SAS Ghost Patrol

The Ultra-Secret Unit That Posed As Nazi Stormtroopers. Their greatest wartime deception

S eptember 1941. A lone German soldier stumbles out of the Saharan wastes – sun-blasted, famished and on the brink of death. He is immediately taken captive by British frontline troops. But this, it transpires, is no enemy. It is Captain Henry Cecil Buck, who has dressed himself in a German officer’s uniform and stolen a German truck, in a desperate bid to escape.

In this unique moment is born his Great Idea: if he could bluff his way out of captivity, surely an Allied unit, similarly disguised, could bluff its way back in again. So was founded Buck’s ultra-secret deception force, consisting of fluent German speakers, wielding German weapons, wearing German uniforms and driving German vehicles flying the Swastika.