SAS Original Mike Sadler a true legend, says Special Forces veteran in tribute
"He was very highly respected by the wartime members of the SAS, they are the ones who set the original standards."
The high regard former SAS member Lieutenant Colonel (Ret'd) Keith Edlin has for honorary SAS Original Mike Sadler is palpable as we sit in his home to talk about the 103-year-old who passed away in January and for whom a memorial was held in Hereford.
I’m desperate to ask Keith about his own exploits during his 31 years in the service, but I know he's only agreed to this on-camera interview to honour the memory of the Second World War veteran.
While the room is being arranged and the lights set up we discuss the BBC TV series Rogue Heroes and the portrayal of those newly recruited SAS members.
"I enjoyed the show," he says, but he thought the characters were exaggerated for dramatic effect. "Mike was very soft-spoken and modest, as all the wartime generation were," he says. Keith is also softly spoken and he offers us a cup of tea.
As we talk, the story starts to unfold. Keith first met Mike when he became Secretary of the SAS Regimental Association after his retirement from service in 1998.
"I'd heard the stories and was aware of what they did – it was a great honour for me to meet Mike Sadler," he says.
"Nowadays you read in the papers about 'so-and-so is a legend' – I don't think they know what a legend is because these are the people who are legends."
An Honorary Original
When Mike Sadler passed away on 4 January he was the last of The Originals.
He was recruited from the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) – a covert reconnaissance and raiding unit that operated behind enemy lines on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier – by David Stirling, the founder of the British Army's elite Special Air Service regiment.
The Originals are regarded as the 21 men who made it back from the SAS's first disastrous mission, parachuting into the desert in the dark during a storm. Fifty-five took part – 34 were either killed or captured.
Mike Sadler and the LRDG picked up the survivors. David Stirling recognised Mike's exceptional navigational skills and poached him for his team – his part in that first mission gave him the title of 'Honorary Original'.
When he first joined the LRDG, Mike Sadler learnt the skill of astronavigation and became fascinated by the LRDG's use of the stars and position of the sun to navigate its way across hundreds of miles of featureless desert.
Keith tells me the story of one of Mike Sadler's most remarkable navigational successes which came in July 1942 ahead of a raid on a German airfield at Sidi Haneish in Egypt.
He navigated 18 jeeps across the desert without headlights or maps.
"That was some considerable feat," says Keith. "David Stirling began to wonder if they would ever get to Sidi Haneish and he called Mike forward.
"Mike said it would be just over the next hill, just at that moment the flare path lights went on and they were smack on where the target was."
Navigating his way to freedom
Mike's navigational skills were called upon many times.
In January 1943 he was part of a small team led by David Stirling that got captured while looking for a route for British troops to outflank the Germans. But Mike and two colleagues escaped.
"I think they were caught in their sleeping bags by the Germans," Keith says with a wry smile.
"Mike and this small group walked over 100 miles over five days where they eventually bumped into the Americans – it's quite a feat in itself that."
But I wondered what made Mike and the rest of this band of Rogue Heroes different?
Keith thinks for a moment before saying: "A lot of them were mavericks.
"They didn't like the run-of-the-mill bureaucratic disciplinary things that were in their own units and wanted to get away from that.
"They wanted to go somewhere where they could be more active in pursuing the war against the Germans and didn't want to be bound by petty rules.
"Bear in mind they were probably more highly disciplined than most units, but it was a self-discipline."
When David Stirling set up the regiment he laid down four key pillars of attitude around which the SAS built its ethos: Humility, Discipline, Humour and the Unrelenting Pursuit of Excellence.
Those lasted the test of time, Keith says.
And Mike Sadler certainly fitted the mould.
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