282465 (1095726) Willis Michael SADLER, MC, MM, Royal Artillery, Long Range Desert Group & 1 SAS

davidbfpo · Apr 20, 2024

Yesterday I attended Mike Sadler's private memorial Service @ Hereford Cathedral, attended by his family, the Prince of Wales, the SAS Colonel Commandant General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, a host of ex- and serving members of the regiment. Plus one French Army SF officer in uniform, although others in civvies were present. The French "helper" assisted me in gaining entry.

After WW2 and an expedition to Antarctica he joined SIS (MI6), serving for thirty-six years, it was suggested he had a role in the Soviet era double agent Oleg Gordievsky (who was finally extracted from the USSR in 1985) and a SIS building somewhere is now named after him.

davidbfpo · Dec 31, 2024

A few snippets have landed and will appear soon, apologies lost them till 31/12/2024. See Post 23.

Meantime he gets a mention in a new thread:The capture of David Stirling: the German account

JohnG505 · Dec 31, 2024

davidbfpo · Dec 31, 2024

Provided by a "lurker" who had a family link to him. Mike Sadler, interviewed at the age of 102

Mike Sadler interview, published in the Daily Mirror 29 Oct 2022

The reason for the interview is that tonight (Sunday 30 Oct 2022) begins a new six part TV drama series “SAS Rogue Heroes”. This is based on the 2016 book of the same name by Ben MacIntyre, which led to a three part documentary by Macintyre in 2017. Sadler is now 102 years old, the only man left from the original SAS.
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Q. What did you think of David Stirling as a man?

He was a first-class man, highly intelligent, highly motivated, and in many ways the founder of the SAS. David was the one who perceived the possibilities and was determined to make the SAS a reality. He managed to recruit about 80 chaps who had, he thought, the requirements he needed. He wanted people who could get on with each other – and him – in difficult circumstances. He was more interested in that than their qualifications.

Q What was your impression of Paddy Mayne?

He was an action man, he liked firing weapons. Paddy was a great one for a party and he was inclined to have one pulled out of bed in the middle of the night just to join a party. I found that sort of thing rather maddening, but he was so nice you couldn’t really mind.

Q. What was the attitude of people to death and injury?

The most important thing was having a doctor capable of doing their work in an emergency. We did have some good doctors who could perform an operation right there in the sand.

Q. If you returned from a raid and somebody had been killed, was that discussed?

Oh yes. They said what a good chap he was, and how sad. People on the whole didn’t think about being killed. We all thought someone else would be killed, but not us. I don’t know why it was. I suspect it was self-protection really.

Q. Would you regard what you did as more dangerous than what other members of the military were doing?

Oh no, certainly not. We knew about the tank battles and things like that. They were much worse. We heard about people getting stuck in tanks which had gone on We felt we were lucky to be out in these remote parts where there wasn’t too much risk. Well, of course, there was a great deal of risk, but we didn’t value it too greatly.

Q. Did you regard yourselves as special, as the name Special Air Service indicates?

We felt we were a good lot of chaps together, that’s true, we did feel that. But I don’t know that we felt we were particularly special. Yes, we were pretty unique in one way. We were conscious that we were doing something different from the regular army.

Q. Can you tell us more about the challenges of operating in the desert?

The problems were knowing where you were, and knowing where you could find resources, such as the places where you could find water on a long journey in unknown territory over very bad conditions.

Sometimes you could get a lovely flat area where you could drive along at 50 or 60 miles an hour. At other times you couldn’t go a mile in an hour because of the terrible conditions, boulders and rocks and stones, getting punctures in tyres endlessly, and damage to the vehicles. Overall, I loved the desert, I thought it was perfect. I was very sorry to leave at the end of the desert war. It was like being on the sea in a way. You could go in any direction. There was a great sort of freedom attached to being in the desert. There was so much variety – beautiful smooth surfaces, sand, and impassable great sand dunes hundreds of feet high –slowly moving across the desert with the prevailing wind, the sand dunes moving very, very slowly, perhaps a foot every year, but altering their arrangements quite considerably.

Oh yes, I thought the desert was a wonderful place.

Q. How secret were your operations?

The whole SAS started out its success by being terrifically secret. David didn’t want any publicity at all, and we never had any to start with, not until the raid of the SAS on the Iranian embassy, which took place in the presence of the television cameras.

Q. How did you deal with the heat in the desert?

We had a bit of a water ration, maybe two pints every day, and if you could last half the day without having any of it then it made life a little bit more hopeful. There was a lot of suffering for those who failed to reserve water for later in the day. If you drank it earlier, it made you much more thirsty.

Q. How did you adapt to conditions in the desert?

The desert – depending on the temperature – for much of the day we just wore a pair of shorts and possibly a shirt or something over the top, and headgear. People favoured so-called desert headdress to wrap round their heads, and, indeed, certainly in a sandstorm you could use it to shelter from the sand to some extent.

David Stirling tended to wear just a hat or a cap, or a woolly headdress, he didn’t wear the fancy headdress.

I didn’t use it much because I didn’t like it either, I had lots of hair in those days and I used that. It was better to have the breeze blowing through you than to have something wrapped round you which was hot.

Q. How do you feel about young people watching SAS Rogue Heroes and learning of the amazing things you did?

They make for very good stories, no denying, and they were very exciting at the time in some cases – exciting and frightening at the same time. Everyone had to take chances which gave rise to considerable possibilities of risk and danger, but they were all part of the business really, you had to put up with it.

It was not something people were enjoying at the time very often – well, it was exciting to be shooting off at things, yes, I suppose it was.

Mostly we didn’t remember killing people because, in our case at any rate in the SAS, we were mostly shooting in the dark at things, or putting bombs on targets and hoping not to disturb the people who were going to be the recipients of them.
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A local newspaper contacted his mother after his escape in Tunisia; sorry only part shown: Photo of Mike Sadler's exploits in the desert

Plus: Photo of Mike Sadler awarded Military Cross:

davidbfpo · Jan 5, 2025

Today is the 1st anniversary of Mike Sadler's passing and I spotted this image elsewhere.

JimHerriot · Jan 6, 2025

davidbfpo said: ↑

Today is the 1st anniversary of Mike Sadler's passing and I spotted this image elsewhere.

View attachment 400219
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Artist Kev(in) Wills. It's what he does.

x.com

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

davidbfpo · Jan 31, 2025

Yesterday Uncle Target posted a short YouTube clip on the SAS Rogues Heroes thread. It was one I had missed and forwarded it to an ex-American US Marine friend, who had spoken to Mike a few years ago about his wartime navigation skills. He has just responded:

That is a beautiful clip David. I would challenge any historian to prove my assertion wrong; without Sadler, the SAS would not have enjoyed success.
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For the clip:

In the comments this one caught my attention:

Mike Sadler was absolutely instrumental to the success of the early SAS. He was resposible for inserting the devastating fighting forces that were the SAS raiding parties deep behind enemy lines and more importantly getting them back to safety. His acheivements during the war are far too many to mention but he is up with Paddy Mayne with regard to influence in shaping the SAS. He was also one of the few people able to tame Paddy - an achievement in its own right! There are fewer true legends in warfare than people claim but Mike Salder is one of them!
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