SAS hero hid from Nazis as a mute butcher’s boy

A SAS hero hid in plain sight as a mute butcher’s boy in a French village, to evade Nazis who have been trying to find him after a failed sabotage mission.

Herbert Castelow pretended to be a cousin of butcher Michel Leduc, a French Resistance chief, in Vert-le-Petit, for nearly two months in 1944 whereas waging a solo conflict behind enemy strains.

German troops visited the butcher’s store day by day to purchase their meat ration. But as Herbert didn’t converse any French or German, he pretended to be mute.

He used a cast French identification card to turn into Hubert Louis Leboulenger, who was listed as having a extreme stammer.

While he labored within the store by day, he led sabotage and intelligence-gathering missions by evening.

READ MORE: Fateful shot that changed both our lives: A soldier and schoolboy’s unexpected friendship

His escape is certainly one of six exceptional true tales featured in SAS Great Escapes Two, by best-selling creator Damien Lewis.

Herbert was a part of a dozen-strong SAS unit parachuted into France on a moonlit evening on July 5, 1944, to explode Etampes airbase, simply south of Paris.

After intercepting radio transmissions, the Nazis had staked out the drop-zone and 11 of the SAS parachutists have been captured or killed. Herbert, the twelfth man to leap, managed to get away and hid in a forest till he was discovered by the Resistance.

At 5ft 4ins and weighing lower than 10st, he was capable of perch on the handlebars of the butchers’ bike beneath a billowing cycle cape worn by Michel to maintain off the rain. German troops knew the butcher so didn’t cease him as he cycled again to the close by village.

Herbert’s daughter Avril Deehan visited Vert-le-Petit in 1995 to search out out extra about her father’s time there.

She says: “Michel said it was easier to have his ‘cousin’ helping out in the butcher’s shop rather than trying to hide an SAS man. He was hiding in plain sight.”

Father-of-five Herbert, from Stockton-on-Tees, was on his second mission for the elite unit after they have been ambushed.

To perform deliveries the butcher and a pal needed to experience both facet of Herbert to cease him biking on the mistaken facet of the highway. He saved veering to the left, risking publicity.

But by the third week of August his cowl was blown when an unknown collaborator denounced him to the Gestapo. Michel was tipped off just a few hours earlier than an operation to seize Herbert was deliberate and fled together with his pal, him heading to close by American forces and Herbert moving into the wrong way to search out the closest British strains.

Before leaving, Herbert took a knife from the butcher’s store and killed two Gestapo brokers primarily based within the village, dumping their
our bodies in a boggy lake close by.

Dressed as a French gendarme he cycled eight miles earlier than taking a break close to Etampes airbase. After scouting out the bottom he returned to search out his bike had been stolen.

Without pondering he let loose a string of curses in English, which have been heard by some German troops.

He confronted prompt execution as a spy, however a senior German officer took him into custody for questioning at a Gestapo detention centre.

After failing to interrupt him throughout every week of torture, together with being burned with irons and electrical shocks to his chest, he was shipped east to Germany and on September 9 arrived in Metz, on the banks of the Moselle river and near the border. Herbert observed his
lone SS guard appeared sleepy simply earlier than midnight. So he killed him together with his naked palms, took his rifle and escaped.

After strolling calmly by means of the closely garrisoned metropolis he swam throughout the river to succeed in American forces and fought with the fifth Reconnaissance Troop, sharing intelligence concerning the Germans’ positions in Metz.

Herbert was flown from Paris to London in a USAAF warplane on September 21, fairly than going by ship.

Damien says: “I’ve never read of one man being flown back on his own. He was either very badly injured and it was a medical evacuation or he had intelligence which they needed to get back to the UK.”

After the conflict Colonel Blair Mayne, 1 SAS’s commanding officer, gave a speech to the Royal British Legion during which he singled out Herbert’s exploits for reward, regardless of not naming him.

He described how certainly one of his males had “lived in a butcher’s shop on the top floor…at night, however, he went out and did some sabotage work”.

Damien says: “This is the man who commanded the SAS for most of the war, the man who led hundreds of Britain’s finest warriors into war, yet he singles out Herbert Castelow’s story.”

He provides: “It is an escape story, but actually it’s really a story about Herbert Castelow refusing to stop fighting. I am sure there were times when he could have made his way back to Allied lines, but he chose to stay.”

Avril, who lives in Bainton, Yorkshire, with husband Brian, says her father, who died in 1973 aged 57, when she was 17, hardly ever spoke about his conflict experiences.

Herbert was awarded the Military Medal however declined an invite to obtain it personally from King George VI, as he didn’t really feel he deserved the accolade.

He labored within the native metal mill after the conflict however suffered from PTSD, significantly on moonlit nights when he would scream and thrash in his sleep.

Avril, 14 on the time, would go to him with a dampened face material. She noticed marks on his higher physique from the torture.

The grandmother-of-three, 66, was contacted by Michel when he was searching for his pal. She says: “I was incredibly close to my father, but after researching his story I am more proud of him.

“I never realised what an incredibly brave man he was, the way he was tortured by the Gestapo, and he said nothing.”

One of Damien’s earlier books, Churchill’s Secret Warriors, has been made right into a Guy Ritchie movie The Ministry Of Ungentle-manly Warfare, starring Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson, due out subsequent yr.

Avril hopes her father’s story will get the identical remedy: “When I tell people my father’s story they always say it is a blockbuster in the making.”

• SAS Great Escapes Two by Damien Lewis (Quercus) from Express Bookshop for £22 at expressbookshop.com or 0203 176 3832. Free UK P&P on on-line orders over £25