Moment SAS were gripped with ‘utter rage’ after arriving at Belsen concentration camp | History | News

As their small convoy of Jeeps rumbled along the wooded lanes of Germany’s Lüneberg Heath, the SAS soldiers enjoying the spring sunshine had little idea of the horrors awaiting them. After fighting behind enemy lines in France throughout 1944, sabotaging Nazi attempts to repel the D-Day landings, then spearheading the dangerous push into the Fatherland, their latest mission seemed tame by comparison.

It was April 15, 1945, and the men of 1 SAS had been given “a small task” to check a reported “concentration camp” for evidence that a captured member of the regiment, Trooper Jenkinson, was being held there. Colleagues from 2 SAS had days earlier discovered 200 French resistance fighters held in appalling squalor in nearby Celle, but, right up to the moment they spotted some incongruous wrought iron gates opening onto a dirt track near the hamlet of Belsen, the men expected to find a military-style prison camp.

All that changed when they passed through the entrance. Lieutenant John Randall in the lead Jeep sensed a dark malevolence as they went by a group of German SS guards, eyeing them warily, but showing no signs of having any fight left in them. Then, as they reached the fortified gatehouse, ranks of barrack-like huts stretched out before them, as far as the eye could see, and they were hit by the overpowering sickly-sweet smell of death.

They were about to discover the true depths of Nazi depravity.

Easing through the gates, Randall’s Jeep was quickly surrounded by crowds of skeletal figures, some in pyjama-like uniforms, some in mere rags, and many wearing nothing at all, all pleading for food, water and medicine. They pressed on further into the camp, witnessing with horror the zombie-like prisoners scavenging for items of clothing among grotesquely twisted piles of human bodies.

Even as they tried to process what they were seeing, they were “welcomed to KL Bergen-Belsen” by camp commandant Josef Kramer and his newest sidekick, Irma Grese – nicknamed the “Hyena of Auschwitz” for her recent work there – as if the camp was something to be proud of. The SS guards, meanwhile, continued their murderous work, seemingly unconcerned by the arrival.

When a female prisoner tried to reach under the wire to grab a stray turnip, a guard simply drew his weapon and shot her dead.

The nightmarish moment is recalled in historian Damien Lewis’s latest book, SAS Daggers Drawn, recounting the incredible exploits of the Special Forces mavericks in 1944 and 1945. Lewis records how the SAS troops were gripped with “utter rage” and could barely restrain themselves from shooting the guards. Witnessing another guard beating a prisoner with his rifle butt, Sergeant Reg Seekings, the British Army boxing champion, was given permission to punch the thug to the ground.

Kramer and Grese were locked in the guardroom and the rest of the guards were told that if any more prisoners were shot, “you are all going to die very horribly”.

Having found and freed Trooper Jenkinson, the SAS men were soon relieved by advancing Allied troops, but many of the hardened warriors would remain traumatised by what they had seen, long after the war. They were particularly angered by local Germans’ attitudes – a result of indoctrination by the Nazis.

Author Lewis says: “You can only begin to imagine what it was like for them in that camp, and then afterwards with the locals denying that it existed. There was one guy who took photographs and got them developed in a local chemist and then was questioned by the military police because the chemist, presuming no German could be responsible for such barbarity, reported him.

“One woman asked the British soldiers, ‘When will we have to learn English?’ having been led to believe she would be shipped to England as a sex slave, because so many people from different countries had been enslaved by the Nazis. She had been told the British Secret Service was as bad as the German Gestapo. The level of brainwashing and control is something that we can’t even conceive of. The idea that the British were free to criticise Churchill, and still happy to fight for him, was anathema under the Nazi regime.

“In that situation, people become automatons. If you view it in that context, that’s why Kramer and Grese gave the SAS a tour of the camp, as if what they were doing to people was normal because that’s what that regime espoused.”

In stark contrast to cowardly monsters like Kramer, the legendary leader of 1 SAS, Lt-Colonel Blair “Paddy” Mayne, had, just five days before the discovery of Bergen-Belsen, shown the ultimate courage and care for others. Yet somehow, as Lewis’s book explains, enemies within the British establishment contrived to deny him the highest award for gallantry – the Victoria Cross – for his actions.

Pushing into northern Germany as pathfinders for the Canadian 4th Armoured Division – who regarded the SAS’s Willys Jeeps as “mechanised mess tins” – Paddy Force, as they became known, were easy targets for die-hard SS troops, fighting to the last, as well as brainwashed, forcibly armed Hitler Youth children.

Mayne split his force into two groups to reduce the risk but, as Major Dick Bond led one of the patrols across a narrow causeway, a large German force sprung a perfectly planned ambush from nearby farm buildings.

The British soldiers – several severely injured – abandoned their Jeeps and dived into the water-filled ditch at the side of the road. Bond and his driver Trooper Max Levinsohn were each killed by a single shot to the head from a German sniper.

The rest of those in the ditch were pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire, anti-tank missiles and small arms rounds.

Mayne, 30 – whose exploits earlier in the war featured heavily in the hit BBC series SAS Rogue Heroes – was furious when he learned what had happened to his men and, with Trooper Billy Hull at the wheel of his Jeep, raced to the scene of the ambush.

Arriving near the village of Lorup, Lower Saxony, Mayne assessed the situation, grabbed a Bren gun and spare magazines, and went to clear out a farmhouse that some of the Germans had previously been firing from. Finding none left, he got Hull, 22, to take up a position on the top floor of the house to give covering fire while he moved on foot towards the next Nazi position.

When Hull let loose, provoking a barrage of fire in response, Mayne stepped into clear sight of the enemy and, picking out a sniper targeting Hull, killed him with great accuracy. Then, as the full weight of the German weaponry continued to be directed at him, Hull and his injured men in the ditch, he single-handedly cleared out a large barn packed with German soldiers.

One SAS witness to his actions described him as “firing burst after burst from the shoulder, killing or wounding all”. Still the onslaught from other Nazi positions continued and Mayne decided the only way to save his trapped men was to attack straight on to the enemy’s guns. He jumped behind the wheel of his Jeep and, with Lieutenant John Scott, one of the survivors of the ambush, volunteering to man the twin Vickers-K guns on the back, he drove at full pelt along the bullet-raked road, urging Scott to shoot into nearby woodlands, where most of the German soldiers were now entrenched.

Witnesses could hardly believe neither man was hit by the storm of German fire peppering the lone Jeep but, after 200m, Mayne spun round to run the gauntlet again, with Scott still spraying rounds from the twin Vickers-Ks.

Back where he started, Mayne turned again for a third run and this time, level with the ditch, he jumped out and began dragging the wounded, one by one, back to his Jeep, before speeding back out of range of the German guns.

Sergeant Albert Youngman, one of those he saved, later reported: “It was such a brazen thing to do… they were throwing everything back at him. God knows how they didn’t hit him.” It was, he added, the “finest act of bravery I have ever seen in my life”.

Lieutenant Scott – himself awarded the Military Medal – said: “Throughout the entire action, Colonel Mayne showed a personal courage that it has never before been my privilege to witness.”

The SAS commander, who had already been awarded the Distinguished Service Order three times (DSO and two bars), was recommended for the VC, backed by SAS Captain David Surrey-Dane, who had been there, and by Canadian Major-General Christopher Vokes.

The citation was signed off by SAS chief Brigadier Mike Calvert and even Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Germany. But back in Whitehall, someone – maybe on the Grant of Honours committee – struck a line through the VC recommendation and scrawled instead “3rd Bar to DSO”.

Major General Bob Laycock, Britain’s Chief of Combined Operations, wrote to Mayne in August 1945, telling him: “In my opinion, the appropriate authorities do not really know their job. If they did, they would have given you a VC.”

Even King George VI was surprised and asked Winston Churchill to intervene, but was told it was a fait accompli. He expressed his astonishment when conferring the fourth DSO on Mayne, but Mayne said later: “I served to my best, my King and Queen, and none can take that honour away from me.”

Since Mayne’s premature death in a car crash in 1955, several attempts have been made to have the VC awarded retrospectively, including a petition to the Queen in 2002 and early day motions in the House of Commons.

Author Lewis feels there is no reason why it should not happen. He points out that, even today, no British member of the SAS has ever been awarded the VC [Anders Lassen who served with the British SAS and received the VC was Danish], and he said: “The SAS has never been a popular regiment with the establishment.”

He blames the fact Mayne did not come from the right public school background and was not English, while noting that military chiefs and politicians were about to disband the SAS in October 1945. From the numerous acts of bravery and supreme leadership highlighted in Daggers Drawn, Mayne could easily have earned the VC for cumulative gallantry.

“His action at Lorup was worthy on its own. It was suicidal. I don’t know how he survived,” adds Lewis. “Mayne was arguably the most highly decorated British Army soldier in the Second World War and yet he didn’t give a damn about gongs. He did it for the care of his men. He couldn’t bear to lose any of them and he felt each loss very personally.

“His principle consideration in that situation was saving his men, vanquishing the enemy and doing the right thing. That’s why he was so revered by those under his command.”

SAS Daggers Drawn: In For The Kill, the Mavericks Who Made the SAS, by Damien Lewis (Quercus, £22) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. For Damien Lewis tour dates, go to