The best SAS mission you’ve got by no means heard of – revealed finally | Books | Entertainment | EUROtoday

The “greatest SAS mission of World War Two” got here when Special Forces daredevils stole a practice and used it to interrupt right into a focus camp in southern Italy to free lots of of prisoners of struggle. This staggering feat of bravery and in-genuity was saved secret for 45 years and, in consequence, is little identified at the moment. As a mission, it signifies like no different the motto of the elite regiment, “Who Dares Wins,” and is instructed intimately in Damien Lewis’s new e book SAS the Great Train Raid, which is out now.

It reveals for the primary time the long-hidden aftermath of the raid deep into enemy territory in the course of the Allied invasion of Italy within the autumn of 1943 and the six months that adopted. The troopers of two SAS, led by Major Oswald Cary-Elwes, had been the primary intofascist Italy to clear the best way for landings at its southern ports by thrusting behind enemy strains to destroy rail tracks and cease the Nazis receiving provides and reinforcements.

At the identical time a Yugoslav prisoner referred to as Zelcko Ljubo escaped from Pisticci, a brutal internment camp established by Mussolini’s regime in 1939. It mirrored the Nazi demise camps and imprisoned Jews, resistance fighters,intellectuals and clergymen. When Zelcko reached the Allied strains he instructed them his camp commandant was making ready to switch Pisticci’s inmates to Nazi Germany on trains, successfully condemning them to demise.

So Maj Cary-Elwes and his deputy, fearless Franco-American Capt Robert Courard, devised the daring plan to hijack one of many trains and, with armed SAS troops and Zelcko as their information, drive it deep behind enemy strains to liberate the PoWs earlier than returning once more.

On September 15, 1943, they launched their assault on the camp and liberated 180 prisoners, many too weak to stroll, whereas others had been freed and instructed to cover within the hills till Allied forces arrived.

Other key figures within the mission that appropriately grew to become often called Operation Loco had been Lt Allister McGregor, whose troops referred to as him “The Boss”, and one among his squad, Trooper George Arnold, who was diminutive in stature at 5ft 5ins tall, however bigger than life in each different means.

They each took half within the practice raid and had been additionally a part of a later mission sanctioned by wartime chief Sir Winston Churchill to seek out escaped prisoners hiding within the hills of southern Italy and convey them to security. As they had been solely alleged to spend 10 days there, they weren’t outfitted with radios and had solely minimal rations and ammunition. They spent six months with no back-up rescuing lots of of individuals and discovering provides the place they might.

Tpr Arnold was the final British man out of Italy and had been presumed lifeless. His regiment thought he was a ghost when he walked again into his SAS base in Scotland. No medals had been awarded for the mission and it was solely in 1968 that it acquired a brief point out, with a cartoon of the practice raid within the Rover and Wizard Annual beneath the headline “Who Dares Wins”.

Pisticci was the primary focus camp the Allies found in the course of the struggle and it was saved secret as a result of fears of demonising the Germans and stopping them from surrendering.

Lewis says: “This mission would have been so sensitive, I cannot stress that enough, as it’s the first concentration camp the Allies came across. There’s no shadow of doubt there was a political decision made on high that we were not going to demonise the enemy and publicise the concentration camps because it would prolong the war.”

He provides: “That’s 80 years ago, so we can now tell the truth and I’m glad we can.” However, the mission had remained shrouded in thriller for thus lengthy that when Lewis began investigating, he discovered plenty of half-truths and misinformation. That is till destiny intervened and he was contacted by Joanne Hussey, 29 – the granddaughter of Tpr Arnold.

Her mom Debbie, 60, had purchased her husband Peter, 66, a duplicate of Damien’s earlier e book for his birthday. After seeing his e mail tackle on the again cowl, Joanne contacted him about her grandfather, who had written his memoirs about Italy however solely proven them to his household.

Damien says: “It’s been a very tough one to unpick. To be honest with you, until meeting Debbie and reading her father’s manuscript, it was tough.”

For Debbie, who lives within the New Forest, serving to to convey her dad’s involvement in Operation Loco to mild has been satisfying. He usually talked about his time within the struggle however solely shared that he had been on a practice with a prince in Italy, who was one of many PoWs free of Pisticci. Debbie says: “Dad was nearly 50 when I was born, so obviously he’d had a whole life before I came along, but he loved telling stories, particularly about the war.

“I guess he made some of them quite light-hearted, and this is something Irealised when I was married and my husband said Dad would tell these stories but Peter had no idea they were about the war.

“He did tell a story about being on a train and meeting a prince, but we had no idea he had stolen the train and that this was in occupied Italy.”

Her father had left faculty aged 14 to work as a shoemaker in Norwich earlier than enlisting aged 16 and becoming a member of a cavalry regiment posted to North Africa, which is the place he met Lt McGregor. They each joined the SAS in July 1943.

Debbie has fond recollections of marching to the wartime track It’s a Long Way to Tipperary along with her father in North Wales, the place she grew up.

He had few possessions from the struggle however one was a memoir masking his six months behind enemy strains in Italy, which she shared with Damien. It contained a scene the place Tpr Arnold was captured by the Nazis and, whereas being marched to the following village, acquired chatting to a German sergeant who was older than him and had studied regulation at Oxford.

Along the route the sergeant supplied him a cigarette and put his machine gun over his shoulder, permitting George to knee him within the groin and escape – with the next gunfire not precisely in his path. Debbie says he believed the opposite man allowed him to flee.

For Damien the memoir breathed life into his unfinished e book. He mentioned: “To my mind there’s only a few World War Two Special Forces’ books written by those who were there. That’s why we had to get it [the memoir] published.

“I think it’s the greatest SAS mission of World War Two. There’s no other in terms of audacity and daring and thinking the unthinkable and doing the unthinkable.All those things that the SAS became renowned for, nothing comes close. It’s the zenith of everything the unit was set up to epitomise.”

He provides: “What sets it apart after the train raid is that I’ve never come across individuals who are sent on a 10-day mission and end up six months behind enemy lines, literally living off the land and robbing and stealing from the bad guys, from the local fascists. It’s a level of freelance maverick operation that I don’t think there’s anything to compare with.”

After seeing one among his earlier books, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, tailored right into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Henry Cavill, Damien is adamant that The Great Train Raid deserves related therapy. “I can’t imagine that we’re not going to have some kind of film made about it,” he says. “It’s got to be.”

• SAS The Great Train Raid by Damien Lewis (Quercus, hardback £22) is out now. Click right here for particulars of his e book tour