Bob -it has been a long time since I replied to your comments - since then I have discovered my father, SSM and SQMS John Alcock, was on Operation Loyton as he had always said - he was in one aircraft with Captain Scott on the 7th of September and had been sent out as a reinforcement party to join Operation Loyton. The other aircraft carried an officer called Reynolds and his men. Reynolds was captured and executed. Father's aircraft aborted its drop due to fog and returned to RAF Keevil. So a week later father set off again but this time for Operation Pistol with Captain Scott again.
By the way, in my father's oral stories, he talked about a French SAS soldier who jumped out of their aircraft after the mission was cancelled. He supposedly jumped because he saw his own village below. So, my father was on Loyton, albeit briefly, but ended up winning the Croix de Guerre at silver Star level for Pistol - one of around ten such medals won by the whole wartime SAS. I have also discovered he was the very first RSM for the new 21st SAS - in 1947 - it is in the first newsletter of the SAS association. Father went on to be the RSM to 3 Para at Suez in 1956.
Strangely his army record shows he was still in the 2SAS after it had been disbanded in 1945. He was still there in 1946. Recently I spoke on the telephone to ex-2SAS trooper Jack Paley, aged 101. He told me he came to see my father to wish him luck just before he went off to the Suez Operation with three Para. Jack Payley and his wife have stayed at my home on one of their visits to the UK. Jack lives in Canada. When I went to Canada to teach for 9 months father set things up for me to see and speak to ex-Major Roy Farran. In the end, we spoke on the phone and he told me how he knew my father and from what period. They were in southern Italy and later in Tuscany together. After my father died in 1997 I was able to speak to Henry Druce of Loyton fame. Cyril Wheeler, an ex-corporal from 2SAS, set this up for me. I think what has made my book unique is that I am the son of a SAS soldier from WW2 who has heard and remembered his father's stories from that period for almost all of his childhood. As an adult, I linked all of this together through reading the SAS story/history and by going to my father's operational area for Pistol and Loyton. This has allowed me to place his stories in context. I met all the French who hid my father in 1944. Jean Koenig was the key French character. I have also visited the cottage where father had to shoot up to six enemy soldiers in close combat in order to survive and so escape Major Reynold's fate on Loyton. It has all been a cathartic process for me. You see I refused to speak to my father for seven years and for four of these years I lived in Queensland. When I came home I decided I had to see him and find some common ground again. We did this together and by going to Moussey and the Pistol area and meeting the French it has all helped. I have listed in my book all the French names of people who helped my father and his men in 1944. One of them won the King's Medal and that was Jean Koenig. I have been in Jean Koenig's home where the Gestapo paid him a visit when my father and his men were hiding in the bathroom and were ready to come out and kill the two black-coated Nazis. My book is a tribute to a man I think I now understand for the better. I wish he was still alive and able to read my book about his time on Operation Pistol. How he kept a cool head, when surrounded at the cottage and then fought his way out was a remarkable escape story. He should never have got away with it. My book will come out in August 2024, if things go smoothly and it will be available in Australia. I am indebted to my Australian friend John Poulter, who is a retired history teacher living in Queensland,, for all his advice in putting this book together. SAS Operation Pistol will be the title although I had wanted to call it Raindrops in Alsace because of the abnormally bad wet weather throughout the operation.
