The long column of heavily armed jeeps nosed into no-man’s-land, the area sandwiched between American and German lines.
To all sides the terrain was war-blasted, smoke-enshrouded and devoid of life. Ghosts seemed to stalk the landscape.
At the wheel of one of the leading vehicles was a figure who looked more like a ‘boy scout’ than any hardened SAS warrior.
Alec ‘Boy’ Borrie had joined the Gordon Highlanders claiming to be eighteen, but was barely sixteen.
Months on guard duty had left him bored stiff, so when calls went out for SAS volunteers Borrie jumped at the chance.
An interview with Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne followed, at which the seasoned and highly-decorated SAS commander had asked Borrie how he’d feel about killing?
‘I haven’t done any yet, so I don’t know,’ was Borrie’s typically forthright answer. ‘I think it’ll be okay.’
Lance Corporal Alec Borrie in front of his Jeep bearing the SAS’s famous winged dagger badge
Lance Corporal Borrie is seen with fellow SAS members (from left to right) Joe Craig, Chris Tilling, Arthur Smith and Woody Woodford in France in 1944
Lance Corporal is seen in his bed at his home in Dagenham holding a specially commissioned oil painting of Commander Paddy Mayne. The painting was hung above his bed, prompting him to say, ‘thank God I’ve got my commander watching over me again’
Maybe it was his disarming honesty, but for whatever reason Borrie was one of just 30 of 300 volunteers selected, and he would go on to make it through intense SAS training.
That was several months ago. Now, in 1944, he was here, about to face his baptism of fire, as their convoy attempted to slip through the German frontline.
As his eyes strained in the gloom, Borrie nudged his commander, Captain Roy Close. ‘Look ahead, sir.’
Far in front lay a French café, and beside it was parked the distinctive form of a Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251, a German military halftrack.
Beyond it lay a long line of enemy trucks, painted their distinctive field grey.
As the column of jeeps approached, curious faces – German soldiers – turned their way.
From their earliest days of operations, the SAS made sure to have a native German speaker, often a German Jew, embedded in their patrols.
Right now, a voice cried out a greeting in German, from the lead jeep: ‘Hallo, Kamerade!’
Figures all along the line of jeeps began to wave, as if they and the enemy were the best of friends.
Amazingly, the ruse worked. Smiling and waving, the jeeps sped past, until a very welcome bend in the road whisked the SAS out of view.
Repeatedly, the SAS ran the gauntlet, posing as friendly forces, until someone from the rear jeep radioed through a warning.
‘Radio silence! Radio silence!’ the convoy commander barked.
But the voice at the rear would not be silenced. ‘We have four more vehicles in convoy,’ he warned.
Sure enough, a group of enemy vehicles had tagged onto the SAS column, as the tail-end Charlies.
Thankfully, when the SAS turned off southeast, the enemy vehicles continued straight on. As they parted company both sides bid their farewells with a final wave.
An SAS jeep after being devastated by a mine. Borrie’s jeep hit a mine and all that was left was a twisted, smoking wreck
Lance Corporal Borrie is seen with SAS comrades posing beneath a sign pointing towards Brussels
Alec Borrie (centre) seen with SAS comrades next to an Chrysler emblazoned with the SAS insignia
Reaching the Yonne region of France, some 250miles from the Normandy beaches, the patrols got to work.
Near the town of Châtillon-en-Bazois, Close steered his four-jeep patrol into a deep forest hideout.
Shortly, they received a warning from a local Frenchman. A German convoy was due through the area. They’d need to move quickly if they were to hit it.
With one final check on their jeep-mounted Vickers-K guns and grenades, Close navigated the patrol to an ideal ambush spot – a stretch of open road, with a bend at either end.
Backing the jeeps into the roadside woodland, Close spread them along the entire strait.
The plan was simple. Close, with Borrie at the wheel, manned the last jeep in line.
They’d allow the convoy to get level with them, before they’d trigger the ambush, so halting the lead enemy vehicles.
Then the rest of the jeeps would let rip, aiming to cause ‘maximum damage’ as the convoy was trapped on the open highway.
Borrie was still shunting their jeep into position, when the growl of heavy engines sounded from the far bend.
First vehicles to appear were a motorcycle outrider, leading a German staff car, with its mottle-grey camouflage paint.
After that came a truck crammed with troops, and then another and another, and dozens more. Soon, the entire length of road was full of vehicles.
Judging the time was right, the guns on Close’s jeep spat flame, cutting down the outrider, his motorbike sliding across the road in a hail of sparks and crashing into a roadside ditch.
Swinging their weapons onto the staff car, its windows imploded in a shower of glass, the figures inside slumping forward as they died.
All along the woodland muzzles sparked, as a dozen Vickers ripped out the fire.
The troops in the leading trucks dived for cover beneath the wreckage of their vehicles, but as the SAS poured in a storm of bullets more figures were cut down.
From one of the jeeps someone lobbed a grenade. It sailed over a truck, exploding on the far side in a flash of orange.
But one of the enemy vehicles, about midway along the column, had come to a halt broadside on to the jeeps.
Lance Corporal Borrie (left) is seen with former comrades PJ Cabut and Jack Man, at Sennecey-le-Grand in 2019
Lance Corporal Borrie poses at the wheel of a Jeep with former SAS comrades during a reunion
In an instant, the canvas sides dropped away to reveal a pair of machine guns mounted on tripods.
The gunners opened fire, and a storm of rounds went hammering perilously low over the jeeps.
They were ‘Spandaus’ – belt-fed MG34 machineguns – nicknamed ‘Hitler’s buzzsaw’ by Allied troops, for they could hammer out 1,200 rounds per minute.
Having swung their twin Vickers around, Close and his men opened up on the nearest MG34, saturating its gun-team with fire, silencing first one and then both of the weapons.
The enemy convoy was massive. The tail-end was still out of view. The first five trucks were now raging infernos, with more peppered with bullet holes.
The cries of the injured rent the air, as gunfire pulsed back and forth. But above the hellish din, the ambushers heard another noise now, one they’d least expected.
From the opposite direction there were grunts of powerful engines. A second enemy convoy was in-bound, and the SAS were in danger of being trapped.
Close gave the signal to break contact. Two jeeps swung around, and roared up the forest track heading for cover.
But as the third went to withdraw, a burst of enemy fire hit the driver. He lost control of the vehicle, which careered into a roadside ditch.
In a flash, Alec ‘Boy’ Borrie seized the initiative. Reversing his jeep through a barrage of enemy fire, he made it to the trapped vehicle.
Then Borrie, cool as a cucumber, got hold of the wounded man and dragged him aboard, along with his comrades.
That done, and with enemy troops swarming aboard their machinegun trucks, the raiders hared off into the forest, ‘bullets zipping past and smacking into the trees all around.’
Shortly, the fire ceased. All that could be heard was the grunt of the jeep’s ‘Go Devil’ petrol engines, plus yells of alarm echoing through the woods from far behind.
Once they’d gone a good distance Close called a halt. The ‘taught feeling of excitement’ was draining away, to be replaced by the caution of the hunted.
They would hole up for the night in a remote patch of woodland.
Not having thought to bring much food, ‘dinner’ was steaming tea and biscuits, over which they exchanged tales of the battle.
As an SAS section, it was their first time in action. For four of their number – Borrie included – it was the first time they had ever faced the enemy.
On balance, they felt they’d done pretty well.
In fact, the impression those eight men had left was fearsome. The surviving vehicles of the enemy convoy reversed course, heading back into Nevers, the city from which they had set out, leaving behind a line of burned-out trucks and cars.
A heavy force of German troops did return, to comb the woodlands, but they found no-one. By then, the SAS raiders were long gone.
Close, Borrie and the rest of the patrol would go on to be treated to a sumptuous feast by ‘a French aristocrat who dressed like an English gentleman and spoke impeccable English’, at his grand chateau.
Warned about a German military headquarters, they’d launch a hit-and-run attack on that very building, being hailed by the Mayor of Châtillon-en-Bazois as the ‘Englishmen who have killed sixty of the enemy … and have come to liberate the town.’
They’d go on to party like there was no tomorrow in a newly liberated Paris, where they’d enjoy the delights of the ‘most well-known and upmarket brothel in France,’ as Borrie described it.
But months later, with the battle for France won, they would face their toughest trial yet – the snowbound, freezing and bloody march on Berlin.
To Borrie, who by spring 1945 had spent the best part of a year at war, it was ‘obvious that it would be a different type of war.’
The SAS would be ‘fighting on German soil and everybody was the enemy.’ Serving at the tip of the spear, their role was to crowbar open enemy frontlines.
In doing so the SAS faced die-hard Hitler Youth fighters, the Volkssturm – Nazi Germany’s home militia – armoured units, and elite paratroopers.
The resistance proved suicidal, with little quarter being given by either side. Even friendly forces couldn’t be trusted.
Moving in their jeeps far ahead of the Allied frontline, the SAS column was pounced on by a US warplane.
Having buzzed the convoy of jeeps, all presumed the pilot had identified them as Allied troops. Not a bit of it.
Moments later, the fighter aircraft came in again, guns blazing. As the pilot rolled in for a second attack, Mayne and his men lost patience.
‘We opened up with 40 Vickers-K guns,’ Borrie noted, and the warplane veered off ‘trailing black smoke.’
Menaced by German snipers, there was no telling when the enemy might strike.
During the ferocious battle for Friesoythe, a town more than 40miles inside Nazi Germany, an entire SAS patrol had been captured.
In the aftermath of the fighting, in which they’d suffered heavy casualties, Borrie and his pals were brewing up breakfast at the roadside.
All of a sudden, a lone shot from a nearby house ‘hit the frying pan and sent it flying.’
By now, the SAS jeeps had been fitted with the heavy, .50-calibre Browning machineguns.
More annoyed at their ‘breakfast being ruined’ than being sniped at, Borrie and his cohorts put a long burst from the brute of a gun into the house, before ‘we cooked some more food and ate in peace.’
But Borrie’s war was about to come to a sharp and bloody end.
Author Damien Lewis poses with Lance Corporal Borrie at his home in Dagenham just a few months before his death last May aged 98
As Mayne radioed SAS headquarters, ‘This country absolutely bloody to work in. The battle is turning into a slogging match and ourselves into Mine Detectors.’
Pressing on, the convoy probed deep into hostile terrain. As one jeep hit a mine, they veered off right, down a sideroad.
A narrow gravel track, Borrie’s jeep took the lead. The vehicle commander was SAS stalwart Sergeant Alex ‘Sandy’ Davidson, whose wife had given birth to a baby girl who was not yet one year old.
Earlier, Davidson had argued that it was ‘wrong to expect married men to take part in the actual fighting,’ this late in the war.
In the jeep’s rear, Trooper Freddy Caldwell served as the gunner, while Borrie was at the wheel.
As they pressed on, Davidson ordered Borrie to stick to the tracks made by previous vehicles. It was a sensible suggestion.
Keeping to those tyre tracks, Borrie motored ahead.
But an instant later there was a ‘mighty flash and the jeep rose into the air, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the field at the side of the road in perfect peace and quiet, not realising that the blast had made me deaf,’ he later recalled.
Davidson had been thrown in one direction, and Borrie and Caldwell in the other. All that was left of the jeep was a twisted, smoking wreck.
Borrie was bleeding from the head. Caldwell was badly burned. But Davidson had suffered horrendous injuries. Loaded into an ambulance, he would be dead by the time they reached a field hospital.
There, Borrie had his face stitched back together by a German surgeon, and Caldwell’s burns were treated.
As the need for beds was acute, Borrie volunteered to be treated as ‘walking wounded’, and he was flown back to Britain in a C47 Dakota transport aircraft.
Admitted to a Manchester hospital, he soon realized the matron was a real ‘Adolf Hitler… It was worse than being in prison.’
Borrie vowed to escape as soon as he could. On Victory in Europe (VE) Day, Borrie – still not even 21 years old – seized his chance.
Lance Corporal Borrie looks through an old photo album while in bed at his home in Dagenham
He hit a local pub and got ‘very drunk.’ At one stage he had a blazing row with a rude individual who refused to get out of his way, before realizing it was his own reflection in the mirror.
Returning to the hospital, he was put on a charge for being AWOL. When his commander, Paddy Mayne, returned to England a few days later, he learned of the news.
Mayne came to liberate Borrie, and he ripped the charge sheet to shreds of course. No case to answer for this war hero.
In the spring of 2023 I was fortunate enough to interview Alec, and to hear at first hand some of his incredible wartime stories.
Sadly he passed away a few months later, at the age of 98.
He was survived by Major Mike Sadler MC MM, the legendary navigator and SAS commander. Major Sadler sadly passed away in January 2024.
He was the last known of member of the original wartime SAS to die.
Their full story, and that of Paddy Mayne and his band of warriors, is told in my new book, SAS Daggers Drawn.
SAS Daggers Drawn is published by Quercus.
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