Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
Seventh Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2014 by Damien Lewis

The moral right of Damien Lewis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN 978 1 84866 917 8
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 84866 854 6
TPB ISBN 978 1 84866 853 9

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

Plate section credits (plates numbered in order of appearance)

Imperial War Museum, London
: 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20
The National Archives, Refs
HS9/48/1; HS9/680/5(1); HS2/89/2(1): 4, 5 and 6
Bundesarchiv/Bild 183-B10713/Krempl/Sammelplatz
: 9
Reproduced by kind permission of Jack Mann
: 8, 11 and 12

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Very special thanks are due to those veterans who I was able to interview, or who granted me access to their interviews, and in many cases gave of their time, their memories and opened their archives to me freely, not the least of whom is Jack Mann. Thanks also to Iain Farmer and Anders Sandberg, producers of the forthcoming film
Raiders
, which tells of the life of Anders Lassen and his fighting men, who first inspired me to look further into the extraordinary story as told in these pages. Thanks also to Paul and Anne Sherratt for reading the early drafts and for perceptive and constructive criticism and feedback.

I am especially grateful to my publishers, Quercus, and to Richard Milner, Josh Ireland, Charlotte Fry, Patrick Carpenter, David North, Jane Harris, Dave Murphy, Ron Beard, Caroline Proud, Hannah Robinson and everyone who helped bring this book to fruition. I am again grateful to my researcher, Simon Fowler, for exhaustive research work in The National Archives, The Imperial War Museum and at various other venues. Thank you, once again, for unearthing those untold stories and those secrets that were waiting to be found.

I am also indebted to those authors who have previously dealt with the topics that I have covered in this book and on whose work I have relied here. In alphabetical order they are: W. E. Benyon-Tinker (
Dust Upon The Sea
); Thomas Harder (
Anders Lassen’s War
), Peter Kemp (
No Colour Or Crest
), Charles Koburger (
Wine-Dark, Blood Red Sea
), James D. Ladd (
SBS – The Invisible Raiders
), Mike Langley (
Anders Lassen VC, MC
), Suzanne Lassen (
Anders Lassen VC
), Brian Lett (
Ian Fleming and SOE’s Operation Postmaster
;
The Small Scale Raiding Force
), John Lodwick (
The Filibusters
) and Gavin Mortimer (
The SBS In World War Two
).

Thanks – once again – to my wife, Eva, and to David, Damien Jnr and Sianna-Sarah, for putting up with Dad being locked away in his study, writing.

    Cork, Ireland, 2014

There are sadly few if any survivors from the Special Forces operations of the Second World War depicted in these pages. Throughout the period of the research and writing of this book I have endeavoured to be in contact with as many of those who do exist, plus surviving family members of those who have passed away. If there are further witnesses to the stories told here who are inclined to come forward, please do get in touch with me, as I may be able to include further recollections on the operations portrayed in this book in future editions.

The time spent by Allied servicemen as Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents and/or Special Forces operators, or as captives of the enemy were often deeply traumatic, and many chose to take their stories to their graves. I am very grateful to those few who felt able to provide their testimonies (some of whom have now sadly passed away). Memories tend to differ and apparently none more so than those concerning often confused and frenetic operations behind enemy lines. The few written accounts that do exist of such missions also tend to vary in their detail and timescale, and locations and chronologies are often contradictory. That being said I have done my best to provide a comprehensible sense of place, timescale and narrative to the story as told in these pages.

Where various accounts of a mission appear to be particularly confused the methodology I have used to reconstruct where, when and how events took place is the ‘most likely’ scenario. If two or more testimonies or sources point to a particular time or place or sequence of events, I have opted to use that account as most likely. Where necessary I have recreated small sections of dialogue to aid the story’s flow.

The above notwithstanding, any mistakes herein are entirely of my own making, and I would be happy to correct any in future editions. Likewise, while I have endeavoured to locate the copyright holders of the photos, sketches and other images used in this book, this has not always been straightforward or easy. Again, I would be happy to correct any errors in future editions.

For Jack Mann,
whose hand of steel remains firm to this day.

And for those other butcher-and-bolt raiders
who have sadly passed away.

We will remember them.

3 July 1943, Kastelli Airbase, Crete

The goats wandered across the dry, dusty terrain nibbling here and there at whatever vegetation they could find. Ahead of them loomed the wire-mesh fence of the German airbase. A low bush still possessing some succulent greenery grew right on the fence line. It drew the hungriest animals. To get to the highest branches they had to stand on their hind legs, forehooves resting on the wire itself.

Two figures followed in the animals’ wake. They were dressed like local goatherds, wrapped in traditional loose, dirty-grey robes and shawls. As they tried to restrain the animals, pulling them back from the wire without much success, a pair of Junkers Ju-87s landed on the airstrip, the roar of their propellers drowning out the goatherds’ cries to their animals.

The two men eyed the hated Stuka dive-bombers, whose
Jericho-Trompete
screaming sirens could strike terror into even the most hardened of operators. There were six further Ju-87s sitting on the runway, plus a handful of the larger Ju-88
Schnellbombers
– Hitler’s much-vaunted warplanes.

No doubt about it, Kastelli Airbase was getting busy. Along with the handful of sleek Messerschmitt fighter planes and
Storch reconnaissance aircraft that also dotted the runway, there were a plethora of juicy targets to choose from.

As the roar of the Stukas died away, from somewhere inside the airbase a voice yelled out a challenge in German. A guard had spotted the goats clambering on the perimeter fence. He started pounding on the wire with his rifle butt.

‘Hey! You there! Get your animals off!
Schnell! Schnell!
Get them off!’

Beneath their disguises Anders Lassen, a Dane by birth, but now fighting with Britain’s Special Forces, and Nereanos Georgios, his Greek resistance-fighter guide, stiffened. Unlike Georgios, Lassen was a fluent German speaker and could understand every word – but both men tried to act as if they were entirely ignorant of the meaning.

Lassen fingered the Luger pistol he had tucked under his robes, flicking the safety catch to ‘off’. While Georgios could easily pass as the local that he was, Lassen’s straw-blond hair and piercing blue eyes were a dead giveaway, that’s if the German guard got close enough to get a proper look at them.

‘Get your damn goats off the wire!’ the German yelled again. ‘Get out of here! Or I shoot!’

It had seemed like a good idea to use the goatherd cover to do a close recce of the airfield, but Lassen hadn’t taken into account the inate stubbornness of the animals, especially when they were hungry. As he and Georgios used their sticks to beat the animals back, the German guard seemed suddenly to grow more suspicious.

‘
Kommen Sie hierher!
’ –
come here
. ‘
Kommen Sie hierher!
’

Lassen’s grip on his weapon tightened, but it was then that Georgios took the initiative. He splayed his hands in a helpless gesture.

‘We don’t understand!’ he shouted back at the guard, in Greek. ‘We don’t understand!’

The guard raised his rifle angrily and mimed shooting the goats. Then he switched his gun-sights across to the two men. The message couldn’t be clearer:
get the hell out of here
. Lassen figured they’d seen enough. Together the two men dragged the last of the animals off the fence and beat them back with their sticks.

The guard gave them a long, lingering scowl, before continuing with whatever were his duties.

‘Perfect,’ Lassen muttered, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘The fence isn’t electrified.’

As they drove the herd further away, he took the odd, surreptitious glance at the wider fortifications surrounding the airbase. The nearest guard tower – a wooden structure built up to a height of around 50 feet – had a searchlight peeping out between the outer posts, one that could be operated by those manning the tower.

‘See that,’ Lassen whispered. ‘Searchlights all face outwards.’

Georgios flashed him a look. ‘Perfect to see us coming. How does that help?’

Lassen’s mouth offered a thin smile, but there was no corresponding warmth in his eyes. There was only the ever-present, visceral hatred of the German enemy, plus the wide-eyed, wired stare of a man burning through the Benzedrine. Benzedrine – more commonly known as ‘bennies’ – is a
powerful amphetamine. Ever since they’d landed on this Greek island, Lassen had been handing out the pills like Smarties. It was the Benzedrine that was keeping him and his men going.

‘It means we can go about our work unseen,’ Lassen muttered. ‘Once we’re on the airfield—’

‘That’s if we
get
as far as the airfield,’ Georgios cut in.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lassen countered, his Danish accent still evident. ‘Ve vill get there.’

From the skies to the east a faint, juddering beat drifted on the air. It grew into a powerful rhythmic roar as an aircraft approached. Over the far end of the airbase, for a brief moment, three silhouettes hung in the air almost as if they were floating. But within seconds they were thundering towards where Lassen and Georgios were standing.

‘More
Schnellbombers
!’ Lassen hissed, excitedly. ‘First the Stukas and now these! They must be clearing Heraklion.’

The flight of Junkers-88s thundered low overhead, the sheer power of their twin BMW engines coupled with the sensation of the downdraft scattering the goats. The
Schnellbomber
had been designed to fly too fast for Allied fighters to intercept or shoot it down, and had proved to be one of the most versatile aircraft in the war. Known in the Luftwaffe as ‘Mädchen für Alles’ – the Maid of all Work – the Ju-88 was used as a bomber, a night fighter, a heavy fighter, a reconnaissance aircraft and even as a torpedo bomber.

Recently, the
Schnellbombers
had been used in that latter role from Crete, flying anti-submarine and anti-ship patrols, searching for any Allied vessels that might be lurking in the
Mediterranean. As Lassen and his men had been dropped at the start of this operation by a British warship operating under the very noses of the Germans, taking out those
Schnellbombers
would be a delicious irony.

Lassen let out a wild laugh. ‘It’s all here! Looks like Holmes and his lot’ll be attacking empty runways and hangars!’

Some several dozen kilometres across the German-occupied island of Crete lay Heraklion Airbase – the target for a sister group of raiders, led by Ken Lamonby and Dick Holmes. Holmes was Lassen’s arch-rival in D Squadron, their Special Forces unit, and the Dane thrilled to the idea that Holmes might arrive at Heraklion to find no targets to strike.

*

Two hours later he and Georgios made it to the bare and sun-blasted ridgeline lying high above the airbase. They’d left the goats with one of Georgios’ brothers at a pre-arranged rendezvous, where they’d also dumped their local dress.

On seeing them Ray Jones, who was lying in a hidden sentry position, called out the coded challenge: ‘GARAJ!’

‘SLAVE!’ Lassen replied.

As with everything, they kept it simple: the codewords were made up from the first few letters of the men’s name and rank. There were five raiders on the Kastelli mission – Georgios included – so it was simple enough to remember five codewords based upon such easy details. Recently, they’d been ordered by Raiding Force Headquarters to resort to a more complex and arguably unbreakable code system, but as with most things Lassen liked to keep it idiot-proof. He gave those orders he disagreed with the scant attention they deserved.

Lassen and Georgios rejoined the main body of men, lying-up in the shade of a patch of rocky scrub just outside the entrance to their cave. All apart from Jones were feverishly busy constructing the tools for the coming night-time attack. Mostly these were Lewes bombs – a DIY blast-incendiary explosive made by mixing diesel oil with ‘Nobel 808’, a plastic explosive, plus thermite, a metal-based gunpowder.

It was Lieutenant Jock Lewes, one of SAS founder David Stirling’s stalwarts, who had invented the Lewes bomb. Stirling’s men had needed a device light enough to carry into the field, yet powerful enough to damage and set fire to aircraft. Placed within a small canvas bag, the Lewes bomb could be hidden inside a cockpit or on a wing, in close proximity to the fuel tanks, so as to ignite the aviation fuel – which was exactly how Lassen and his men intended to use them tonight.

Lassen squatted down among his band of fighters. He grabbed a half-eaten K Ration pack and pulled out some hard biscuits. While the rest of the British Army was issued with the so-called British ‘Compo’ Rations, Lassen had managed to blag some of the US Army paratroopers’ ‘K Rations’ for his men. Far lighter and more portable than Compo, they were borderline edible, and provided just enough energy and calories to keep a soldier going in the field.

Of course, Lassen was largely fuelling himself with the Benzedrine, but he needed something solid in his guts with tonight’s mission almost upon them. He started to sketch a map of the airbase, describing in a series of sharp, staccato sentences what he and Georgios had found. His eyes were wide and staring, and his men could sense the blood lust that was
coursing through his veins. For all of them, the thought of blowing that airbase to smithereens was a delicious one – only with Lassen, it was the idea of killing Germans that really got his blood pumping.

‘We keep it simple,’ Lassen declared. ‘We go in tonight and cut the perimeter wire. There will be good cloud cover. Little moonlight. Nicholson and Greaves, you move in from the east and hit the fuel and ammo dumps. Jones – you and me go in from the west and we hit as many aircraft as we can. We go through the wire at 0100 hours. We should be in there for no more than twenty minutes. Set the timers for 0200 hours, so we get a good distance away before it blows.’

‘But what about me?’ It was Georgios.

‘Go back to your village,’ Lassen told him. ‘Go back home.’

‘But I can fight!’

‘Not tonight. Not with us. When the base blows we run like the wind. You do not want to be with us. Anyway the Germans may try to take revenge. Go back and make your people ready.’

In spite of his cold-blooded demeanor, Lassen had a real affinity with the locals, and especially the women – the dark-eyed, raven-haired beauties of this captivating Greek island. He shared a common bond with the Cretans, who nurtured a level of hatred of the German enemy as deep as his own.

‘But I want to fight,’ Georgios insisted. ‘I am
resistance fighter
. I want to fight. The Germans, they already have killed many of my people.’

Lassen’s voice softened. ‘Go back where you are needed. Protect your family. Trust me, we could not have come this far without you.’

‘But when you run you will need guide,’ Georgios argued. ‘You get nowhere without me. You attack: I attack. You go in; I go in. You come out, I show you the way.’

‘Andy, Georgios is right,’ Sergeant Jack Nicholson cut in. ‘We’ll be buggered on the way out without him.’

‘All right,’ Lassen relented. ‘Georgios, you go with Nicholson and Greaves. But stay outside the perimeter wire to guide us out again.’

‘Yes!’ The Cretan’s fist punched the air. ‘Andy, we will fight like the brothers!’

‘What’s the plan if things go wrong?’ Nicholson asked. ‘What if we’re spotted on our approach under the searchlights? Or once we’re on the base setting the charges?’

Lassen’s killer stare returned. ‘No one is going to get seen during the approach.’ He was silent for a beat. ‘Make sure of that. And if we are spotted once on the airbase, blow it all to hell and get moving. You all know the emergency RV?’

Lassen reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled map. He took a pencil and tried to scribble ‘Rendezvous’ on their agreed emergency rallying point, should they get split up. But English wasn’t his first language, nor spelling his strongest suit. He tried again, scrubbed it out in frustration, and scrawled one word in capitals: ‘MEAT’

‘Got it?’ he queried.

There were a series of grunts in the affirmative.

‘If any one of us does not make the RV, we do not go back for him. Understood?’

Again, the grunts of agreement.

Lassen nodded. ‘Good. Now the fight.’

*

The night trek to the airbase went without a hitch. The four raiders were dressed in ‘light order’, carrying only their day sacks stuffed with Lewes bombs, and armed with pistols, grenades and knives. They’d left their heavier Tommy Guns and German Schmeisser machineguns behind – the key with such a mission being able to move fast and unseen. They’d never win a stand-up firefight with the enemy, who tonight numbered some two hundred mixed German and Italian troops.

Instead, the aim was to be in and out like ghosts.

At around five hundred yards out from the airbase Lassen’s group split from Nicholson’s, the latter skirting southwards through a vineyard towards the humped, blocky silhouette of the fuel dump. Lassen led Jones towards the airstrip, dropping to a cat-crawl as they emerged from the cover of the vines, a couple of hundred feet short of the wire. A searchlight swept the night, the sentries on the nearest tower staring into the thin beam that probed the sea of darkness around them.

For an instant the blinding spear of light seemed to pierce Lassen and Jones, pinning them to the ground. The two raiders burrowed on their bellies into the dry dirt and the sparse, scrubby undergrowth, as they tried to escape the searchlight’s pitiless glare. Being trapped under that intense illumination was spine-chilling, especially as there wasn’t a scrap of real cover anywhere around.

After several tense seconds the light moved on and Lassen urged Jones forward. The Dane reckoned it was movement that drew the eyes of the guards, so if they made like statues
whenever the light swept past no one would detect their presence.

The next time the searchlight swung around he and Jones froze in their tracks, and after a tense moment the beam of light continued its steady sweep across the hillside. As they pushed ahead Lassen was trying to keep his natural exuberance in check. He was never happier than when on the hunt, especially stalking much sought-after prey.