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April 28 1944.
On this day began one of the great feats of endurance in the history of US special forces.
The march up & over the 6,100ft Naura Hkyat Pass in the Burmese jungle was undertaken by ‘Merrill’s Marauders’.
One Marauder described it to me as 'a trail of sadness'. 2/
That man was Bernard Martin, seen here 2nd row, two from right.
Bernie’s best friend, Bill Smawley, next to him on the end of the 2nd row, didn’t survive.
The Marauders were riddled with malaria, typhus & amoebic dysentery.
Feverish & exhausted, every step was an effort.

1/7
At dawn on December 3 1941 L/Cpl Mike ‘Lofty' Carr (pic) was alone behind enemy lines in Libya.
The previous night he’d got separated from his LRDG patrol.
Then he saw a Senussi camp.
What happened next was a lesson in humanity that Lofty kept with him for all his 101 years. 2/
In 2014 I read him his report of the encounter, which he’d written 73 years earlier. “I asked for food & water & was provided with camel’s milk, macaroni & coffee by the natives,” wrote Lofty in 1941. “Having been fed I was next provided with blankets and taken to a cistern."

1/7
September 26 1943 – the date of arguably the greatest special forces raid of WW2.
It was codenamed Jaywick & comprised 3 Brits & 3 Aussies
Wally Falls, Don Davidson, Andy Huston, Ivan Lyon, Arthur Jones & Bob Page.
Here they toast their success
Wally, Don & Ivan were British. 2/
They departed Exmouth Gulf, W.A, on Sep 2, in the Krait (pic), a 70-ft long fishing vessel with a 6 cylinder H.P engine.
Their target was Singapore harbour, 1800 miles north.
They were going deep into enemy territory, but only Ivan Lyon knew that among the crew of fourteen.

1/6
On this day in 1944 Sergeant Gerald Davis of 2SAS was given a choice by the Gestapo:
Either he talked or he died
He was left alone for 10 minutes to make his decision.
Davis lies in Moussey cemetery, eastern France.
The inscription on his headstone reads: ‘Loyal Unto Death’. 2/
The previous photo is of Davis’s pal, Len Owens (pic in 1944), visiting his grave in 2005.
Len & Gerald were Phantom Signallers attached to 2SAS & dropped into the Vosges region on August 13 1944.
In a contact with a German patrol on Aug 17 Davis became separated from his unit

1/6
On June 18 1944, Lt Leslie Cairns & 15 men of A Sqn, SAS, along with 7 RAF crew, vanished en route to the Morvan in France.
The Stirling aircraft has never been conclusively found.
Six months earlier Leslie had married Irene in Edinburgh, where they'd met at university. 2/
Cairns and his men are remembered on the Bayeux Memorial to the Missing. Among the dead were several SAS ‘Old Hands’, including Reg Wortley, Barney Bryson & Bill Leadbetter.
Also listed are SAS men murdered in France by the Germans and whose bodies were never found.

1/16
June 15 1945
‘Last Big Nazi in the Bag’ was the headline in the Nottingham Evening Post.
The Nazi was Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (pic).
Bagged in a Hamburg boarding house.
By the SAS
This is the story of how a SAS sergeant nabbed one of the most infamous Nazis. 2/
Of the many SAS veterans I met few were as formidable as Jacques Goffinet (pic). "Fighting was in my blood,” he told me.
Jacques was a Frenchman who served in the Belgian SAS. They were a crack outfit, led by the outstanding Eddy Blondeel.

1/12
On June 13 1944, Lt Johnny Cooper & his stick of A Sqn, 1SAS, were crouched in a ditch near Les Valottes (pic) deep inside Occupied France. In the distance they heard an odd noise.
"What the hell's that?" Johnny whispered to his mate, Reg Seekings.

Was it friend or foe? 2/
On the night of June 11/12, a recce party of 19 men from A Sqn, led by Bill Fraser, had jumped into the Morvan. Their DZ was at Vieux Dun (pic) but they were scattered over a large area. Cooper, using his schoolboy French, asked a local for help in locating the Maquis.

1/9
June 6:
Also the day in 1922 that Johnny Cooper was born.

Johnny (pic) served in the SAS from 1941 to 1959 with a brief intermission working in the wool trade.
But knitted cardigans weren’t really his thing.
So he re-enlisted & added Malaya & Oman to his WW2 battle honours. 2/
A sign that someone has reached legend status is when they’re immortalised in song. That was the case with Johnny – who cropped up in an A Squadron favourite - ‘Old Uncle Bill Fraser & all’, lustily sung in spring 1944 while the Regiment trained at Darvel in Scotland.

1/8
This is a thread about Teddy Mitford of the LRDG.
Distantly related to the sisters.

Pre-war desert explorer.
One of the first LRDG officers.
The Kiwis hated Mitford (pic) & at one point plotted to murder him for being an upper-class English prat.
Why didn't they?
Read on 2/
Someone asked me if he had a part in the LRDG badge.
Yes, it was Mitford's idea to put Bluey Grimsey’s Scorpion design inside a wheel, taking inspiration from the Italian Auto-Saharan Coy's badge. This happened in Nov 1940 when the Long Range Patrol officially became the LRDG

1/9
Following Sunday’s LRDG thread, 1 or 2 have asked about the motto & scorpion badge.
The motto was explained in Tracks, the LRDG newsletter, which first appeared in June 1941.
Not by strength, by guile (non vi sed arte) was chosen by Captain Frank Edmundson (pic with Senussi). 2/
Frank, a Kiwi, was the LRDG MO in 1940/41. He also had a hand in the Scorpion badge, one of its first appearances being in Tracks (pic).
The full story was recounted in the 1973 LRDG newsletter – with the man responsible for the design, Kiwi Claude ‘Bluey’ Grimsey, explaining:

1/6
May 28.
Remembering the ‘Boss’, Ralph Bagnold, founder of the Long Range Desert Group, who died on this day in 1990.
The LRDG: the first, and the finest
"Not by strength, by guile" 2/6
David Lloyd-Owen said that Bagnold’s four tenets for the LRDG were:
1) planning
2) equipment
3) communication system
4) ‘human element of rare quality’.

One of the 'human element' recruited to the Rhodesian Patrol in the summer of 1940 was Cecil Jackson (pic)

1/14
On this day in 1944 Major Ian Fenwick, 1SAS, told the papers: ‘Wonders will never cease.’
He was talking about the fact he’d just got engaged, three weeks after meeting his bride-to-be on an SAS training exercise.
Pic: Fenwick, 3 from left, training in Scotland in May 1944. 2/
Margaret was serving tea from a YMCA van & Fenwick stopped for a brew.
It was love at first sight.
The wedding was set for September. Shortly after the engagement was announced in The Times, Fenwick & 1SAS left Scotland for Fairford in Gloucestershire.

1/8
This is Austin Hehir, MM, of 2SAS,
Back in March I tweeted a thread about the Ironman Irishman, and said I would love to know more about this remarkable soldier.
Thanks to his family (& Twitter) I now do after they contacted me.
This photo of Austin was taken in his POW camp. 2/
Quick recap:
Hehir was part of Op Maple, parachuting into northern Italy in January 1944.
His method of eliminating Nazi staff cars was ‘to draw his two revolvers & walk up the road firing at the car’. He did this twice.
In 10 days his team accounted for 25 enemy vehicles.

1/10
It’s happy birthday 2SAS.
To use a modern word, they officially ‘transitioned’ from No62 Commando to 2nd Special Air Service on May 13 1943 under the command of Lt-Col Bill Stirling.

An eclectic bunch. They included:
An American athlete
A French gangster
A German Communist. 2/
The American was John Cochrane, born in Buffalo, but educated at Appleby College in Ontario. He’s front, 2 from left, in this photo.
John enlisted in the Toronto Scottish in 1939 but volunteered for No62 Cdo in November 1942. Writing to his parents in Jan 43, he explained why:

1/11
May 8 1945, Monopoli, Italy.
The mother of all booze-ups for the SBS & the LRDG.
Doug Wright, SBS, told me: “We filled a water cart with wine and drank for a week.”
A Hitler 'Guy' was made & burned on a bonfire (pic).
There was pig racing & a SBS fortune teller. 2/
There was a greased pole to climb with old mattresses underneath to cushion the fall of the revellers.
Capt Walter Milner-Barry, SBS, (pic) wrote in his diary: “We organised a funfair for the troop with unsuitable officers dressed up as ballet girls."
But someone was missing

1/9
This photograph was taken on May 5th, 1945.

A group of captured SS soldiers are made to dig their own graves near Großhansdorf in Germany.
Looking on are members of 2SAS under Major Henry Druce.

Fingers on triggers.

What happened next? 2/
I interviewed three SAS present: Druce, Granville Burne & Cyril Wheeler (centre)
First, the diary entry of Joe ‘Doc’ Patterson, 2SAS M/O:

Fighting had stopped at 0800hrs on May 5 but 2SAS continued to patrol: ‘We swanned around a bit but only took a few prisoners,’ he wrote.

1/
May 2 1943
It was the Special Forces sports day in Palestine. Competing were:
1SAS (SRS)
SBS
Raiding Forces
OCTU
New Zealand Railway Construction Coy
South African Rly Construction Coy.

The SAS war diary noted that the Kiwis ‘provided plenty of beer’. Cue mayhem

Pic: Beer 2/
The SAS got off to a flier, literally, with Tim Ransom winning the 100m sprint. Alex Baker finished second in the High Jump.
Then it seems to have all gone rapidly downhill as the boys' focus turned to the beer.

1/
Four SBS men were murdered on or about this day in 1944:
George Miller, MM
Ray Jones, MM
George Evans, MM
Leo Rice.

For decades their fate was a mystery.
Until a presidential campaign in 1986 revealed the truth.

Pic in 1944: Evans front right & Jones 2 from left back 2/
This is the story of Georges Evans, pic as a baby in the east end of London. His dad's work on the railway took the family to Derby.
He grew into a handsome man of 6ft 2, something of a local heart-throb. He enlisted as a driver in the Sherwood Foresters in Jan 1939 aged 18.

1/
John Tonkin (pic, rgt) was a wartime SAS Officer & post-war Antarctic explorer who had more lives than a cat.
This is his hair-raising story.
I mentioned Tonkin in last week’s thread about Belsen.
Born in 1920, he joined the SAS in early 1942 from the Northumberland Fusiliers. 2/
I met three men who served under Tonkin in the SAS: Alex Griffiths, Bert Youngman & Arthur Thompson. All spoke highly of him.
Tommo, who was with him in the desert in 42 & then in 45, said:
"I’d call Tonkin a quiet hero. I was with him for a long time. I drove him...

1/
April 15: a patrol of 1SAS was the first Allied unit to enter Belsen.
In subsequent decades tales have grown tall about what actually happened.
This thread is based on accounts of the SAS men definitely present, none of whom ever forgot that dreadful spring day in 1945. 2/
Mostly it is based on the testimony of Sergeant Duncan Ridler, MM, 1SAS Intelligence section, who I interviewed for many hours in 2002/03.
Duncan (pic) also wrote an account 30 years ago that was published in Mars & Minerva, the SAS Regimental journal.

1/9
On April 13 1945 2SAS (pic) radioed a Sitrep to their HQ. The previous day they'd entered the town of Celle to liberate what they’d been told was a POW camp. It wasn’t.
“Tell England that Nazi concentration camp to be seen to be believed. 200 French Maquisards dead or dying.” 2/
Captain Joe Patterson, pic, the 2SAS Medical Officer was the first to enter the camp. He saw two ‘filthy animated skeletons’ wearing grey & black striped trousers. They spoke French & directed him to a stable. Patterson gagged when he stepped inside. He wrote in his diary: