Memorial for soldiers killed in daring wartime operation

HISTORIANS are searching for the surviving family of an SAS hero set to be honoured with a memorial this year.

Private James Dowling, from Birmingham, was executed on September 20, 1944, after being captured in France. He was only 21 years old. Dowling was among a large number of soldiers in the 2nd SAS Regiment, Army Air Corps, who were killed in Operation Loyton – many of them executed.

Those men will be honoured with a memorial, and the hunt is on to find relatives for the ceremony.

Precious little is known about Dowling, one of the youngest Who Dares Wins operatives.

Experts behind Facebook site “The SAS and LRDG Roll of Honour” have discovered he was born in Small Heath on October 14, 1922.

“He’s officially listed as aged 22, but had lied to increase his chance of serving overseas,” say site bosses. “He was really 21.

“He parachuted into France – it was his first time abroad – on September 6, 1944. He was captured on the 15th, then executed on the 20th.

“James is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Bayern in Germany [Durnbach war cemetery], in Grave 3.K.18.”

Operation Loyton remains one of the SAS best-known “cloak and dagger” missions of the war but it proved disastrous. Of the 91 men parachuted into France’s Vosges mountain range at a time when the Germans were pouring reinforcements into the area, 14 were killed.

Thirty-one were captured and executed.

It was a typically daring endeavour by the Hereford-based regiment.

A small SAS advance party was parachuted into dense woodland on August 12, 1944, tasked with linking with the French resistance.

The main fighting force followed 18 days later.

But from the off the operation was ill-fated.

One of the first casualties was a leading member of the resistance who killed himself by eating plastic explosives. He thought it was cheese. It was intended that American forces would relieve the SAS, but General Patton’s men were stalled by the enemy and Operation Loyton was abandoned.

The SAS force was split into small groups, each tasked with making it back to Allied lines 40 miles away.

After the war, it was discovered 31 soldiers had been murdered, some of them at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges mountains.

In 2003 a memorial was erected for victims in the French village of Moussey. Those victims included 140 French civilians believed to have assisted the Allies.

There is also a memorial to Operation Loyton at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas.