Chapter 1: What extraordinary mission of the SAS is explored in this episode?
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We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. One of the most elite fighting forces ever assembled. The Special Air Service, the SAS. These were not ordinary soldiers.
Handpicked, highly trained, mavericks. They were deployed where the risks were greatest and the margins for error were razor thin. And the story at the heart of today's episode... It might be the most extraordinary mission of World War II. We are joined by the best-selling historian, author Damien Lewis, to talk about his book, The Great Train Raid, which uncovers a forgotten wartime mission.
The hijacking of a pirate train. Yes, a pirate train, which the SAS would use to launch a surprise raid on an Italian concentration camp. Today, we're going to get into exactly what happened that day and how only the SAS could have pulled it off. Enjoy. Damien, great to have you back on the podcast. How are you doing?
Brilliant, Dan. Brilliant. So good to be here again.
I mean, I don't know how you keep finding these stories. The SAS, the wartime SAS is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? It's just extraordinary what this unit gets up to. What do you think it was about war at this time, and indeed in the 20th century and into our own day, that made this unit, well, made it so effective?
Dan, you know, we founded Special Forces Soldering in World War II, and these men were charged to do the unthinkable. In fact, they were charged to think the unthinkable in terms of ways to attack the enemy and then to put that into operation. Because if you can think of an unthinkable way to attack the enemy, by default, the enemy will never have conceived of it. That's the beauty of it.
So these were maverick lateral thinkers, piratical individuals, and that's exactly what they proceeded to do. It's one of the reasons why they were so unpopular, because they were doing things in a completely different way. Now, what does that mean? It means that they, that legacy, that model upon which all special forces now are founded, bear in mind,
When the US wanted to make Delta Force, which is their nearest equivalent to the SAS, what did they do? They got their two guys and put them through SAS selection in the Brecon Beacons to learn how to do it. Bucky Burrus, who's a good friend of mine, is one of the first people to have done it. So they then went back to America and founded Delta Force.
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Chapter 2: How did the SAS hijack a train for a humanitarian mission?
So that means the necessity is the mother of all invention. But he said, two, don't think we don't look at what happened in World War II and take examples from that and adapt them for the present day.
That's amazing. Fascinating stuff. Let's go back to World War II now. You've mentioned David Serling. You've mentioned Paddy Mayne. Many people who have listened to this podcast will have heard you on previous episodes. Let's just quickly rehearse. The SAS emerges, although, as you've shown, it's very kind of murky beginnings and there's different traditions and strains.
But roughly speaking, the SAS, as we understand it, emerges in North Africa. There's a couple of visionaries. Just very quickly give us the genesis and then let's get on some of the some of the rates that you want to highlight in your latest work.
Yeah, so very quickly, Special Air Service. June 1940, Churchill, aftermath of Dunkirk, calls for thousands of commandos to be raided, a new way of waging warfare. And cascading down from that in the North African desert in the summer of 1941, David Sterling, tall guards officer, commando trained, puts forward this idea for a raiding force in the North African desert.
Really, really, really simple idea. just beautiful in its simplicity. You know, North Africa, the war's being waged along the coastal strip. That's just where everybody fights because no one believes you can navigate or survive in the Sahara Desert. So David Sterling says, well, why don't we learn how to navigate and survive in the Sahara Desert? Then we can go.
thousands of kilometers behind enemy lines and attack the enemy in a way that they would never conceive of as being possible. That is the genesis of the idea of the SAS. So the 62-odd originals that he recruited included obviously himself, then there was John Lewis, who was one of the visionary founders of SAS Selection.
but then also Blair Paddy Main, the Northern Irishman, who was brought in initially as their PT, physical training specialist, because he was an Irish and British and Irish Lions rugby international, also the University of Ireland heavyweight boxing champion, just a stunning sportsman. So obviously he was brought in as the PT officer, but interestingly,
Main was also made by Sterling, the discipline officer of the SAS. He was the man charged to keep discipline. And Paddy Main had a very good idea of how you keep discipline. He said to the guys, listen, you do anything wrong, you come and tell me. There'll be no paperwork. There'll be no stain on your record.
All you have to do is stand as many rounds as you can stand with me in the boxing ring at that training base in North Africa. And we will call it quits. But he said, because he was an Irishman with that brilliant Irish sense of humor. He said, but look, If you can come up with an excuse that makes me laugh, I might let you off. I'll just give you a quick example.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the SAS face during their raid on the concentration camp?
He says, I was coming back well in time. stopped for a cigarette to light a cigarette, had to turn around because it was blowing a hoolie in the desert, as it often does. So I turned around to light the cigarette, forgot to turn back around again, walked for two hours in the wrong direction because you know, Paddy, all the desert looks the same. That's why I'm late.
And because he made Paddy Mayne laugh, he was let off. So yeah, that's a brief nutshell of the founding ethos of the SAS. It was egalitarian. It was quality above rank. Your background, your education, your career before the war, none of that mattered. All that mattered was whether you were willing to take the fight to the Nazi enemy in these
borderline suicidal missions across the North African desert and that you could think completely outside of the box and find means to attack the enemy that the enemy never even conceived of.
I would be very happy to have a disciplinary attached to my permanent record rather than go toe to toe with Paddy Main in the boxing ring. I'd be like, stick it. I can take the career, you know, the career hit. Okay, so we've got North Africa, many striking successes, particularly against airfields.
When it comes to invading Southern Europe, the Italian campaign in 1943, how's it envisaged that the SAS will work?
Yes, a great question. By now, we're talking summer 1943, David Sterling, founder of the SAS, has been captured. So he's in captivity. Paddy Mame has been forced to take over command. Why do I say forced? Because it's something he never sought. It was thrust upon him. And many of you believe that he would be an utter failure, that he would not be able to survive in the corridors of power.
Actually, he proved them all wrong because before the war, Paddy Mame was also a trained solicitor. So he had a brilliant legal brain in his head. Didn't suffer fools gladly, but he knew how to operate on that level. And because they are deeply unpopular, you know, the Mavericks, they were accused of being, you know, in official reports, raiders of the thug variety.
That's how they were referred to. So, yeah. Because they are unpopular, they're used in... One SAS are used in a way which is absolutely, completely incompatible with how they should be used. So what happened was they were sent in to act, serve at the tip of the spear to storm the cliff tops in Sicily and take the big shore guns that would blow the Allied invasion fleet out of the water.
That's the kind of command where we roll, not deep behind the lines, sabotage operations, which is what the SAS were formed for. However, at the same time, David Sterling's brother, Bill Sterling, in my view, even more of a visionary than David Sterling actually, had trained and recruited and formed two SAS, the second SAS regiment in Algeria, near the North African desert.
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Chapter 4: Who were the key figures involved in the Great Train Raid?
Damien, I didn't know about this. You very excitingly have identified a raid that you feel does show the SAS working at their best in their role, really as sort of demolition experts almost, and paralyzing enemy logistics. We should remember, of course, the old dictum that enthusiasts talk about tactics, experts talk about logistics. So paralyzing enemy logistics is vital.
That's stuff, that's oil, that's weapons, that's supplies, it's boots and food moving around, getting to the battlefront. And you've identified a raid that takes place actually in northern Italy later in 1943. Tell me about that. Tell me about Speedwell.
Operation Speedwell was one of the few missions that Bill Sterling, you know, got greenlit. And it was along the vision that he had for the whole of Italy. I mean, Speedwell was supposed to be proof of concept. It was supposed to be, you know, Bill Sterling's chance to prove that these kind of operations were. Eight men were sent in under the command of a absolutely wonderful, brilliant...
A man who was loved by his men, adored by his men. So Lieutenant Hugh Pinckney. Fantastic individual. Just give you one quick anecdote, because this is Hugh Pinckney through and through. So they're training in North Africa and Algeria. And a load of guards officers are recruited into the SS. And pucker guards officers, they arrive.
And, you know, the sense of the dress code of the SS was pretty damn fluid. You could pretty much wear what you wanted, what you felt comfortable.
comfortably and we should say damien that got the guards for those listening abroad these are the people that in people they're guarding buckingham palace they're on royal duties marching about and they're all spit and polish right
Yeah. So they turn up and they're rather aghast at the sense of dress of particularly the SAS officers. And so they put a kind of dictum out saying, you know, from now on, officers will dress formally for dinner, you know, in the middle of a training camp in North Africa. And they know that Hugh Pinckney is a real maverick and an absolute champion of his men.
And so one of them comes to Hugh Pinckney and says, look, you know, You need to understand, you need to wear a tie to dinner. So Hugh Pinckney says to his men, gather at the officer's mess tonight so you get a good view, right? And he proceeds to turn up at the officer's mess, last to dinner, walks in wearing only a tie and nothing else. There's absolute silence in the mess.
And then a few seconds later, the first laughter starts. Everyone bursts out laughing and it's kind of like he pulls it off. He sits through the whole of the dinner naked apart from a tie. But seriously, for a moment, while he was such an amazing commander, he'd injured his back recently, just before this, in a parachute operation. This is the measure of the man.
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Chapter 5: What innovative tactics did the SAS employ during the operation?
They've got no way of making comms with headquarters and no plans to get them out again. They've just got to find a way or make one. Anyway, the point is they fly in to deploy at night. And Hugh Pinkney, their commander, typically is the first out of the aircraft.
And as he jumps, no one would imagine that he's as badly injured as he is because he leaps out of the aircraft as if there was everything to play for. And, you know, that's the start of this mission on which they are extremely successful. You know, Pinckney himself, tragically, is never found after the jump. The men can't locate him, can't find him, much that they search and call his name.
And obviously Horace Stokes is missing. is convinced that he's had an accident upon landing because of injured back. He's died or he's completely incapacitated. But they can't keep searching for him because they've been seen during the parachute drop and the enemy are already hunting for them. So they have to leave him behind and they split into two groups and they set up on their operation.
Stokes and his two fellows carry out this operation. amazing sabotage operation deep in a train tunnel and blow up what is a German armoured train. And having blown it up, the Germans, obviously, confounded by what's happened and in the chaos and confusion, open fire on themselves. And then Stokes and his two fellows start their epic escape and evasion.
It's a thousand, it's more than a thousand miles to try to get back to Allied lines. That is their mission. Really extraordinary.
And they do make it back. I mean, you say it's 800 kilometres north of Rome, but the Allies aren't even in Rome. But I mean, they're right down at the bottom of Italy, right? So they are, and they managed to hike all the way back.
Two of them managed to make it back to Allied lines overland somehow incredibly. Horace Stokes. As he parachutes down, it's very windy. It's borderline operational conditions. They probably shouldn't have parachuted at all. But typical of the SS, they went anyway. Anyway, a gust of wind blows Stokes onto the roof of a farmstead and he lands on the roof.
His parachute gets caught up in the chimney. He's left hanging. um dangling into space and he cuts his parachute lines and drops and injures his groin in the process and by the time he's approaching rome stokes realizes that he's so ill from his injury that he can't go on Well, certainly he can't expect his two fellows to continue travelling with him because he's holding back too much.
So he says to them, you go on without me and leave me. And very reluctantly they do. So Stokes is then left in an Italian farmstead 200 kilometres north of Rome, knowing he's dying. He knows he's dying. Very, very sick.
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Chapter 6: How did the rescue operation impact the local resistance fighters?
In fact, he had septicemia. So he decides there's only one option. I must steal a bicycle, cycle to Rome. find my way into the Vatican, persuade them I am who I am, because he'd heard that the Vatican was running this secret escape line for allied POWs, which they were. And so that's exactly what he does.
I mean, I don't know how he did it because, you know, injured with septicemia, with a very, very, very painful groin in agony, cycling 200 miles through Italy on a stolen bicycle, and then somehow navigating his way through Rome, getting to the Vatican, persuading his way into the Vatican, then persuading them he was a bona fide... Anyway, they don't know whether to believe him.
in his entirety but what they do know is that he's on death's door and so there's a there's an escaped partisan who happens to be a surgeon and he operates on Stokes and he he castrates him he takes off one of his testicles because he's so badly injured that saves Stokes's life now you can imagine at that stage Stokes might have thought yeah I've kind of done enough for the war you
No, what he does once he's recovered is he starts to train the Italian partisans, the Italian resistance, using all the skills he has. Then he starts to fight alongside them and do sabotage operations. Finally, he's captured by the enemy and goes before the Gestapo and faces this horrendous torture. And he tells himself one thing.
He says, look, if I tell the truth, if they break me and I'm forced to tell the truth, I am dead. Because they knew at this stage that Hitler wasn't very happy about commando and SAS operations. He didn't really like them very much.
thought they were rather not the done thing and so had authored an order that all captured commandos and parachuters and SAS should be kept alive only for long enough to torture them and then and then murdered they've got a good idea this is what's happening so Stokes sticks to his cover story no matter what they do to his cover story is he's just a regular soldier who was a prisoner of war in Italian camp and escaped the camp
That's his cover story. 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.
However many times I talk to you over the years, you keep finding people who every time are like, you can't possibly top this. And here you are, Damien, back on with these extraordinary stories. Damien we're going to check back in with what's going on in the south of Italy but first we're going to cut to an ad don't go away everyone more of Damien coming up after this Damien, take me back.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of the operation for the SAS and the rescued prisoners?
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. Now, several things fall out of that. Of course, at this stage in the war, September 1943, no one in Allied
command knew what a concentration camp was we had no idea so that obviously oswald carrie elwes the commander of the two sas units on the ground has no idea what a concentration camp is so first of all it's like is this guy telling the truth because these horrors are you know inconceivable and then when they're convinced that he's telling the truth that he that they're well why have you come he says because they're about to ship everything north
loading them aboard a train to Nazi Germany and if they get them to Nazi Germany that is a death sentence and in that concentration camp are obviously Jews but there are also French, Yugoslav and Polish partisans and resistance fighters, there are former French foreign legionnaires and there are Italian priests and other intellectuals who've resisted Mussolini's fascist rule. Now
Again, this is all true. So when Bill Sterling was recruiting into the SS in Algeria a few months back, he thought, there's all these French foreign legionnaires sat around with nothing to do. Because, of course, the French foreign legionnaires, you know, in theory, in North Africa, were now part of the Vichy regime, the regime of Vichy France, which wasn't fighting anymore.
So Bill Stirling says, well, as many French foreign legionnaires recruited did the SAS as possible. So he finds this chap called Raymond Carod. Lieutenant Raymond Carod, who is the most incredible figure almost I've ever come across in terms of operations.
Right. Well, that's a pretty, that's pretty, that's a pretty remarkable bar that he's crossed there because you've come across this guy.
So he really brief character sketch. He's got a film star mother who's American, an arms dealer father who's French, bought up half in America, half in France and, Age of 18, volunteers for the French Foreign Legion. But if you're French, you can't join the French Foreign Legion in theory, as you know.
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Chapter 8: How did the historian uncover the story of the Great Train Raid?
So he has to get a Belgian passport to then pretend he's Belgian to get into the Foreign Legion. Fights in Norway with the Foreign Legion in 1940 in the defence of Norway. Wins the Croix de Guerre. comes back to France.
France falls, deserts the Legion because he doesn't want to join Vichy French forces, goes to Marseille, the port city, meets Mary Jane Gold, the beautiful, glittering, incredibly wealthy American socialite in Marseille. She's helping run an escape line for Jews out of Europe and funding it. He... has got gangster contact, underground gangster contacts by now in Marseille.
He says, I'll use my gangster network to help you. They fall in love. She nicknames him Killer Kurod because of his background. They rescue together 2,000 Jews. And then the network gets penetrated. And Mary Jane Gold is fine because she's an American neutral country. She can just go back to the States. But Kurod is obviously not. So he manages this unbelievable escape, gets to the UK. Right.
Gets the UK volunteers for hazardous operations, gets recruited into special operations executive, wherein he is characterised as a lone wolf operator, then gets parachuted back into France by the special operations executive as an assassin, carries out several assassination operations, eventually gets hunted down by the Gestapo, escapes again. But by now they know his real name.
So at that stage, he's recruited into Bill Sterling's SAS under a false name because he can't serve in SOE anymore. You can't serve as an SOE agent if the enemy know your identity. So Raymond Carod in North Africa, in Bill Sterling's SAS training camp, has gone around all the French Foreign Legion bases recruiting people. Of course, you're not allowed to leave the French Foreign Legion.
It's called desertion, isn't it? You face horrendous things if you desert the French Foreign Legion. But they're deserting in their droves because they're hungry for action. And in Ciotona, their base, the 2SAS base in southern Italy, where the Yugoslav concentration camp internally turns up,
A significant part of Cary Elwes' 2SAS force is made up of Kouroud and his French Foreign Legionnaires, former French Foreign Legionnaires. It's known as the French Foreign Legion SAS Squadron. That's what they were known as. So Cary Elwes and Kouroud, they have reasons to want to intervene, first off. This is a real SAS mission. This is 120 kilometers behind enemy lines.
That's where the concentration camp is. So it's got SAS stamp all over it. Secondly, Carod knows that there are former French foreign legionnaires in that camp as a personal reason to go. Thirdly, Cary Elwes is the son of a champagne merchant and he spent half his life in France. He's a massive Francophone. He's got a reason to go to the camp.
So they start to cook up a mission with Zelko, the escaped Yugoslav partisan. And the problem is that because their mission has been so rushed, Operation Slapstick, they've got like just a handful of Jeeps and they've had to, you know, scavenge a 1916 Renault school bus and various other things to transport their men around. They do not have the transport to get there.
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