4 The warrior with wanderlust
From Sicily to Normandy to the heart of Germany, JOHN TONKIN was on the frontline of SAS operations across various theatres in Europe, marking a new phase in its development
By summer 1943, the SAS had
B destroyed more than 300 enemy aircraft in north Africa, and had been made the 1st Special Air Service Regiment. Now its war moved to Sicily.
With the unit was John Tonkin, who had first arrived in the Middle East as a Royal Northumberland Fusilier. Bored with constantly running up and down sand hills to stay fit, he volunteered for the commandos before joining the SAS in late 1942. Several months later, Tonkin became an officer in the Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) commanded by Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, the organisation’s pre-eminent figure after the capture of David Stirling (and perhaps for some time before).
The SRS was one arm of the regiment, the other being the Special Boat Squadron commanded by George Jellicoe. The SRS’s first action, on 10 July 1943, saw 287 men landing at Capo Murro di Porco on the south-east coast of Sicily with the job of knocking out the enemy’s artillery defences.
With its deployment in Sicily, the SAS had to adapt. Its men were now used as shock troops, thrown at the enemy ahead of the arrival of the main invasion force. This commando role was quite unlike anything the SAS had been created to do. In truth, the organisation – viewed by many as a localised desert sabotage unit with no wider application – was fortunate to have survived the end of the north Africa campaign.
Several days after the landing at Capo Murro di Porco, Tonkin and his men attacked the port of Augusta on Sicily’s east coast. Jumping ashore from their landing craft as machine-gun bullets rattled the vessel’s armoured side, they headed up a seemingly abandoned street, kicking in doors and periodically dropping down to shoot from low level. Reaching a junction, Tonkin opened fire on a man running down the connecting street – only to realise that the man was his own sergeant.
Finally, the party reached a crossroads where they ran into heavy enemy fire. Suddenly the firing stopped. Tonkin remembered that: “We heard this shuffling… and this peasant woman appeared. She was very old, and she was just walking quietly… down the middle of the road… it was only after she had completely disappeared that the firing started up again.” The war had stopped so that one old lady could cross the road. This small but intensely human moment affected Tonkin deeply.
Bolting for freedom
At the start of October, during the SRS attack on Termoli – a town on Italy’s Adriatic coast – Tonkin was taken prisoner by members of the German 1st Parachute Division. Shortly afterwards, while being transported through the countryside in the back of a truck, he prised back the canvas canopy, jumped and bolted for freedom. With the help of a succession of sympathetic Italian civilians, he reached Allied lines. A fortnight after his capture, he rejoined his SRS colleagues in Bari.
In early 1944, the SAS achieved brigade status and prepared for operations in France. The unit’s operational instructions for the upcoming invasion of Normandy indicated that members would parachute behind enemy lines to impede the movement of German forces by attacking roads, bridges and railway lines, and by calling in RAF air strikes. In an entirely new theatre, the SAS would again be performing the role for which it had been created. Tonkin was
Tonkin opened fire on a man running down the connecting street – only to realise that the man was his own sergeant
placed in charge of Operation Bulbasket, which involved dropping men near Poitiers, in the Vienne department of western France. On arrival in France, he met the local SOE agent with whom he would be working closely. Together they agreed that they would allow the SAS’s presence to become known locally, to attract the maximum information about enemy activities.
Clearly, this might have negative ramifications as well as positive – but it soon paid off: a railway worker arrived with news that petrol tankers belonging to the German army were standing in local railway sidings. Tonkin immediately sent a junior officer (dressed in clichéd French costume) to check that the report was genuine. It was – and the following evening, 12 Mosquito fighterbombers destroyed the tankers.
Discovery and disaster
Subsequent events, however, led to the enemy discovering the location of the Bulbasket camp – and, on the morning of 3 July 1944, it came under attack by hundreds of troops of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division. Tonkin and several other men escaped; most of the SAS men were, though, captured. Four days later, the prisoners were placed in trucks, driven to a quiet spot in the woods and murdered by their captors.
John Tonkin finally returned to England on 7 August 1944, but his war was far from over. In March 1945, he crossed the Rhine as the SAS pushed into Germany in support of Allied parachute landings. Here the unit carried out a combined commando and sabotage role, driving through enemy lines before shooting at them from the rear.
The following month, he was part of the SAS party that liberated the concentration camp at Belsen. He remembered arriving at a camp that seemed, from the outside, to be merely a well-maintained military installation. He had absolutely no idea of the horrors that he was about to encounter.
After the war, Tonkin worked for Shell Oil, and moved to Australia in the 1950s where he became general manager of a uranium mine near Darwin. He died in 1995, having been awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his services to Aboriginal peoples.
The SAS was disbanded at the end of the war – or so it seemed. However, an SAS War Crimes Investigation team under Major Eric ‘Bill’ Barkworth remained in force to investigate the murders of SAS men in France, as did a series of SAS Mobile Teams sent to Greece to examine the roles of local people in the rescue of Allied servicemen. These teams were still in existence in 1947, when the name and concept was revived with the creation of 21st SAS Regiment. SAS troops have since served in numerous operations across the globe. Any report of the SAS’s demise in 1945 was, perhaps, an exaggeration.
Joshua Levine is a historian and bestselling author. His latest book, SAS: The Illustrated History of the
SAS, was published by William Collins in May
Catch up with Rogue Heroes, the high-octane drama about SAS exploits in the Second World War at: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/ p0d5z0xy/sas-rogue-heroes
The prisoners were placed in trucks, driven to a quiet spot in the woods and murdered by their captors