Regiment : The Real Story of the SAS (9780141889436) by Asher Michael

Author:Asher, Michael [Asher, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141889436
Publisher: Penguin Books Uk Ltd
Published: 2018-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

59. ‘In the face of enemy machine-gun fire’

On the morning of 9 April 1945, Paddy Mayne’s signaller, David Danger, received an urgent wireless message. It came from Cpl. Eddie Ralphs, the man who had scragged nine Germans at Termoli with his Bren. Ralphs was pinned down in a ditch with other B Squadron men, and his OC, Major Dick Bond, had just been shot dead by a German sniper. ‘Paddy almost blew up,’ recalled Billy Hull, Royal Ulster Rifles, Mayne’s driver. ‘[He] just kept saying, “Poor Dick, poor Dick”.’1

They were crossing the flatlands of north Germany, wooded fens, criss-crossed with ditches and canals, that made tough going for their newly-armoured jeeps. Heading for the city of Oldenburg en route to the U-Boat docks at Wilhelmshaven, B and C Squadrons, 1 SAS, were pathfinding on the left flank of 4 Canadian Armoured Division, whose tanks were rumbling far behind. The SAS had taken over from an armoured recce squadron the previous day. For the German ops, they had left their SAS insignia behind. They were disguised in black berets with Royal Tank Regiment badges, and had even been issued with RTR paybooks. By now, the fate of the missing Bulbasket men was suspected, and the murder of the Garstin stick known from the survivors, Jones and Vaculik. The SAS knew what would happen to them if they were captured, and their identity revealed.

It was full daylight, and for the past few minutes the squadrons had been travelling in echelon, bunched closer together than they should have been. They had been hunting for a way across the next canal, and Dick Bond’s men had found a bridge intact at a village called Borgerwald. They hadn’t been expecting a contact. Briefing the SAS-men that morning, Intelligence Officer Major Mike Blackman had informed them that ‘there would be next to no opposition, except from the German equivalent of the Home Guard’.2 Most of the men were inexperienced newcomers, and regarded the job of supporting an armoured division as ‘a swan’. Derrick Harrison, with Tony Marsh’s C Squadron, knew it wasn’t real SAS work, but at least it was a job. ‘We were satisfied,’ he said, ‘if a little perturbed. Our “mechanised mess tins” were poor substitutes for the armoured cars we were relieving.’3

Mayne was aware that there could be German strongpoints on the road, and had warned the men to keep their eyes peeled. Many of the newcomers had never seen him in action, though, and considered him far gone in drink, and ‘over the hill’ at twenty-nine. Derrick Harrison surmised that there might be trouble from the Hitler Youth. Neither he nor Mayne knew they were up against their old foes from Termoli, the crack 1 Parachute Division.

Mayne stood up and scanned the landscape over the armoured farings that were now standard fittings on SAS jeeps. He could see the B Squadron vehicles halted at a crossroads at the bottom of the valley through which the canal ran. The road was a narrow track leading between a cluster of buildings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.