The SAS or the Special Air Service is one of the most secretive but effective units
of the British Army.
It has a long history and was founded during the Second World War, and today helps in a
number of ways for example counter terrorism or hostage rescue.
But the group began under the idea of David Sterling, who formed initially L Detachment
and he recruited only the best to serve in his group.
It began life as a commando force that would operate behind enemy lines in North Africa
during World War 2, and was initially made up of 5 officers and 60 other ranking members.
The first mission was a parachute drop in November 1941 to support Operation Crusaders,
but the mission was a complete disaster at the time.
However the second mission went much better, and they attacked 3 airfields in Libya and
destroyed around 60 planes despite the loss of only 2 men.
But the Germans during the war greatly feared enemy commandos such as the SAS, and Hitler
issued a decree that any of these captured should be executed immediately and shot dead.
There were two operations in particular conducted by the SAS during World War 2 that resulted
in the executions of a number of executions of the members of the Special Air Service.
Join us today as we look at the BRUTAL Executions of the captured SAS soldiers of World War
2.
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The first operation we will look at is Operation Bulbasket, which was conducted by B Squadron
of the 1st SAS.
The plan was fore the men to be operate behind enemy lines in occupied France between June
and August 1944, east of Poitiers.
The plan was to block the Paris to Bordeaux railway line near the town and to prevent
German reinforcements heading towards the normandy beaches following D-Day and the Normandy
landings, and in particular they wanted to halt the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.
It would be carried out alongside Operation Houndsworth in the area of Dijon, and intelligence
experts believed it would take the Panzer Division 3 days to reach Normandy.
The officer in charge of B Squadron was Captain John Tonkin, and Second Leftenant Richard
Crisp was acting as the second in command.
The pair were briefed on their objectives, and were told that secret agents in France
would help them also.
A group of soldiers in an advance party including Captain Tonkin were taken by Handley Page
Halifax to France and were dropped.
Their drop zone was an area of marshland, and they reached this at 1:37 am on the early
hours of the 6th June, a number of hours before the D-Day landings began and the allied forces
began their assault on Normandy.
There was some distrust inside of the group, but the following morning the advance team
met with their SOE contact who was part of the local armed French resistance.
They agreed that Operation Bulbasket would work in the west of the Vienne Department
near to Poitier, and other resisters would work in the East.
The aim was to delay reinforcements reaching Normandy, and as mentioned the 2nd SS Panzer
Division Das Reich who it was aimed to halt had around 15000 men, and 1400 vehicles including
some of the most feared German tanks.
They began their journey to normandy on the 8th June, and on the 7th more SAS soldiers
were parachuted in, and a second drop occurred on the 11th.
Jeeps armed with Vickers K machine guns were dropped also, and when they were on the ground
the SAS then began to prevent reinforcements heading to Normandy.
They set to work destroying railways and also placed land minds, and even patrolled in their
jeeps.
The men heard of 11 petrol tanks based nearby, and one Leftenant Tomos Stephens embarked
on a 75 mile round trip by bicycle to confirm the location of the petrol train.
He noticed it was heavily guarded, and then an air attack was launched and 12 RAF Mosquito’s
destroyed it later on.
The SAS men regularly moved bases and locations, but the German SS Security police had been
informed where the SAS were based in a forest near to Verrieres.
On the 1st July 1944 they sent agents into the forest to try to locate the camp, and
they gathered an assault force.
The DAS then tried to find a new camp, and the force in the forest camp was made up of
40 SAS men.
The Germans attacked at dawn, and within a few hours the SAS men had been defeated.
They tried to break out of the forest, and a group of 34 of them were ambushed and them
captured.
The leader of this group, Leftenant Tomos Stephens was set upon by German officers,
and was beaten to death by one of them with his rifle butt.
7 Captured members of the French resistance were also then shot dead inside the woods
and their bodies were left there.
But the fate of the arrested members of the SAS was sealed as Hitler had issued the commando
order, stating that enemy commandos should be shot dead immediately without a trial.
Captain Tonkin had managed to evade capture, and he set time pencils in the supplies which
later detonated and killed a number of Germans.
On the 7th July 1944, the SAS prisoners were taken in lorries to the forest of Saint Savant
near to the village of Rom.
They were all to be shot dead according to the Commando order, and the men were then
forced to line up inside the forest.
Each one of them was then shot dead, and their bodies were left and dumped inside of the
forest.
The German Army and the SS argued over who should carry out the execution, but it was
the Wehrmacht who were given the go ahead to kill the SAS members.
The men had been forced to dig their own graves before they were shot by the firing squad
at dawn.
Their bodies were buried in 3 separate graves.
But there were 3 other SAS members who had been wounded in their capture, and these were
then executed using lethal injection inside of hospital.
In total, 34 members of the SAS were executed in this failed operation, along with a downed
American pilot and 7 members of the French Resistance.
The bodies of the men were discovered inside the forest, and a number of the bodies were
still wearing allied uniforms and contained the dog tags that said they were part of Operation
Bulbasket.
This was of course a huge set back for the SAS.
But int he following months there was another operation conducted by the SAS that resulted
in mass execution.
Operation Loyton was planned between the 12th August and the 9th October 1944, and the men
were to be parachuted into the Vosges Mountains.
This area is in north eastern France and close to the German border.
The American Third Army were heading towards this area, but a small SAS advance party was
parachuted into the area commanded by Captain Henry Druce.
The drop zone was in a very wooded area around 40 miles west of Strasbourg, and the plan
was to contact local French resistance fighters, and to carry out recon in the area and to
find targets to locate, as well as a suitable drop zone for the main SAS attack force.
This came 18 days later on the 30th August, and the landing did not go too well.
A parachute equipment container that was full with ammo inside blew up when it hit the ground,
and a resistance members died when trying to move the parachute containers.
He apparently thought plastic explosive was in fact cheese.
A man who was loitering in the woods was also detained after he was caught picking mushrooms,
and in this the man managed to grab a Sten gun and he was then shot trying to escape.
But the next day the SAS began patrolling and setting up observation posts, however
the Germans knew where they were and they had been betrayed.
There were many more Germans in the area than they believed, and 5000 German soldiers were
advancing towards the SAS base camp.
The SAS were then involved in a number of firefights with Germans, and the Wehrmacht
believed there was a bigger enemy force there than there was.
Jeeps armed with machine guns were then parachuted in, and the Jeep patrols attacked German road
convoys and staff cars, and they went on the aggressive.
A patrol under Captain Druce’s command then entered the town of Moussey and attacked German
soldiers, but the enemy could not find the SAS base.
To find out information, they rounded up the local French people and they arrested 210
men between the ages of 16 and 50.
They were interrogated and were then sent to concentration camps, and only 70 ever returned
with the rest dying inside the camps, or never emerging.
The plan was for the Americans to eventually relieve the SAS, and the operation which was
now over two months in length was beginning to be wound down.
However there was a significant degree of SAS men who had gone missing during the operation,
and it’s believed were captured.
The SAS had been ordered to split up into small groups and head towards Allied lines
40 miles away.
One patrol was ambushed and killed by the wafer SS, but 34 other men failed to make
it back to relative safety.
Following the end of the war investigations occurred to find the whereabouts of the missing
SAS men, and it was known that many of them had been killed.
The SAS had been disbanded in October 1945, but the authorities looked into what happened
during Operation Loyton.
They knew of the commando order, and the French gave over information that the bodies of a
number of SAS soldiers had been found
It was found that 30 SAS men had been executed by the SD and a number of them had been taken
to a concentration camp and killed there.
Erich Isselhorst the leader of the Nazi police in Strasbourg was executed for his involvement
in the killings, and it’s believed he was involved in the executions of the French resistance
fighters and also the SAS soldiers.
He ordered the executions of the captured SAS members, and with this the prisoners had
been taken to the banks of the River Rhine on trucks on the 21st November 1944.
The leader of the firing squads was Karl Beck, and he believed it was stupid to leave a mass
grave of allied soldiers close to the front line.
The prisoners were kept in a jail and were then taken to a local forest, where they were
then shot in groups of three by a firing squad inside a bomb crater.
They were killed by gunshot to the head, and with this the dozens of SAS men were killed
in this way.
The two operations of the SAS showed how dangerous the Nazis and the Germans viewed the detachment
of soldiers.
The Commando order which told Germans what to do with them was an illegal order, and
more executions of British commandos took place.
Following both of the operations scores of British soldiers were illegally executed,
and their stories today are relatively and untold part of the Second World War.
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