Night Fighters in France. Shaun Clarke

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