Helen Fry
A Conversation on Tom Petch’s book, “Speed, Aggression, Surprise The Untold Secret Origins of the SAS”
Dr Helen Fry and Tom Petch - A Conversation on Tom’s book, Speed, Aggression, Surprise The Untold Secret Origins of the SAS
- Well, I’m absolutely delighted to have a special session today for Lockdown University with Tom Petch. Tom was actually eight years in the British Army as a tank commander, also troop commander of 22 SAS, an award-winning film director as well. It was your debut film, Tom. “The Patrol” won the Raindance Film Festival. Huge congratulations. That’s a amazing achievement for your debut film. He’s of great interest in the scene ‘cause we are going to talk about the foundations of the SAS. And Tom is the great, great grandson of Samuel Shepheard who owned the Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, where of course, the SAS were founded. So we’re absolutely delighted. And we’re going to be talking themes around your new book, which we have behind me here, “Speed, Aggression, Surprise” and I highly recommend it. It’s a fantastic cracking read. So let’s talk a bit then about your book. So before we get into some of the themes of your book, can you just give us a basic little turnout like what is the SAS? Because they’re not the same as the commandos, are they?
No, so the SAS is a special force. It probably, internationally, would be closest to something like Delta Force or perhaps Navy Seals. And I tried to explain this the other day, that what everyone thinks about special forces is that they’re incredibly tough, they’re resilient. You know, there’s a show on, I think it’s on Fox and it’s on Channel 4 run by a friend of mine called Billy Billingham. He’s my instructor, so he’s a mate of mine. So everyone knows that side of it, which is the sort of base level of having to be fit enough and resilient enough to do that sort of soldiering. The bit I think people don’t really understand is that the SAS and special forces are a completely different organisation within the military. And essentially, the way to think about them is that if I’m a second lieutenant in the military in a normal unit, I report up through a chain of command, which goes above me to a major, then it goes to a colonel, and it goes to a brigadier, and it goes to a general, and then finally to another general, who’s the force commander. And special forces, the SAS, circumvent that. They report directly to the force commander because their role is strategic, and that was established back in 1940.
And we think of David Stirling, of course, being the great maverick who founds this group in the desert and “SAS: Rogue Heroes” recently on channels in the UK. And I actually absolutely loved it. I know it’s probably not a bit like reality, but tell me, because that’s largely mythological, isn’t it? So you started the book and haven’t you found that the foundations are largely mythological?
Yes.
You want to comment on that?
Yeah, so it’s interesting that there is a myth which was really started in the war. And actually if you look at the history, the reason there’s a myth is because the SAS ultimately started as a deception. It was a mythical unit to start with before it became a real unit. It was a very small SAS prior to David Stirling, which was augmented by a chap called Dudley Clarke, who was in Cairo, and he created an enormous fake SAS and Stirling was part of that. He was the first real part of that.
And there’s another character that’s woven 'cause your book is driven by characters, isn’t it? And William Fraser, of course, is very prominent. Do you want to comment on him and we’ll kind of then move on to some of the other themes in the book?
Yeah, because my book goes further back than the narrative we all know. So if you’ve seen “SAS: Rogue Heroes,” that narrative starts in about 1941 in Cairo. Special Forces, if you were to be really honest, it takes special forces back to Lawrence of Arabia in the First World War. I don’t go that far back. I do mention him. But really, my book starts in 1939. So I wanted someone, well I found Fraser, which nobody knew. Nobody really knows much about him. He was a corporal who was given an emergency commission. He’d never been to university or anything like that. But the good thing about him is he goes the whole way through the war in the SAS or special forces and then the SAS on the front line. So you have the sort of strategic level understanding through the character of Dudley Clarke and then you have the front line operator and he’s always in the fighting from the beginning of the war to the end of the war. Though few people have ever even heard of him.
Yeah, I hadn’t until your book and it’s incredible that quite a large majority of these men actually do survive in quite, well, incredibly dangerous missions. But your own personal connection to the hotel where the SAS was founded, is that why you decided to write the book? Tell me a bit about the family connection and the hotel and presumably you’ve actually visited the hotel.
Well, the original hotel sadly burned down. It was burned down before I was born. It was burned down in the '50s. So the family connection is my great, great, great, three greats there, grandfather was a chap called Samuel Shepheard and he was working on a merchant ship in the Mediterranean in the 19th century. And there was a mutiny on board the ship and he supported the crew. So the captain threw him off in Cairo in Egypt. And he didn’t have a job and he couldn’t get another job on a ship so he started working in hotels. He was also very good at it 'cause he rose very quickly and he also got very plugged into Egyptian society, became friendly with the pastoral ruler and hunted his hawks. And through him, he got funding to found the English hotel, which became known as Shepheard’s. And also the ruler gave him a very cheap lease on one of his princess’ palaces, which actually interesting, was a headquarters from Napoleon. So there’s a pre-military history to the military history. And then that all kicks off because that place became, if you ever seen the film “Lawrence of Arabia,” the betrayal there of him going into the bar, that’s supposed to be Shepheard’s Hotel. The actual the address of the bar staff there is correct. And then in the Second World War, same thing. It was a big sort of watering hole for all the people who came in from the desert. And it became a melting pot ‘cause they all met each other. Stirling met Clarke met Jock Lewes. They all met in this hotel.
So what was the atmosphere like at the time? Was it quite as portrayed in some of the dramas? Quite raucous, quite a bit over the top, over the line? I mean, what was the sense of that? An international, yes?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, well interestingly, Egypt itself of course was neutral. So it wasn’t in the war. There were no blackouts. So you can imagine coming from blitzed blacked out London you know, and arriving in Cairo and there’s a party. There’s plenty of champagne, there’s no shortage in food, there’s no rationing, you can buy anything you want 'cause you are relatively wealthy compared to the local. So it was absolute chaos. And in fact, at one point, General Algonac tried to get a grip on it, That was one of the generals in command in Egypt. And he wanted to move the whole force headquarters out into the desert, a place called Mena, outside. But they sort of stonewalled and they said, “Oh, we don’t have enough tents, we don’t have enough transport.” And then he lived out there and the rest of the headquarters went on in their high rent flats in Gezira Island, which was a bit like Manhattan kind of style lifestyle with a polo club and a lido, yeah.
Yeah, quite extraordinary. So do you believe then that the foundations of the SAS really can be linked back to that melting pot in those bars in your great, great grandfather’s?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, one of the key meetings that formed there was a… The SAS re-plugged into a unit called the Long Range Desert Group, which had been founded in the desert by a guy called Ralph Bagnold. And to mention another film, that’s the real story of “The English Patient” if anyone’s seen that. These were a bunch of explorers in the desert between the war. He formed a special force sponsored by Wavell. Now, by the time Stirling got there, that was commanded by a guy called Prendergast and Prendergast and Stirling first sat down and got drunk in my great, great grandfather’s hotel and they formed the idea together of teaming up. And really, that was the real game changer for the SAS that turned them from this parachute unit that didn’t really work into a force to be reckoned with. Yeah, so that happened in Shepheard’s Hotel.
And at this point, isn’t there a belief, and certainly with Stirling and his mates, that the war is not only in the balance, but actually the allies could lose it. Do you think that’s really the crucial spark, if you like, for this? 'Cause that’s what’s portrayed in dramas and films.
Yeah, the thing is about the British military in the 1940s, it’s not a phrase people would think of is creatives and entrepreneurs. If you look at Stirling and that cohort, they’re trying to fight the war a different way and there are a lot of other people like Dudley Clarke, the guy referenced in the book who’s the strategy guy, but they’re not alone. There’s a lot of people trying to do that. In the First World War, Lawrence of Arabia called wood chopping, which is where you do frontal assaults, you get a lot of casualties. There’s a whole other bunch of people who don’t think that’s a good idea, and they think going round. And if you’re interested in history, the guy to look up is a guy called Basil Liddell Hart, who wrote a book between the wars called “The Strategy of Indirect Approach.” Who basically said, “If you want to be successful, don’t do the obvious thing, do the who dares,” which is the motto of the SAS. Who dares to take the indirect approach?
Yeah, very, very famous motto. So what then of the first missions, can you outline the first major mission that was of some success? 'Cause it’s still quite early in the war, isn’t it? And it’s before the allies have landed in North Africa. So it’s before November '42, it was still in '41. So give us a sense of what they’re doing 'cause they are thinking outside the box, aren’t they?
They are. So before Stirling, there was an SAS formed by mistake, not really mistake. Going back a little bit, Dudley Clarke forms the commandos and his commandos are not the commandos… The big units that came later. His command is very small units. He forms them straight after Dunkirk and the first of those commander raids is carried out three weeks after Dunkirk, so we’re talking 1940. And he also thinks, this is Dudley Clarke, it’d be great to have a parachute unit 'cause that would really help. So his commanders are going in by boat, but he wants a parachute unit and he creates a parachute commando, which is called 2 commando. And they stop learning to parachute. We don’t know much about parachute. We’re quite late to the party on that. The Germans are well ahead of us, Russians have a parachute unit. We don’t, we don’t. And that unit gets disbanded basically because the Battle of Britain, and we don’t have enough aircraft. It’s not going to work and it gets handed back to the RF. And the one thing that British hated about the commando’s name is that Dudley Clarke, who’s a former South African, a resident, has named it after one of our enemies, the nemesis, the boers and the commandos. And British staff office hate this. They’re always trying to get rid of the name. A unit that is not regular is called special service. So when 2 commando get turned back into a parachute unit or get turned back into special service, the staff, of course, puts air in it. In brackets, special air service. And that is how the SAS is structured And that unit then carries out an operation 'cause there’s an aqueduct in Southern Italy. And at that time, sorry it’s a little bit of a long-winded answer.
[Dr. Helen Fry] It’s fine.
Yeah, the Italians are fighting Albania and an engineer in Holborn with an engineering firm identifies it. If we knock that aqueduct out, it would cut off the supply to a very arid region of Southern Italy, and they parachute this unit in. It’s the only way there can be an RF plan. Only way they can do it and they go in parachute and knock down this aqueduct. They all get captured. But really, that’s the first SAS operation prior to Stirling anything else. But what has happened just prior to that, Dudley Clarke by then is in Cairo, he’s been sent to Cairo because the commanders aren’t really working in the UK and he’s been recruited by Wavell to run strategic deception. And he, by mistake, gets copied into the information this raid’s about to take place. He thinks, “Oh, that’s Brilliant. That’s a brilliant deception.” If I pretend we’ve got parachuters 'cause they have parachuters in Italy. They could have come from Cairo then we can pretend we got parachuters. And that is the start of the deception that leads on and on and on and eventually, the real unit is produced from that.
No, it’s incredible. So it’s really like a phantom thing that didn’t actually exist at all.
No. And it’s very clever, Clarke. So one of the things he thinks, he thinks, well, he calls his methods subliminal methods, and special forces and deception are absolutely linked. In Second World War, they’re almost the same thing really. And he thinks, “Well, what would really terrify Mussolini?” So his idea is to put fear in the mind of his enemy. And he thinks Mussolini’s been messing around in North Africa for ages. He’s created genocides, persecuted people, killed Abyssinians, and Senussi tribes people in these horrific crimes. And he thinks, “What about if we pretend the SAS is training Abyssinians?” That’s Ethiopians and he’s going to parachute them in Italy and he fakes the photo shoot. So when these parachutes actually really appear, Mussolini goes, “Oh my word, they’re sending Abyssinians into Southern Italy,” and he panics. And interestingly, the Luftwaffe, Germans are deploying at that time down through Italy, and he shuts the whole place down, sends out the troop, sends him the Carabinieri and nobody understands what’s going on. But just 'cause he’s scared and Clarke did that.
So what’s the major success, if we go back to the base in Cairo, what’s their first major success? Because they’re going to be attacking airfield, aren’t they? And they’re going from behind way… I mean something that was so completely out of the box, which of course Churchill supported and we’ll come to Randolph, his son later in our chat. So yeah, tell us about the first daring do and what they achieved.
Yeah, so the first thing to say is the SAS that Clarke came up with Stirling was never operational. Clarke was desperate trying to fake this unit and he was chucking stuff out of aircraft, fake parachutes, fake gliders. It was all going quite well but he was struggling a little bit. What he really needed was fake parachuters. And when Jock Lewes appeared, one of the commandos, and said, “I want to jump out of an aeroplane.” Basically his unit, which already exists, which is called K Attachment. SAS sponsored it. They said, “Great. Real people want to jump out, brilliant.” And actually that parachute drop happens on the eve of a real British offensive. So the fake thing and the real thing merged and Stirling gets wind of it and he goes down as well. So Jock Lewes and Stirling and a few others jumped out of a plane. And from that moment, it becomes apparent that this could be real and Wavell wants it to be real. Wavell’s then fired replaced by the York. But the York likes the idea too. He thinks it’s a really good idea. And they start training and what they’re training to do is to hit targets and ID the aircraft. They’re trying to look for a strategic target and airfields are good target for special forces. It also really scare the Germans and Italians they think.
And there’s also a really big problem at that point in the war, the Luftwaffe, have deployed their Messerschmitt 109 fighters, which outpace anything we’ve got. So taking these out would be a really good idea. So that’s the plan. And Eighth Army get wind of it, Xander Galloway, who’s the BGS, well, brigade major in the Eighth Army gets wind of it. And he loves the idea, rings up HQ say, “So how can I get more of these parachuters? I want loads of them.” But we all know that operation goes wrong 'cause they get to their jumping off point. There’s 30 mile an hour winds on the drop zone, which is just impossible to deal with 'cause they don’t know that I don’t think, or they knew it’s dangerous, I don’t think they knew how dangerous. Because the thing about parachute, when you land, you’ve got to get it down on the ground or it just turns into kite, rips you across the desert. And lots of 'em get killed and hurt doing that. And that’s a washout, so then they run it again. They send the SAS back in. That’s when Prendergast, who’s the LRDG, who already operated behind German lines. They’re told to hit the airfields. And Prendergast, that’s not job for us. We’ve got big trucks, these big Chevrolet trucks, you know? We haven’t got any explosives. This is not a job for the LRDG, but what about those guys? He thinks about Stirling and this drinking session they’ve had in Shepheard’s. What about those guys? Get those guys down there. So they fly down the 20 odd SAS men that are left. They split up into small teams and they drive them off. But that all kind of goes wrong too until, and I talk about this in the book, till William Fraser hits this airfield and destroys 37 aircraft. And it’s really, because everyone talks about Jock Lewes shooting at the park, Mayne shooting those pilots. Well, we don’t know who they are, but he shoots a load of people. But the one that really gets the recognition is Fraser’s 'cause he knocks out 30, it’s probably more than 30. So he blew up the whole airfield and he sneaks away without anybody knowing what happened.
[Dr. Helen Fry] Incredible.
That’s right. So that is the truth of that first very successful raid..
And course Paddy Mayne is a big figure in the history of the SAS, and he’s often portrayed as will even, well, way, way, way off the spectrum from Stirling. And is that really true? Was he such a maverick? I mean, is he really the character that’s more of the success behind the SAS than David Stirling?
I think it’s not fair to kind of rank them because it was a like the Beatles. Who’s better? John Lennon or, you know? Do you know what I mean? Like, Paul McCartney. Who are you going to vote for, you know? If this was the Beatles, Lennon would be Stirling, probably Paul McCartney would would be Jock Lewes. And then you’ve got to decide who the other two are. But do you know what I mean? It’s a team effort. I do think that’s a little unfair because I think that they all had different roles play. Stirling was the entrepreneur. Without him, it could not have been created. Jock Lewes was the organisation. He was the training. Couldn’t have happened. Mayne was incredibly brave and incredibly tough. So like, he’s the man who’s going to deliver the goods. But actually, it’s Fraser who’s the first… Without him, it wouldn’t existed. So you’ve got the very professional former corporal who’s very, very, very good at navigation, extremely good soldier. And it’s really interesting they chose him to go and hit that airfield rather than the other three. Any three of them could have gone, all three of them could have gone but they selected him to go.
So you are uncomfortable with singling out a kind of hero in your book, the hero in the whole story?
Well, I think that’s become a bit popular to bash Stirling. I dunno, I think that’s what has happened recently. My feeling on that, it’s not fair because if you look at the archive, you go, “Well, the Dudley Clarke files, the original concept, the SAS, which is signed by Stirling in what’s called "Eight Force Diary.” So it’s in his beam plan. So he has a dossier with all this fake SAS what’s going on. It’s in there. And then you have the minutes of the first meeting of the SAS which is chaired by the deputy director of military training in Cairo, and at that meetings, Clarke and David Stirling. If you compare it to sort of business outside of the army, you need these sort of people. These are the people that create things. They may not be the best people organizationally, but they’re coming out with the ideas and then other people. And also to be fair to Stirling, he knows what his weaknesses are and he tries to fill them. So he tries to recruit two people, which is Carol Mather who turns him down, who’s an Eighth commander, and he does recruit Jock Lewes 'cause he knows he needs these people to cement the unit. Mayne comes later 'cause Mayne’s trying to go to Burma and he can’t get there. The army is a team game. There’s not one sort of person.
I’m glad you’ve mentioned that about Stirling because there is this trend to sort of, in a way, rewrite history. And I’m really interested, 'cause you mentioned your research. Did you scope your resources and research before you wrote the book? Or was there something because of the family link? Essentially, why you wrote the book. What was the motivation for you, personally? Did you just feel that history was taking the whole foundations of the SAS in a different direction?
Yeah, I think when I first started this, I was researching on a film not a book. So there you go. My wife told me it’s going to be a book. She’s right. There was tonnes of research and actually was just too much to be in one place. And I think the two things really are, I felt that the focus was all going in one direction and people like Fraser, when I discovered… So the SAS kept very bad records 'cause it wasn’t a proper regiment. So it’s very fractured the archive. If you go to a battalion archive, you’ll find the war drawer, you’ll find the pieces of quarters. It’s all quite concentrated. The SAS stuffs all over the place. So there was this aspect, we are missing some stuff. And it was that strategic thing really. You know, Clarke was barely mentioned in anything actually. I think I’m the first person that’s gone, “Well, we need to look at this guy,” because without mentioning Clarke, you can’t really understand how the SAS came to be or what it was trying to do. And all of its operations, this description of it as a rogue unit where it wasn’t commanded, that’s not true you know? The York gave Stirling a radio, for example, prior to the Mayne battles, his battles. And he was talking directly to Stirling so that when they hit that airfield with the jeeps, that was directly coordinated with an attack at El Alamein. So you know, this idea that this is an independent unit that nobody knows what’s doing… It’s part of what would now recognise as a strategic forces structure.
So that’s interesting 'cause it’s something which is in the blurb for the book as well, isn’t it? Because of your background, it’s given you a unique understanding of the strategy. I felt reading your book, that that’s your… Such a strength in the way that you’ve approached history. 'Cause I think if you come to things, the sources, and I find that with some of the stuff I write, if you come to with fresh eyes, you see things which people have missed. If you go back to the primary sources, and it seems to me, you know, I just think this book is so wonderful 'cause you have done that and you’ve analysed what you’ve discovered.
Yeah, and the really bizarre thing, Helen, 'cause I didn’t know, I don’t come from history background, so I opened my first file from the archive probably in 2016, pulled it out and went, “Oh, wow. It’s all the same paperwork.” Everything I used in the '90s in the military, they used in the 1940. Literally, the wardrobe which is a legal document, I filled one of those when I was an Bosnia, So it’s like all of this stuff. It’s not code like you know, the enigma code but the army speaks in shorthand, it speaks in subtext. I think that was my unique thing was I could look at it all again and go, “I know that they are working for the force commander because I’ve got that from the archive.” So I just need to track, so if someone’s CC’d, I’ll know that they’re CC’d, I’ll look down CC and go, “Okay, all these people here know what’s going on. So let’s go and find what they’re doing.” Bit like a jigsaw. I had a massive expelled spreadsheet. Don’t want to show you, but it was layers of light and it went by month so I could see what… If Al connected something, this guy did it, all the way down till you know what they were doing.
Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I mean most historians don’t go into that much kind of detail in terms of a timeline, but it’s so helpful because you can see connections. I mean, obviously we can’t talk about all of the missions this evening and we want people to read the books. As I say, it’s just cracking. But there was one mission that the attack, of course, we’ll talk about Rommel because this is keen, and it’s not often an area that’s discussed. But in 1942, there was this attack, wasn’t there? On Sidi Haneish Airfield. Do you want to give us a flavour of what happened there? Just gives us an insight into what this SAS achieved actually in that region? 'Cause we know so much about Western Europe, about D-Day and I’ll come to D-Day later, but we know a lot about that, but people don’t really know much about North Africa. So give us a sense of the importance.
Well, yeah, so Rommel was… I’ve been using military, sorry, civilian Arabs, he was the sort of Steve Jobs of this story. He had literally a reality force field, distortion field that he could just do stuff that would created chaos. You know, he would get a few Panzers and then he just run rings around us. It was really troublesome with the British deal with. And we had a situation where a temporary commander Richie was in charge of a defence of something called the Gazala line which collapsed. And then there was something called the Gazala gap which is where everyone raced back to get behind the El Alamein line as it then transpired. And so we are in a big mess at this point. And Algonac took over command. He basically fired Richie which we know but he fired Cunningham, well, he fired Richie who fired Cunningham already. And he then took over command himself. So the force commander came down with a guy called Eric Jordan Smith and he said, “Look, I’m just going to take over 'cause this is a mess.” And he gathered all the special forces into his headquarters at the front line. And that included the SAS and the LRDG. And he basically said, “You’re going to get behind Rommel’s lines and we’re going to cause chaos.” Gave Stirling a radio link and they went back out through the Qatar Depression and got behind the lines and then just started operating. It was a bit of a nightmare for the LRDG 'cause they basically became a sort of truck carrying resupply unit to the SAS, which they did not like. That was not their role, but that’s what they ended up doing, is carrying in more munitions. And the SAS basically got behind the lines wreaked havoc. And by that time, they got the Willy Bantam Jeeps, which is the platform that we all know them for 'cause they strapped on machine guns onto them, Lewis guns onto them. And that enabled them to get onto an airfield with a machine gun into pieces. And you can imagine that was absolutely devastating for the Germans. And all of this is interesting 'cause it never really mattered how effective they were. What it mattered was that they got there undetected and did the job. That’s what caused the problem for the Axis for both the Italians and the Germans. They’re very short on troops. And the more mess the SAS made behind the lines, the harder it got for them and they had to pull people off the front line to deal with them and divert their aircraft, which is vital.
Yes, and of course the Germans didn’t… Well, you said the Axis forces, Germans, Italians didn’t actually know how many of these were way back at base or anything.
Yeah. That’s the thing, isn’t it? They’re so successful, you could imagine. So do we have accounts, and you may not have looked at this, but do we have accounts of what the Germans thought of it? I mean, they must have absolutely come from nowhere.
Yeah, they thought the SAS had a battalion operation in the desert by that stage. They thought we had a brigade, airborne brigade. So Clarke’s deceit was clever. So he only ever gave the SAS one airborne battalion, which is one SAS. And he faked two and three SASs and said they had gliders. But, you can imagine this, Clarke’s background was he is a pilot in the First World War been in Egypt, and he’d flown over all this desert, in his Bristol Scout and he’d actually crashed three times so he knew all this stuff. And the thing about airborne forces is you’ve got to keep looking over your rear. And all of Clarke’s deceit was centred on one thing, which was the line of communication that ran from Tripoli all the way up this wiggling road along Alona. And so the more we could hit that, the more we could disrupt it, the more forces that the Italians had to hold back, and the more aircraft that got sent back to deal with the SAS, and Rommel admits it. He says, “This was chaos.” They were really tough to deal with. Particularly when after El Alamein, there was only squadron of them by then because Montgomery was not key on the SAS. But they managed to completely mess with his lines of communication, giving a real headache.
I mentioned earlier Randolph Churchill. I’ll phrase it like this. Did Churchill’s son really turn up in the midst of all this and was he actually taken in the heart of that operation? I mean, it just seems incredible in that moment that if he was ever captured.
Yeah, I mean, but you have to think about what’s going on. And so what’s going on there I think is Stirling being smart. He knows Randolph has his father’s ear. And actually, Randolph’s having a bad time. This is around the time that his wife Pamela’s affairs come out. She was sleeping with the U.S. Embassy and that became public. He came back to England 'cause his father had… Churchill promised to add a vote of no confidence to support his dad. The commander’s being disbanded, Randolph was drinking heavily, and his dad was a bit worried. There’s a letter from Churchill going, “What are you going to do when he goes back to Cario?” He goes, “What are you going to do?” And he says, “I’ve teamed up with Stirling and I think it’s going to be a good show whatever.” And Stirling does chuck him out in an aircraft. You know, he goes past him. Allegedly, he goes past him going, “Look at this, look how great this is.” And Stirling goes, “Yeah, but look how fast you’re going.” It’s a simple equation. The heavy you are, the faster you go down. Anyway, but they do take him on and off as the LRDG Commander said, “The only damage in that operation was the chair that Randolph Churchill broke in Siwa Oasis when he sat on it.” 'Cause they all had their digs there but it’s true. But then after that, I mean Randolph wrote… So Winston Churchill about then, a three-page letter saying this was… His trip to Vangazi with Stirling was the most fantastic thing he’d ever done. Well, you want to get the ear of the highest man in the country and you want to sponsor the force and that’s the way to do it.
Incredible. 'Cause of course Churchill loved all that unorthodox. We have the special operations executive where they were parachuted behind enemy lines and agents into France, and other parts of Western Europe and elsewhere. So he loved all that. So this is Winston Churchill’s baby, and, well, it’s not his baby but I mean you could see how he would absolutely support that.
It made the SAS indestructible because they were… What’s called the Cairo purge happened. So Churchill flies out to basically execute the York 'cause he said it’s like killing a beautiful stag because he wants to get rid of the York 'cause the York isn’t doing what he said. And the York had a disastrous, a political problem, which the Yorks lost the South African division to Brooke and so Smuts has lost his temper and said, “You’ve got to sort that command out.” So Churchill flies out there in his liberator called Commando as it would be. He flies out there to basically fire everyone. You know, it’s a bit like the England football team. Every time they have a disastrous game, everyone gets cold. So they’re going cold, that lot. And in the midst of that, the SAS could have gone because they had enough enemies. But Stirling asked his… Oh sorry, Churchill asked to see Stirling and he did. He went to see him lunch with, as he says, “I’ve had Randolph’s mates for lunch.” And after that, Stirling gets a memo from his secretary saying, “Can you write down your proposal for the special air service?” So go figure. So he survives the Cairo Purge because of Randolph Churchill.
That’s a huge privilege isn’t it? For us as historians, to be able to work on this original primary material, isn’t it? So for you, what was the most astonishing discovery during all of your research that perhaps you didn’t know about the SAS? Was there a moment where you were genuinely astonished by what you were reading?
Very early on 'cause when I was in the SAS and I was in the British army, I didn’t know about William Fraser, and one of the first things I stopped and stumbled on, which people have seen is the report of his airfield raid. He writes out that report of the 37 aircraft destroyed and then the following bit where he goes, “They escape 200 miles.” And I dunno if people have seen it and maybe not realised the import of it. So what’s interesting about that document, that versus the “SAS War Diary,” which is a huge… Shall I hold it up for you? It’s huge.
Yes. Let’s have a look.
It wasn’t actually a diary which is this document.
While Tom’s getting that, I would just say that we will open up for questions in about 10 minutes. So if you want to think about questions to start putting in the chat… Oh, wow. Look at that.
So that isn’t a real War Diary. When they were being disbanded, well, all the documents in there, but when they’re being disbanded they retrospectively, this is after the war, they retrospectively tried to write their history. So right at the beginning of that, there are accounts of Paddy Mayne shooting up the heart and Fraser. And what’s interesting in there, they’ve got the press cutting, they’ve got the wrong raid, the press have amalgamated the two raids who credited Mayne. So I’d assume like everyone has, “Oh, it was Mayne who did all that.” And then I go to the archive, find the OP report, the actual report by Fraser, I go, “Oh, hang on, I’ve never heard of this guy. There’s no statue for him. I’ve never heard this guy.” And that digging then, he’s a fascinating character himself but but I think I’m one of the first people that’s probably done that sort of due diligence. But the other thing wasn’t the SAS, it was Clarke. The stuff about Clarke, again, the “Eight Force Diary” has existed, people have known that. It’s been referenced by a good book called “The Deceivers,” which I’d recommend, which is about deception in the Second World War, I can’t remember who wrote that. Maybe we have to reference that. So, but again, I went into the Imperial War Museum and found his family papers. And again, I had that moment of when you find document and you think, “I don’t think anybody’s got this.” And there’s a really interesting thing. He wrote a book, a biography. He was banned from writing his actual biography which is why we don’t know any of this. But he did write a biography which ends in early 1941 or late 1940. And in that, he’s redacted this account of him going to Ireland, which is the most extraordinary mission. But the original chapter is in his family archive. And I found it, I went, “Oh, wow. I don’t think anyone’s kind of knows what this is. This is the original chapter that he wrote that describes him going to Ireland to persuade them basically to join the war on the side of the British, yeah.
Wow, yes. No, I didn’t know that. So that’s extraordinary. If we fast forward to D-Day, something which people can relate to as well, the SAS is still of course carrying forward into the wartime. So they have an important role, don’t they, around D-Day? Do you want to give us a flavour of that?
Yes, so by this time I think special forces have really kind of evolved. There’s a sort of hiatus while Montgomery’s around and Italy’s a bit of a mess and actually one SAS gets called SRS. It’s just a commando unit. It’s not real special forces. But they go back into roll, and initially, Montgomery wants to drop them all over the Normandy Beach. It’s going to be a bit of a disaster. And Eisenhower gets wind of this because at that point, and you probably know this, Helen, the OSS are going to drop in along with… So that’s the American NIC and CIA are going to drop into France to help the French resistance. And they sort of hope the SAS would go be doing something with them. You know, they wanted them with them. Basically, there’s a bit of a protest and Bill Stone resigns, who’s David’s second brother, or resigns or got fired. Someone needs to find that archive. I have not. I went through every document. I cannot find the record, actual a letter. So whether he resigned, got fired, that happens. And then, Eisenhower gets wind of this bust up and goes, "No, they’re strategic troops.” He actually sends someone down. He goes, “No, they’re strategic troops. They’re my command.” And then he goes, “Right, what I really need is Clarke is deceive the Germans. The Balkans were still going to invade from the south. And the Germans are keeping two pounds of divisions down on the French Riviera, right down the south of France. He said, "What’s the maximum range the SAS can drop? 'Cause what I need is someone to go into the French countryside and cut those railroads and keep cutting so those Panzers cannot get to the Normandy Beaches.” And that job is given to William Fraser, that guy I talked about earlier. And to the SAS, and they drop into France and they… By then, they have radio approach called Phantom operations from radio back to the UK. And then they’re doing things that probably if you know anything about special forces generally in Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever, they’re doing things you recognise today. They’re calling airstrikes and coordinating local forces and all that sort of stuff, yeah.
Do we have a sense, because it goes without saying, these are highly dangerous missions. Do we have a sense of rate of survival? I mean, like you could say, what the rate of survival for bomber, for example, three months, you’re lucky, aren’t you? I mean, something like this. I mean, they’re going into the most dangerous scenarios and they did lose men.
They did, but the thing is their survival higher because they’re doing this special forces job and actually a lot of 'em just don’t want to go back. There’s this description of Paddy Mayne being terrified by an air raid in Italy, because they don’t want to be there. They’ve volunteered not cause they’re scared of soldiering, but they just don’t want to be in the regular army. They don’t want to be part of this group where decisions are made high up. It’s pretty much from man these people are mavericks, Like I said, they’re very creative, they’re military, they want to be out there doing this stuff. So they’re what we’d call… Attrition is an awful word. Their casualty rate’s relatively low. The only place where this really goes wrong is in Italy where they get repurposed as a commando and they have devastating casualties during the Italian Campaign 'cause they’ve been used as shock troops which is what the commandos have been used as. And they have high casualties at that point. And they’ve been generally surprisingly low. The only thing I would say on that is there’s a padre called Padre McLuskey parachutes in, and it’s quite clear to him. And he writes in the report that what we would now recognise as PTSD, you know, post-traumatic… The fact they’ve been operating for that long and you know, with my own expenses in the military, they didn’t have tools. Sometimes, they’re behind the lines for eight months, you know, extraordinary lengths of time that you wouldn’t leave someone out there nowadays. You’d go, “They’ve got to rotate these people there. They can’t do this job forever.” And it affected them, definitely.
Yeah. So in your view, so during the Second World War, what do you think was the SAS’ finest moment? Is that a fair question? Is that a difficult one?
No, it’s just what is the one? Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. What would be their finest hour? Definitely North Africa would be high up there, wouldn’t it? But then again, you look at what Fraser did with his little unit in France, and you think that’s pretty strategic. That’s two Panzer of divisions that are going nowhere because of this little unit. So I think that’s a tough one there, Helen. And then you what’s very hard to measure that Clarke tries to do is the effect of his deception. So if you look at the very first raid in Italy, how much did that mess with Mussolini’s head? I mean, the Italians weren’t keen on North Africa from the moment that O'Connor and the early offences happened. We nearly threw them out of North Africa. They didn’t really want to be there. So that raid could have really impacted… Oh, and another deception, this is not an SAS one, but he was very clever about always saying that we were going to land near Berchtesgaden. so he was always pointing forces ‘cause he was trying to mess with Hitler, that was what he was doing. So there’s that deception angle. That’s a much harder thing to measure how effective that was but I’d say that’s the two things. The SAS would be the overall deception, can’t really measure that. The Stirling years in the desert, I think they had an impact there and then Fraser in France.
So I’m going to ask you one last question before we open… Hopefully, we’ll have some questions in the chat. Do you think, and again, this might not be something you thought about, but do you think your book has a message for today, or are you just thinking in historical terms about the story, the foundations of the SAS, or do you actually think there is a message?
Yeah, I think there is a message and I keep alluding to, which is this Steve Jobs thing, which is that large organisations, let’s forget the British military in the 1940s, have real trouble incorporating ideas and concepts and people, and it’s people really, isn’t it? That are creative, that are icon class, and you can look at people, we’ll all know people who might be a bit out there, but they often are the founders of companies. They often are the entrepreneur who found some radical new software company or a beer company, particularly individual there. But anyway, they are the James Dysons or whatever. These are the people and you put them in the military, they’re going to be doing that as well. And that’s really what you want. And the story of the book really is how, as a difficulty, British has nurturing it 'cause sometimes, it goes well, sometimes, they’re shot down and fired. So yeah, that’s the sort of theme of my book. Creativity and entrepreneurs in the military.
Yeah, that’s wonderful. So let’s have a look and see if you’ve got anything in the chat. We have. I’m hoping I can use the technology. Okay, so we’ve got… “Was there a link between the SAS and SOE or were they completely separate?” Was there any point at which they’re both mavericks in a way and gentleman warfare.
Yeah, yeah, so the straight answer is no, but there’s a little bit, no, not really. The problem with the SOE in Cairo was, as you prob might know, it didn’t go very well and then they had a real problem. And in fact, if you ever read, excellent book by Hermione Ranfurly, she gets a job as secretary and then she’s tasked by GHQ Cairo to spy on the SAS 'cause there’s such a risk. They’re throwing money around, it leaks like a sieve the cab drivers in Cairo call it the secret office, which isn’t very good if you’ve got a secret organisation, and everyone knows where your flat is. So that’s a straight answer. The SOE was considered a liability by the LRDG. In North Africa, they hated working. I mean, you’ve got accounts of absolute bust ups, LRDG critique one and SOE operatives, you know, because they kept deploying the wrong people. And France slightly different. France, the SOE dropped in so there is a direct link with SOE, OSS, and the SAS. That was very coordinated. They were co-located often. So yes, there is a time, but their roles are different. Yeah, as I said, their roles, so it’s not a direct direct link correlation.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - Yeah, and we’ve got a question here. “Was Orde Wingate a member of SAS?”
A - No, interestingly he wasn’t. He attempted to run a parallel thing, but no. He was sent down to Abyssinia to start an insurgency by Wavell, who he’d worked for in Palestine. So Orde Wingate has very brief history. He was in Palestine running, I think, they were called night specials, but he became a scientist and he was quite extreme and eventually got removed. He was like a Kurtz from “Apocalypse Now” went off down that road where he’s gone completely native. And what he’s doing is going in and shooting Arabs and he got… And I always doubt that but then Wavell knew he’d done that. And then when the Second World War come through, he goes, “Well, that guy, Orde Wingate, he was pretty good at fighting that insurgency, so let’s go and send him down there to start one.” And he does, he starts an insurgency largely due to him. I mean, there were other people down there as well. He’s very effective in the Ethiopian Highlands. And then he rides in on a white charger and puts Haile Selassie back on the throne. But then he doesn’t get in. Actually, interesting aside, he attempts to commit suicide and Stirling says, “I don’t want anything to do with that guy.” 'Cause anyone who’s prepared to commit suicide with the police is a massive threat to him and the organisation. So he thought he just becomes subsumed by Wingate who is a fanatic, an absolute fanatic.
Q - We’ve got a question about the gliders. “Did the gliders carry men the size and equipment?” But actually, from what I’ve been reading, they’re just fake, aren’t they?
A - Clearly fake, on the ground. So they’re full size, pulls from canvas, but they’re completely fake. They can’t get in the air. The first gliders I think in Africa used in Sicily from memory, someone might correct me and said they were used and torched, but I think they used in Sicily 'cause they have a disastrous operation Sicily, this is not the SAS, the airborne units, used gliders. But unfortunately, they release 'em too early 'cause they’re inexperienced. The headwind stops when they crash in the sea. And the SRS, so that’s Paddy Mayne and William Fraser in their landing craft passed through, the carnage of that and 200 men drowning because they’re on a mission to knock out a gun in place and they can’t stop. It’s horrific scene. Horrific.
Q - Yeah, yeah. So let’s see what else we’ve got coming in. This is absolutely fascinating. Okay, so we’ve got a question here from Jocelyn. “What was happening, if you can answer this one, in Eritrea in 1941?” I have a picture of my dad in army uniform on a motorbike, a messenger delivering letters or messages around between the camps. Do you have anything on that aspect of the war or is that not something you’ve covered?
A - It’s not really something but Eritrea is East Africa. So probably Cunningham, I tell you who was down there was Cunningham before he went up north. So there was a very successful campaign that removed the Italians. So the Italians occupied large bits of Africa and they tried to expand that at the beginning of the war because they basically, as someone put it, Mussolini was desperate to be at the Victor’s Banquet. He thought Britain was going to surrender. So he did this rush to grab a load of land and then of course, held out and Mussolini go, “Oh, dear.” And hick on the British. And the British knock him down. So I dunno exactly which unit that would be. You know, maybe there’s a way of communicating that to me. I can look at the pitch and look at my notes. I would’ve looked it but the scope of my book, if I’d gone down the East African view, I’d be stuffed again.
Q - Yeah, no that’s fair enough. That’s great. And of course, it’s always good to get personal records of family members, army records, or whatever. Okay, so we’ve got a question here. “In the past, the SAS was cloaked in secrecy. Has the growing publicity jeopardised effectiveness of our present resources at all?”
A - No, and actually I’d say the reverse actually. I think the Second World War, the SAS was very well publicised. As I said, they were trying to make everyone know about it. No, I don’t think so. I think the second war is is very different to what exists now, you know? I don’t think there’s a crossover. And obviously, the thing is that nobody really wants to reveal anything that will compromise operations and things like that. So, no, I don’t think so. I dunno if that’s true.
Q - And we had another question below that. “What did you think, if you’ve watched it, of "SAS: Rogue Heroes?” 'Cause there’s a mixed opinion, isn’t there? I mean, historians can get terribly wound up about the fact it’s not accurate. Is it important that the dramas are giving a love of history, I suppose? A certain part of history or bringing those stories alive? How do you feel about those dramas and in particular, “SAS: Rogue Heroes” and if no one’s seen it yet, I think you can get it on your Netflix, six-part series. I probably enjoyed it. But what did you make of it, Tom?
A - I’ll be honest, I didn’t watch all of it. I did watch quite a bit of it, but I think there’s two sort of schools I thought. One of which is that it generates interest, doesn’t it? Because you’ve got a very popular TV series that generates interest. Therefore, people will get interested in the history. So that’s one side of it. I can buy that. The other side of it is, it’s not very accurate. So then you’ve got that other side of it, you know? If people don’t do that, they will think that’s the story, won’t they? So I think that’s the two things is yeah, if you’re discerning enough to work out that this is fiction and a lot of TV and film is very inaccurate. It has to be sometimes, then that’s one thing. But then again, if that’s the only source you’ve got, you’re going to get the wrong end of the stick. Stirling doesn’t have a girlfriend. There’s lots of stuff they get really very wrong. And there’s some people get quite angry about portrayal of the characters of course 'cause we know that Paddy Mayne was very quietly spoken. Stirling was very… He had a speech impairment when he was young, very quiet. Neither of them swore and Stirling was a very persuasive man. Paddy Mayne didn’t speak much at all. So you’ve got very different portrayals. I think with all of this, the one I always thought was quite good in this area was “Band of Brothers,” which you saw, which was about the… Have you ever seen that, Helen? Probably not
Yes.
But that’s very much sticks to the narrative of the 101st and what they did. And I think that what’s quite good about that is you come out that feeling war’s not a good thing. I think all of this portrayal should be as accurate as possible to convince people that war’s a terrible idea. That’s what I think ultimately. I mean, I don’t know if “Rogue Heroes” does that or not. I dunno.
Q - Yeah, that’s really helpful. Thank you, Tom. So what else have we got coming through here? Okay, someone’s asking “What is the LRDG?” So what does that stand for?
A - Yes, so the Long Range Desert Group was the precursor to the SAS, but really, the SAS modelled itself on the LRDG. And you know, they have squadrons, they have vehicles. Very much when the SAS arrived, it plugged into the LIDG, and the LRDG was created by desert explorers. They already knew how to navigate in the desert before the war, and then they created this unit. And the things they could do, they could navigate, travel through the desert. There would’ve been no SAS without them. So you have to look at them first. So that was the precursor, yeah.
Q - Yeah, that’s really helpful. Thank you. Okay, we’ll see what else we’ve got coming. We’ve got some really good questions this evening. Okay, so we’ve got one that may well have actually come in from Israel. A nephew runs a counselling organisation called Soultalk, which cares for Israeli troops with post-battle trauma. “Could Tom please let us have some insight into a little of what he knows about mental healthcare to UK soldiering?”
A - So it’s improved a lot since my day. I left in '97. I don’t think we had any, and actually I just saw that the MP Johnny Mercer over here who’s part of our government and is a veteran, has just started an initiative to try and improve things even more there. There are services, but then again, soldiers go into civilian life. So the services they ultimately get are the services that civilians get. I think we tried to augment it. I think there was a lot of work done post or around time of Afghanistan. And I think the awareness is there, but as you know, the mental health service is not particularly well funded. And it is a tricky area. It really is, yeah.
Okay, one more and then I’m going to finish with a question to round… It’s been absolutely brilliant today. Thank you so much.
No, .
Q - Yes. So we’ve got a question that’s come in. Did the Germans ever find out that this whole thing about the deception and this whole SAS has been exaggerated?
A - No, even worse actually. They thought towards the end of the campaign in North Africa. So this is around the time of Norman Island. They thought we had an entire fake army. Clarke had created so many fake units that they thought we were able to invade the Balkans and Normandy at the same time. It was a mess. They had no idea. They were publishing fake orders of battle which is the… Oh, sorry. There were only two units they didn’t believe. No, it got worse and worse for them. And Clarke always said this, it’s a very interesting thing. He said, “The Italians were harder to deceive because they were Machiavellian.” 'Cause Machiavelli is Italian, and the Germans were easy to deceive 'cause they light everything in the right place. So they loved the fact that everything looks like… No, that’s an awful thing to say, sorry. To anyone who’s German in this audience, I don’t mean it. That’s what he said not me.
Yeah, yeah, I want to finish with the very end of your book and I’m just highlighting it again and then to ask a final question about contemporary times before we wrap up for today. So at the very, very end, I thought this was really quite poignant actually. You finish your book by saying, “So the SAS was reborn and through the years, members of the SAS would rely on their wings to carry them through the dark night of the underworlds and lift them safely to meet the dawn.” I found that incredibly moving actually. And I wasn’t kind of expecting it at the end of the book, but it’s just so poignant.
Yeah, yeah. And those came from my great, great grandfather’s hotel. Those wings came from his hotel and they are based on the god Ra, who as we know, Egyptian mythology, rise in the east, sets in the west, then it has to travel through underworld and rise again.
Mm-hmm, incredibly moving. I really encourage you to go out and buy the book, but we can’t finish today without thinking about contemporary times and Ukraine. So I want to ask you about your personal reflections on what’s happening in Ukraine and yeah, give us some kind of perspective.
Well, I mean, it’s obviously a massive tragedy but I would say, the Ukrainians have done incredibly well. I personally did think that Putin’s been an idiot but that happens, but they’ve done incredibly well. And in a funny way, they’ve done a lot of the things that I talk about in the book. They use deception operations, they use special forces, they threaten the Russian headquarters, you know? They did all of that. I think the trouble with what’s happening now is we’re into the next phase. What would Lawrence already would’ve called the wood chopping, and unfortunately, it is going to be a bit of a slog now. I mean, it will go their way. I’m sure it will 'cause they’ve got a lot of support from us. And as I say, Putin’s a complete idiot. The one thing I would say about all this, and politicians, Putin’s not a fool, is where they… I’m going to finish with this one. I think history’s really important and how it just portrays really important because politicians get their information from somewhere. Whereas Putin got his information that he thinks this is a good idea. He hasn’t read his history books. Clearly doesn’t know Marshal Zhukov or anything 'cause his strategies’ been hopeless. But you can apply that to Donald and many other people. They go and do things and what are they watching, what are they reading, and what do they understand? The more honest we can be in history and reveal things, and show the world, then perhaps the better informed future generations might be… And there’ll be fewer wars which would be a very good thing.
Tom, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Keep writing, keep writing.
Okay. Looking forward to your book. looking forward to your book next.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to have you back and thank you so much.
Brilliant.
For joining us today. Thank you.
No problem. Okay.