Step one: forget you’re Jewish

The thrilling story of how the British Army turned refugees from the Nazis into the vengeful ‘X troop’

368pp, Chatto & Windus, T £16.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP £20, ebook £9.99

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The part played by commandos in the Second World War is legendary – always at the forefront of action, silent, quick, efficient and hugely courageous. When Mountbatten, who had commanded Combined Operations since October 1941, suggested to Churchill that a new branch of this elite force be formed, of displaced nationals such as Poles, Frenchmen or Norwegians, men highly motivated to drive the Nazis out of their own countries when the time came to invade Europe, the prime minister’s response was enthusiastic.

Most needed of all would be those for whom German was their native tongue, something that meant they would be able to interrogate captured German troops, sometimes even on the battlefield, discovering such things as the enemy’s strength or where mines had been laid. As most of those with impeccable German were Jewish refugees who had fled from the Third Reich, it was from these young men that “X troop”, as it became known, was formed.

Its commander, Bryan HiltonJones, was determined to secure highly intelligent, very fit young men who were desperately keen to fight. He did not have to search hard for the first candidates, some of whom had come to England on the Kindertransport, who had been badgering the authorities to let them join fighting units and hit back at those who had destroyed their families.

“We were looking for people whose local knowledge and languages and hatred for Hitler was very much in evidence,” said one of the interviewers later. Only around a quarter of all who volunteered were accepted, a total of 87. Many were from intellectual and cultured Jewish families; all were filled with a burning desire for revenge.

First, everything that might give away their Jewish background was to be forgotten or destroyed: everyone knew how the Nazis would treat captured Jewish, as opposed to British, soldiers. They had to choose themselves a new, Britishsounding name and a back story that would explain their impeccable German – a German nanny, a diplomat father who had worked in Austria – to be used from then on. They had, in fact, to forget they were Jews.

They also learnt everything from how to hide in plain sight, lockpicking and silent assassination to stripping and reassembling a Bren gun while blindfolded. A final test was being dropped in a remote area of Scotland with nothing to eat, staying there a week and then making their way back to their depot at Littlehampton within 24 hours. All but one managed it. The switch from stateless Jewish refugee to elite British soldier was complete.

They were invaluable in the front line of battle, from capturing a mine laid in the sea for analysis before amphibious landings on D-Day to single-handedly taking out a Panzer tank. During an attack on German radar stations surrounded by heavy concrete walls, one X-trooper spotted a periscope peeking out from

They had to come up with stories – a nanny, say – to explain their impeccable German

what he correctly deduced must be an underground bunker. Kicking out the glass, he stuffed a grenade deep into the opening, then stepped back and shot it. The explosion sent a deadly burst of white-hot phosphorus down the periscope and into the bunker below, leaving its occupants dead or fleeing.

They took part in swift, diversionary attacks on German-held outposts or islands, aimed at convincing the enemy that a full-scale invasion was about to take place, thus leading them to divert their own forces from other theatres of war. Several fought beside Lord Lovat and his piper on a bloodstained Normandy beach on D-Day.

One episode serves to display the courage and quick thinking of the X-troopers. Towards the end of the war, one of them, Ian Harris (real name Hans Ludwig Hajos), fighting street by street in the town of Osnabruck, learnt from a stray Hungarian soldier that many of the Axis forces outside the town might be ready to give themselves up.

Straight away, Harris, taking only his Tommy gun, drove with the Hungarian to the German headquarters. Here, to his horror, he discovered not just a few stragglers but an entire SS battalion – would he be captured, interrogated, perhaps shot? Fortunately, his uniform had no giveaway rank badges, so when a German major came out, saluted, and asked his rank, he replied “Major” (he was a corporal at the time) and thus, treated as an equal, could say that he had come for their surrender.

When the German major asked why they should surrender, Harris replied coolly: “Well, there are more of us and our weapons are better.” Challenged to prove British weapon superiority by seeing who could hit the most bottles lined up against a wall, Harris knocked out all 10, while the German’s Luger hit only three. “Yes,” agreed the German major, “your weapons are better.” The result of this massive bluff was that Harris in his jeep drove slowly back to Allied headquarters with hundreds of prisoners marching behind him.

To discover the doings of this unknown troop (until the end of the war, only one man knew their real identities) Leah Garrett trawled endless records and interviewed the few survivors and the families of others. What she found makes a thrilling, stirring story, well told.