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The Nemesis File

The True Story of an SAS Execution Squad

John Blake Publishing Ltd

A love of soldiering must run in our family. After the Second World War, my father would talk to me about his exploits as a member of the famous Long Range Desert Group, those legendary heroes who patrolled North Africa harassing German supply lines. His stories always excited me and made me yearn for the day when I would be old enough to join the army too.

My first recollection of my father is of a big, powerful man, a stranger in army uniform, walking into our house and taking command of the place, ordering my mother, sister and me about. I was frightened of him from the start – and would soon have reason to be.

My father never seemed to like me and for no reason at all would hit me, frequently and hard. Even today, forty-odd years later, my recollections are of waiting for him to come home, waiting for him to slap me and knock me off a chair or into a corner. He never seemed to want me around and I would spend most of the time when he was at home in my room, alone.

My mother never seemed to have time for me either. She was always busy, always rushing about. She would spend time laughing with my elder sister but never with me. She did not abuse me but just didn't seem to want me around, as though I was surplus to requirements. However, times were hard and life would have been difficult for my mother who had had to take care of everything because my father was away in the army for most of those early years.

After the war, when the Long Range Desert Group was disbanded, my father was retained by the army and served in the Far East, in Borneo and Malaysia. It wasn't until I was five years old that he was demobbed and came home for good, back to his old job of driving lorries.

With my father back home, the family grew as my mother bore two more daughters and two more sons. No wonder she felt she had had enough of having kids – her first had been born when she was only 16, the last when she was 36! She had only ever wanted two!

I loved listening to stories of my father's time in the army. One of my favourites was of the days when he was in the Long Range Desert Group. They would drive hundreds of miles, searching out German positions, before attempting to blow up the enemy oil and arms dumps and supply routes. As he explained to me, they could not cope with prisoners and would do all in their power to avoid finding themselves in a position where they might have to take any.

On one occasion, however, they were driving their Jeeps in convoy when they came over the brow of a hill and into a wadi. There, in front of them, was the enemy – about forty infantry troops who had spent the night resting in the river bed. There was no way to escape and my father thought that this was the end, that they would be captured and probably killed. There were only twelve men in their unit. The odds were enormous.

To my father's amazement, however, the German troops immediately raised their hands, eager to surrender. They were calling out, 'Tommy, Tommy, comrade' before the British Jeeps had come to a halt in their midst.

The Germans seemed desperate to surrender but my father's group could not take them prisoner. They had no food for hungry men, little water and the idea of marching forty enemy troops perhaps hundreds of miles through the desert was unthinkable. Besides, they were under orders never to take any prisoners; it wasn't their function.

My father and the other sergeants had no idea what to do. If they left the Germans in the river bed and drove off, their position and direction would be known, their mission ruined. There could be only one answer. They told the Germans that they would have to surrender their weapons and made them leave their rifles and revolvers in a pile and then walk to the other side of the wadi with their hands on top of their heads. Then they told them to face the rising sun. Four of my father's group picked up machine guns, inserted the magazines and then shot every single one of them. Dad told me that he could never forget it, that he hated doing it, but they were in the middle of a war; they had no option. That story, which I am sure was true, instilled in me a profound and lasting respect for my father and not a little fear.

Another story was of another occasion during the war when Dad was convinced he would die. His group was about to blow up a large German petrol store. They had laid the explosives and were leaving the barbed-wire enclave when a German sentry, on his inspection round, stopped for a cigarette immediately in front of my father and two of his mates. He could have been only a few feet from them; they could even hear him breathing in the stillness of the desert night. For three minutes he stood there smoking while they tried desperately to hold their breath, fearful of betraying their position. If that sentry had turned to face them, he could not have failed to see them. They were ready to shoot if necessary but that was the last thing they wanted to do as they knew there were at least twenty more German soldiers on the site, but they could not get close enough to him to take him out silently. Finally, after what my father said seemed like a lifetime, the sentry threw away his cigarette butt and continued on his way.

Despite the bad times, he obviously missed the excitement of the Desert Group. He would speak with pride about their exploits in blowing up dumps and ammunition supplies, engaging in the occasional gun battle with pursuing German troops, the narrow escapes and the life they had led in the desert. I would plead with him to repeat these ad infinitum and their effect was to make me long to grow up and join the army myself. I couldn't wait to be old enough to sign on and experience the excitement and adventures that he had known. For me, however, it wouldn't be like that but I wasn't to know.

After the war ended, my father discovered that he could never rekindle that wartime sense of commitment, coupled with the belief that he was helping, in his small way, to win the war. He never liked the jungles of the Far East the way he had developed an affection for the open desert, despite the scorching sun and the terrible sandstorms from which there was no real protection. He would hardly ever talk about his active service in Malaysia, as though he wanted to forget that period of his life. There was nothing of the pride he always showed when talking of the men he had served with in the desert. That was his war, his manhood, his life. Nothing could, or would, ever equal that.

As a result, he found life in civvy street very difficult and it became all but impossible for him to hold down a job. He thought all his work boring and tiresome and found driving an overladen lorry along the crowded North Circular road a poor comparison to the freedom of those war years spent driving hundreds of miles through empty desert. Every few months he would quit his job in anger, the frustration tearing him apart. Then he would go on a drinking bout and become a different man. It was on those occasions that I feared him most for he would be unable to control himself and would take it out on me, his eldest son. Now, after my own experiences in the army, I can understand the pressures that he fought against, the reasons why he drank and why he would inevitably end up hitting me. But I didn't understand then, and my memories are of being afraid.

One day, when I was about nine years old, I learned about the other side of war – death.

I remember coming down to breakfast one day and seeing my father sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. He was making a groaning noise and his shoulders were hunched up and shaking. I had no idea what was happening. He didn't look at me and he didn't say anything. I stared at him for a minute or so and then I realised that he was crying and the emotion was shaking his body. However, my father's tears and sobbing seemed very different from the tears I had seen my mother shed. There was anger in him, a frustration which he could not control and which I could not then understand.

It transpired that his younger brother, my uncle Stanley, had died in North Korea, shot out of the sky while parachuting behind enemy lines. The house was silent; no one uttered a sound; we just watched Dad crying, furious, his eyes violent and a single word coming from his lips over and over again: 'Why, why, why?'

At lunchtime, he went out and I did not see him again for a day and a half. I think he went on a bender but I remember my mother saying it was best for him to get it out of his system. She knew it was better for him to bury his anger and his violence in drink than try to bottle it up and then take it out on us.

This episode left me in no doubt about what I wanted to do with my life. From that moment I just wanted to grow up, join the army, become a parachutist and kill as many Koreans as possible.

I don't really remember having a close relationship with my mother. She would simply give me my food, tell me what to wear, tell me what to do and tell me to behave myself. I can, however, remember her saying at least five or six times a day, 'Wait till your father gets home. He'll give you a good hiding.' What seems odd, though, is that I can't really remember ever doing much wrong because most of the time I kept myself very much to myself and away from my mother and brothers and sisters. I became a bit of a loner.

There were some incidents from my childhood that I have always remembered. I smile about them now, although I didn't smile at the time.

My first vivid memory of excitement tinged with fear dates from when I was only two years old. My sister Jan, who was seven years older than me, would be told to take me with her down to the shops whenever my mother asked her to do some shopping. I would be put in the pushchair and my sister, under duress, would have to take me with her.

Just for sport, she would always let go of the pushchair when we came to the brow of a hill, about fifty yards from the shops. She would run beside the pushchair as I screamed at her, not knowing what would happen next. Of course, when the pushchair began picking up speed, she would take hold of it and roar with laughter at my terrified face.

One day, however, she failed to catch hold of the pushchair as it careered down the hill, gathering speed. I can remember seeing the road at the bottom of the hill, with vehicles moving along it, and being convinced that I would end up under one of those cars or lorries. I can remember screaming and looking back at my sister as she ran vainly down the hill, desperately trying to catch me. The pushchair bounced off the kerb but, thank God, there were no vehicles coming. I held on grimly as the pushchair sped across the road, smashing into the opposite kerb and throwing me out on to the pavement. I was distraught, screaming and crying, and she tried to comfort and quieten me, knowing that she would get a good hiding from my mother when she discovered how my bloody face had become so covered in cuts and bruises.

My sister would always take the opportunity to have as much fun as possible at my expense. Another favourite trick was to encourage me to walk under her big overcoat whenever we went to the shops. Hidden under the coat, I could see nothing and she would walk quickly along, with me running to keep up. Then, suddenly, there would be a crash as I smashed into a lamppost or pillar box and I would hear Jan roaring with laughter as I cried in pain. It was months before I realised she was walking me into these objects on purpose. I assumed, all along, that they were mere accidents.

My first memory of real pain, however, was not the result of a beating from my father but an argument I had with an old-fashioned, stand-up mangle that my mother kept in the kitchen which led through to the hall. I loved to slide up and down the linoleum in the hall, especially after my mother had spent time polishing it. One day I ran along the hall, landed on my backside and slid into the kitchen, crashing headlong into the mangle, my face hitting the iron stand on which it rested.

I screamed in pain and cried even louder when I realised that blood was pouring from my mouth and three teeth had fallen out. My mother, however, left me in no doubt as to who was to blame for the accident while she propelled me down the road to the doctor's surgery to check precisely what damage I had done to myself. Even today I can still recall the pain.

I had a rather ambivalent attitude towards my elder sister for she had a knack of blaming me for everything that went wrong, usually when she had done something naughty herself and didn't want to accept responsibility. As a result, I later became more and more wary of her and her motives, but in those early childhood days I didn't realise why I was always getting into trouble when I had done nothing bad.

On one occasion we were sent to the shops to buy something for supper. I was about six and my sister was thirteen. Unfortunately, the shop was out of stock of the item we had been sent to buy so my sister spent the money on sweets. When we returned home my mother could see that we had been eating chocolate and quickly realised that we had spent the money on sweets rather than on what we had been told to buy. My sister told her that it was totally my fault and that I had forced her to buy them. As a result, I received a good hiding and my sister was simply given a caution to take more control of me! In retrospect, of course, it was wonderful training for army life but I didn't appreciate that at the time.

On another occasion, when I was about seven, my father had been tiling the living-room fireplace and, having finished the job, went out to the shops. While he was out, my sister decided the top row of tiles was not correctly matched and took all of them off. When my father returned, an hour later, all the tiles were on the floor and the fireplace looked a mess. In a fury, he asked what the hell had happened and my dear sister told him that I had taken them off while she was out of the room. I protested my innocence and told him I had not touched them, which was true. On that occasion, he gave me a good thrashing not only for removing the tiles but also for telling lies.

After that episode I really hated my sister. However, revenge is sweet. A couple of years later she began dating a boy who my mother didn't like at all. She forbade my sister to see him. Of course, she continued to do so but needed my co-operation. I seized my chance. At that time I loved Airfix aeroplane models and for three months I made her buy me a model plane every Saturday to ensure my silence. She hated it but had to go along with it.

In many respects, I suppose my mother was quite Victorian in the way she brought up her children. She undoubtedly had high standards. She would never give us pocket money and made us work around the house and run errands. We were never allowed to go out and play with other children without her express permission, which, quite frequently, she wouldn't give. She wanted us to mix with children whose parents she respected, which were not the ones we wanted to play with. She was particularly tough with my sisters. The last thing Mother wanted was one of her daughters coming home pregnant.

However, like mother, like daughter. A year after she banned my sister from seeing her boyfriend, Jan did, indeed, come home and announce that she was having a baby. She, too, was only sixteen. When she told my parents, there was an almighty row so I went to my bedroom to keep out of trouble while their voices reached screaming pitch. They quietened down, however, when she told them that the boy had offered to marry her and they stood by her, although my mother never forgave my sister or forgot the shame.

Another traumatic event occurred when I was nine years old. My school friends and I had started playing a stupid game of 'chicken' on the railway line that we passed each day on the way to and from school. The game began as a dare. It was only a bit of bravado but it would end in tragedy.

Four or five of us would stand on the railway line used by the steam engines because we all realised that the other line, being electric, would kill us instantly if we ever stepped on it. When a train approached, we would leap from the line and land on the grass embankment. The first to jump was chicken, the last to jump the winner.

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Excerpted from The Nemesis File by Paul Bruce. Copyright © 1995 Bruce/Davies. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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