SAS HEROES' GREATEST MISSION

EXCLUSIVE: It was a staggering feat of bravery kept secret for decades, but now the SAS train raid on a concentration camp during the Second World War is detailed in an incredible new book. JON COATES reports

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THE "GREATEST SAS mission of World War Two" came when Special Forces daredevils stole a train and used it to break into a concentration camp in southern Italy to free hundreds of prisoners of war.

This staggering feat of bravery and ingenuity was kept secret for 45 years and, as a result, is little known today.

As a mission, it signifies like no other the motto of the elite regiment, "Who Dares Wins," and is told in detail in Damien Lewis's new book SAS the Great Train Raid, which is out now.

It reveals for the first time the long-hidden aftermath of the raid deep into enemy territory during the Allied invasion of Italy in the autumn of 1943 and the six months that followed.

The soldiers of 2 SAS, led by Major Oswald Cary-Elwes, were the first into fascist Italy to clear the way for landings at its southern ports by thrusting behind enemy lines to destroy rail tracks and stop the Nazis receiving supplies and reinforcements. At the same time a Yugoslav prisoner called Zelcko Ljubo escaped from Pisticci, a brutal internment camp established by Mussolini's regime in 1939.

It mirrored the Nazi death camps and imprisoned Jews, resistance fighters, intellectuals and priests.

When Zelcko reached the Allied lines he told them his camp commandant was preparing to transfer Pisticci's inmates to Nazi Germany on trains, effectively condemning them to death.

So Maj Cary-Elwes and his deputy, fearless Franco-American Capt Robert Courard, devised the daring plan to hijack one of the trains and, with armed SAS troops and Zelcko as their guide, drive it deep behind enemy lines to liberate the PoWs before returning again.

On September 15, 1943, they launched their assault on the camp and liberated 180 prisoners, many too weak to walk, while others were freed and told to hide in the hills until Allied forces arrived.