How our special forces escaped from the Nazis

WAR reporter turned author Damien Lewis was inspired to write about the stories of the SAS (Special Air Service), the British Army’s special forces unit, when he met veteran members while covering conflicts almost 25 years ago.

The 58-year-old father of three, who lives in Dorset, is coming to Henley Literary Festival, where he will talk about his latest book, SAS Great Escapes Three.

He says: “It’s really great to have these tales of the triumph of the human spirit coming at a time when the world is a troubled place and it’s great to read about these stories of overcoming impossible odds.

“People need to be uplifted, they need to believe that the impossible can happen.

“I was a war reporter for more than 20 years. I reported from all the difficult places you can imagine, Syria, the Balkans, Sudan, across Asia and South America as well and it was actually during my reporting years that I first came across special forces veterans.

“They often act as security for media teams and sometimes they train as cameramen because the skill sets are almost transferable.

“I was a cameraman shooting a lot of my own material, so it was from one of those guys that I first heard about a special forces operation.”

“It was a relatively modern-day one, it was the hostage rescue mission that took place in Sierra Leone in 2000.

“With his help and others, I wrote the book Operation Certain Death, which was the nickname the guys gave to the mission and that was a Sunday Times bestseller.

“I then wrote a couple more modern-day true elite forces stories but very quickly one is drawn back to the Second World War, because that’s where it all began. It’s really just bringing to life the origin story of how it all started.

“That’s where the alchemy was first cooked up and that’s where the magic, and this new way of soldiering, was perfected.”

As an organisation, the SAS appears to be shrouded in secrecy.

Officially founded in 1941, the SAS was disbanded at the end of the Second World War, but a year later it was decided that a Special Air Service unit should be reinstated.

Damien says that, initially, it was somewhat frowned upon by the old guard. “We, the British, pioneered this very innovative, irregular, maverick, daring form of warfare, which was actually deeply unpopular with most in British high command and many politicians at the start. They were not flavour of the month at all.

“It was just seen as being not cricket, it wasn’t how British operatives were supposed to behave and it wasn’t gentlemanly warfare.

“So many of these commanders had cut their eye teeth in the First World War and they still thought it was going to be like trench warfare.

“It took a very long time to adapt, because they also abhorred the egalitarian, freewheeling, empowering spirit of the SAS, the idea that no matter your rank, you could contribute to planning a mission.

“You would carry it out on your own if need be, even if you were only the lowliest private.

“These things were anathema to a high command British military, it cut against the very ethos of what the British military was about at the time.

“So, the more spectacularly successful the SAS were, particularly in North Africa, in the desert operations, the more unpopular they became, because they were proving the naysayers wrong.”

An award-winning journalist, Damien’s SAS series of books includes Zero Six Bravo, SAS Forged in Hell, SAS Brothers in Arms, SAS Bravo Three Zero, SAS Band of Brothers, SAS Shadow Raiders, SAS Italian Job and SAS Ghost Patrol.

Damien also wrote The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which was made into a film by Guy Ritchie, released in July.

In his latest book, Damien tells the story of Operation Galia, where 34 SAS fighters parachuted into Northern Italy during the Second World War, then successfully evaded 5,000 Nazi troops during blizzard conditions.

The stories include five of the most daring escapes carried out during the war.

“One of the greatest things that one comes across with this book and others that I’ve written is that I have families reach out to me with the unpublished accounts that their fathers or grandfathers have written,” says Damien.

“I’ve had that happen several times, and these have been blow-by-blow accounts of what they did during the war.

“They are absolutely amazing testaments which were written at some stage, usually reasonably quickly after the war, and then locked away in a cupboard for decades. That’s a really fantastic way of bringing these stories to life.

“They cover North Africa, Italy, France and Germany so it’s pretty widespread.

“As part of the nature of special forces operations, you are deploying in very small bands of individuals.

“Four men is often the norm, deep behind enemy lines, and obviously the chances of death and injury are high and so too are the chances of capture.

“Because of the ethos of the SAS, the onus upon you to escape is all-consuming because you have to get back to your brothers-in-arms and rejoin the fight.

“So, these kinds of operations make the most extraordinary escape stories, it comes with the territory.”

Damien has experienced life-threatening dangers in his work.

“I have been held prisoner myself by rebels in one or more countries and I have escaped from and been hunted by the military of a very nasty regime behind enemy lines over many weeks.

“So I have experience which I can draw on and I think that’s really important.

“In this world, it’s great to write about what you know and have experienced and what you intimately associate with because you’ve been there.

“I can bring that to the pages and that’s what I try to do.

“When I’m speaking to veterans, whether it might be Second World War veterans or more modern-day veterans, we can speak the same language because we’ve got the same reference points. So I hope that veracity and authenticity cries out of these pages.”

• Damien Lewis is at Henley town hall for Henley Literary Festival today (Friday, October 4) at 3pm. For more information and to buy tickets, call (01491) 575948 or visit www.henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk