Dan Snow's History Hit - SAS: Band of Brothers

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

June 1944: the SAS parachute deep into occupied France, to wreak havoc and bloody mayhem. In a country crawling with the enemy, their mission is to prevent Hitler from rushing his Panzer divisions to the D-Day beaches and driving the Allies back into the sea. Damien Lewis joined me on the podcast to tell the story of the SAS Band of Brothers.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm just standing on the bridge of a boat, of a ship, looking out on a perfectly smooth mirror-like surface of the sea as the moon rises over there on the southeast horizon. I'm here during lockdown doing some social isolation on a big boat in the middle of the ocean by myself. This episode of the History Hit podcast has got nothing whatsoever to do with maritime affairs. In fact, it's very land-based. We've got Damien Lewis back on the podcast. That historian just writes one best-selling smash hit about special forces in World War II after another.

Well, he's only gone and done it again. This time he got a tip-off from a member of the public, one of his fans, via social media. He got a tip-off, he looked into it, it he pulled on that thread and what do you know there's another extraordinary story from the second world war of what the special forces the sas were getting up to after d-day in france it's a story of bravery capture luck escape revenge heroism you name it it's got it all you're going to absolutely love it it's great to have Damien back on the podcast hundreds of you have entered our competition for £100

to spend in the shop please go to historyhit.com slash quiz, it's all self explanatory there you get £100 and you can check out the absolutely bizarre history hit shop while you're there we're already running low on woolly medieval helmets with retractable face coverings.

It's proving the absolute hot item on the shop this season. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this podcast with Damien Lewis. Damien, great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. It's always good to be on the show. And glad it's still all going, all bells and whistles, in this very difficult time we're all living through. Well, thank you very much indeed. I just want to... Well done to you as well.

Just when you think there are no more stories to be told about Special Forces in the Second World War, here's this one. You've got a true band of brothers tale. Yeah, it's a hell of a story. And the way it came to me is, you know, one of those kind of unbelievable tales. It was a message over Facebook, a guy called James Irvin, who is a former military guy himself, but his grandfather, Trooper Packman, served in the SAS during the war. And he just sent me a quick message saying, look, you know, my grandfather was killed on SAS operations in France post D-Day. He was captured by the Gestapo and, you know, brutally put to death. And it's part of a wider story about these incredible missions deep behind the lines,

directly in the aftermath of D-Day, to try to stop German armour getting to the D-Day beaches. It might be of interest. And so from there, I started looking into it. And then, as you say, it just became this absolutely extraordinary tale, which lasts from, you know, June 1944, all the way through again to the Nazi hunting operations post-war. So right the way through to 1947, you know, one of those really incredible tales where you follow these characters through just the most extraordinary missions and escapes and then of course the quest for vengeance and justice. So you mentioned the mission after D-Day I mean you don't hear as much about special forces in summer of 1944 and was it partly because it's a war of big battalions it's a war of armoured divisions things like that but what was their job in France in the second half of 1944? They'd only ever existed overseas, so they formed in North Africa,

then fought all through the North African campaign, and then, of course, the Mediterranean in Italy. And they were called back to Britain for the first time in late 1943, early 1944. And they were headquartered in Darvell in Scotland, and their mission was to get themselves in shape and undergo a massive recruitment drive to support the D-Day landings. So they came back to the UK, this piratical band of raiders as they were described, with every conceivable nationality in their ranks and lots of eclectic collections of uniforms and it didn't particularly go down very well and as high command

tried to drag them kicking and screaming into line, spit and polish and tried to get them doing a bit of drill and all that kind of stuff they were desperate to find a mission for d-day which would suit a form of warfare which they didn't really understand many in the high command didn't and so they came up with this idea that they would deploy literally just hours before d-day itself and drop slightly ahead of the landing beaches and act as a blocking group en masse so 2000 which is by now how much the ranks of the landing beaches and act as a blocking group en masse, so 2,000, which is by now how much the ranks of the SAS had been swollen by recruits, so 2,000 of them were parachuted in

and basically in static positions as the immediate blocking group for the landings. And as Lieutenant Colonel Blair Paddy Mayne, who was in command of one SAS, and William Stirling, who was in command of two SAS, having taken over from his brother David Stirling when he was captured said that is not how we are used we're dropped deep behind the lines small bands of fast-moving raiders to harass and harangue and confound the enemy and that's how we've always been used and that's where we do our job best

and Bill Stirling actually Colonel Bill Stirling actually had to fall on his sword and resign in protest at the continued insistence the SAS be used in this way with the threat of further high-level reservations that eventually a high command gave in and so a completely new set of missions were conceived of which were archetypal SAS taskings, dropping deep behind the lines, deep into occupied France, to attack the railways, roads and road convoys carrying German armour, the Panzer divisions, to the D-Day beaches, which we knew is what Hitler would do. As soon as he knew where the landings were, he would rush his heavy armour to those areas to drive the Allies back into the sea.

And so the SAS were charged to stop the armour getting through and scores and scores of patrols were parachuted into France just after D-Day to achieve just that. This was an unprecedented territory in a way because unlike the North African deserts you know France was densely populated heavily occupied by the Germans four years of occupation at least you know it was a very different milieu to be dropping into and theater and i suppose one of the upsides was that of course via the special operations executive you know churchill's ministry for ungentlemanly warfare we had good contacts and relations with the french resistance who churchill had been urging were armed as a guerrilla army to rise

up in the enemy's rear so the the plan was really that, you know, these SAS patrols would parachute in, link up with the resistance, fight alongside them and give them the command, the control, and extra firepower and the confidence to hit hard. So I suppose that made it slightly less daunting, if you like. All of your books seem to feature the most remarkable characters, but this particular drop had a real quality to it. Yeah, so the book focuses down onto one patrol.

They're a patrol within an operation which was codenamed Operation Gain. It was one of these missions to destroy the German armour. And this patrol of 12 men, codenamed Sabu 70, were dropped into an area just to the south of Paris, literally 20 miles no more to the south of Paris, near the town of Douidon, to sabotage rail links and blow up this massive ammo dump that was situated on the fringe of the rail lines from where ammo was being rushed to the D-Day beaches. And the patrol was led by this fabulous and immensely brave and spirited individual called Captain Patrick Garstin. Now, Garstin had already won an MC in the retreat to Dunkirk in the rearguard. He'd been decorated in the field.

He'd then been injured quite seriously trying to get off the D-Day beaches. It was a miracle he actually got off alive. He'd then come back to the UK, deployed to North Africa to join the East African campaign, still dogged by his injuries, and was eventually and ominously returned to the UK for final disposal, was what was written in his orders, i.e. to be invalidated out of the military. Well, rather than being invalidated out of the military, he volunteered for airborne training, trained as a parachutist, and then after a stint with the Long Range Desert Group, he volunteered for airborne training, trained as a parachutist, and then

after a stint with the Long Range Desert Group, actually volunteered for the SAS. So here you had a man already on an MC leading this patrol of 12 SAS deep into France, who actually should not have been in the military at all, let alone undergoing and leading frontline operations. And he was the kind of individual who would only ever lead from the front. That was his nature. And indeed, he did throughout the whole of the operations. And then just to continue the theme, his second in command was a Lieutenant John, nicknamed Rex Vihay, who was actually hailed from Mauritius,

which was a British and French colony. His ancestors were from Europe. And Vihay, likewise, had been serving in North Africa, had volunteered for airborne duties, had trained with a parachute regiment and had had a parachuting accident and again had been banned from all further frontline duties. But when he was returned to the UK in early 1944,

had somehow managed to circumvent that, for the SAS and as a fluent French speaker and a fluent English speaker VH was welcomed into the SAS with open arms so that's just two of the individuals neither of whom should have been there both of whom had been invalided out certainly from frontline duties but had refused not to serve at the sharpest end possible of operations. How does this operation go? So they're deployed initially to sabot at the sharpest end possible of operations. How does this operation go? So they're deployed initially to sabotage the rail and the ammo dumps, and it is a spectacular and resounding success. There's a Corporal Serge Vatulik, who is actually under Garcin,

and he's originally of Czech origin, but a French citizen serving in the Free French SAS. And he walks into Douden town, finds out where and when the next train is due. The whole patrol moves in at night. They stake it out. They kill the guards on the rail tracks. They plant these fog signals, these special SOE developed charges, which enable a charge to blow up just in front of a train, so ensuring derailment. And then they plant around about 50 separate charges on on this massive set of ammo dumps all with four hour delays so they make sure they've got enough time to get away

and then they set up their ambush positions for the train which duly comes steaming through out of the tunnel at which stage the fog charges are detonated the explosives ignite the train's blown to pieces and the raiders attack it with their brain guns and their stand guns there's then a massive firefight and there's another standout individual in the patrol who's from Wigan a former miner from Wigan and actually one of David Sterling's SAS originals who's Corporal Thomas Ginger Jones and he stands firm on the tracks with a brain gun firing from the hip via which he enables the rest to get away and he stands firm on the tracks with a Bren gun firing from the hip via which he enables the rest to get away and he escapes also with just a flesh wound and then of course they have a very

very very angry and very very vengeful enemy on on their trail especially as three hours later vast series of explosions and all the ammo dumps blow up and so all out of ammunition not been able to link up with french resistance so nowhere where they can go to ground and go into hiding garstan calls for rescue and there was this policy developed before the post-e-day operations went in that if necessary they would try to pluck out patrols using aircraft by airborne means now course, the SOE had long experience of delivering agents into the field by the Lysander light aircraft and collecting them again. So it was a variation on that theme.

So Garstner radios Darvell headquarters and asks for pickup rescue. And the reply he gets is not quite what they expected. It's, yes, we'll come and get you. We'll send in an RAF air crew and they're going to land at Etamp Airfield, which is just nearby. Now, Etamp Airfield was a very significant Luftwaffe airbase. So significant was it that the Allies had mounted half a dozen very significant bombing raids to try to destroy it over the past few weeks, none of which had been very successful. And so, lo and behold, the Sabre 70 patrol were ordered

to make their way to Etamp Air Base that night to get rescued from the airstrip by a C-47, a Dakota aircraft, flying in with an RAF aircrew, a very brave RAF aircrew, it has to be said, who were determined to pluck them out of there. Quite extraordinary. Is this a particularly unusual raid, or is this just an operation that you were given this entree into? Do you think there were things like this going on all the time, most of which will now be pretty much forgotten to history? This is an extraordinary

rescue. They're pulled out of that airbase by that C-47 and not under fire, a massive firefight, they fight their way onto the aircraft and they get airborne and get back to the UK. It's an extraordinary rescue and before getting rescued, indeed, they plant the last of their charges on some of the aircraft on the airstrip to actually blow it up as they fly out of there. But having said that, Dan, there were scores of such missions taking place all across France, SAS and other related units, and you could take any number of them and they would be equally brave

and fearsome and die hard. What makes this mission so extraordinary and why I decided to focus on it is what happens to them during their next mission and which leads on to the whole Nazi hunting operations through 1945 post-war. And it's that combination of factors, that cradle to the grave aspect of this story, which really makes it stand out. Tell me about what happens later in the war. They get back to the UK on C-47 and ironically, bizarrely, but I guess you can understand the reasoning, Lieutenant Colonel Blair Mayne, who's the commander of 1SAS and very much involved in this mission personally, says to them, look, you've been into a torn pair base and you've got extracted from there. Well, we want to send you back again to the very same place to destroy it. And the reason being, there have been all these RAF and US Air Force bombing raids.

None have been successful. And by the way, when they were being extracted from the air base, they actually came across these camouflage forests. So if you can imagine trees made out of wood and chicken wire with false leaves stretched over them, there were these camouflage forests absolutely convincing from the air which explained why the Allied air raids had scored very few successes because the aircraft was so well hidden. Well British intelligence worked out that a Tomp air base was one of the first air bases to get the Luftwaffe's first jet fighter so the first operational jet fighter of the entire war,

the Sturmwogel. And so they're sent back in again to destroy the airbase and take out some of these groundbreaking aircraft. And they're going to be dropped close by in an area of dense forest at a drop zone at a small village called Laferte, LA. And SOE have arranged for them to link up with a band of French resistance fighters on the ground so they'll have a reception party, in theory. In practice, what's happened is that the SOE, I guess you could say, has been penetrated by the Gestapo and there's a very wily and canny Gestapo commander in Paris

at their headquarters at 84 Avenue Fort called Hans Kiefer who's defected what they called the funk spiel the radio games and the radio games were they would capture an SOE agent in France male or female hopefully capture their radio kit and their code books and their ciphers turn that captured agent by obvious means and then use that agent to play back messages to the UK as if that agent was still freely operating in the field with the aim of calling in more agents and more airdrops of weaponry and more airdrops of supplies and even cash and that was the funkspiel games and Captain Garstner and his men have very sadly

fallen victim to a funkspiel so when they fly back in again in July now to deploy to La Ferte drop zone and then attack a Tempere base, actually who's waiting for them on the ground is not the French resistance at all. It's a party of Gestapo from Paris and a body of Waffen-SS soldiers in ambush position. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the

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I guess there's no getting out of that situation. Not for most of them, no. Unfortunately. So Garstown is the first out, first down. As I said, led from the front as always. Shadowy figure runs up to him dressed in civilians. He presumes it's a member of the French resistance and the man does indeed shout out, vive la France. But as he gets close enough to Garstin to whisper, he says,

Beware, there are Bosch Germans all around. And as he leads Garstin into the trees, the enemy come out of the shadows with their weapons and Garstin is captured. He tries to break away to warn his men and they shoot him down. And he's very, very grievously injured. If you could imagine jumping out of a fast-moving sterling bomber in a 12-man stick, even though you jump very closely together, you would be spread out a long way along the ground. Because of that, the last three parachutists don't land in the open field of the drop zone,

they land in the forest. Those three get away for that reason and that reason only, but the rest are all either captured, injured very badly and captured, or killed. And some of them, Ginger Jones in particular, basically fight to the last round and it's dawn before the last ones are brought in. And then the wounded and those who are without wounds are loaded aboard a truck and driven to Paris. The wounded taken to the Hospital Saint-Petrier in Paris, given no treatment whatsoever, and immediately faced Gestapo interrogations. And just to give you an idea of how brutal this is, Lieutenant Vigée, who I mentioned earlier, the chap who shouldn't have been there at all

because he was invalided out of the war, supposedly, he's been shot three times once in the spine and he's paralysed from the waist down. Yet even so, within hours of arriving at the hospital, he's got a Gestapo interrogator at his bedside, beating him around the face and even threatening, if he doesn't talk, to get the surgeons to remove his bullets without anaesthetic. So this is pretty brutal stuff. And what are the Gestapo after? Well, it's two things. They're after obviously finding out what their mission was and where there might be other SAS parties deploying in France but more importantly they're after launching another function operation so they want to find out who in their parties in

charge of communications, where the radio is, where the cipher books are so they can try and use the captured SAS men to lure in more and more airdrops to capture more and more operators and individuals. And of course, those able-bodied men who've been captured are then taken to the Gestapo headquarters at Avenue Fock, 84 Avenue Fock, and they then go into horrific torture and questioning to try to find out the selfsame things. How do we know about this? Well, we know about it from a lot of different sources. I have been so privileged and so fortunate and so honoured in telling this story is the help from the families of those who were there. So I'll just give you some examples. Lieutenant Vihay's family who are in Mauritius, lovely people, so helpful. Now, I didn't know, of course, when I started researching

it, but not only did he write up an account of his war in French, which they sent to me. It's book length. But he kept a notebook all through the war. So even when he was in the field, even on this operation, he kept the notebook, so a diary of his operations. They shared that with me. They shared letters between him and all his family members, between him and the fellow members of his patrol. Sean Garstin, the son of Patrick Garstin, the patrol commander, one year old when his father was captured, never got to know his father because Garstin was killed at the end of this capture. But Sean, again, who lives in Nairobi in Kenya, immensely helpful, shared with me the family's memorabilia, photographs, letters, medals, everything they

have, you know, that you would bring down from a loft in any normal family situation. And the same across so many other members of the patrol. And without that, it's pretty much almost impossible now to tell these kind of stories. And then finally, I guess, too, as the icing on the cake, there's still surviving and wonderful SAS veteran Jack Mann, who is in his late 90s, who read a very early draft of the manuscript for me to just check the authenticity and the tone was right, and sent me back his handwritten notes in pencil, having read it from cover to cover. You know, you pull a team like that together, you really can capture these stories and bring them back alive, which is what one tries to do.

You mentioned many of them didn't make it back alive. What was the circumstances of their death? So they're being held in the 18th Avenue Falken in the hospital and Kiefer, the head of the Gestapo, contacts Berlin and says, what do I do with them? And Hitler himself gets involved and he sends an order to Kiefer. These men are to be executed. They are to be dressed in civilian clothes, taken to a patch of woodland and killed now hitler took very personally as a personal insult to himself and the reich behind the lines operations whether it be by the soe the oss the american equivalent sas command those parachuters whoever partly it's because we did launch quite a few assassination operations re Reinhard Heydrich comes to mind in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Operation Anthropoid.

The many assassination attempts in North Africa and Europe against Rommel, of course. But there were others, too. And Hitler felt these were a personal affront, an insult to himself and his top leaders. and his top leaders. And so much earlier than the Sabah 70 patrols capture, he had authored his commando order under which he gave authority, illegally of course, for any captured commandos that all of them had to be killed and could only be kept alive for long enough for their questioning interrogation by the Gestapo. And so he orders Garstin and his captured men to similarly be killed. And they are, in early August, forced to dress in civilian clothing. And when they challenge why, they're told there's a prisoner exchange taking place in Geneva, and they're going to be trucked to Geneva to be exchanged with German prisoners being handed over by the British. Of course, very few of them believe it,

and especially because as they put the civilian clothing on at gunpoint, some of them can see that these clothes, or some of the clothes at least, already have bullet holes in them. And that evening they're driven out into a patch of French woodland and Garstin, who is very, very seriously injured still, has had no treatment for his injuries, but is an extremely honourable man and has believed, you know, Kiefer's assurances

that they are going to be subjected to a prisoner exchange. When they're marched into the woodland at gunpoint and begin to get lined up, he realises what's really going to happen and turns to his men and says, my God, they're going to shoot us. And he says, I will stand firm and you guys make a break for it.

By which he means, I'm too injured to get away, but some of you aren't. I'll stand and take the fire and you get away. And that's exactly what happens. As Schnur, who is the SS commander of the execution squad, pulls out a piece of paper and starts to read out Hitler's execution sentence in German and then has von Capri,

his second-in-command, translate it into English. As they hear the final word sentenced to be shot, Jones and Vatulik, the former miner from Wigan and the Czech Free French SAS man, break free and charge their would-be gunmen, their would-be assassins, their would-be assassins. And both of them manage to run some distance away before their ill-fitting civilian shoes force them or make them trip up, fall over their own feet. And as both go crashing down,

volleys of fire break out, including going over their heads. And it's actually their falling down that saves them. Otherwise, they would doubtless have been shot. Vakulic gets back on his feet and runs again and is pursued by the executioners. And Schnur, the SS commander, realises that if any of these seven get away, there will be hell to pay for them in Berlin because it's on Hitler's personal orders that they are supposed to be executed. So the hunt is underway.

Jones, meanwhile, lays still and plays dead. And when the gunmen have run off, when the executioners have run off after Vatulik, he gets to his feet, dashes away and manages to hide himself under some leaves. And so those two individuals, Corporals Vatulik and Jones, do escape. And that night and over the next few days, they're both reunited with each other and they link up with the French resistance and so begins the next chapter of the story where Vatulik and Jones train and call in arms drops to the local Bresles, that's the name of the nearest town resistance, in preparation for the American advance when they will rise up in the enemy's rear and ensure that Bress Les is liberated. And that's exactly what they do.

But it's interesting, Dan, when they escape that firing squad, and, you know, read about the escape, it's miraculous. It's almost unbelievable. When they escape and when they're asked what drove them on with the bullets at their back, it's not just the animal instinct to survive. It's perhaps even more so, it was the desire to get vengeance and justice for their murdered comrades, because they knew that the other men were getting gunned down where they stood at their backs. And so when

they eventually liberate Brest-Lestown, Vakulik and Jones then get in the mayor's car, drive back to the site of their executions, collect bullet cases at the very site where they should have died, and then go to the nearby chateau, the chateau Paracis Fontaine, where the five who had been gunned down were buried in a mass grave, and they find the location of that mass grave. And so begins this investigation into these war crimes, which, as I say, lasted to 1947 and ends up in vengeance and justice being done. The SAS became more and more aware that, you know, Hitler's commander order must exist. And indeed, eventually copies were found. And they knew that hundreds of their men had been captured and disappeared. And so both Maine and Colonel

Franks vowed that the perpetrators would be hunted down and brought to justice. So they set up an official SAS war crimes investigation team towards the end of the war, dispatched them to France and Germany to investigate. It was headed up by the peerless and brilliant Major Eric Bill Barkworth, an SAS intelligence officer, fluent German speaker and fearsome interrogator. Any German who met Barkworth knew they had more than met their match. Barcliffe takes over a former Nazi official's villa in Gaggenau, the German city near the French border,

and together with his second-in-command, the extremely tough and resilient Dusty Rhodes, his sergeant, they start hunting down the suspects. Now, the problem is this. SAS, as I said earlier, was never particularly popular with some in the high command, some in the establishment, as were some of the other special forces units. And by October 1945, the writings on the wall and the SAS is formally disbanded, told to destroy all documents and all records and return to their units. That's it,

end of the regiment as we knew it. And there are some, Colonel Mayne and Colonel Franks, first and foremost, commanders of 1 and 2 SAS, and Winston Churchill himself, voted out of power, but still, of course, extremely powerful and influential, who are determined this will not happen. And so the one thing they keep alive and they are determined to keep alive at all cost is the nazi hunting team and so the sas war crimes investigation team goes dark it goes completely unofficial it becomes known as the secret hunters they're funded out of a black budget massaged out of the war office so the war office isn't aware where the money's actually going and they're controlled by a clandestine radio set perched on the roof of

a building in eaton square which gives them their orders from london and it's a completely off the books operation amazingly they recruit more sas to it and they are hiding in plain sight so they're operating the length and breadth of former German occupied Europe they're driving old SAS jeeps they're wearing the SAS cap badge the wind beret they're dressed in uniform they are masquerading as if they have every right to be there and indeed they are one of the most successful war crimes hunting operations ever and they are in large part because Dan they're willing to break all the rules you know they don't seek permission when they are, in large part, because Dan, they're willing to break all the rules. You know, they don't seek permission when they are crossing from one zone of occupation to another, because they know if they seek permission, then a warning might get through to the man they're after.

They use their Jeeps in the back roads. They circumvent the checkpoints. They arrive on the suspect's doorstep in the middle of the night unannounced, and they address him in his pyjamas or his underpants. These are snatch missions, and they're extremely successful. The culprits are dragged back to the Villa Degla basement and there they are interrogated by Barkworth and very few, if any, don't break very, very quickly. And it's in that process that Barkworth realises

there is this individual, Hans Kiefer, the chief of the Gestapo from Paris, who then came back through the Vogue Mountains to Strasbourg as Nazi Germany forces retreated from the Allies, and that he is responsible for scores of atrocities against captured Allied agents, SAS, SOE, including those wanted for what became known as the No Allies Wood Killings, the killings of our Sabu 70 patrol, Garstown and his men. And it's a strange thing because at the end of the war, the SS itself was rightly made an illegal organisation and any SS were slated for arrest and questioning and potentially trial. And so

Kiefer and his second in command, Haug and others, know that they're being sought and so they go into hiding. And Kiefer and Haug go to a Bavarian ski resort and get casual jobs as hotel cleaners and that's where they're going to hide out. But Horg, who has five children, decides one day he cannot not go and visit his family and Kiefer warns him, if you go home they're going to be watching, you'll get captured and you may give me away. Haug goes anyway and lo and behold, Barqueth's men are watching. They arrest Haug and in questioning Haug, who'd been held as a prisoner of war by the British during World War I, he's an old soldier

and was treated very well, so whose allegiances are torn anyway, Haug confesses all and he says, I think you might find Kiefer, who's their number one wanted in this ski resort in Bavaria and in that way all of the suspects who haven't been killed in the war are brought into custody give their confessions and stand trial at Wuppertal in the summer of 1947 and they're all sentenced either to death or to long custodial sentences so the justice

and the vengeance which Ginger Jones and Serge Vachelik sought as they escaped has finally been served. Good luck. The book is called? SAS, Band of Brothers. Boom. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it. Hi, buddy. Just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy.

I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.