ROGUE HERO
Born Willis Michael Sadler, he was always known as ‘Mike’. His parents were Wilma and Adam. He was born in Kensington but two weeks later his father was promoted and the family moved to the village of Sheepscombe in the Cotswolds. Mike went on to have a younger brother.
His father managed a plastics factory in Stroud.
Mike was sent to Bedales School in Petersfield, Hampshire.
At the age of fifteen, he went with a school friend on a cycling holiday in Germany. Mike commented that German people seemed to find it hilarious to shout ‘Heil Hitler’ at the English boys, followed by giving the Nazi salute.
Mike was deeply disturbed by the anti-Jewish signs he saw everywhere and also the amounts of young people marching through German towns and cities.
Mike left school in 1937 and immediately moved to Southern Rhodesia (nowadays Zimbabwe) to work on a tobacco farm – “Fired by boyhood tales of adventure in a land of lions and elephants.”
He was still there when the Second World War broke out. Mike immediately signed up with a Rhodesian artillery regiment.
He fought Rommel’s Afrika Corps on the Egypt–Libya border and was quickly promoted to sergeant.
Mike didn’t suffer fools gladly and he thought one of his superior officers was incompetent. One day he questioned orders when told to make sure his men slept in their boots.
The officer shouted at Mike and threatened to reduce him to the ranks. Mike promptly ripped off his stripes. He had reduced himself.
However, this inspired great admiration from his men.
On leave in Cairo, Mike was in a bar when he bumped into some members of the newly formed LRDG (Long Range Desert Group). They had been set up to mount attacks behind German and Italian lines.
They were about to embark on a mission with another new group, the SAS (Special Air Service).
The SAS had been founded by David Stirling in 1941. The intention was to create a small mobile force that would surprise the enemy by attacking from the desert.
Their first operation of the SAS had been a disaster. They had parachuted into the desert behind enemy lines, in the dark, during a terrific storm. 34 of the 55 men who had set off on the mission had been captured or killed.
Stirling was warned that he needed an immediate success or the SAS would be disbanded.
Consequently, Stirling linked up with the LRDG for his next mission. This was to attack a joint German and Italian airbase in the Libyan desert.
They needed a navigator and had no maps. Mike persuaded the LRDG he could navigate by the stars, so he was taken on.
Mike took the SAS and LRDG 400 miles across the desert, from Jalo Oasis in Cyrenaica to the airfield at Wadi Talmet, using just the stars and a theodolite. He said, “The idea of navigating by the stars was so fascinating that I couldn’t resist.”
The journey took them two days and three nights.
The attack was a success. 24 aircraft were destroyed and 30 of the enemy killed. Many fuel dumps were also taken out. The SAS was saved.
They earned the nickname ‘Rogue Heroes’, although they preferred to call themselves ‘The Originals’.
The Germans and the Italians called them ‘Ghost Riders’ or ‘Cats in the Night’.
Mike was immediately seconded into the SAS, promoted to colonel and awarded the Military Medal. He was officially in charge of ‘celestial navigation’. “It was a voyage of discovery because the maps, except in the very coastal regions, had nothing much on them except longitude and latitude lines and the odd dotted line marking a camel track or something. It was entirely like being at sea.”
It was commented on that Mike had almost a sixth sense in being able to find his way in the desert. He said, “You have to be confident because it was awfully easy especially at night, to start feeling you’re going wrong.”
However, he put a lot of work into navigation. He spent weeks studying the stars and despite having been very poor at the subject at school, he taught himself the mathematical principals behind the use of the theodolite.
Mike’s next mission was to lead eighteen jeeps (each carrying four machine guns on the back) to Sidi Haneish airfield in Egypt – “no headlights, no maps.”
Once the SAS had arrived there, Mike was told to wait at the edge of the airfield whilst the attack took place and check nobody got left behind.
37 German aircraft were destroyed. Everybody escaped – but it was Mike that got left behind.
During his desperate escape in his jeep, he came across a German military convoy that had stopped for a tea break. Mike drove straight through them and got away.
Not every mission was a success. During Operation Bigamy, the SAS tried to raid an airfield in Benghazi but they were discovered by Italian troops. They lost 70 armed vehicles.
In January 1943, David Stirling (the founder of the SAS), planned a special mission. He aimed to lead a selected group through the Tebaga Gap, join up with the British Eighth Army and attack the Axis powers in Tunisia.
This was a joining together of Operation Strike and Operation Vulcan. Mike was one of the men selected to take part.
It did not go according to plan. Stirling and ten others were captured. Mike was one of just three men who escaped.
He then led the other two men on a 110 mile walk across the desert with no maps, no food and no water.
Eventually, they were picked up by American troops who initially thought they were German spies. Mike persuaded them otherwise.
An American journalist described Mike at the moment he walked out of the desert. “The eyes of this fellow were round and sky blue and his hair and whiskers were very fair. His beard was well under his chin and he was emaciated.”
Mike rejoined the SAS, now led by Paddy Mayne, who had been his unit leader – a man Mike much respected.
On one occasion, Mike and other SAS soldiers were escorting a group of Italian prisoners to Cairo when they were attacked by German planes. The Italians rushed to help them, manning the anti-aircraft guns.
When they reached Cairo, Mike bought each of the Italian prisoners a drink before handing them over to the military authorities.
This became a story of legend and was replicated in Christopher Landon’s novel (and subsequent film), ‘Ice Cold in Alex’.
Overall, the SAS were so successful with their lightning raids in North Africa that the enemy put fences around their airfields and had guard dogs and regular patrols around them.
The SAS destroyed over 400 enemy planes in this region – more than the RAF.
However, it is believed Mike did not fire a single shot. “My job is to get my men to the targets.”
In early 1944, Mike was sent to Darvel in Scotland, to help train SAS troops for D-Day.
In August, he himself was parachuted into the Loire in France to join the fighting. His role was to sabotage Panzer tanks to stop them heading north.
At one point, he was driving his jeep when he came across a heavily armed German convoy. Being just six feet away from them, he had no time to turn his vehicle around.
Instead, he waved cheerily at them, shouted a greeting and drove past them. The Germans waved back.
It took them a few moments to realise Mike was the enemy. By then, he had swung his gun around and before the Germans could fire at him, he had knocked out two of their machine gun crews.
For this action, Mike won the Military Cross.
At the end of the war, Mike was employed in searching for Nazi war criminals.
Shortly afterwards, Paddy Mayne went to join the ‘Falkland Island Dependencies Survey’, and took Mike with him.
From there, Mike joined the ship MV Trepassey on a British expedition to Antarctica. He established a British base on Stonington Island. For this, he was awarded the Polar Medal.
Upon returning to Great Britain, Mike briefly worked at the US embassy in London before being recruited by MI6.
He spent the rest of his working life in their employ, during the Cold War years.
In 1947, he had married Merriell Anne Hetherington – known as Anne – who had been a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) during the war.
The couple divorced in 1949.
In 1958, Mike remarried. His second wife was Patricia Benson, another MI6 operative. They had one daughter named Sally. They lived in Cheltenham.
Anne would also remarry – into the Swedish royal family.
When Mike finally retired from the Secret Service, he took up sailing – which he pursued with a passion. He also co-wrote with Oz Robinson, the second edition of the nautical guidebook ‘Atlantic Spain and Portugal’.
In 1998, Mike became the Secretary of the SAS Regimental Association.
Patricia died in 2001.
Mike’s story was told in Sean Rayment’s 2013 book, ‘Tales from the Special Forces’. His chapter was called, ‘Fighting Rommel : Captain Mike Sadler’. Rayment said, ‘His navigational skills were legendary.’
In 2018, Mike was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French government. It was given to him at the French embassy in London. He said, “I do remember the people who didn’t survive and who didn’t have the chance to receive this great honour.”
To celebrate his one hundredth birthday in 2021, a stretch of water in Antarctica was named after him – Sadler’s Passage.
By now, Mike’s eyesight was failing. His special birthday was celebrated at the Special Forces Club in London.
In 2022, there was a television series about the exploits of the SAS in the desert. It was named ‘Rogue Heroes’ and was based on a book about them, written by Ben MacIntyre. Mike was played by the actor Tom Glynn-Carney.
Mike and Tom met up and had lengthy discussions about his service. Mike said of the SAS, “We were wholly dependent on one another and on our mental and physical resources and aptitudes.”
Mike spent his last few years living in a care home in Cambridge, which was where he died. He was the last surviving member of the ‘Rogue Heroes’ – the original members of the SAS.
Prince William attended a memorial service for Mike at Hereford Cathedral.
RIP – Reading Interplanetary Pathways
