Behind Enemy Lines: Damien Lewis (1944)
Damien Lewis, author of SAS: Band of Brothers
On 6 June 1944, the allied armies successfully executed Operation Overlord: the seaborne invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. We are familiar with the stories of the landing beaches in Normandy. We know less about the covert series of special forces operations that happened in the crucial weeks that followed.
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In this tense and dramatic episode of Travels Through Time, the Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author Damien Lewis takes us back to the scenes of two such missions. They were undertaken by SABU-70, a twelve-man, elite unit of the SAS. As Lewis explains, these operations were uncertain and fraught with danger. In Britain there was already good evidence that the Nazis were not abiding by the established conventions of war, and that they were ready to execute covert operatives if they were caught.
This intelligence did not impact the British strategy. Ever since Dunkirk and the evacuations of 1940, Winston Churchill had pioneered the use of special forces. Central to this was the newly-founded Special Air Service (SAS). This unit was established in 1941 and by 1943 it was under the command of the imposing, former rugby international, Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne.
It took barely a second for each man to make the jump, plummeting through the Stirling’s slipstream and dropping like stones. Within moments their chutes bloomed silver above them, catching the air with a sharp snag, swinging back and forth like pendulums. Ghostly apparitions, twelve figures dangled from domed stretches of quilted silk, laced in tight formation across the moonlit sky. It looked to have been a perfect jump, to follow a perfect flight.
(Damien Lewis on the start of a SABU-70 mission)
Those who volunteered to serve in the SAS was often in their early twenties. As Lewis describes, they were a hugely brave, effervescent and determined ‘band of brothers’, who came from an array of different backgrounds.
Leading SABU-70 was an Irishman, Captain Patrick Garstin. Garstin is described by Lewis as ‘a man of incredible fortitude, leadership ability, decency and courage.’ He was joined by others like the ex-Wigan miner, Thomas ‘Ginger’ Jones and Serge Vaculik, an extraordinary character who had escaped continental Europe to join the fight against the Nazis.
In June 1944 these soldiers and the rest of their unit (or ‘stick’), in their red berets and jump smocks, were deployed far behind enemy lines in occupied France. The plan was for them to parachute into a drop zone where they would begin the work of military sabotage.
SABU-70’s fate over the weeks that followed oscillated between spectacular success and utter disaster. But overall their story, told here on the eve of Remembrance Day, is one of great courage. A report from the time would conclude that the work they did ‘succeeded in delaying the departure of two SS divisions [for Normandy] for over a week.’
Such a judgment shows how vital their work was in tilting the war in the Allies’ favour in the summer of 1944.
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Show notes
Scene One: June 1944, France, a drop-zone twenty miles to the south of Paris with SABU-70.
Scene Two: July 1944, France, La Ferte Alais drop zone with SABU-70, just east of Etampes airbase, south of Paris.
Scene Three: August 1944: Noailles, a dark patch of remote woodland to the north of Paris.
Memento: Lt John H. Weihe’s SAS beret.
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Damien Lewis
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Map of France, 1944 with scenes
Background image source: Library of Congress
People who feature in this episode
More about the scenes
Scene One
June 1944, France, a drop-zone twenty miles to the south of Paris. Night. 12 SAS under the command of Captain Patrick Garstin MC parachute from a four-engine Sterling bomber into a moonlit cornfield, armed to the teeth and laden-down with explosives. Their mission: to blow to pieces a nearby railway line, and the locomotive pulling wagon-loads of German tanks towards the D-Day beach-heads, in Normandy, as the forces of Nazi Germany try to drive the Allies back into the sea. The challenge: to find out exactly when that train will come steaming through, to properly time the ambush. So fluent French speaker Corporal Serge Vaculik must set out for the nearby town of Dourdan, to gather vital intelligence – disguised as a local Frenchman to escape capture.
Scene Two
July 1944, France, La Ferte Alais drop zone, just east of Etampes airbase, south of Paris. Captain Garstin’s 12-man team are parachiuted back into France, after a dramatic and spectacularly successful first sabotage mission, this time charged to blow to smithereens the enemy (Luftwaffe) airbase at Etampes – the place from where they were pulled out by a daring RAF rescue, just days earlier. However, this time the drop-zone is far from deserted. Due to deception and betrayal – the Gestapo’s Funkspiel; radio-games – a Gestapo and Waffen SS ambush force has surrounded the cornfield. A savage firefight ensues, and nine of Garstin’s men are killed, wounded or captured unhurt, many fighting to the last round. Three escape. The rest are dispatched north to Paris, to the notorious gestapo HQ at 84 Avenue Foch.
Scene Three
August 1944: Noailles, a dark patch of remote woodland to the north of Paris. Juist prior to dawn. A German military truck and staff car pull to a halt. Menaced by a heavily-armed guard force of SS and Gestapo, Captain Patrick Garstin and six of his SAS men are marched into the trees. Garstin, severely wounded, can barely walk. As the men are lined up before the enemy’s guns, Garstin realises all talk of a prisoner exchange has been lies. They are here to be executed. Under his breath, he urges the rest to try to break free, as he stands firm to take the fire. An execution order from Hitler is read out, before figures break free in an effort to escape and the gunmen open fire … Two will escape, and their quest to bring the killers to justice will last through to 1947, and one of the most remarkable Nazi-hunting operations ever.
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