It ‘beggars belief’ that ‘unbreakable’ SAS hero has not been decorated | UK | News

As Sergeant Horace Stokes lay in bed dying of cancer, he told his son Peter to go into his wardrobe and look for “a little box”.

Inside was a worn old diary containing a truly remarkable story that he kept secret from everyone except his wife, Joan, for nearly half a century.

Peter, who had just graduated as an RAF officer at the time, had difficulty believing what he read in his father’s memoirs.

She says: “My father died very young, he was only 66. My sister called me and said she only had two weeks to live, but she didn’t want me to know she was dying.

“I had just finished my service in the army, so I went home and spent the last two weeks of his life with him, and in the middle of the night he said to me: ‘I went to see you in the back of my wardrobe, there’s a little box there, open it.’

“I went to the box and opened it, inside was a worn out old diary. He said I wanted you to read it.”

“Then I had the privilege of talking about some of these things in the last two weeks of his life, and then he died. It wasn’t like him, like most of his generation, to write a book about what he did.”

“So none of his family knew anything about his wartime service.”

His story is featured in bestselling war historian Damien Lewis’s latest book, SAS Great Escapes Five, out now.

Horace was born in 1921 and was one of 11 children raised in a two-bedroom house in Small Heath, a tough area of ​​Birmingham where the Peaky Blinders street gang, which inspired the BBC drama starring Cillian Murphy, was founded.

His diary revealed that he volunteered to join the Territorial Army’s Royal Artillery regiment when the war broke out and was mobilized at the age of 17 while he was away on TA duties.

Shortly after this he joined 12 Commando in Northern Ireland, where he met a young officer with whom he served throughout the war, a true maverick, Captain Philip Pinckney.

After going on missions in northern France, they took part in a raid on the Isle of Sark that galvanized Hitler’s infamous Commando Order (who executed all secret agents and special forces soldiers caught behind enemy lines); We will return to this later as an important part of Horace’s story.

The pair were part of a small number of men from the Small-Scale Raid Force and later joined Bill Stirling, brother of SAS founder David, in North Africa.

This group became 2 SAS, which Bill commanded to conduct raids in Italy. One of these, Operation Speedwell, saw 13 men from two teams parachute deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy’s rail network in September 1943.

Horace was part of the team commanded by Pinckney that landed almost 200 miles north of Rome to carry the lines from Bologna to Florence and from Boretta to Pistoia.

When they jumped out of the plane, a layer of fog covered the landing site, making it difficult to see, and a sudden gust of wind knocked Horace into the chimney of a house, leaving him hanging there with severe pain in his groin.

After pressing the release button on his chest strap and sliding the roof down towards the floor, he released it and suffered serious injuries.

He ignored the pain to escape with two of his comrades, and a week later they successfully blew up a railway tunnel near Vernio.

Pursued by the enemy and knowing that his injury was slowing them down, Horace abandoned his friends and, disguised as a native, found a bicycle and cycled some 250 miles to the Vatican in Rome – with a groin tear – where he was received by a priest and a young Yugoslav surgeon saved his life by amputating his left testicle.

After rescuing Horace, he trained local resistance fighters and went on raids with them, spending seven months working behind enemy lines – until he was captured and handed over to the Gestapo for questioning.

He knew he would be executed if he told them who he was, so he claimed to be an escaped prisoner of war. His captors tortured and beat him every day for weeks, but Horace did not give up.

The next year he was sent to three prisoner of war camps, one in Italy and two in Germany; He escaped each time, crossing the Channel and reaching his home in May 1945.

Peter, 64, who retired as a Wing Commander from the RAF Regiment in 2002, said: “When I read his diary I found it incredible. I wanted to know why he hadn’t told anyone and he said ‘we didn’t do that. We signed the Official Secrets Act, there were people helping me who I wouldn’t want to get into trouble with. It wasn’t my job to tell the story, it was my job to keep it a secret.’

“I wish I had more time to explore this part of his life, but when I thought about it I didn’t think he wanted that. I think sitting down and talking about it would bring back a lot of memories.”

He adds: “There were some things there that I found hard to believe. Who would bike 150 miles behind enemy lines to get into the hands of a priest in Rome? How could that be? But it was all true.”

Ether, who has three children and two stepchildren and lives in Truro, Cornwall, said she only knew her father as a publican in Birmingham. Immediately after the war, Horace also worked as a grocer and met his wife, Joan, on one of his delivery tours.

Peter adds that he was proud to receive three citations and an MBE for his own military service, but there was always a slight “sense of guilt” about this, as his father was never rewarded for his relentless bravery, which he attributes to his relationship with Pinckney, whose unorthodox tactics were frowned upon by the high command.

Damien says: “Horace was an absolutely extraordinary figure who was involved in some seminal moments in special forces history, but who repeatedly failed to survive Operation Speedwell, the physical hardships he endured leading up to his capture, and the repeated escapes that followed.

“He was unbreakable and super human.”

He adds: “Most of history consists of senior ranks and very little is written about NCOs and those below that rank, and Stokes is a mind-blowing story of overcoming seemingly impossible odds.

“It’s just disbelief to have gone through all this and not dress up, it really is.”

Being granted access to Horace’s diary allowed him to tell his story in the latest SAS Great Escapes book.

Damien says: “I first encountered Stokes 14 years ago when I wrote The Ungentlemanly War Ministry and got to know him through the raid on Sark and the Commando Order, but as with most of these, I couldn’t write Horace Stokes’ story without Peter finding the manuscript.

“You know there’s a great story there, but it’s impossible to bring it to life these days unless you can see the source material.”

*SAS Great Escapes Five by Damien Lewis (Hardcover, £22) is out now. For details and tickets to Damien’s book tour visit geni.us/DamienLewis_Events