.

The men crowding into the briefing room at Fairford, however, were the British founder members of the SAS Brigade, having joined it in North Africa in 1941 and taken part in its first daring raids. The ‘Head Shed’ in charge of the briefing and now taking up his position in front of the covered blackboard on a raised platform was the squadron commander, Captain Patrick ‘Paddy’ Callaghan, No. 3 Commando, an accomplished boxer and Irish rugby international who had, at the time of the formation of L Detachment, been languishing in a military-police cell in Cairo, waiting to be court-martialled. Though normally an amiable, courteous man, Callaghan had a fiery temper and had often landed in trouble because of it. Nevertheless, he was one of the most able officers in the SAS, often mentioned in dispatches for his bravery in action. Thus, though he had not been promoted since 1941, his abilities had been officially recognized when his superiors put him in charge of C Squadron.

Standing beside the heavily built Captain Callaghan was his slim, handsome second in command, former Lieutenant, now Captain, Derek ‘Dirk’ Greaves. Like Stirling, Greaves had been a member of No. 9 Commando, posted to General Wavell’s Middle Eastern Army on attachment to Layforce. With Layforce he had taken part in raids against the Axis forces in Rhodes, Crete, Syria, around Tobruk and all along the seaward side of Libya’s Cyrenaica Desert, before being wounded, meeting Lieutenant Stirling in the Scottish Military Hospital in Alexandria and becoming his right-hand man in the formation of L Detachment. Single when with Layforce, he had since married his Scottish fiancée, Mary Radnor, and now missed her dreadfully, though he took comfort from the knowledge that she was living safely in the family home in Edinburgh, and now eight months pregnant with their first child.

‘All right, men, quieten down!’ Captain Greaves shouted. ‘We haven’t got all day!’

When the spirited babble continued even as Captain Callaghan was taking up his position in the middle of the dais, Sergeant Ralph Lorrimer bawled: ‘Shut your mouths and let the boss speak! Are you men deaf, or what?’

Formerly of the Dorset Regiment, then with the LRDG, an expert in desert tracking and warfare, but also unbeatable with the Browning 12-gauge autoloader, Lorrimer had been approached by Stirling and Greaves to join L Detachment when he was spending his leave in Tiger Lil’s brothel in Cairo’s notorious Sharia el Berka quarter. He was therefore respected by the men for more reasons than one and, when he shouted for them to be silent, they promptly obeyed and settled down to listen to the Head Shed.

‘Can I just open,’ Captain Callaghan asked rhetorically, ‘by saying that I know how frustrated you men have been, stuck here in Gloucestershire, when the battle for Europe is under way in France.’

‘Damned right, boss!’ Lance-Corporal Jack ‘Jacko’ Dempster cried out. ‘The best bloody brigade in the British Army and they leave us sitting here on our arses while lesser men do all the fighting. A right bunch of prats, that’s how we feel.’

As the rest of the men burst into laughter or murmurs of agreement, Sergeant Lorrimer snapped: ‘We don’t need your bloody nonsense at this time in the morning, Jacko. Just shut up and let the boss speak or I’ll have you out in a guard box.’

‘Yes, Sarge!’ the lance-corporal replied with a smirk.

Nevertheless, Lorrimer was grinning too, for he had a great deal of respect for Dempster and the rest of the ‘other ranks’. Jacko, as everyone knew him, was just one of the many men in the room who had been founder members of L Detachment when it came into existence in 1941. Known as the ‘Originals’, they included Sergeants Bob Tappman, Pat Riley and Ernie Bond; Corporals Jim Almonds, ‘Benny’ Bennett, Richard ‘Rich’ Burgess and Reg Seekings; and former Privates, now Lance-Corporals, Neil Moffatt, Harry ‘Harry-boy’ Turnball and, of course, Jacko Dempster.

Each one of these men had gone into the North African desert with minimal knowledge of desert warfare, learnt all there was to know from the Long Range Desert Group, and then taken part in daring, mostly successful, raids against Axis airfields located well behind enemy lines. Remarkably, only one of them – the revered Lieutenant John ‘Jock’ Steel Lewes – had died during those raids. As a brutal climax to the final raid of that period – a simultaneous attack by three different groups against Sirte, Tamit and Nofilia – the survivors, all now present in the briefing room, had made it back to the forward operating base after an epic trek across the desert, most of them practically crawling into their camp at Jalo Oasis. Though they never openly said so, they were proud of what they had accomplished and stuck together because of it, keeping themselves slightly apart from the other, more recent arrivals in the SAS Brigade.

Furthermore, as Sergeant Lorrimer knew only too well, the Originals had developed a low boredom threshold, and this had caused immense frustration when, at the end of 1943,1 SAS were returned to Scotland for training and operations in northern Europe. Initially they were kept busy establishing a base near the remote village of Darvel, east of Kilmarnock; but in May the following year the SAS Brigade had been moved to Fairford, where the men had been able to do little more than constant retraining in preparation for Operation Overlord. Small wonder they had become even more frustrated when D-Day passed without them. Now Lorrimer was hoping that what the CO was about to tell them would make amends for that.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ Captain Callaghan continued, ‘to end the suspense, we’ve been assigned a specific task in France and it commences forthwith.’

When the cheering, clapping and whistling had died down, the captain continued: ‘At this moment, General Patton’s 3rd Army is driving south towards Dijon.’

‘Mad Dog Patton!’ shouted Corporal Richard ‘Rich’ Burgess.

‘I wouldn’t let him hear you say that, Corporal,’ Callaghan admonished him, ‘because although he may seem mad to you, he’s a damned good soldier and proud of it.’

‘Sorry, boss.’

‘Anyway, to aid Patton’s advance, Montgomery has asked for airborne landings in the Orléans Gap.’

‘That’s us?’ Lance-Corporal Harry ‘Harry-boy’ Turnball asked hopefully.

‘No,’ Callaghan replied. ‘Our task is to soften up the enemy before the landings – and to distract them from the landings – by engaging in a series of hit-and-run raids against their positions. For this mission, Operation Kipling, you and your jeeps will be inserted by parachute in central France. Once you’ve all been landed, you’ll establish a base, lie low and make contact with the Maquis.’

‘Frogs?’ Lance-Corporal Neil Moffatt asked dubiously.

‘French partisans,’ Captain Callaghan corrected him. ‘“Maquis” is a Corsican word meaning “scrub” or “bush”. The Maquis are so called because when the Krauts introduced compulsory labour in the occupied countries, many men fled their homes to live in rudimentary camps in the scrubland and forests. Since then, with the aid of our Special Operations Executive and America’s Office of Strategic Studies, they’ve been engaged in highly successful sabotage activities behind German lines. They may be Frogs to you, but they’re a bunch of tough, courageous Frogs, so don’t knock them.’

‘Sorry, boss,’ Neil mumbled.

‘Good or not, why do we need ’em?’ Rich Burgess asked.

‘Because we believe their local knowledge will make them invaluable for planning raids, particularly those behind enemy lines.’

‘Are they troublesome?’ Sergeant Bob Tappman asked.

Callaghan nodded. ‘Unfortunately, yes, and for a couple of reasons.’

‘Which are?’

‘The Maquis are split between those who support General de Gaulle’s Free French and those who sympathize with the communists. Unfortunately, the latter believe, as do the communists, that de Gaulle is no more than Britain and America’s stooge, to be used and then discarded.’

‘Bloody marvellous!’ Corporal Reg Seekings murmured, then asked: ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ Callaghan said. ‘A lot of the Maquis have shown more interest in storing weapons for after the war, to use against de Gaulle’s supporters, than they’ve shown in actually killing Germans.’

‘Beautiful!’ Jacko said, laughing. ‘I can’t wait to work with them.’

‘Also,’ Callaghan pressed on, ‘the SOE views the Maquis as its own concern, has its own teams to arm and organize them, and therefore won’t take kindly to us becoming involved. In fact, they’ve already unofficially voiced their complaints about the plan to insert us in what they view as their own territory.’

‘Well, stuff the SOE!’ Rich exploded.

‘I agree,’ said Bob Tappman. ‘Those sods don’t know anything about the real world. We can deal with the Maquis better than they can, so let’s go in and get on with it.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Callaghan continued, ‘even given these negative points, we do believe that with the advent of D-Day and the continuing advance into Europe, the Maquis will be more co-operative than they’ve been in the past. They’ll want the war to end as soon as possible…’

‘So that they can get stuck into each other,’ Jacko interrupted, copping a laugh from the other men.

‘…to enable them to sort out their differences,’ Callaghan continued, ignoring the interjection. ‘We’re banking on that.’

‘And what if it doesn’t work out that way?’ Bob Tappman asked bluntly.

Callaghan nodded to Greaves, then stepped aside to let his fellow captain take centre stage. ‘Where we’re going,’ Greaves explained, ‘the situation is changing constantly, so our own position there will be highly unpredictable. Therefore we have to be ready to change our plans at a moment’s notice. What I’m about to outline to you is a preliminary course of action that’ll be subject to changing circumstances on the ground.’

‘I love surprises,’ said Jacko.

‘I should point out, first thing,’ Greaves continued, ‘that we won’t be alone. The Special Air Service Brigade, consisting of British, French and Belgian components, was flown into France shortly after D-Day and has since set up a wide network of bases in Brittany, the Châtillon Forest, east of Auxerre, the area around Poitiers and the Vosges. Some of these groups are working hand in glove with the Maquis; others are out there on their own. Either way, they were inserted in order to recce the areas, receive stores, and engage in active operations only after our arrival.’

‘So when and where do we arrive?’ Bob Tappman asked.

In response, Greaves picked up a pointer and tugged the canvas covering off the blackboard, to reveal a map drawn in white chalk and showing the area of central France bounded by Orléans to the west, Vesoul to the east, Paris to the north and Dijon to the south. ‘We’ll parachute in here,’ he said, tapping a marked area between Rennes and Orléans, ‘and then make our way by jeep through the forest paths north of Orléans. The vehicles will be dropped by parachute once you men have landed. They’re modified American Willys jeeps equipped, as they were in North Africa, with twin Vickers K guns front and rear, supplemented with 0.5-inch Browning heavy machine-guns. The modified versions have a top speed of approximately 60mph and a range of 280 miles, though this can be extended by adding extra fuel tanks, so you should get anywhere you want to go with a minimum of problems.’

‘And where do we want to go?’ Jacko asked.

‘With the recent American breakthrough at Avranches, we’ve been presented with a fluid front through which small vehicles can pass. The American Advance Party already has one troop spread across a direct line from Normandy to Belfort, roughly across the centre of France. With those men already in place, and with ensured air supply for our columns, we’re in a good position to cause chaos behind the Germans who’re withdrawing in front of the US 3rd Army led by General Patton. Therefore, in order to lend support to Patton’s advance and help his 3rd Army reach Dijon, you men will head initially for the Châtillon Forest and, once there, make contact with the Maquis. You will then learn everything you can about the area from the Maquis and, using that knowledge, embark on a series of hit-and-run raids, preferably by night, against enemy positions.’

‘How far do we take the raids, boss?’ Bob Tappman asked in his customary thoughtful manner.

‘Nothing too daring, Sergeant,’ Greaves replied. ‘Nothing too risky. The point is to harass them – not engage in unnecessary or lengthy fire-fights – and to sabotage their channels of communication and, where possible, destroy their transport. The task is harassment and distraction, rather than elimination – so just get in and out as quickly as possible. And no heroics, please.’

‘You won’t get any heroics from us, boss,’ Jacko said, lying for all of them. ‘No one here wants a bullet up his arse if he can possibly avoid it. We all want to live to a ripe old age.’

In fact, Jacko was not alone in thinking that the last good time he had had was a month ago, when on a weekend pass to London. After the peace and quiet of Gloucestershire, he and the other Originals had been thrilled to find the West End so lively, with staff cars and troop carriers rumbling up and down the streets, Allied bombers constantly roaring overhead, protected by Spitfires and other fighter planes, flying to and from France; the pavements thronged with men and women in the uniforms of many nations; the parks, though surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, packed with picnicking servicemen and civilians; ARP wardens inspecting the ruins of bombed buildings while firemen put out the latest fires; and pubs, cafés, cinemas and theatres, albeit with black-out curtains across the windows and their doorways protected behind sandbags, packed with people bent on enjoying themselves.

Even during the night, when diminishing numbers of German bombers flew over to pound London and V-l and V-2 flying bombs caused further devastation, the city was packed with soldiers, pilots, sailors and their women, all having a good time despite the wailing air-raid sirens, exploding bombs, whining doodlebugs, blazing buildings and racing ambulances. Compared with tranquil Gloucestershire, the capital was a hive of romance and excitement, for all the horrors of war. In truth, it was where most of the Originals wanted to be – either on leave in London or taking part in the liberation of Europe. The latter was, at least, now happening and they would soon be part of it. That made Jacko, and most of the others, feel much better. They were back in business at last.

‘What’s the transport situation?’ Sergeant Pat Riley asked.

‘Handley-Page Halifax heavy bombers specially modified to carry men and supplies and drop jeeps and trailers from its bomb bay,’ said Greaves.

‘Bloody sitting ducks,’ Neil Moffatt whispered to his mate, Harry ‘Harry-boy’ Turnball.

‘Not any more,’ the captain said to Neil, having overheard his whispered remark. ‘In fact, the Halifaxes are now armed with two .303-inch Browning machine-guns in the nose turret, four in the tail turret, and two in manual beam positions, so we should have adequate protection should we be attacked by enemy fighters during the flight.’

‘Thanks, boss, for that reassurance,’ Neil said wryly.

‘Is it true, as some of us have heard, that we’re having problems in getting enough aircraft?’ Rich Burgess asked.

‘Unfortunately, yes. Because we don’t yet have our own planes, all arrangements for aerial transport have to be co-ordinated by 1st Airborne Corps and 38 Group RAF at Netheravon and Special Forces HQ. This means that we practically have to bid for aircraft and we don’t always get enough for our requirements. For this reason, you should expect to be inserted in batches over two or three successive nights; likewise for the jeeps.’

‘Which means that those who go earliest have the longest, most dangerous wait on the ground,’ Rich said. ‘More sitting ducks, in fact.’

‘Correct,’ Greaves replied with a grin. ‘Which means in turn that the most experienced men – including you, Corporal – will be in the first aircraft off the ground.’

‘Gee, thanks, boss,’ Jacko said, imitating an American accent with no great deal of skill.

‘Do we take off from Netheravon?’ Bob Tappman asked.

‘No. From RAF Station 1090, Down Ampney, not far from here. Station 1090 will also be giving us support throughout our period in France.’

‘So when do we get out of here,’ Rich asked, ‘and get to where it’s all happening?’

Greaves simply glanced enquiringly at the CO, Captain Callaghan, who stepped forward to say: ‘Tomorrow night. You’ll be kitted out in the morning, collect and manually test your weapons throughout the afternoon, and embark at 2250 hours, to insert in central France just before midnight. Any final questions?’

As the response was no more than a lot of shaking heads, Callaghan wrapped up the briefing and sent the men back to their barracks with instructions to pack as much as they could before lights out. They needed no encouragement.