Damien Lewis
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And he sticks to it no matter what they do to him.
And so eventually they believe him.
And so they put him on a train and they send him north to Germany to a POW camp.
And that is just the start of a series of the most incredible stakes by Horace Stokes, which end up with him in 1945.
breaking out of the prison of war camp he's in with two other individuals, stealing a German staff car, writing on the side of the staff car, daubing in paint, escaped Allied prisoners of war and driving that staff car to the American lines, because the Americans were approaching and finally getting back to Allied lines.
So the SAS, our two SAS are sent ashore at the forefront of the Taranto landings, Operation Slapstick.
So they're there to seize this incredibly important Italian port of Taranto, which they do.
and all the airborne and other forces come ashore.
Then they're acting as pathfinders, pushing routes out from Taranto and going up against the German parachute regiment, which are in defense there.
And then, and of course, these are not typical SAS operations.
And then something happens, which is really rather surprising.
They're in.
They've actually seized Chiatona railway station just to the west of Toronto.
They've made that their base.
And then out of no man's land comes this individual.
And he says, my name is Zelko and I am an escaped Yugoslav partisan.
And they're thinking, OK, where have you escaped from?
Why are you here?
And he says, well, I've escaped from Pistissi concentration camp.
And I've come because they're about to ship all the inmates north to Nazi Germany.