Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII Read Online Free PDF

somehow Buzz had managed to nurse it across a thousand-plus miles of storm-swept sea.
    In the months leading up to their departure each of these men had been taught to wage war in what was then a very un-British way – fast and dirty, with no holds barred. At therevolutionary Experimental Station 6, the codename for the seemingly genteel Ashton Manor, just south of Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, they’d been taught to fight ‘without a tremor of apprehension, to hurt, maul, injure or kill with ease’. Their instructors were the legendary William Fairbairn and Eric ‘Bill’ Sykes, veterans of policing British interests in what was then the wild Treaty Port of Shanghai, which lies at the mouth of China’s mighty Yangtze River.
    On that city’s lawless waterfront and in its twisting streets and alleyways Fairbairn and Sykes had learned how to injure and kill at close quarters. At the outbreak of war they had been recalled to Britain, to teach all they knew to the crew of the
Maid Honour
, and others volunteering for such missions. From Wilkinson Sword they’d commissioned a specially made knife, with a seven-inch blade, a heavy handle to give firm grip in the wet, a cross-guard to prevent hand slip, plus two razor sharp edges and a sharp, stiletto stabbing profile.
    Some 250,000 of these knives would roll off Wilkinson Sword’s London production line during the war years, each etched with the words ‘The Fairbairn Sykes Fighting Knife’ on its square head. Fairbairn and Sykes taught the
Maid Honour
crew how to stalk a man silently from behind, to snake an arm around his neck choking off any cry, while jerking the head sideways and driving the blade deep into the soft area between the neck and shoulder blade in a savage down-thrust.
    They demonstrated how if a main artery was severed, a man would quickly lose consciousness and die – drowned within seconds in his own blood. Most importantly, Fairbairn stressed, there was no more deadly a weapon at close quartersthan the knife, ‘and it never runs out of ammunition.’ In what became known as their ‘school for bloody mayhem’ they demonstrated methods of silent strangulation, how to disable with a single blow from fist or boot targeting vulnerable points like the kidney or spine, and how to wield a pistol fast and deadly from the hip, ‘Shanghai Style’.
    They stressed how most pistol duels take place at very short range, a matter of a few feet separating the two sides. They showed how the man who was quickest on the draw would doubtless win, no matter how accurate was his aim. By drawing and firing Shanghai Style – bracing the pistol butt against the hip and aiming from there – the shooter could get the drop on his opponent. They taught the double tap – two bullets fired rapidly from the hip, in the general direction of the target’s torso, to disable, then one fired with more careful aim into his head.
    In short, they emphasized how in war, ‘one cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness.’ What they taught at Station 6 wasn’t fair and it wasn’t pretty, but it certainly delivered. And Anders Lassen for one had taken to this school for bloody mayhem like a fish to water.
    But right now as the sun rose above the glittering ocean and March-Phillipps set a course for Madeira’s Funchal Harbour, it was subterfuge and deception that was needed most of all.
    Landfall was approaching.
    With the jagged profile of Madeira hoving into view – the volcanic peaks of the island rise to over 6,000 feet at their highest – even Lassen was persuaded to discard and keep hidden all of his weaponry. Being a fluent Swedish speaker, the blond-hairedDane – along with Hayes, who spoke a smattering of Swedish, and Buzz the ‘cabin boy’ – would spearhead their Scandinavian deception.
    Cover papers were hastily gathered together. These included false passports and fake seaman’s documents, all of which identified the crew as Swedish civilians off on a transatlantic