During World War II, Operation Saxifrage was a raid by four small

Special Air Service The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...

teams who landed on the east coast of Italy on the night of 27 October 1943. In charge of the operation was

Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

Roy Farran Major Roy Alexander Farran (2 January 1921 – 2 June 2006) was a British-Canadian soldier, politician, farmer, author and journalist. He was highly decorated for his exploits with the Special Air Service (SAS) during the Second World War. Far ...

and Lieutenant Grant Hibbert. The SAS were inserted via boat, somewhere between Pescara and Ancona, using the

Tronto river The Tronto ( la, Truentus) is a long Italian river that arises at Monti della Laga and ends in the Adriatic Sea at Porto d'Ascoli, San Benedetto del Tronto. It traverses the Lazio, Marche, and Abruzzo regions of Italy. The source of the Tronto i ...

and by late evening, had made landfall with the 16 commandos being divided into 4 teams. After trekking in the bad conditions, the men hunkered down as daylight approached and continued on after sunset, meeting up at 21:00 (28 October) with the other raiding parties of Candytuft. They placed the explosives on the railway lines and by midnight the charges had gone off, destroying the line, however, not immediately being heard by the Germans due to the bad weather. Continuous attacks by the SAS went on for the next 4 days before the commandos pulled out and re-joined with a Royal Navy ship.

References

Conflicts in 1943 World War II British Commando raids 1943 in Italy {{World-War-II-stub

See also

References