SAS Great Escapes by Damien Lewis

Author:Damien Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Editions Ltd
Published: 2021-04-29T09:42:06+00:00

After a short period of rest and recuperation, Langton rejoined the SAS and became commander of the HQ Squadron, where he served throughout the D-Day landings and until war’s end. His wartime exploits are perhaps best summed up by his Jesus College Boat Club History entry: ‘T. B. Langton, twice Head of the River, twice a rowing blue and President of the CUBC, was the hero of an epic escape across the African Desert to Alamein.’

Hillman was also awarded a Military Cross for his part in the Tobruk raid and subsequent escape. In his MC citation, penned by Langton, he was listed simply as a member of the SAS. The citation ends with a telling note: ‘No details of the above operation may be published owing to their secrecy and the fact that Pte Hillman was dressed in German uniform.’ Hillman went on to have a long and distinguished career with the SAS, winning a Military Medal on future operations behind enemy lines.

Five days after Langton and Hillman’s return to Allied lines, Lieutenant David Russell – second-in-command of the SIG – also stumbled out of the desert, after his own incredible escape. He too was recommended for an immediate Military Cross, the citation stressing how his ‘escape was eventually carried out in the face of enemy opposition and under extreme hardship’, in ‘circumstances of extreme danger and difficulty’.

The commander of the SIG, Captain Herbert Buck, though wounded in the Tobruk raid, had attempted to steal a vehicle and bluff his way out again, along with others of the raiding party. Captured after days on the run, Buck was sent to POW camps in Italy, where, typically, he became a serial escapee. Despatched to a high-security camp in Germany, Buck established a fencing club and ran Highland dancing classes, before being freed upon the camp’s liberation by Allied forces. Returning to Britain, Buck was slated for SAS operations in the Far East but was tragically killed when a Liberator aircraft carrying him crashed shortly after take-off from Britain.

At the end of the war Langton and Evans – the dysentery-ridden escapee they had been forced to leave at the roadside – were reunited, when Evans returned to England, his health fully restored, despite the long months spent in POW camps. Lieutenant Barlow – the artillery officer they had lost contact with, while slipping out of the Tobruk defences – was sadly never found and presumed killed in action at Tobruk.

During Langton and party’s extraordinary escape march, the tide had turned in the battle for North Africa, and perhaps the wider war. After Rommel’s defeat by the Eighth Army at El Alamein, Winston Churchill would remark: ‘Before Alamein we never had victory. After Alamein we never had defeat.’ As the fighting across Egypt, Libya and Tunisia ended, the SAS’s unique abilities, forged in the fires of the Sahara, evolved to suit new theatres of war. The conflict in Europe brought with it fresh challenges, but whenever and wherever the men of the SAS found themselves captured, the burning desire to escape was always at the forefront of their minds.

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