Roy Farran: Rogue Hero
Roy Farran was one of the outstanding British soldiers of the Second World War. He was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and three Military Crosses while serving with the Royal Armoured Corps and the Special Air Service but he never rose above the rank of major unlike that other great SAS soldier, Paddy Mayne, who finished the war a Lt.Colonel with four DSOs. Farran and Mayne had much in common. Irish blood for a start, though the Catholic Farran was born and raised in India to a military father. They were brave and instinctive guerrilla fighters, able to size up a situation in seconds, quicker than the enemy, and react with swift and savage ferocity. The pair could be truculent and volatile, character flaws that were exacerbated by the stress of combat and became more acute after the war.
A serious back injury curtailed Mayne’s military career – and his rugby one – and he returned to civilian life after the war. Farran remained in the army, rejoining his parent regiment, the 3rd Hussars, before an appointment to Sandhurst as an instructor. It was a soulless role for a man of action. Restless, dissatisfied and probably suffering from combat stress,Farran volunteered for the Palestine Police Force. He was tasked with tracking down members of the Jewish paramilitary groups that were waging a war of insurgency against the British. In May 1947 16-year-old Alexander Rubowitz vanished while putting up propaganda posters for a paramilitary group. His body was never recovered but Farran was arrested and charged with the youngster’s murder (The death of Rubowitz is covered in Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal, and Britain’s Secret War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948, by David Cesarani). He wasacquitted in a court-martial and returned to Britain, seeking refuge with the one man he knew he could trust: Bill Stirling, his former commanding officer in 2SAS.
While Farran had been awaiting his court-martial, he began writing his war memoir, Winged Dagger, (the SAS emblem is actually the Flaming Sword of Damocles but it has become more commonly known as the Winged Dagger because of Farran’s book). Stirling featured prominently, described as ‘the pioneer of the SAS idea’ along with his younger brother, David.
Farran recalled their first meeting, in Algiers in the early summer of 1943, shortly after Bill Stirling had transformed No62 Commando into the Second SAS Regiment. ‘Stirling was a great mountainous man,’ wrote Farran. ‘He radiated an encouraging aura of confidence and although he told us that we would be on a fortnight trial, we already felt ourselves part of a team before the interview was finished’.
In the months before joining 2SAS Farran had been working for ‘A Force’, the cover name for a small and secretive unit of MI9 whose primary task was to assist Allied POWs to escape from Axis countries. When Farran asked for a transfer to 2SAS, the head of A Force, Lt. Col. Tony Simonds, asked why he wanted to leave. ‘Because MI9 work isn’t exciting enough, and didn’t kill anybody,’ replied Farran.
Farran found excitement in 2SAS, first in Italy in the autumn of 1943 and then in France in 1944 when he led D Squadron on what was the regiment’s most effective mission, Operation Wallace * (Wallace is described in Mortimer’s latest book, The SAS in Occupied France: 2 SAS Operations, June to October 1944). One of his officers in France,Captain Bob Walker-Brown described Farran to me six decades later. ‘Farran was a born soldier. He had drive and initiative and was quite ruthless. If someone didn’t measure up he was out. One of my stick commanders…was RTU’d (Returned to Unit) by Farran, sent home with the message “weak, wet and windy”. So if you didn’t make the grade you were out, no second chance.’
Walker-Brown was selected by Farran to lead a 30-man 2SAS unit into northern Italy in late December 1944 – thesuccessful Operation Galia. Walker-Brown exfiltrated two months later and was the 2SAS liaison officer at 15th ArmyHQ when Farran jumped into the Reggio Valley on March 6 1945 to launch Operation Tombola, the objective of which was to lead the disparate partisan groups in a lightning guerrilla campaign against the Germans.
Tombola should have been under the command of a Canadian officer called Captain Robert “Buck”MacDonald but at the eleventh hour – and without informing 15th Army HQ – Farran stood him down and lead theoperation himself. He subsequently claimed he had fallen out of the aircraft while acting as a despatcher. ‘Roy very improperly “fell out of an aeroplane by mistake”,’ remembered Walker-Brown. ‘And he was very naughty because he took over from a very good Canadian troop commander.’
This was not to be the last act of insubordination from Farran during Tombola. In late March he disobeyed an ordernot to launch an attack against a German Corps HQ, and Walker-Brown recalled: ‘I had to spend most of my time trying to stop Farran being court-martialled.’
Farran’s mentor in 2SAS was Bill Stirling, but on the eve of D-Day he was dismissed by Lt. General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, commander of 1 Airborne Corps, after a bitter dispute about how the SAS Brigade should be deployed inFrance. Browning wanted them dropped a few miles inland from the beachhead to hold up the German armoured reinforcements; Stirling, rightly, said this was not their role and they would be annihilated. He advocated a strategic deployment, deep inside France, to lead a guerrilla campaign alongside the Maquis. Stirling won the argument but at the cost of his job.
The officers and men of 2SAS were deeply upset at Bill Stirling’s dismissal, none more so than his protégé Farran. As a result he grew resentful of what he called ‘half-arsed fighting types’ and in August 1944 he had a furious row with one such officer, Major The Hon John Bingham, who was on the staff of the SAS Brigade. Bingham denied Farran permission to fly to Greece as an SAS observer to Land Forces Adriatic, but Farran went anyway.
It wasn’t just medals that Farran collected during the war, he also picked up a number of enemies, which was one reason why he never rose above the rank of major. Like Paddy Mayne, he was one of those men born for war; peacetime soldiering bored him, as did staff officers.
Writing Winged Dagger was a cathartic experience for Farran; it may well have saved him from a similar fate to Mayne, who struggled to find meaning to life after the war and was killed in a car crash in 1955. Bill Stirling also did his best, finding Farran employment as he made the transition from soldier to civilian.
Farran subsequently carved out a successful career as a journalist, publisher and politician, settling in Canada, where he died in 2006. His war memoir remains a classic of its genre. When the book was published in April 1948 a newspaper captured the essence of the author in its review: ‘Unlike most in that category it is mainly, almost solely, a factual record of fighting and adventure,’ said The Scotsman. ‘There is no psychoanalysis. There are no emotionalpassages… the author is too much of a “man” to make a song and dance about a wound, or great physical danger. Often thoughtless, sometimes rebellious, Roy Farran nevertheless compels admiration by his complete disregard for his personal safety.’
Gavin Mortimer is a historian and author of David Stirling: The Phoney Major, The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS.
