On 6 April B and C Squadrons of 1SAS prepared to depart Hylands House for Tilbury Docks on their final operation of the war in Europe. Rumours were already circulating that the SAS Brigade would soon be on its way to the Far East so there was little sense that peace was only weeks away. ‘In the morning we all lined up outside Hylands and helped ourselves to this big breakfast all laid out on tables,’ recalled Bob Lowson.1
Three days later the force was laagered just south of the German town of Meppen, listening to their commanding officer, Paddy Mayne. They were about to embark on Operation Howard, the objective of which was to act as the eyes and ears of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division as they penetrated into northern Germany in the direction of the medieval city of Oldenburg. Nobody liked the idea of the mission, not Mayne nor his men. ‘It was awkward operation, a little bit foolish really,’ said Sid Payne. ‘We were supposed to be accompanying the Canadian armoured brigade but we couldn’t see them as there was some distance between us. We were also too lightly armed for the task.’2
On 10 April the two squadrons set off on the road to Oldenburg. Tony Marsh led C Squadron while B Squadron was commanded by Major Dick Bond, recruited from the Auxiliary Units in 1944. Having crossed the river Hase they drove north towards the village of Borger. Mayne was travelling with C Squadron with David Danger sitting in the back of the jeep with his radio. Also in the jeep was a gramophone and loudspeaker. ‘Paddy had the idea that he was going to harangue the German forces through this loudspeaker and call on them to surrender,’ remembered Danger. ‘I was to operate this thing and play some of Paddy’s Irish records that he’d also brought along.’3
Before Mayne had had time to rig up his gramophone, Danger received a message over his radio reporting that B Squadron had been ambushed and Major Bond was dead. ‘Paddy asked what was happening,’ recalled Danger, ‘and when I told him he threw me off the jeep and set off down the road.’
Mayne arrived at the scene of the ambush to discover that Bond was dead, as was his driver, and several men were trapped in a ditch with the Germans taking pot shots at them from their concealed positions. One of the trapped SAS men was Albert Youngman: ‘We’d been patrolling up a road when we came under heavy gunfire,’ he said. ‘We baled out into a ditch to make our way back to the column but as we crawled along the ditch we found we were trapped by a drainage pipe.’4
From their concealed position back down the road, Mayne was briefed on what had happened; the three jeeps had come under fire from the woods to their right and the L-shaped farm buildings in front. Major Bond had tried to reach his stranded men by crawling up the ditch to the left of the road, but a sniper shot him dead as he climbed over the drainage pipe. His driver, a Czech Jew called Mikhael Levinsohn, had met a similar fate in attempting to squeeze through the pipe. ‘He was small and I thought he would be able to climb through the drainage pipe,’ Lieutenant John Scott told Mayne. Mayne’s reaction was to mutter ‘Poor Dick, poor Dick.’5
Bond was one of the cartel of privileged officers who had arrived at the SAS from the Auxiliary Units and it was felt by some of the more experienced NCOs that they lacked the requisite temperament for SAS operations. ‘I did some patrols with Bond and [Captain Tim] Iredale when we were in France and Iredale kept on saying “Ossy, we’re off to see the wizard”,’ recalled Bob Lowson. ‘They didn’t know what they were talking about… Bond ran into trouble because he didn’t realise if you hit the bloody ditch and stay there you’re done for. You’ve got to get your weapons into action. You had to seize the initiative, get in first.’
Mayne assessed the situation in a matter of seconds and then swung into action. Sprinting across the field to the nearest of the three farm buildings (which had been strafed by Scott’s Vickers a short while earlier), Mayne checked to make sure it was free of Germans and surmised the sniper had withdrawn to one of the other buildings. He returned to his jeep, removed a Bren gun and several spare magazines, and signalled for Billy Hull to follow. The pair doubled back to the first of the farm buildings and Mayne instructed Hull to slip upstairs and open fire from a top floor window with his Tommy gun. Mayne, meanwhile, crept round the side of the building and readied himself for Hull’s salvo.
Hull fired a long burst into the second building and drew the fire of the German sniper, just as Mayne anticipated. As the German prepared to take aim Mayne stepped out from the building and killed him with his Bren gun. The Germans hidden in the wood opened up with Panzerfausts and small arms but Mayne and Hull withdrew without further incident.
Mayne now asked for a volunteer, and John Scott stepped forward. A year earlier Scott had been commissioned in the field having already won the Military Medal, and now he wished to make amends for the guilt he felt at ordering Levinsohn into the ditch.
With Mayne at the wheel, the jeep roared down the road towards the stranded men. Lieutenant Scott stood in the back, pummelling the woods with the twin Vickers oblivious to the German fire coming his way. Mayne slowed briefly as he passed Youngman and the others, yelled ‘I’ll pick you up on the way back’ and continued down the road. Mayne swung the jeep round when they reached the crossroads and came tearing back with Scott still pouring fire into the woods. Twice more the jeep drove up and down the road until finally the enemy fire subsided. Satisfied that the woods no longer posed a threat, Mayne braked by the ditch and hauled on board his wounded and bewildered men. He was later recommended for a Victoria Cross but this was downgraded to a Distinguished Service Order, his fourth of the war.
The SAS pressed on the following day, having buried Bond and Levinsohn three miles from where they had died. C Squadron passed through the village of Esterwegen and picked their way across some flooded woodland. That afternoon they reached the outskirts of Friesoythe, 35 miles west of Bremen, and ran into another ambush on another narrow country road. Mortar bombs began dropping on the lead vehicles; some were able to swing round and get out of harm’s way, one or two were hit sending their occupants diving into the flooded ditches. The jeeps at the rear of the column raced to assist their comrades. ‘I began laying down fire with my Browning,’ recalled Bob Lowson, ‘and as I did so I could see all these soaking wet figures emerging from the ditch. Tony Marsh being one of them.’
Alerted by the mortar attack, B Squadron, to the rear of C Squadron, decided it was too risky to drive to their aid. Alighting from their jeeps, the SAS men began moving through the flooded fields on foot. Lieutenant Gordon Davidson led his eight-man section (including his section sergeant Albert Youngman) towards the ambush unaware that their assailants weren’t old men or callow youths, but the 7th German Parachute Division, deployed with the specific aim of repelling the Allied advance. ‘We reached the ditch and prepared to cross the road when a German motorised column of at least ten vehicles appeared a hundred yards away,’ recalled Davidson. ‘The Germans dismounted rapidly from their transport and in a few minutes we were surrounded. In the ditch I could only see a Schmeisser before and behind me. No point in arguing.’6
Youngman said he and his seven comrades were made to sit on top of an ammunition wagon as they were driven into captivity. ‘The idea was to deter our own troops from attacking the convoy but as we drove along I saw a jeep come out of a wood, turn and I thought, “That’s Paddy and we’re in the shit”.’ Mayne opened fire but to his men’s relief missed the ammunition wagon.
It had been a costly attack for the SAS; as well as the men taken prisoner, the enemy had also captured four jeeps and destroyed a further two. That evening they laagered in a forest as they waited for the approach of the 4th Armoured Division, kept alert by the occasional German sniper hidden somewhere in the trees. The next morning the Canadians appeared and Mayne withdrew his men south to a village quiet enough in which to brew up and scrounge food. Bob Lowson was just making himself comfortable when he was ordered by Bob Lilley to take his jeep back into the forest to hunt for a missing SAS trooper.
Lowson set off with his driver, Andy Coutts, and Sergeant Major Nobby Clarke and Sam Cooper of B Squadron who had decided to offer their support. Clarke’s jeep led them down the forest track and into the dense mass of conifers. ‘I was in the front passenger seat listening to “Dufflebag”, the GI request show, on the radio when we came under fire,’ recalled Lowson.
The sniper’s first bullet missed but his second hit Cooper in the head. Clarke was shot in the leg as he tried to pull his dead driver into cover. Coutts scrambled out of the driver’s seat and threw himself down the embankment. Lowson followed but was shot in the thigh as he leapt clear of the jeep. ‘I slid down this bank and pulled my trousers down,’ recalled Lowson. ‘There was this bloody great hole in my leg and another one on the other side where the bullet had exited.’ He plugged the hole with his field dressing and Coutts offered him his to stem the blood. Coutts then helped Clarke back along the embankment, promising Lowson he’d be back with reinforcements. Lowson remained hidden from the sniper but fearful nonetheless that the Germans might come to finish the job. ‘I knew what the Germans did to captured SAS men and I didn’t fancy that much,’ reflected Lowson.
Lowson was rescued a short while later and left in the hands of a Canadian field hospital, whose first act was to give him a pint pot full of rum and a cigarette.
Meanwhile, Gordon Davidson and his men were handed over to the SS not long after their capture, and removed to a farmhouse for questioning. ‘The interrogator was not so much a Nazi bully boy as a mini-Himmler,’ remembered Davidson. ‘Behind the starkly, simple interrogation table sat a small uniformed figure, sallow faced with sharp malevolent eyes lurking behind rimless steel-framed glasses. He exuded menace.’
Youngman was beaten by some of SS soldiers, and then thrown in a pigsty with the rest of the SAS soldiers. The ‘mini-Himmler’ reappeared again to inform his prisoners that he’d decided to have them shot in the morning. That night, however, the Allies advanced from the west and the SS were ordered up to the front line. In their place was a unit of the Volkssturm, the German Home Guard, who marched the SAS men east while they kept pace on their bicycles. For the next week they headed further into Germany, subsisting on dry bread and brackish water, and being subjected to the occasional beating from vengeful inhabitants of villages they passed through. On 16 April they were herded into Stalag XB near Sandbostel (approximately 60 miles north-east of where they had been captured), a POW camp containing mostly Frenchmen and Eastern European soldiers. ‘After a couple of days the Gestapo turned up,’ recalled Youngman. ‘They were threatening us again so me and Davidson decided if we’re going to be killed we might as well be killed trying to escape.’
Leaving behind the rest of their section who preferred to remain as POWs, Davidson and Youngman were smuggled out of the camp by some French prisoners engaged on a working party at a nearby farm. The pair split from the French and headed west in the direction of the advancing Allies. ‘A mile or two from the camp, the heady sensation of freedom soon gave way to fear,’ recalled Davidson. ‘We were in enemy territory, in incomplete disguise, not armed and vulnerable to any gang of thugs roaming the countryside at that time. The best plan was to get off the autobahn, make for the shelter of woods and move under cover of night towards the sound of heavy gunfire.’
For three days and nights Davidson and Youngman edged cautiously towards the gathering sound of battle. Then, just after dawn on 25 April, as they walked down a winding forest road, Youngman heard the crisp tones of the ‘Home Service on the radio’. They rounded the bend and there was the Guards Armoured Brigade having breakfast.
The rest of B and C Squadron, meanwhile, were on their way towards Westerscheps, a few miles west of Oldenburg. ‘Just before we got into Oldenburg we ran into this village and there wasn’t a bloody soul around,’ recalled Bob McDougall, a Liverpudlian in C Squadron. ‘It was just after first light when we pulled up and the next thing this little kid came out, and all he had on was a little jersey, no shoes, nothing else. And one of the section, a fellow called Finch, picked this kid up and brought him over. He put a blanket over him and pulled out a bar of chocolate and gave it to the kid. You never saw a face light up, and within a few minutes Finch had this kid laughing and there was chocolate all over his face. So Finch went round collecting chocolate for the kid.’7
That was one of the few bright moments in an otherwise grim few days. On 29 April Trooper Tom Kent stood on a mine and, after he had died slowly from wounds, Paddy Mayne sent a signal to Harry Poat waiting to lead A and D Squadrons across the river Elbe and up towards the Baltic Sea port of Lubeck. ‘Squadron now plodding along through bog and rain on their feet. Tpr. Kent killed by mine. Nobody very happy.’8
Mayne’s disquiet was exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding not just the regiment’s future but his own. News of David Stirling’s release from captivity had been radioed to 1 and 2SAS on 20 April, and the following day came a second despatch from England: ‘David Stirling in great heart sends many messages and congratulations to all, and hopes to come out and visit you soon.’9
Mayne had led 1SAS for two-and-a-half years and now faced the prospect of handing over command to Stirling. But the more immediate problem confronting Mayne was what to do with the SAS Brigade once they had finished mopping up the last vestiges of German resistance. On 27 April Mike Calvert – who had taken over command of the SAS Brigade from Roderick McLeod in March – sent a message to Mayne and Franks in which he raised the possibility of a deployment to Denmark: ‘Resistance and ground reception very well organised and country suitable for concealment and jeeping between woods.’10
Evidently Mayne had earlier voiced his concerns to Calvert about the possibility that the SAS might be misused by SHAEF for the Brigadier appended a second message specifically to the Irishman. ‘Understand your worries. You are quite right to raise them… Hope can put you on good wicket soon as possible.’ The crossing of the river Elbe began, as far as the SAS was concerned, at 1500 hours on Sunday 29 April. In the preceding week 2SAS had been bolstered by the arrival of 118 men of the regiment under the command of Major Grant Hibbert. They had driven up from Arnhem after their initial operation – Keystone – had been cancelled by the Brigade. The aim of Keystone, planned in conjunction with a French SAS mission, had been to capture seven bridges over the Apeldoorn Canal in Holland but bad weather prevented the French from dropping and so instead Hibbert and his men motored north to link up with the rest of 2SAS.
Hibbert led the regiment across the Elbe in the face of what Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery later described as ‘generally light’ opposition. The biggest shock was the sight – and sound – of the German jet fighters overhead. These were Me 262s which could reach maximum speed of 500mph. ‘We got over the river more or less unscathed,’ remembered Charlie Hackney, ‘but as we were making for the woods on the other side we got caught by some airburst shells, which were nasty things that sent out a shower of red hot shrapnel. I was going hell for leather for the trees when suddenly the jeep in front stopped. As I came level I saw Bobby Boxall slumped dead over the wheel.’11
Operation Archway’s report had little to say after the Elbe had been crossed. Hitler was dead, Berlin had fallen and everyone just wanted to go home. On 3 May the report stated:
Force HQ moved to Luttjensee and subsequently to Gross Handsdorf. Major Poat’s 1st SAS Squadron reached Lubeck and moved on to Kiel with 30th Assault Unit.
Frankforce embarked for UK on 10th May.12
Paddy Mayne’s men were north of Oldenburg shortly before the armistice was signed. After the death of Tom Kent the regiment was being extra vigilant with a ceasefire so tantalisingly near. ‘I’d been sitting in a ditch watching a farmhouse where Germans soldiers were walking around,’ recalled Bob Francis. ‘We could have done them quite easily but it all seemed too late in the day; I didn’t want to hurt anybody and I certainly didn’t want to get hurt. The war all sort of fizzled out.’13
