5 real-life shockers in SAS Rogue Heroes Season 2

SAS Rogue Heroes Season 1 blew the dust off the founding of the British Army Special Air Service (SAS) during World War II’s Western Desert Campaign. The series, created by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight and based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, now turns the searchlight to the SAS in Europe. 

With their founding commander David Stirling (Connor Swindells) in a POW camp, 1SAS is under a new commander, Paddy Mayne (Jack O’Connell), while David’s brother Bill Stirling (Gwilym Lee) heads up 2SAS (avoid getting bogged down in the details of what they’re called, how many units there are, or what colour their berets are, because it gets really convoluted). There are new recruits including John Tonkin (Jack Barton), Jock McDiarmid (Mark Rowley), and Anthony Greville-Bell (Stuart Thompson), and a new first mission looms in sunny Sicily.

Under their new designation, the Special Raiding Service (SRS), Paddy and the lads will be paving the way for the 1943 Allied invasion, aka Operation Husky. The season will cover their work in Italy between July 1943 and the D-Day Normandy landings in June 1944.

We’re in for sheer adrenaline backed up by a hard rock soundtrack. And while Season 2 includes a lot more made up characters and situations than Season 1 did – as the revised season’s introduction warns, “This is not a history lesson” – here are five of the most incredible things the real-life SAS really did at this time during World War II.

PS: Scroll to the end for 10 more World War II series and movies.

Binge SAS Rogue Heroes Season 1-2 now.

Episode 1: One lunatic vs a pill box

During Operation Husky, the SAS landed at Capo Murro di Porco, where they had to take out the Lamba Doria battery – one of four battery positions on the peninsula. The position seemed impossible. The great shore guns were housed in near-invulnerable concrete “pill boxes” and the battery sat atop a sheer cliff face. After they successfully took the Lamba Doria battery (thanks to an expert mortar round that landed smack-dab in the ammunition store) without casualties, they then moved on to the second battery, AS 493. 

This is when Reg Seekings stepped up. According to his military medal citation, “Sgt Seekings himself rushed the pill box” – armed with sheer bloody-mindedness, grenades and revolver. He then led his division to wipe out the neighbouring mortar post. It took the SRS less than 36 hours to capture or destroy the fascists’ defences and take over 500 prisoners. 

Fact check: As seen in episode 1, the bad weather proved disastrous for the 147 British gliders involved (their part of the mission was code named Operation Ladbroke). After they were released too far out from the target, only 12 landed where they were supposed to, and 69 crashed in the sea, drowning 200 men. And yes, the SAS units did have to pass them by without helping, for exactly the reasons that Paddy states.

Episode 2: Amok in Augusta

While the on-screen opening scene gives us a daring dodge featuring Paddy and Reg deceiving German soldiers at the harbour in Augusta by pretending to be Italian fisherman before blasting them to bits with a bazooka, the real-life taking of Augusta involved a far more dangerous full-daylight beach landing under enemy fire. The fact that so many of the SAS men survived is testament not only to the possibility that they were some god of mischief’s favourites, but to the diversion caused by Operation Mincemeat, which had lured most of the Germans out of Augusta the previous day. 

Paddy led the charge up the rocky shore and into the town’s narrow streets under a blaze of German machine gun fire. And according to historian Gavin Mortimer (author of The SAS In 1943), Sergeant Bill Deakins remembers Paddy nonchalantly striding up the streets of Augusta with one hand in his pocket at one point to encourage his men. 

Paddy’s conduct in Capo Murro di Porco and Augusta earned him his first bar on his Distinguished Service Order. The official citation for his DSO states, “In both these operations it was Major Mayne’s courage, determination and superb leadership which proved the key to success. He personally led his men from landing craft in the face of heavy machine-gun fire. By this action, he succeeded in forcing his way to ground where it was possible to form up and sum up enemy defences.”

Fact check: Paddy did, in fact, blow open a safe in Augusta’s main bank using a grenade. And according to Ben Macintyre’s book, some of the SAS men lurched around the streets in stolen women’s clothing while drunkenly looting and running amok, as Paddy dashed about pushing a baby carriage full of liquor bottles.

Episode 3-5: Chicken, beef or death?

In October 1942, unknown to the Allies, Adolf Hitler issued the top-secret Commando Order, stating that all Allied special forces operatives like the SAS were to be executed promptly and without trial (this is and was a war crime). So it should be curtains for John Tonkin (Jack Barton) when he’s captured during his attempt to blow up Campomarino bridge near Termoli in episode 3. 

Instead, in episode 4, Luftwaffe General Richard Heidrich saves John from the firing squad as he’s standing facing the guns with a blindfold over his eyes. He then invites John to dinner, behaves like an SAS fanboy, and warns him about Hitler’s Commando Order while dropping a hint that he should do his best to escape. So in episode 5, John overpowers three German soldiers and he begins his long march back to Termoli, during which he runs into an old pony club crony of his sister’s, Daphne Reece Williams (Bianca Bardoe). 

Fact check: Yes, John was taken prisoner by members of the German 1st Parachute Division. And the bizarre sit-down dinner with the General really happened (just not after a last-second firing squad reprieve), but it was the major who escorted him to his prison cell who actually warned John about the order. After that his real escape was a lot quieter; he simply slipped out of the truck he was being transported in by unclipping the truck’s canvas canopy, scrambling out, and making a run for it into the night. John hiked south for two weeks before running into a British patrol (not his sister’s chum) and rejoining his SAS friends in Bari.

Episode 4: The inner war

Director Stephen Woolfenden warns, “PTSD plays a big part in the series. We go on some particular journeys where the group go through some horrifying experiences…Each of the characters suffer in their own particular way. Reg Seekings, for instance, is carrying an awful lot. He has closed himself off from the rest of the unit, and can’t really express himself. Part of the preparation I did was to look at some of the research material. There’s amazing footage of the real Seekings talking about his experiences, and that was just heartbreaking; to be able to refer to and learn from that, to talk to actor Theo Barklem-Biggs about it, and to try and weave a way of trying to understand that into the series… trying to remain human when we know he is forever changed by the horror of what he’s been through.” 

And Stephen does mean horror. In episode 4 we see Reg having to shoot a 12-year-old child he befriended after his family’s house is shelled in an attack. 

Fact check: In real life, Reg was familiar (perhaps not as intimately) with the child since his parents washed laundry for the SAS. When he saw the boy running around screaming in agony with his intestines spilling out, he caught and shot him. Reg realised that the child’s wounds were fatal, but the mercy killing haunted him. He was just 23 years old.

Episode 5: Luck of the devil

One real-life escape might have been a bridge too far in believability, even for SAS Rogue Heroes. During the SAS operation in Termoli in 1943, Reg Seekings was aboard a truck carrying 24 of his platoon when they were hit by a mortar round. He was adjusting the truck’s tailgate while they were in a side-street at the time and was thrown clear. While his only injury was a damaged fingernail, he was one of only two survivors. 

According to the other survivor, SAS soldier Eric Musk, Reg gathered all the strewn arms, legs and heads, and matched them as accurately as possible to create whole bodies before he and Eric buried their comrades together. This steep loss is referenced in the moment when the SAS name and bury 21 of their own men (who’ve died off-screen) in episode 5.

Fun fact: Former rugby star Paddy Mayne played for the British Lions during their 1938 tour to South Africa, where he earned a reputation for blowing off steam by “wrecking hotels and fighting dockers”.

Binge SAS Rogue Heroes Season 1-2 now.

10 more epic World War II stories to watch on Showmax

Whether the kids have a school assignment, you’re trying to put recent history into perspective, or you can’t resist a good yarn, here are more documentaries, movies and series that offer different angles on the events of World War II.

The Last Rifleman: Drama film inspired by the true story of Bernard Jordan. Pierce Brosnan plays a World War II veteran who escapes his care home in Ireland to journey to France for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings (which we see the SAS preparing for in episode 6). Along the way he meets German and French survivors who share their own stories.

One Life: Biographical drama film based on the life of Sir Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn), a young London-based broker who rescued Jewish children from the Nazis on the brink of World War II. Fifty years on, Winton is still haunted by guilt over the lives he couldn’t save, until a TV show brings together a group of people whose lives he changed. 

Darkest Hour: Biographical drama film. Gary Oldman won the 2018 Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of (then-unpopular) newly appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, as he weighs up his decision to refuse to negotiate peace with Adolf Hitler during the battle of Dunkirk in World War II.

Operation Mincemeat: Historical drama film inspired by a true story and based on the 2010 book of the same name by Ben Macintyre (author of Rogue Heroes, which formed the basis for the series SAS Rogue Heroes). British intelligence officers Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), Commander Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth), and Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond books, played by Johnny Flynn) come up with a sneaky plan to outwit German troops during WWII, to divert them from the Allies’ coming invasion of Sicily.

The Commandant’s Shadow: Documentary film. Hans Jürgen Höss, the son of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, visits a detailed replica of the idyllic family home he was raised in, which was right next to the death camp. The documentary addresses everyday Germans’ claims of ignorance to the horrors happening next door. As he reflects, Hans and his son Kai meet holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and her daughter, Maya. 

Band of Brothers: Historical drama mini-series based on historian Stephen E Ambrose’s 1992 book of the same name, and produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. The action follows a group of young men who start their training in 1942, as part of America’s newest and most elite military regiment. We then follow them through their battlefield engagements throughout Europe towards the end of World War II, from Normandy to Berchtesgaden. With Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston and David Schwimmer.

We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company: Documentary film. A companion to the HBO biographical drama series Band of Brothers, this film reunites the surviving members of Easy Company to tell their versions of key events shown in the series.

The Pacific: This mini-series produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg tells the story of the United States’ involvement in World War II from the perspective of three Marines caught up in the war theatre in the Pacific. With James Badge Dale as Robert Leckie, Ashton Holmes as Sidney Phillips, and Joseph Mazzello as Eugene Sledge. The series draws on Sledge and Leckie’s real-life memoirs, along with the writing of fellow Marine Chuck Tatum (played by Ben Esler).

World on Fire Season 2: Period drama series. While fictional, this drama series paints a portrait of civilian lives during World War II. Season 2 covers everything from the experiences of young women recruited into Nazi Germany’s Lebensborn programme, to the lives of refugees in the UK, hospital and resistance workers in Nazi-occupied Paris, and those caught up in the war in Africa.

Six Minutes to Midnight: Period drama film inspired by a real British school – the Augusta Victoria College – whose pupils included the daughters of Hitler’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his envoy to the Vatican, Carl-Ludwig Diego von Bergen. Eddie Izzard wrote and stars in this film as schoolteacher Thomas Miller, who’s sent to an elite German girls’ boarding school in England as a spy just as WWII is about to break out.

Alternative WWII histories: Horror film Overlord, Quentin Tarrantino action film Inglorious Basterds, war movie 3 Days in Malay, atomic bomb biographical drama Oppenheimer