Who was Great Britain's highest decorated soldier in world war I ?
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When Tommy Macpherson was ordered by Churchill to cause chaos for the Nazis and 'set Europe ablaze' he took to his task with relish. Sixty-five years after D-Day, Britain's most decorated former soldier talks about his extraordinary life and his experiences behind enemy lines in France
HE LEARNT quickly because he had to. In no time at all he worked out that plastic explosives smell like almonds, that a Sten gun with a wet cloth wrapped around its barrel produces the same deep percussive thud as a heavy machine gun, that when two sabotaged pylons crash into each other they produce more spectacular sparks than any fireworks, that human flesh smells like bacon when it burns. He also learned that guerrilla fighting came effortlessly to him.
Tommy Macpherson had joined up while he was still an Edinburgh schoolboy, and by the age of 21 he knew more about killing and wrecking and wreaking havoc than most men would ever know. By the end of the war he had become the most decorated soldier of all time. Only 25 men have ever been awarded the MC three times and Tommy is the only one left alive. Only one man has ever been awarded three MCs, three Croix de Guerre and the Legion D'Honneur, and Tommy is that man. Even the Pope knew what a warrior Tommy was, which is why he personally awarded him the Star of Bethlehem and a Papal knighthood.
If the Highlander is weighed down with gongs, it's not altogether surprising. Few men can claim to have single-handedly affected the course of the Second World War, and the 89-year-old is one of them. He's not a boastful man, though, and says simply that he wasn't a hero 65 years ago, that he was "just doing my job". But that doesn't alter the facts, which are that in June 1944, with the Germans throwing men, machinery and malice aforethought at the fragile Normandy beachhead, Macpherson played a pivotal role in slowing the advance of both the Second Motorised SS Infantry Division and Das Reich, the feared 2nd SS Panzer Division that was moving northwards determined to dislodge the Allies' precarious foothold on mainland Europe.
The way in which he did it remains one of the most jaw-dropping acts of chutzpah ever perpetrated by a British soldier. He had been operating as a partisan, blowing up bridges and pylons and generally making himself so incredibly irritating that the Germans had already wasted thousands of man hours trying to capture him. Yet unarmed and accompanied only by a doctor and a French officer, Macpherson drove his stolen German Red Cross Land Rover along ten miles of road lined with crack German troops, through two bursts of machine gun fire and into the headquarters of a division of veterans who learned their trade on the Eastern Front, a division that had become infamous for the brutality of its reprisals against partisans and those who would bar its way.
When Macpherson stepped out of the car in Pont d'Arcay he cut an unforgettable figure. Dressed in full Highland regalia, here was "that lunatic Scotsman who keeps blowing up bridges", the "alleged Scottish Major" whose face adorned wanted posters throughout half of France and on whose head the Germans had put a 300,000 franc reward. But the 23-year-old wasn't there to surrender, he was there to deliver terms.
The terms were simple: surrender or he would unleash a bombardment from the heavy guns stored further down the Allier River and attack with his 20,000 troops. If that didn't work, then he'd call up the RAF and bomb the Germans into oblivion.
It was a remarkable bluff. His hastily assembled ragtag troop of Resistance fighters were callow French novices who would have been routed by the battle-hardened German veterans, he had no heavy guns to speak of, and he might as well have whistled Dixie as try to whistle up a squadron of RAF fighter-bombers. Not that the Germans knew any of that. Remarkably, they threw in the towel with barely a whimper of defiance; Major General Elster and his No.2, a black-uniformed full Colonel, signing the surrender documents there and then. Macpherson had captured 23,000 German troops armed with nothing more than his sgian dubh and the biggest brass neck in Scotland.
"Our lightly armed and inexperienced troops could not have withstood a determined attack," he remembers. "The advance guard of the German Army had 7,000 fighting troops, comprised mainly of battle-hardened veterans of the Russian Front, who would have gone through us like a knife through butter. My judgment was that if we didn't think of something there was going to be a lot of blood shed, including mine."
HE LEARNT quickly because he had to. In no time at all he worked out that plastic explosives smell like almonds, that a Sten gun with a wet cloth wrapped around its barrel produces the same deep percussive thud as a heavy machine gun, that when two sabotaged pylons crash into each other they produce more spectacular sparks than any fireworks, that human flesh smells like bacon when it burns. He also learned that guerrilla fighting came effortlessly to him.
Tommy Macpherson had joined up while he was still an Edinburgh schoolboy, and by the age of 21 he knew more about killing and wrecking and wreaking havoc than most men would ever know. By the end of the war he had become the most decorated soldier of all time. Only 25 men have ever been awarded the MC three times and Tommy is the only one left alive. Only one man has ever been awarded three MCs, three Croix de Guerre and the Legion D'Honneur, and Tommy is that man. Even the Pope knew what a warrior Tommy was, which is why he personally awarded him the Star of Bethlehem and a Papal knighthood.
If the Highlander is weighed down with gongs, it's not altogether surprising. Few men can claim to have single-handedly affected the course of the Second World War, and the 89-year-old is one of them. He's not a boastful man, though, and says simply that he wasn't a hero 65 years ago, that he was "just doing my job". But that doesn't alter the facts, which are that in June 1944, with the Germans throwing men, machinery and malice aforethought at the fragile Normandy beachhead, Macpherson played a pivotal role in slowing the advance of both the Second Motorised SS Infantry Division and Das Reich, the feared 2nd SS Panzer Division that was moving northwards determined to dislodge the Allies' precarious foothold on mainland Europe.
The way in which he did it remains one of the most jaw-dropping acts of chutzpah ever perpetrated by a British soldier. He had been operating as a partisan, blowing up bridges and pylons and generally making himself so incredibly irritating that the Germans had already wasted thousands of man hours trying to capture him. Yet unarmed and accompanied only by a doctor and a French officer, Macpherson drove his stolen German Red Cross Land Rover along ten miles of road lined with crack German troops, through two bursts of machine gun fire and into the headquarters of a division of veterans who learned their trade on the Eastern Front, a division that had become infamous for the brutality of its reprisals against partisans and those who would bar its way.
When Macpherson stepped out of the car in Pont d'Arcay he cut an unforgettable figure. Dressed in full Highland regalia, here was "that lunatic Scotsman who keeps blowing up bridges", the "alleged Scottish Major" whose face adorned wanted posters throughout half of France and on whose head the Germans had put a 300,000 franc reward. But the 23-year-old wasn't there to surrender, he was there to deliver terms.
The terms were simple: surrender or he would unleash a bombardment from the heavy guns stored further down the Allier River and attack with his 20,000 troops. If that didn't work, then he'd call up the RAF and bomb the Germans into oblivion.
It was a remarkable bluff. His hastily assembled ragtag troop of Resistance fighters were callow French novices who would have been routed by the battle-hardened German veterans, he had no heavy guns to speak of, and he might as well have whistled Dixie as try to whistle up a squadron of RAF fighter-bombers. Not that the Germans knew any of that. Remarkably, they threw in the towel with barely a whimper of defiance; Major General Elster and his No.2, a black-uniformed full Colonel, signing the surrender documents there and then. Macpherson had captured 23,000 German troops armed with nothing more than his sgian dubh and the biggest brass neck in Scotland.
"Our lightly armed and inexperienced troops could not have withstood a determined attack," he remembers. "The advance guard of the German Army had 7,000 fighting troops, comprised mainly of battle-hardened veterans of the Russian Front, who would have gone through us like a knife through butter. My judgment was that if we didn't think of something there was going to be a lot of blood shed, including mine."
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