The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment. John Parker
The Germans also took heavy losses, particularly among the parachutists, who were shot from the skies as they came down: 3500 dead and the same number wounded.
The pull-out began on 27 May. Churchill’s thoughts turned straight away to Britain’s own airborne capability. In a personally written minute of that same day, he demanded immediate action towards the formation of an airborne division ‘on the German model’. Seething at the failure to provide him with that force, he commented to Ismay: ‘Thus we are always found to be behindhand by the enemy.’
The dramatic impact of the German paratroop landings on Crete, combined with Churchill’s anger, gave the military managers what one of their number later described as ‘a veritable kick up the arse’. Within three days the Chiefs of Staff issued an edict for the immediate formation of a Parachute Brigade and called for volunteers from across the whole Army. The 11th Special Air Service (SAS) Battalion, which so far had deployed for just one operation – from which not a single man returned – was to be incorporated into the new organization, thus leaving the title of SAS vacant for the inception of David Stirling’s new force, which would operate against Axis forces in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Stirling, a young officer with the Scots Guards, had been engaged in commando operations with Layforce, now about to be disbanded after heavy losses in Crete. Stirling harboured the idea of airborne raiders on a much grander scale than the operations of Major Roger Courtney’s Special Boat Service, which was running sea-borne sabotage and clandestine reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines.
Stirling had never attempted a parachute drop himself and on his first attempt his canopy failed to open properly and he came down to earth with a bump. In hospital for several weeks, he used the time to set down his proposals and as soon as he had recovered, presented them personally to General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief in the Western Desert. Auchinleck liked the sound of it and so did Winston Churchill, who needed little persuading after he visited North Africa and asked to see Stirling personally. Thus the SAS was born and given a base at Kabrit, near the Suez Canal, in July 1941. Initially it went under the grandiose title of L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade, in an apparent attempt to fool the Germans into believing that the Allies had a new airborne brigade.
To some extent, this supposition would have been correct. For back in England that same month, recruiting teams began visiting British Army regiments to select volunteers for the new Parachute Brigade that was forming under the overall command of Brigadier Dick Gale and had its headquarters at Hardwick Hall, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Alastair Pearson, a future brigadier and a stalwart and hero of the Parachute Brigade, eventually becoming one of only two soldiers to be awarded a DSO and three bars during the war, had already seen service in France in 1939–40 and in Suffolk during the invasion scare as a junior officer with the 6th Battalion Highland Light Infantry when he volunteered for special duties. The Parachute Brigade was not quite what he had in mind:
I had volunteered for the Special Forces and was eventually called for an interview for what I hoped was going to be a place with the Special Boat Service. One of my friends had joined them and told me it was very good. I had an interview with Dick Gale, which went quite well and I was told I would be accepted. I had no real idea of what I was letting myself in for until just as I was leaving. Gale said, ‘You know, you will have to make parachute jumps.’ Well, I didn’t know, but anyway I had been accepted and I began my training course. It was, shall we say, interesting. The discipline was much harder than in normal Army regiments. The men tended to be slightly older, at least 60 per cent were drawn from regulars, experienced soldiers. It was a different kind of discipline to that when dealing with conscripts or temporary soldiers. The training was tough and we began preparing immediately for a series of operations across the Channel, but most never came to anything because the Navy could not guarantee to get us off and back.
Another Scot, Macleod Forsyth, was, like many of the early volunteers, a regular soldier. He had been with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders since enlisting at the age of 19, and in 1941 he read the notice from the Army welcoming volunteers for special duties. It contained a note at the bottom, he recalled, which specifically stated that all applications had to be forwarded so that there could be no question of company commanders keeping back their best men. Forsyth applied and was accepted, and soon discovered that although the training was as ‘keen as mustard’, the methodology was still somewhat primitive:
I went down to Chesterfield and was put into C Company, which was going be made into a Scottish company – Seaforths, Black Watch, KOSBies [King’s Own Scottish Borderers] and Royal Scots. The CSM was a Black Watch man. We realized then what training was; everything had to be improvised. Training was being invented as we went along. In the gym, they had tables and chairs stacked 14 feet high and you climbed up and jumped off. The corporal had a foil and when he said jump you jumped; otherwise you got a whack across the arse. Other things we did [included] jumping from the back of three-ton lorries – jumping off backwards with the lorry travelling at 20 miles an hour. C Company was the first to go up to Ringway to begin a programme of jumps there. The first was the balloon jump. There were four of us in it, with an RAF corporal in charge. We sat in a basket staring down this hole in the middle. As it soared skywards … one of the others said, ‘This is daft – we’re hanging on here like grim death and in a minute or two we’re going to bloody well jump out.’
And then, before you know it, the first jump and you don’t have time to think. You land and you say to yourself, ‘I’ve done it.’ The feeling you got was tremendous; you felt so good. In those days, damn few had done it. Then we went on the aircraft – first a familiarization ride, and then up for the jump. They told us that if you didn’t want to do it, nothing would be said and you would simply be returned to unit. I remember one chap refusing. He’d done two or three jumps and then suddenly he couldn’t do it any more and just crawled away. It was understandable, but I said to myself, ‘My God, I’ll never do that! I’m going to stick it out.’
They told us that once we had our ‘wings’, we couldn’t refuse. To refuse then would be a case of refusing to obey an order or, if we were on an operation, cowardice in the face of the enemy. In fact, that was the only refusal we had in our unit. The other thing I remember about those early days: we discovered that because we were on special training, we could get second helpings in the mess. Well, second helpings – the boys went back again and again. I once ate three Army dinners. After all that training, you could eat a horse – shoes as well. From morning to night, you were on the gallop, so you needed sustenance. And the RAF boys used to come in and there was nothing left for them. In the end, the Army had to increase the rations to fill them up.
The 1st Parachute Brigade was initially to have four Parachute Battalions, an airborne troop of sappers from the Royal Engineers and a signals team. The old 11th Special Air Service Battalion became the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Brigade, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Eric Down. By the end of the summer the 2nd and 3rd Battalions were in place and the 4th was fully recruited by the end of the year. The latter was to form the nucleus of the 2nd Parachute Brigade, which came into being early in 1942. To give the new force an immediate strength, in view of the shortage of suitable volunteers, the 7th Battalion the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders and the 10th Battalion the Royal Welch Fusiliers were transferred en masse to the 2nd Parachute Brigade to train as parachute troops.
At last Churchill’s dream of an effective force of paratroops was beginning to take shape. There was still much to be done in terms of training, building purpose-made equipment for simulated jumps, assembling all other essential gear, exercises, delivery of the gliders, training of pilots and so on – all of which needed the input of a large amount of expert knowledge from RAF fliers and technicians. To establish a single cohesive management, Headquarters 1st Airborne Division was formed under the command of Brigadier Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, DSO, MC, who was commanding a Brigade of Guards at the time. Although he had no hands-on experience of airborne warfare, he too accepted the challenge, was appointed commanding officer of Paratroops and Airborne Troops and became the father of Britain’s modern airborne forces.
Browning took the whole operation by the scruff of the neck, cut through the red tape, stamped on petty jealousies and inter-forces rivalry, ditched the uncommitted and acquired equipment and services