Major Willis Michael “Mike” Sadler, MM, MC, the last survivor of both the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), and David Stirling’s original L Detachment SAS, has marked his map for the last time at age 103.
A Rhodesian, Sadler’s WWII service including 4 Rhodesian Anti-Tank Battery (ranks), Long Range Desrt Group (S Patrol) 1942 (Cpl) award M.M. with LRDG, L Detachment SAS July 1942-September 1942 (CR/3514 Sgt), 1 SAS (A Squadron) 1942-43 (2 Lt), Special Raiding Squadron 1943 (Lt), and 1 SAS (HQ + A Squadrons) 1944-45 (Cap)– recommended MC 1945, ret Maj.
Sadler joined SAS in 1941 and was the group’s primary navigator across the featureless Libyan desert, successfully guiding their gun trucks and war jeeps to success, among others, at Wadi Tamet where his team famously destroyed 24 aircraft and a fuel dump.
Using “very blank” maps and a sun compass — and sometimes not even that!– Sadler got it done long before the days of GPS.
A 2016 interview with Sadler:
Sadler is portrayed by Tom Glynn-Carney in the new BBC series Rogue Heroes.
Post-war, he served with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (now the British Antarctic Survey) and Sadler’s Passage in Stonington Island, Antarctica was later named after him in 2021 in recognition of his work there.
And thus, we remember.