This WW2 hero should have a film made about his exploits

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cancel2 2022

Canceled
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This was posted on FB, heroic scarcely covers this guy's exploits, Rambo in a kilt best describes him.
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What kind of utter lunatic cuts about Nazi-occupied France in a Black French car, with a British flag attached to it, whilst wearing a kilt?

Probably the kind of lunatic that could call for the surrender of 23,000 Nazi soldiers, with no support - aside from that provided by the sheer size of his giant balls.

Meet Ronald Thomas Stewart Tommy Macpherson (Better known as Tommy). Commissioned in the Queens Own Cameron Highlanders in 1939, however in 1940 transferred to No.11 Commando, which is where at the age of 21 this young man’s story truly begins.

As part of a 4-man reconnaissance team on the Libyan Coast, Major Macpherson and his team were tasked with gathering intelligence ahead of the doomed Operation to take out Rommel himself – and unfortunately, his recce didn’t go too well either. Have you ever been stuck in town after a night out, waiting for a taxi that never shows up? Well, these guys spent over 48 hours bobbing up and down off the Libyan coast in canvas Kayaks waiting for a submarine to pick them up and guess what… that stupid submarine never turned up! Of course, the next part of this chapter so many 21-year olds can relate to; the inevitable decision to paddle back to an enemy shore, the reluctant decision to walk hundreds of miles back to Tobruk in shorts, and of course the bitter shame of being captured by Italian fascists - leading to two years in captivity.
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Over this two-year period, Tommy made 7 attempts at escaping his captors – The 7th finally getting him back to Britain, but the first being the most hilarious. Soon after being captured his Italian interrogators took an interest in his Colt Automatic and wanted to know how it worked. The young Major proceeded to take out a spare magazine, load his weapon, make it ready and at gun-point hold them hostage. Unfortunately, due to the lack of food and water and excessive physical exertion over the past week or so, Tommy became Quadra-spazzed by cramp and collapsed – making him unable to make the most of this opportunity, and landing him in solitary confinement.
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Anyway, fast forward through two long years in captivity, and Tommy is to learn just days after his safe return to Britain that his war is far from over. He had been selected for Operation Jedburgh, part of Churchills plan to “set Europe ablaze”. As part of a team of 3, Tommy would parachute into France, link up with French resistance and wage a guerrilla-war against Nazi forces.
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On the night of the jump, Tommy actually wore full Cameroon highland battle dress under his smock – which included a Tartan Kilt. After linking up with the French resistance some of the French fighters actually thought their officer had brought his wife along. The misunderstanding that Tommy was some fair French maiden was short-lived, for the following night he was commanding demolition taskings on railway bridges crucial to the Nazi’s supply lines. The following day the 2nd SS Panzer Division was on the move towards the beaches of Normandy to help drive the Allied invasion back into the sea. This division of Heavy German tanks and armour were battle-hardened from the eastern front and were guilty of heinous war crimes against civilians. Quick to act Tommy and his teams cut down trees and laid mines along their main roads of advance, as well as rigging surrounding trees with explosives and primed grenades. When the columns were halted by the felled trees the resistance fighters would spray the troop-carrying vehicles with machine-gun fire then vanish into the forest. The inevitable infantry follow-up would be met by nothing but falling grenades and exploding trees (Not desirable). As the columns then eventually moved off the lead tanks would hit the mines and the above process would repeat. Similar tactics were used by other French resistance units across France, resulting in this Panzer division taking over two weeks to reach Normandy rather than two days, and of course, by this point, the Allies had a firm foothold in France.
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The French had never seen anything like Major Macpherson, and his existence was becoming legendary throughout rural France. This cave-dwelling, skirt wearing, Sten-gun wielding slayer of fascists was probably the most flamboyant guerrilla commander of all time. He even snuck into a German-occupied French village wearing his kilt, only to sit down and have a drink in the local café with the town mayor. There were also rumours circulating of a Scotsman who would drive around in a black car flying the British flag. Quite reliably the Germans had a complete sense of humour failure, and a considerable bounty was placed on Tommy’s head claiming he was "a bandit masquerading as a Scottish officer and extremely dangerous to the citizens of France”. This bounty actually had the opposite effect to what the Germans intended, and streams of new French volunteers wanted to fight alongside “The Kilted Killer”.
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With greater numbers alongside him, Tommy would continue to wage his guerrilla war. Bringing about the destruction of vital railway lines and bridges; hijacking supply lorries, destroying trains, draining fuel dumps and of course bringing death to the Nazi war machine. On one occasion Tommy accidentally decapitated a German commandant and his driver by booby-trapping a barrier arm so it crashed down on their moving vehicle. Other resistance fighters then gunned down the motorcycle escort; “A satisfying morning” according to Tommy.
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His most amazing feat, however, was still to come. With the battle of France swinging decisively in the allies favour many German units were falling back to defend their homeland. One such unit of 23,000 men and over 1000 vehicles were close to making it back to Germany, and it was Tommy’s job to negotiate their surrender. In a stolen Red Cross vehicle Tommy along with a French officer and a German doctor drove through miles of enemy territory, and despite being engaged by machine-gun fire made it to the Village schoolhouse where the meeting with the German commander would take place. As well as bringing (as always) his finest bonnet and Kilt Tommy also brought some fine negotiating skills. He told the German commander he had a radio link directly back to London, and if he didn’t receive his immediate unconditional surrender he would call for RAF Bombers and Heavy Artillery to completely decimate all German troops in the area. Having built a strong reputation for not fucking around the German surrender was swift. However, it was all a complete bluff - Tommy didn’t even have a radio let alone RAF Bomber squadrons on call. Essentially one unarmed Scotsman brought about the surrender of a 23,000 heavily armed unit.
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After the fall of France Tommy’s war was still not over. He was sent to repeat all of the above in Italy against Communists loyal to the Yugoslavian leader rather than fascists loyal to Hitler. Again, in a Kilt he waged a guerrilla war against the enemy; and again, a bounty was placed on the head of this “interfering Major”, and again not a single fuck was given.
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For his actions during WW2 Tommy was awarded 3 Military Crosses, 3 x Croix de Guerre, a Légion d’honneur and a papal knighthood. He eventually became the most highly decorated living member of the British armed forces. After marrying and having three children Tommy would go on to live to the ripe old age of 94.
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https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Enemy-Lines-Autobiography-Decorated/dp/1845967089/thedaical-20
 
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There were many, many unrecognized heroes from WWII from different countries.
Many never made it home, others were wounded and just forgotten.
I couldn't imagine the youth of today doing what they did.
 
RB 60 said:
There were many, many unrecognized heroes from WWII from different countries.
Many never made it home, others were wounded and just forgotten.
I couldn't imagine the youth of today doing what they did.
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Well this guy's exploits were largely unknown by many until his autobiography was published in 2012.
 
RB 60 said:
There were many, many unrecognized heroes from WWII from different countries.
Many never made it home, others were wounded and just forgotten.
I couldn't imagine the youth of today doing what they did.
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My Uncle was one of them. He was a co-pilot of a B-17 Bomber in the 8th Army Air Force. He flew over 50 missions, including most of the documented big raids in which so many B-17 crews were shot down.

In fact he was one of them. In the last year of the war his B-17 was shot down over Austria. His plane crash landed and two of the crew members were killed and the rest captured and spent the rest of the war as POW's.

While a prisoner my Uncle attempted to escape three times and was recaptured each time. The second time he was captured he was told that he'd be summarily executed if he attempted to escape again.

That didn't stop him and he attempted a third escape and was recaptured. The German Prison guards placed him in a closet in their barracks and told them that in the morning they were going to shoot him. It had been done before so he was certain that "This was it". The next morning he heard the guards come back into the barracks and when they began to open the door of the closet he was stuck in he had put on his game face. He was prepared mentally to die like a man. When the door opened the man standing there was a corporal in the US Army.

Pattons 3rd Army had arrived in the village down the road from the POW Camp and all the Camp guards had skedaddled.

Talk about being lucky to still be alive.

I have some documents and photos about his bomber and it's crew. I've shared them with Tom but haven't posted them on here is it's possible I could be DOX'd if I did so.
 
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How about a film about true heroes, not fascist running dogs.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
My Uncle was one of them. He was a co-pilot of a B-17 Bomber in the 8th Army Air Force. He flew over 50 missions, including most of the documented big raids in which so many B-17 crews were shot down.

In fact he was one of them. In the last year of the war his B-17 was shot down over Austria. His plane crash landed and two of the crew members were killed and the rest captured and spent the rest of the war as POW's.

While a prisoner my Uncle attempted to escape three times and was recaptured each time. The second time he was captured he was told that he'd be summarily executed if he attempted to escape again.

That didn't stop him and he attempted a third escape and was recaptured. The German Prison guards placed him in a closet in their barracks and told them that in the morning they were going to shoot him. It had been done before so he was certain that "This was it". The next morning he heard the guards come back into the barracks and when they began to open the door of the closet he was stuck in he had put on his game face. He was prepared mentally to die like a man. When the door opened the man standing there was a corporal in the US Army.

Pattons 3rd Army had arrived in the village down the road from the POW Camp and all the Camp guards had skedaddled.

Talk about being lucky to still be alive.

I have some documents and photos about his bomber and it's crew. I've shared them with Tom but haven't posted them on here is it's possible I could be DOX'd if I did so.
Click to expand...

 
Mott the Hoople said:
My Uncle was one of them. He was a co-pilot of a B-17 Bomber in the 8th Army Air Force. He flew over 50 missions, including most of the documented big raids in which so many B-17 crews were shot down.

In fact he was one of them. In the last year of the war his B-17 was shot down over Austria. His plane crash landed and two of the crew members were killed and the rest captured and spent the rest of the war as POW's.

While a prisoner my Uncle attempted to escape three times and was recaptured each time. The second time he was captured he was told that he'd be summarily executed if he attempted to escape again.

That didn't stop him and he attempted a third escape and was recaptured. The German Prison guards placed him in a closet in their barracks and told them that in the morning they were going to shoot him. It had been done before so he was certain that "This was it". The next morning he heard the guards come back into the barracks and when they began to open the door of the closet he was stuck in he had put on his game face. He was prepared mentally to die like a man. When the door opened the man standing there was a corporal in the US Army.

Pattons 3rd Army had arrived in the village down the road from the POW Camp and all the Camp guards had skedaddled.

Talk about being lucky to still be alive.

I have some documents and photos about his bomber and it's crew. I've shared them with Tom but haven't posted them on here is it's possible I could be DOX'd if I did so.
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Anything to say about Major McPherson?
 
Havana Moon said:
Anything to say about Major McPherson?
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Yea...what an amazing adventure...though like some war hero's you kinda have to question their sanity. Who was the famous Brit Soldier from WWII who was famous for using an old Scottish Broadsword? He was one of those incredible figures only a war could produce that should have been killed but wasn't?

Then again during WWII there were millions of soldiers who faced death intimately on a daily or near daily basis yet survived...with scars to be sure...but did survive. Most of them just didn't talk about it. I know my elders who served in WWII did not like to discuss their war experiences.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Yea...what an amazing adventure...though like some war hero's you kinda have to question their sanity. Who was the famous Brit Soldier from WWII who was famous for using an old Scottish Broadsword? He was one of those incredible figures only a war could produce that should have been killed but wasn't?

Then again during WWII there were millions of soldiers who faced death intimately on a daily or near daily basis yet survived...with scars to be sure...but did survive. Most of them just didn't talk about it. I know my elders who served in WWII did not like to discuss their war experiences.
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My father was in the Philippines when the survivors of the Bataan Death March were rescued. He never said much about his experiences in WWII. He was visibly shaken when we watched the movie The Great Raid. I never questioned him on what he did when he was in the Navy during that time, he never volunteered to talk about it either. Most of the biggest heroes from WWII were modest or killed, it was others who revealed their heroics.
 
RB 60 said:
My father was in the Philippines when the survivors of the Bataan Death March were rescued. He never said much about his experiences in WWII. He was visibly shaken when we watched the movie The Great Raid. I never questioned him on what he did when he was in the Navy during that time, he never volunteered to talk about it either. Most of the biggest heroes from WWII were modest or killed, it was others who revealed their heroics.
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My father had a close friend who fought in the Pacific theatre with the Marine Corp. He was one of the few WWII Vets who would talk about his experiences in combat. I asked him if it’s true that combat changes you forever and he told a story about his experience at Guadalcanal.

His company had marched through the tropical jungle all day to a forward position to relieve another company of Marines. Shorty after taking position in the fox holes and just after dark the Japanese attacked. They repulsed their attacks but one of the young marines in a fox hole was gut shot. He was in horrible pain and was screaming terribly but no one could reach him as they were under constant fire. The young man screamed all night long and it became a horrible torture to his comrades as they could do nothing to reach him. He screamed all night long but got weaker and weaker and the started sobbing for his mother. My dad’s friend can remember thinking to himself as he was exhausted and scared shitless that he would hurry up and die and in this torture so he could get some sleep. Several hours before dawn the young marine died. At day break the Japanese had withdrawn. When he walked over to the fox hole where the young marine had taken all night to die he discovered that it was one of his close friends from boot camp.

He said he changed then and there. He hated himself for wishing his friend to die but he hated the Japanese even more. He did too. He hated the Japanese passionately till he died in the late 90’s.

What a burden to have to live with, huh?
 
Mott the Hoople said:
My father had a close friend who fought in the Pacific theatre with the Marine Corp. He was one of the few WWII Vets who would talk about his experiences in combat. I asked him if it’s true that combat changes you forever and he told a story about his experience at Guadalcanal.

His company had marched through the tropical jungle all day to a forward position to relieve another company of Marines. Shorty after taking position in the fox holes and just after dark the Japanese attacked. They repulsed their attacks but one of the young marines in a fox hole was gut shot. He was in horrible pain and was screaming terribly but no one could reach him as they were under constant fire. The young man screamed all night long and it became a horrible torture to his comrades as they could do nothing to reach him. He screamed all night long but got weaker and weaker and the started sobbing for his mother. My dad’s friend can remember thinking to himself as he was exhausted and scared shitless that he would hurry up and die and in this torture so he could get some sleep. Several hours before dawn the young marine died. At day break the Japanese had withdrawn. When he walked over to the fox hole where the young marine had taken all night to die he discovered that it was one of his close friends from boot camp.

He said he changed then and there. He hated himself for wishing his friend to die but he hated the Japanese even more. He did too. He hated the Japanese passionately till he died in the late 90’s.

What a burden to have to live with, huh?
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That is the kind of thing that can do mental damage.

My great uncle killed Nazis on the Eastern front.

My great aunt lived through four years of Nazi occupation, during which about half the village died

My grandmother, great uncle, and aunt lived through 15 years of Japanese occupation and under the thumb of their puppet Manchuko government. When the Japanese were finally kicked out of Manchuria in 1945, my great uncle and my aunt's husband enjoyed about 72 hours of freedom before being rounded up and sent to the Gulag by Soviet NKVD.

It is the kind of thing that gives perspective anytime I face life's trivial problems and annoyances.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
My father had a close friend who fought in the Pacific theatre with the Marine Corp. He was one of the few WWII Vets who would talk about his experiences in combat. I asked him if it’s true that combat changes you forever and he told a story about his experience at Guadalcanal.

His company had marched through the tropical jungle all day to a forward position to relieve another company of Marines. Shorty after taking position in the fox holes and just after dark the Japanese attacked. They repulsed their attacks but one of the young marines in a fox hole was gut shot. He was in horrible pain and was screaming terribly but no one could reach him as they were under constant fire. The young man screamed all night long and it became a horrible torture to his comrades as they could do nothing to reach him. He screamed all night long but got weaker and weaker and the started sobbing for his mother. My dad’s friend can remember thinking to himself as he was exhausted and scared shitless that he would hurry up and die and in this torture so he could get some sleep. Several hours before dawn the young marine died. At day break the Japanese had withdrawn. When he walked over to the fox hole where the young marine had taken all night to die he discovered that it was one of his close friends from boot camp.

He said he changed then and there. He hated himself for wishing his friend to die but he hated the Japanese even more. He did too. He hated the Japanese passionately till he died in the late 90’s.

What a burden to have to live with, huh?
Click to expand...
War is so damned awful, thanks for sharing.
 
Cypress said:
That is the kind of thing that can do mental damage.

My great uncle killed Nazis on the Eastern front.

My great aunt lived through four years of Nazi occupation, during which about half the village died

My grandmother, great uncle, and aunt lived through 15 years of Japanese occupation and under the thumb of their puppet Manchuko government. When the Japanese were finally kicked out of Manchuria in 1945, my great uncle and my aunt's husband enjoyed about 72 hours of freedom before being rounded up and sent to the Gulag by Soviet NKVD.

It is the kind of thing that gives perspective anytime I face life's trivial problems and annoyances.
Click to expand...
Gracious, I could not imagine. I am so use to my comfortable life.
 
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Anyway getting back to Tommy Mcpherson, here is his obituary. It is just incredible what he did, if you read it as fiction you'd dismiss it as fantasy.

The hero in a kilt who tackled a Panzer division on his own! (and then accepted the surrender of 23,000 German soldiers)

By Tony Rennell

The undercover British officer crept silently through the bushes, his tartan kilt a bizarre form of dress for a man who did not want to be conspicuous.

Then he stopped to take in the awesome might of the enemy. Through the gloom, he could make out the 15,000 battle-scarred men and 200 machines of the cruellest and most feared of all the SS forces in war-torn France in the summer of 1944.

Parked up for the night, their tanks, half-tracks and heavy guns stretched as far as his eyes could see. How could he and the tiny band of amateurish French Resistance fighters he commanded possibly take on these professional killers? Yet that, come what may, was his mission.

Tommy Macpherson was an exceptional warrior-hero, acknowledged by experts as one of the bravest, most determined and resourceful British soldiers of WW II.

The notorious Das Reich panzer division was on its way from southern France to Normandy to help repel the Allied armies that had landed there on D-Day.

If they made the 450-mile journey in time, they could well be the difference between victory and defeat — which is why scores of Resistance units like this had been mobilised to slow their progress by whatever means they could . . . and at whatever cost.

That cost was already terrible. In towns and *villages of the Lot and Limousin regions, the *bodies of partisans swung from lampposts and telegraph poles as the SS soldiers — veterans of barbaric battles on the Russian front — ruthlessly took revenge on anyone who got in their way.

This do-or-die sabotage halted the SS in its tracks.

And now they had reached the patch of 23-year-old Major Tommy Macpherson — a fresh-faced former Fettes schoolboy, athlete and aesthete and, before the war intervened, a man destined for the dreaming spires of Oxford rather than this bleak French backwater where there was every chance of his being killed.

Macpherson was an exceptional warrior-hero, acknowledged by experts as one of the bravest, most determined and resourceful British soldiers of World War II. Today, at 90, he is Britain’s most decorated former soldier.

His story — told in his forthcoming autobiography — is one of remarkable daring and danger, outstanding even in the annals of that unique generation, as he fought his very special war, almost entirely behind enemy lines.

He did indeed go up to Oxford after the war, gaining a first-class degree. Today, he remains president of the Oxford and Cambridge athletics club, having retired from his career as a successful businessman: he was variously a director of the National Coal Board and High Sheriff of Greater London.

But inevitably nothing in his later life had quite the drama of the extraordinary exploits he undertook in his one-man war against the Nazis.

Recruited into the Army straight from the sixth form, he was picked to be in the newly-formed elite band of Commandos, and earmarked for specialist training to carry out *clandestine raids on enemy territory.

Tommy Macpherson took on a Nazi division almost singlehandedly

And so began an extraordinary series of escapades in which he relied solely on his own cunning, bravery and initiative to stay alive.

In North Africa in 1941, he slipped ashore from a submarine on a reconnaissance mission.

But his sortie went disastrously wrong when the sub that was supposed to collect him did not arrive, and he was forced to trek for days on foot across the desert towards his own lines, sabotaging enemy installations as he went, only to be captured by Italian troops.

Held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy, he made several attempts to escape but was caught each time. He was handed over to the Germans and interrogated by the Gestapo before ending up in a remote camp on the far eastern borders of *Germany.

He slipped away from there wearing a French uniform, made it to the Baltic coast and stowed away on a ship to neutral Sweden.

His flamboyance made him a legend in France.

On his return home in November 1943, he could have been forgiven for seeking a quiet life after two years at the sharp end. Dodging bullets and Nazi forces, he had already endured and survived more danger and hardship than almost any other soldier.

But his unrivalled experience of clandestine operations was vital to the war effort. He was needed for the Special Operations Executive, to parachute into France and gee-up the reluctant foot soldiers of the French Resistance in the aftermath of D-Day.

At Churchill’s behest, he was to arm them, train them and lead them in a guerrilla war against the occupying Germans.

In the dead of night and accompanied by a French army officer and an English radio operator, he dropped into south-central France on June 8, 1944 — two days after the Allies stormed the Normandy beaches.

He was in his Highlander’s battledress, kilt and all — and deliberately so. He was meant to be visible, his undisguised presence a symbol for any wavering Frenchmen that *liberation was at hand if only they took the battle to the Boche.

His attire caused consternation. He heard an excited young Resistance fighter babbling to another that a French officer had landed ‘and he’s brought his wife!’ The lad had never seen a man in a kilt before.

The Longest Day: With just three companions, Macpherson bluffed one German garrison of 100 soldiers with a mock show of force

The unit Macpherson joined was a joke, despite all the assurances he had been given back in England that the maquis was a dedicated fighting force.

Here in the forests and *mountains of the Massif Central it had just eight members, four of them mere boys, a few guns and a single, clapped-out lorry for transport. In four years, they had never mounted any sort of operation to trouble the occupying Germans.

He brought them a machine gun, grenades and plastic explosives, but did they have the savvy and the guts to use them? He found out soon enough when, just days later, the Das Reich SS column hove into his sights.

It was do-or-die moment — and dying seemed the more likely outcome. He decided that engaging them directly would be suicidal and pointless. But ingenious, cleverly-planted booby traps might do the trick of slowing them down.

Through the night, he and his men felled trees to block the road ahead of the convoy and laid their only anti-tank mine, strapping plastic explosives to it for extra oomph. Grenades dangled from overhanging branches — primed to fall and explode.

Communists and Nazis alike put a price on his head.

Primitive though these measures were, they was surprisingly effective. In the morning, the Germans had to bring up heavy equipment to move the tree trunks. Minutes ticked away. Then a tank hit the mine and slewed across the road.

More delay. Finally, Macpherson and his men sprayed troop carriers with their Sten guns and then dashed away into the trees — classic hit-and-run tactics. Hiding at a distance, they heard shouts and screams as the grenades did their job.

Eventually and inevitably, the SS column moved on, but precious hours had been won. With similar small *victories the length of France, it took Das Reich more than a fortnight to complete what should have been a three-day journey, by which time the Allied hold on Normandy was secure.

So, too, was Macpherson’s hold on his new friends. With this success under his belt, his status was assured and streams of newly-emboldened volunteers arrived to join him. Now they began to fight back in earnest.

German supply lorries were hijacked for food, railway lines and road bridges blown up, steam engines wrecked, enemy petrol dumps drained (though not blown up for fear of civilian casualties). The major encouraged children to scatter nails in the street to puncture the tyres of German trucks.

One of his favourite targets was electricity pylons, and he took enormous schoolboy pleasure from blowing up two together. As they crashed, massive sparks flew out, like a giant firework display. To celebrate Bastille Day, he knocked out eight in one exhausting night.

Macpherson: had a price put on his head by both Nazis and Communists.

In his Cameron Highlanders’ *tartan, with a Sten gun in his hand, explosives in his pockets and a skean dhu — the traditional Scottish *dagger — tucked into his sock, his flamboyance made him a legend in this rugged area of rural France.

Furious and frustrated, the Germans offered a 300,000-franc reward for the capture of this ‘bandit masquerading as a Scottish officer’, as Wanted *posters described him, but he seemed as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel and as bulletproof as a tank.

Driving round the countryside to muster and train his growing fighting force, he narrowly missed *German patrols on the road, or *skidded away from road blocks just in time.

Pursued by an enemy patrol one night, his car’s fuel tank was hit by bullets, but even then his luck held. They had just enough petrol left to turn into dense woods, dump the car and seek refuge with the nuns in a nearby convent.

He was at times able to turn the tables. Returning from a night raid on a railway, he was warned that the road he was on was used *regularly by the Germans. Indeed, the local commandant’s staff car was expected shortly.

‘We were at an unmanned level crossing with a heavy wooden pole that lowered itself across the road when a train was coming. It was a perfect opportunity. I fixed some plastic explosive to the wire holding up the pole and rigged it with a fuse.’

When the open staff car sped into view, he blew the fuse, the pole came down and the car hit it at 50mph, decapitating the commandant and his driver. Then Macpherson’s men mowed down the cavalcade’s motorcycle escort with Sten guns. All in all, he recalls phlegmatically, ‘a satisfactory morning’.

By now, the war was swinging decisively in the Allies’ favour and it was time for Macpherson to become ever more brazen in his defiance of the Germans. To impress the locals, he began to fly a Union Jack and the Cross of *Lorraine flag of the Free French from his black Citroën.

Then he sat in full uniform at a café in a town square, nonchalantly and openly drinking wine with the mayor, just to show that he could. It was almost an act of bravado too far.

Suddenly a German armoured car swung into the square. In the nick of time, Macpherson and his driver leapt into the Citroen and raced away into the hills, chased by the Germans.

With the advantage of the higher ground, they stopped and lobbed a makeshift grenade into the pursuing armoured car, destroying it. Then they laid charges around a bridge over a river and blew that, too. ‘It was,’ he recalls, ‘just another day at the office’.

But his most extraordinary achievements were yet to come.

With Allied forces now advancing into the heart of France from both north and south, the Germans were on the retreat. But would they depart without causing a bloodbath? Subtlety and subterfuge were called for.

With just three companions, Macpherson bluffed one German garrison of 100 soldiers with a mock show of force.

He and his men wrapped wet handkerchiefs inside the metal hand grips of their light Sten guns, so that when fired they made the deafening noise of heavy machine-guns. The garrison, fooled into thinking themselves outgunned, surrendered.

Then he went one better when a German column numbering 23,000 men and 1,000 vehicles was heading back to the German border through the last remaining gap between the two advancing Allied armies.

In the Loire valley, a small band of Resistance fighters held a vital river bridge, and a fight to the death — which they had no hope of winning — seemed inevitable. Unless the German general could somehow be persuaded to give up without a fight.

At a parlay with the Germans, Macpherson once more bluffed. ‘My job was to convince the general that I had a brigade, tanks and artillery waiting on the other side of the river and they could not get through.

The clincher was when I told him that I was in contact with London by radio and could at any time call up the RAF to blow his people out of sight. In truth, the only thing I could whistle up was Dixie, but he had no way of knowing that.’

The German general bowed to what he was persuaded was the inevitable and surrendered, bringing the liberation of France a large step closer but with no loss of life.

Amazingly, Macpherson’s war did not end even then. With France freed from the Nazis, he was whisked off to Italy to organise the partisans in their last struggles to evict the Germans.

There he found himself up against a new enemy — communist forces loyal to the Yugoslavian leader, Tito, and intent on annexing parts of Italy.

Macpherson’s determined *opposition succeeded in thwarting these plans, with the result that Tito pronounced a death sentence on the ‘interfering major’.

To have had a price put on his head by Nazis and Communists was a rare distinction, and as highly prized as the Military Cross and two bars, the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre this most buccaneering of British soldiers was awarded for his extraordinary exploits.

Behind Enemy Lines: An Autobiography Of Britain’s Most Decorated War Hero by Sir Tommy MacPherson with Richard Bath, is published by Mainstream at £17.99. To order a copy at £16.20 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.
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https://electricscotland.com/history/scotreg/tommy_macpherson.htm
 
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