Major Mike Sadler, last of the wartime SAS ‘Originals’ – obituary
Major Mike Sadler, pictured in North Africa: according to one American, ‘the eyes of this fellow were round and sky blue and his hair and whiskers were very fair. His beard began well under his chin, giving him the air of an emaciated and slightly dotty Paul Verlaine’ – John Lawrence
Mike Sadler, who has died aged 103, was a former MI6 officer and an honorary member of “the Originals”, as men of L Detachment of the early SAS are known. He was believed to be the last survivor of the Long Range Desert Group or LRDG, without which the fledgling SAS might not have thrived. He also has a piece of the Antarctic named after him.
The origin of Sadler’s adventurous career was a pupil in his prep school who had been brought up in Africa and entertained his fellows with adventure stories. Intrigued, Sadler left school in 1937 to work on a farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he joined a Rhodesian Army artillery unit equipped with howitzers from India’s North-West Frontier. Despite not being strong at maths or geometry at school, he took a keen interest in the angles of fire needed to engage distant targets, and was disappointed when his unit converted to an anti-tank role “where you could look through a telescope straight ahead.”
Mike Sadler, second from left, with fellow SAS officers – John Lawrence
They were dispatched to Somaliland and Abyssinia, before being shipped to Mersa Matruh in the Western Desert, where they dug defences. Sadler refused the offer of a commission because, as he told the historian Gavin Mortimer: “I didn’t fancy the idea of abandoning my friends… I wasn’t at all keen on the extreme aspects of militarism, marching up and down, although I did my best to be reasonably smart.”
In 1941, by then a sergeant, he “fell out marginally” with one of the unit’s two British officers, neither of whom commanded respect. Standing orders were that the men should sleep fully dressed in their sleeping bags, in case of attack. Sadler allowed his men to sleep in sand shoes, because Army boots made it difficult to get out of sleeping bags. The officer insisted on boots. Sadler refused. Marched before the commanding officer, he was ordered either to apologise or risk being reduced to the ranks. “Oh, that’s all right, I’ll reduce myself to the ranks,” he said, and did.
The LRDG was already operating as a covert reconnaissance and raiding unit behind enemy lines, navigating across vast expanses of desert that their Axis enemies regarded as inaccessible. It was manned by volunteers, many of them New Zealanders and Rhodesians.
In North Africa – John Lawrence
Sadler, at a lively social gathering in Cairo, met an LRDG member who invited him to join. They thought he might be useful as an anti-tank gunner; his transfer was swiftly granted and he journeyed in a convoy to the LRDG base at Kufra. On the way he became fascinated by the art of navigating by stars, and when they arrived at Kufra he was offered the role of navigator.
Sadler had a fortnight’s practice before his first patrol, helped by a former merchant seaman, Tom Merrick. He proved an adept pupil, accurate in dead reckoning by day and with the theodolite at night, soon becoming the principal navigator for the LRDG and SAS. He worked by notes and calculations rather than untrustworthy “feelings”, or guesswork. They often travelled when exhausted, he said, and “you could suddenly think, God, I never did that, and you don’t know if you’ve been 10 miles or 50… and it’s probably a few seconds in fact.”
Initial SAS operations – parachuting on to remote targets – were costly failures, but success came when the LRDG agreed to ferry and aid the assault teams. Sadler’s first SAS operation was a raid on an airfield at Wadi Tamet in December 1941. They were bombed on the way (“We could see the bombs leaving the aircraft,” Sadler said), but evaded further scrutiny and dropped the SAS team three miles from the target.
Mike Sadler – John Lawrence
Sadler then waited for them on the outskirts of the airfield itself. The raid was a significant strike, with about 30 German officers killed, 24 planes and a fuel dump destroyed.
The way back, however, was not straightforward – Sadler always said that his main worry was not the operation itself but “how the hell we were going to get away afterwards because the Germans were on to us”.
On this occasion they evaded pursuit and headed in their Jeeps for a rendezvous 150 miles west. One Jeep sustained a puncture, the captured German pump did not work and they had to stuff blankets into the tyre. But the wheel disintegrated to the point where they were running on the brake drum and had to abandon the vehicle.
The other Jeep needed water, but the spare jerry can had been accidentally poured into the petrol tank, leaving the men too without water, and the Jeep stalled. They all peed into the radiator and, at Sadler’s initiative, rigged up a siphon feeding petrol from a spare can into the carburettor. When they reached the rendezvous “some Stukas came down and did a bit of a strafe”.
Another raid was on the airfield at Sidi Haneish, which involved astro-navigating 18 Jeeps across 70 miles of desert without lights or maps. Sadler delivered them to within a mile of the runway. Firing about 26,000 rounds of ammunition from their Vickers machine guns, they destroyed an estimated 37 aircraft in a spectacular display which he photographed (unfortunately, his camera and film were stolen later in the war). During the escape they inadvertently drove through the German column that was pursuing them – “They were standing around their vehicles… They were not alert… I drove through German columns a few times.”
Mike Sadler – John Lawrence
Following this episode Sadler was notified by radio that he had been awarded the Military Medal. Later in the war, after commissioning, he was awarded the Military Cross for actions in France.
Not all the raids were successful. During an operation led by David Stirling, one of the founders of the SAS, the party unknowingly camped next to a German unit. Stirling and most of the patrol were captured but Sadler and two others escaped into surrounding gullies, lying low until nightfall. Then, on foot, without food or water and with Sadler navigating, they followed the lie of the land, aiming for the Allied lines 100 miles away: “We walked between salt lakes and mountains in the direction we hoped might be occupied by the Free French and therefore friendly.”
They ran into a group of Arabs who gave them dates and a goatskin of water, then into another group who stoned them. Eventually, exhausted and dehydrated, they reached the Free French who treated them well and handed them over to the Americans.
The Americans were initially suspicious, given that the nearest British were many miles away over the Mareth Line, but were soon reassured. An American war correspondent who saw them described Sadler: “The eyes of this fellow were round and sky blue and his hair and whiskers were very fair. His beard began well under his chin, giving him the air of an emaciated and slightly dotty Paul Verlaine.”
Sadler had earlier had an appendix operation in Cairo – “It was a grumbling affair and they thought it would be better to have it out before I was sent on patrol.” He had also been commissioned by David Stirling before his capture, a promotion confirmed by the military secretary in Cairo with the words “I hear you’re masquerading as a military officer.”
The SAS in North Africa – John Lawrence
In late 1943 Sadler was recalled to Britain and sent on a publicity tour of America. He was next posted to Darvel in Scotland to help set up an SAS training centre for new recruits preparing for D-Day. On August 10 1944 he parachuted into France to join A Squadron of 1 SAS in Operation Houndsworth, part of the effort to sabotage German reinforcements heading for Normandy. His MC was awarded after an encounter with an enemy patrol in which he and the Maquis boy guiding him drove through the German column before firing backwards into it.
He also set up an SAS intelligence unit and travelled across county to the Forest of Orleans to take part in another operation. Returning to Britain he was given the job of accompanying SAS paratroopers to their planes and debriefing crews on return. However, he joined the flights himself, taking the bomb-aimer’s seat – “I still liked a little bit of adrenaline.”
Following hostilities, Sadler – by then a 26 year-old captain – was adjutant to Paddy Mayne, one of the SAS founders, assisting in the temporary disbandment of the service in October 1945. A letter arrived from the Colonial Office seeking volunteers for the Falklands Islands Dependencies Survey (later the British Antarctic Survey).
Mike Sadler with fellow SAS officer Graham Rose – John Lawrence
Sadler said: “I went into Mayne’s office and said, ‘I’m the first to volunteer’ and Paddy said, ‘I think I’ll come too.’ During the next year Sadler helped set up a new base on Stonington Island, where a glacier (since melted) connected to the mainland. In 2021 the area was named Sadler’s Passage in recognition of his work. Sadler – by then 101 – was gratified by the honour, but saddened that global warming had melted the glacier.
After Antarctica, he married his first wife and spent time sailing, largely in the West Indies. He then ran the US Embassy’s information film programme for two years. During further sailing he was invited to join MI6, where he spent the rest of his career.
Willis Michael Sadler was born in Kensington on February 22 1920, the elder of two boys. The family soon moved to Sheepscombe in Gloucestershire, where his father became director of an early plastics factory, Erinoid, in Stroud. Sadler was sent to Oakley Hall prep school in Cirencester and later to Bedales, which he left aged 17 for Rhodesia.
He was popular in MI6, recalled as helpful, calm, modest, soft-spoken, gentlemanly and “rural smart – more country tweed than Savile Row”. He enjoyed unusual cars, including three Bristols, and for many years owned a serviced apartment in Sloane Avenue where he shared his London life with a long-term partner.
Mike Sadler, aged 91, at home in Cheltenham – John Lawrence
When he retired he took up sailing again and co-authored with a former colleague an edition of the classic nautical guidebook, Atlantic, Spain and Portugal. Later, by then a widower, he moved to Cheltenham to be near a former girlfriend who became his companion for almost 20 years. After she died he was supported by his former secretary from MI6, before finally moving to a care home in Cambridge to be near his daughter.
Apart from a period in the Far East during the Confrontation with Indonesia, Sadler’s MI6 posts mostly involved training and operational security, often with a technical bias. Never pompous or self-important, he had a keen sense of humour and enjoyed being teased. On his 60th birthday his staff presented him with an exquisitely wrapped 60-watt light bulb.
In retirement Sadler co-authored, with Oz Robinson, Atlantic Spain and Portugal, a guide to sailing in those seas.
At the age of 98, in 2018 Sadler was appointed a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. After the war he married Anne Hetherington (later Baroness Anne von Blixen Finecke). The marriage was dissolved after two years and in 1958 he married Pat Benson, who died in 2001. He is survived by their daughter, Sally.
Michael Sadler, born February 22 1920, died January 4 2024
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