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Hello and welcome to Downsize History. I'm just standing on the bridge of a boat of a ship looking out on a a perfectly smooth mirror like surface of the sea as the moon rises over there in the on the southeast horizon. I'm here during lock down, doing some social isolation on a big boat in the middle of the ocean by myself. This episode of the podcast has got nothing whatsoever to do with maritime affairs. In fact, it's very land based.

We got Damian Lewis back on the podcast that he still enjoys rights. One best selling smash hit about special forces in World War Two after another. Well, he's only gone and done it again. This time he got a tip off from a member of the public, one of his fans via social media. He got a tip off. He looked into it. He pulled on that thread. And what do you know? There's another extraordinary story from the Second World War of what the special forces, the SAS, we're getting up to after D-Day in France.

It's a story of bravery, capture luck, escape, revenge, heroism, you name it. It's got it all. You're going to absolutely love it. It's great to have them back on the podcast. Hundreds of you have entered our competition for £100 to spend in the shop. Please get a history at dot com slash quiz. It's all self explanatory. There you get £100 and you can check out the absolutely bizarre history shop while you're there. We're already running low on wooly medieval helmets with retractable face coverings.

It's proving the absolute hot item on the shop this season. In the meantime, everyone enjoy this podcast with Damian Lewis.

Damien, great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. It's always good to be on the show and glad it's still all going or bells and whistles in this very difficult time we're all living through.

Well, thank you very much indeed. I just want a wealth well done to you as well. Just when you think there are no more stories to be told about Special Forces in the Second World War, here's this one. You've got a true band of brothers tale.

Yeah, it's a hell of a story. And the way it came to me is, you know, one of those kind of unbelievable tales. It was a message over Facebook, a guy called James Irvine, who is a former military guy himself. But his grandfather, Trooper Pakman, served in the SS during the war. And he just sent me a quick message saying, look, you know, my grandfather was killed on S.A.S. operations in France post D-Day.

He was captured by the Gestapo and, you know, brutally put to death. And it's part of a wider story about these incredible missions deep behind the lines, directly in the aftermath of D-Day to try to stop German armor. Getting to the D-Day beaches might be of interest. And so from there, I started looking into it. And then, as you say, it just became this absolutely extraordinary tale which lasts from, you know, June 1944 all the way through again to the Nazi hunting operations post war.

So right the way through to 1947, you know, one of those really incredible tales where you follow these characters through just the most extraordinary missions and escapes and then, of course, the quest for vengeance and justice.

You mentioned the mission after D-Day. I mean, you don't hear as much about special forces in summer of 1944, partly because it's a war of big battalions, it's a war of armored division, things like that. But what was that job in France in the second half of 1944?

They'd only ever existed overseas, so they formed in North Africa then for the North African campaign. And then, of course, you know, the Mediterranean in Italy. And they were called back to to Britain for the first time in late 43, early 44. And they were headquartered in Darvel in Scotland. And their mission was to get themselves in shape and undergo a massive recruitment drive to support the D-Day landings. So they came back to the U.K., this piratical band of raiders, as they were described with every conceivable nationality in their ranks and lots of eclectic collections of uniforms.

And it didn't go down very well. And that's high command. Try to drag them kicking and screaming into line to spit and polish and tried to get them doing a bit of drill and all that kind of stuff. They were desperate to find a mission for D-Day, which would suit a form of warfare which they didn't really understand. Many in the high command did. And so they came up with this idea that they would deploy. Literally just hours before D-Day itself and dropped slightly ahead of the landing beaches and act as a blocking group en masse, so 2000, which is by now how much the ranks of the SS had been swollen by recruits.

So 2000 of them a parachute in and basically in static positions to as the immediate blocking group for the landings. And as Lieutenant Colonel Leopardi Main, who was in command of one SS and William Stirling, he was in command of two SS, having taken over from his brother David Stirling when he was captured, said That is not how we are used. We dropped deep behind the lines, small bands of fast moving raiders to harass and harangue and confound the enemy.

And that's how we've always been used and that's where we do our job best. And Bill Sterling actually, Colonel, belittling actually to fall on his sword and resign in protest at the continued insistence the SS be used in this way with the threat of further high level reservations that eventually high command gave in. And so a completely new set of missions were conceived of, which were archetypal SS taskings dropping deep behind the lines deep into occupied France to attack the railways, roads and road convoys carrying German arm of the Panzer divisions to the D-Day beaches, which we knew what he would do as soon as knew whether landings were he would rush his heavy armor to those areas to drive the allies back into the sea.

And so the SS were charged to stop the army getting through and scores and scores of patrols were parachuted into France just after D-Day to achieve just that. This was unprecedented territory in a way, because unlike the North African desert, you know, France was densely populated, heavily occupied by the Germans for years of occupation. At least, you know, it was a very different media to be dropping into and theater. And I suppose one of the upsides was that, of course, via the special operations executive, you know, Churchill's Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare, we had good contacts and relations with the French Resistance who Churchill had been urging were armed as a guerrilla army to rise up in the enemy's rear.

So the plan was really that, you know, these these SS patrols would parachute in, link up with the resistance, fight alongside them and give them the command and control and extra firepower and the confidence to hit hard. So I suppose that made it slightly less daunting, if you like.

All of your books seem to feature the most remarkable characters, but this particular drop had a real quality to it. Yes.

So the book focuses Stone onto one patrol that there are patrol within an operation which was codenamed Operation Gain. It was one of these missions to destroy the German armor and this patrol of 12 men were codenamed Sârbu. 70 were dropped into an area just to the south of Paris, literally 20 miles, no more to the south of Paris, near the town of Dujail, to sabotage rail links and blow up this massive unmowed that was situated on the fringe of the rail lines from where AMR was being rushed to the D-Day beaches.

And the Petrobas, led by this fabulous and immensely brave and spirited individual called Captain Patrick Galster. Golston had already won NMC in the retreat to Dunkirk in the rear guard who'd been decorated in the field. He'd then been injured quite seriously, trying to get off the D-Day beaches. Myracle He actually got off alive. He'd then come back to the UK, deployed to North Africa to join the East African campaign, still dogged by his injuries, and was eventually and ominously returned to the UK for final disposal.

Was what was written in his his orders, i.e. to be invalidated the military? Well, rather than being invalidated the military, he volunteered for airborne training, trained as a parachutist, and then after a stint with the long range desert group, actually volunteered for the SAS. So here you had a man already won an embassy leading this patrol of 12 SAS deep into France who actually should not have been in the military at all, let alone undergoing and leading frontline operations.

And he was the kind of individual who would only ever lead from the front. That was his nature and indeed he did throughout the whole of the operations. And then just to continue to theme his second in command, which was a Lieutenant John nickname, Rex Veja, who was actually hailed from Mauritius, which was a British and French connely, his ancestors were from Europe and Vijay, likewise had been serving in North Africa, had volunteered for four airborne duties, had trained with a parachute regiment and had had a parachuting accident, and again had been banned from all further front line duties.

But when he was returned to the UK in early, 44 had somehow managed to circumvent that volunteer for the SAS. And as a fluent French speaker and a fluent English speaker, Vihar was welcomed into the SAS with open arms. So that's just two of the individuals, neither of whom should have been there, both of whom had been invalided out. Certainly from front line duties, but had refused not to serve at the sharpest end possible of operations. How does this operation go?

So they're deployed initially to sabotage the rail and the ammo dumps, and it is a spectacular and resounding success. There's a Corporal Serge vacuoles who is actually under Galster and he's origin of Czech origin, but a French citizen serving in the free French forces. And he walks into Duder Town, finds out where and when the next train is due. The whole patrol moves in at night. They stake it out. They kill the guards on the rail tracks.

They plant these fog signals. The special so developed charges which enable a charge to blow up just in front of a train. So ensuring derailment. And then they plant around about 50 separate charges on this massive set of ammo dumps or with four hour delay. So they make sure they've got enough time to get away. And then they set up their ambush positions for the train, which Julie comes steaming through out of the tunnel, at which stage the fog charges are detonated, the explosives ignite, the trains blown to pieces, and the Raiders attack it with their brand guns and their stun guns.

There's then a massive fire fight. And there's another standout individual in the patrol who's from Wigan, a former miner from Wigan and actually one of David Stirling's SAS originals to Corporal Thomas Ginge Jones. And he stands firm on the tracks with a Bren gun firing from the hip Vij, which enables the rest to get away. And he escapes also with just a flesh wound.

And then, of course, they have a very, very, very angry and very, very vengeful enemy on their trail, especially as three hours later, vast series of explosions and all the ammo dumps blow up. And so all the ammunition not been able to link up with French resistance. So nowhere where they can go to ground and go into hiding. Garstin calls for rescue. And there was this policy developed before the post D-Day operations went in that if necessary, they would try to block out patrols using aircraft by airborne means.

Now, of course, the Essawi had long experience of delivering agents into the field by the Lysander Light aircraft and collecting them again. So it was a variation on that theme. So Gosnold radios Adavale headquarters and asked for pick up rescue, and the reply he gets is not quite what they expected. It's yes, we'll come and get. You will send in an RF air crew and they're going to land at an airfield which is just nearby. Now, its army airfield was a very significant Luftwaffe air base.

So significant was it that the allies had mounted half a dozen very significant bombing raids to try to destroy over the past few weeks, none of which had been very successful. And so, lo and behold, the Sabre 70 patrol were ordered to make their way to its own power base that night to get rescued from the airstrip by a sea 47. A DeCota aircraft flying in with an air crew, a very brave RAAF aircraft has to be said, who were determined to pluck them out of there.

Quite extraordinary.

Is this a particularly unusual raid or is this just an operation that you were given this entree into? Do you think there were things like this going on all the time, most of which will now be pretty much forgotten to history?

This is an extraordinary rescue. They pulled out of the air base by that sea 47 and not under fire, a massive firefight. They fight their way onto the aircraft and they get airborne and get back to the UK. It's an extraordinary rescue. And before getting rescued, indeed, they plant the last of their charges on some of the aircraft on the airstrip, actually blow it up as they fly out of there. But having said that, and there were scores of such missions taking place all across France, SAS and other related units, and you could take any number of them and they would be equally brave and fearsome and die hard.

What makes this mission so extraordinary and why I decided to focus on it is what happens to them during their next mission, and which leads on to the whole Nazi hunting operations through 1945 post-war. And it's that combination of factors that cradle to the grave aspect of this story, which really makes it sound like, tell me about what happened later in the war.

They get back to the UK on Sea 47 and ironically, bizarrely. But I guess you can understand the reasoning. Lieutenant Colonel Blair Main, who's the commander of one S.A.S. and very much involved in this mission, personally, says to them, look, you've been into a torn power base and you've got extracted from there. Well, we want to send you back again to the very same place to destroy it. And the reason being there have been all these RAAF and US Air Force bombing raids, none have been successful.

And by the way, when they were being extracted from the air base, they actually came across these camouflaged forests. So if you can imagine, trees made out of wood and chicken wire with force leaves stretched over them, there were these camouflage force absolutely convincing from the air, which explained why the allied air raids had scored very few successes because the aircraft was so well hidden. Well, British intelligence had worked out that, Tom. I was one of the first air bases to get the Luftwaffe as first jet fighter, so the first operational jet fighter of the entire war, the Stern Vogul, and so they sent back in again to destroy the air base and take out some of these ground breaking aircraft.

And they're going to be dropped close by in an area of dense forest at a drop zone at a small village called Lefort, L.A. And so we have arranged for them to link up with a band of French resistance fighters on the ground so they'll have a reception party in theory. In practice, what's happened is that the Essawi, I guess you could say, has been penetrated by the Gestapo. And there's a very wily and canny Gestapo commander in Paris at their headquarters, 84 Avenue, called Hans Kiffer, who's defected, what they called the funk spiel, the radio games and the radio games were they would capture in a suburb in France, male or female, hopefully capture their radio and the codebooks and their ciphers turn that captured agent by obvious means and then use their agent to playback messages to the U.K. as if that agent was still freely operating in the field with the aim of calling in more agents and more air drops of weaponry and more air drops of supplies and even cash.

And that was the funk's bill games and. Captain Galster and his men have very sadly fallen victim to a full spiel, so when they fly back in again in July, no, to deploy to Lapuerta, they drop zone and then attack it on their base. Actually, who's waiting for them on the ground is not the French resistance at all. It's a party of gistaro from Paris and a body of Waffen SS soldiers in ambush position free.

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I guess there's no getting out of that situation. Not for most of them, though, unfortunately. So Garston is the first out, first down, as I said, led from the front. As always, shadowy figure runs up to him dressed in civilians. He presumes it's a member of the French Resistance. And the man does indeed. Vive la France. But as he gets close enough to Goffstown to whisper, he says, Beware. There are Bosz Germans all around.

And as he leads Garston into the trees, the enemy come out of the shadows with their weapons and Garston is captured. He tries to break away to warn his men and they shoot him down and he's very, very grievously injured. If you could imagine jumping out of a fast moving Stirling bomber in a 12 month stick, even though you jump very closely together, you would be spread out a long way along the ground. Because of that, the last three parachutists don't land in the open field of the drop zone.

They land in the forest. Those three get away for that reason and that reason only. But the rest are all either captured, injured very badly and captured or killed. And some of them, Ginge Jones in particular, basically fight to the last round. And it's dawn before the last ones are brought in. And then the wounded and those who are without wounds are loaded aboard a truck and driven to Paris. The wounded taken to the hospital salpetriere in Paris given no treatment whatsoever and immediately face JUXTAPID interrogations.

And just give you an idea of how brutal this is. Lieutenant Vihar, who I mentioned earlier, the chap who shouldn't have been there at all because he was invalided out of the war. Supposedly he's been shot three times once in the spine and he's paralyzed from the waist down. Yet even so, within hours of arriving in the hospital, he's got a GISTARO interrogator at his bedside beating him around the face and even threatening if he doesn't talk to get the surgeons to remove his bullets without anesthetic.

So this is pretty brutal stuff and what are the Gestapo after? Well, it's two things they're after, obviously finding out what their mission was and where there might be other S.A.S. parties deploying in France. But more importantly, they're after launching another functional operation. So they want to find out who in their party is in charge of communications, where the radio is, where the Slipher books are, so they can try and use the captured SS men to lure in more and more air drops, to capture more and more operators and individuals.

And of course, those able bodied men who've been captured are then taken to the Gestapo headquarters Avenue Foch, 84 Avenue Foch. And they then go into horrific torture and questioning to try to find out the selfsame things. How do we know about this?

Well, we know about it from a lot of different sources. I have been so privileged and so fortunate and so honoured in telling this story is the help from the families of those who were there. So I'll just give you some examples, Lieutenant Veejays, family who are in Mauritius, lovely people. So helpful. Now, I didn't know, of course, when I started researching it, but not only did he write up an account of his war in French, which they sent to me, it's book length, but he kept the notebook.

All through the war, so even when he was in the field, even on this operation, he kept the notebook. So a diary of his operations, they shared that with me. They shared letters between him and all his family members, between him and the fellow members of his patrol, Sean Gasteyer, the son of Patrick Goffstown, the patrol commander, one year old when his father was captured, never got to know his father because Goffstown was killed at the end of this capture.

But Sean, again, who lives in Nairobi in Kenya, immensely helpful, shared with me the family's memorabilia, photographs, letters, medals, everything they have, you know, that you would bring down from aloft in any normal family situation and the same across so many other members of the patrol. And without that, it's pretty much almost impossible now to tell these kind of stories. Then finally, I guess, to as the icing on the cake, there's still surviving a wonderful ISIS veteran, Jack Man who is in his late 90s, who read very early draft of the manuscript for me to just check the authenticity and the tone was right and sent me back his handwritten notes in pencil, having read it from cover to cover.

You know, you pull a team like that together and you really can capture these stories and bring them back alive, which is what one tries to do.

You mentioned many of them didn't make it back alive. What was the circumstances of their death?

So they're being held in the of a new Fokin in the hospital. And Kether, the head of the STOPP contacts Berlins is what we do with them. And Hitler himself gets involved and he sends an order to kiffer, these men are to be executed, they are to be dressed in civilian clothes, taken to a patch of woodland and killed by Hitler, took very personally as a personal insult to himself and the Reich behind the lines operations, whether it be by the SOE, the SS, the American equivalent SAS commandos, parachute, whoever.

Partly it's because we did launch quite a few assassination operations. Rainer Reinhardt Heidrick comes to mind in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Operation Anthropoid. The many assassination attempts in North Africa and Europe against Rommel, of course, but there were others too. And Hitler felt these were a personal affront, an insult to himself and his top leaders. And so much earlier than the Sabby 70 patrols capture, he had authored his commando order under which he gave authority illegally. Of course, for any captured commandos, for all of them had to be killed and could only be kept alive for long enough for their questioning interrogation by the Gestapo.

And so he orders that Galster and his captured men to similarity be killed. And they are in early August forced to dress in civilian clothing. And when they challenge why, they're told there's a prisoner exchange taking place in Geneva and they're going to be trucked to Geneva to be exchanged with German prisoners being handed over by the British. Of course, very few of them believe it, and especially because as they put the civilian clothing on at gunpoint, some of them can see that these clothes or some of the clothes at least already have bullet holes in them.

And that evening they're driven into a patch of French woodland. And Gasteyer, who is very, very seriously injured, still has had no treatment for his injuries, but is an extremely honorable man. And has believed in a Kiefer's assurances that they are going to be subjected to a prisoner exchange when they're marched into the woodland at gunpoint and begin to get lined up. He realizes what's really going to happen. He turns to his men and says, oh, my God, they're going to shoot us.

And he says, I will stand firm and you guys make a break for it, by which he means I'm too injured to get away. Some of you aren't. I'll stand and take the fire and you get away. And that's exactly what happens as Schnurr, who is the SS commander of the the execution squad, pulls out a piece of paper and starts to read out Hitler's execution sentence in German. And then Hans von Kapre, his second in command, translated into English as they heard here, the final word sentence to be shot.

Jones and Vatu, like the former miner from Wigan and the CheckFree French SS man, break free in charge. There would be gunmen, there would be assassins, and both of them managed to run some distance away before their ill fitting civilian shoes forced them or make them trip up, fall over their own feet. And as both go crashing down, volleys of fire break, including going over their heads. And it's actually they're falling down that saves them.

Otherwise, they would doubtless have been shot. Vakili gets back on his feet and runs again and is pursued by the executioners and Schnurr, the SS commander, realizes that if any of these seven get away. There will be hell to pay for them in Berlin because it's on Hitler's personal orders that they are supposed to be executed, so the hunt is on the way. Jones, meanwhile, lays still and plays dead. And when the gunmen have run off, when the executioners have run off after vacuoles, he gets to his feet, dashes away and manages to hide himself under some leaves.

And so those two individuals, Corpuz, Vatu and Jones, do escape. And that night and over the next few days, they're both reunited with each other and they link up with the French Resistance. And so begins the next chapter of the story where Factuality and Jones train and call in arms drops to the local breathless. That's the name of the nearest town resistance in preparation for the American advance when they will rise up in the enemy's rear and ensure that Brussels is liberated.

And that's exactly what they do. But it's interesting down when they escape that firing squad and read about the escape, it's miraculous. It's almost unbelievable when they escape and when they're asked what drove them to what drove them on with the bullets at their back. It's not just the animal instinct to survive. It's perhaps even more so. It was the desire to get vengeance and justice for their murdered comrades because they knew that the other men were getting gunned down where they stood at their backs.

And so when they eventually liberate restless town of Akela in chains, then get in the mayor's car, drive back to the site of their executions, collect bullet casings at the very site where they should have died, and then go to the nearby chateau, the Chateau Paresis. Fontan, where the five who had been gunned down were buried in a mass grave, and they find the location of that mass grave. And so begins this investigation into these war crimes, which, as I say, lasted to 1947 and ends up in vengeance and justice being done.

The assassin became more and more aware that, you know, Hitler's commander order must exist. And indeed, eventually copies were found and they knew that hundreds of their men had been captured and disappeared. And so both Maine and Colonel Franks vowed that the perpetrators would be hunted down and brought to justice. So they set up an official SS war crimes investigation team towards the end of the war, dispatched them to France and Germany to investigate, and was headed up by the peerless and brilliant Major Eric Bill Buckworth, an SS intelligence officer, fluent German speaker and fearsome interrogator.

Any German who met Buckworth knew they had more than met their match. Buckworth takes over a former Nazi official's villa in Gargano, the German city near the French border, and together with his second in command, the extremely tough and resilient, dusty roads. His sergeant, they start hunting down the suspects. No, the problem is this. S.A.S., as I said earlier, was never particularly popular with some in the high command, some in the establishment, as were some of the other Special Forces units.

And by October 1945, the writing's on the wall and the SS is formally disbanded, told to destroy all documents and all records and returned to their units. That's it. And of the regiment as we knew it. And there are some a Colonel Maine and Colonel Franks, first and foremost commanders of one and two SS and Winston Churchill himself voted out of power, but still, of course, extremely powerful and influential who are determined this will not happen. And so the one thing they keep alive and they are determined to keep alive at all cost is the Nazi hunting team.

And so the war crimes investigation team goes dark. It goes completely unofficial. It becomes known as the secret hunters. They're funded out of the black budget, massaged out of the war office. So the war isn't aware where the money's actually going. And they're controlled by clandestine radio set perched on the roof of a building in Eaton Square, which gives them their orders from London. And it's a completely off the books operation. Amazingly, they recruit more sass to it and they are hiding in plain sight.

So they're operating the length and breadth of Europe of former German occupied Europe. They're driving old SS jeeps. They're wearing the SS cap badge, the wind beret. They're dressed in uniform. They are masquerading as if they have every right to be there. And indeed, they are one of the most successful war crimes hunting operations ever. And they are in large part because then they're willing to break all the rules. You know, they don't seek permission when they are crossing from one zone of occupation to another because they know if they seek permission, then a warning might get through to the man they're after.

They use their jeeps and the back roads, they circumvent the checkpoints. They arrive on the suspect's doorstep in the middle of the night unannounced, and they address him in his pajamas or his underpants. These are snatch missions and they're extremely successful. The culprits are dragged back to the Villa D'Aguilar basement, and there they are interrogated by Buckworth. And very few, if any, don't break very, very quickly. And it's in that process that Buckworth realizes there is this individual, Hans Kiffer, the chief of the Gestapo from Paris, who then came back through the Vogue Mountains to Strasbourg as Nazi Germany forces retreated from the allies and that he is responsible for scores of atrocities against captured allied agents.

Sassone, including those wanted for what became known as the Noailles, would killings, the killings of our Siby 70 patrol Goldstone and his men. And it's a strange thing because at the end of the war, the SS itself was right. You made an illegal organization and any SS were slated for arrest and questioning and potentially trial. And so Kaifa and the second in command, Hawg and others know that they're being sought. And so they go into hiding and Kiffer and he'll go to a Bavarian ski resort and get Cashel jobs as hotel cleaners.

And that's where they're going to hide out. But Hawg, who has five children, decides one day he cannot not go and visit his family. And Kiffer warns them, if you go home, they're going to be watching, you'll get captured and you may give me away. Hawg goes anyway. And lo and behold, Buckworth men are watching. They arrest Hawg and in questioning Hawg, who'd been held as a prisoner of war by the British during World War One.

He's an old soldier and was treated very well, so his allegiances are torn anyway. Hawg confesses all and he says, I think you might find Kether who's there. No one wanted in this ski resort in Bavaria. And in that way all of the suspects who haven't been killed in the war are brought into custody, give their confessions and stand trial at Wuppertal in the summer of 1947. And they're all sentenced either to death or to long custodial sentence is so the justice and the vengeance which Ginge Jones and Serge virtually sought as they escaped has finally been served.

Good luck. The book is called SACE Band of Brothers Boehme. Thank you very much indeed. Thaxton, appreciate it.

Barbara, just a quick message at the end of this podcast, I'm currently sheltering in a small, windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundie. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material. You guys, in return, a little tiny favor to ask if you could go to get your podcasts, if you could give it a five star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review.

I really appreciate that. But from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favor. Then more people listen to the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.

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