Mike Sadler, fearless desert navigator in World War II, dies at 103

At the end of a grueling day, Mr. Liebling said, “a G-2 (intelligence) officer came out of the staff tent” to talk to the British. “He had a bottle of whiskey with him, which was an excellent idea as they were quite gone by then. After half an hour he got out and told us he thought everything was fine.”

Willis Michael Sadler – known to friends as Mike – was born in London on February 22, 1919, to Adam and Wilma Sadler, and grew up in Stroud, a village in Gloucestershire, about 110 miles to the west. His father was the director of a plastics factory. Mike attended Oakley Hall School in Cirencester and Bedales School in Hampshire. After graduating in 1937, he moved to Southern Rhodesia, where his imagination was fueled by stories from his youth about adventures in a land of lions and elephants. Thanks to family ties, he got a job on a tobacco farm, where he worked until the war broke out.

After his adventures in North Africa as a desert navigator, Mr Sadler returned to England and in 1944 parachuted into France after the Allied invasion of Normandy. He took part in sabotage operations against the German occupation forces and won the Military Cross for bravery in action behind enemy lines.

He and his wife Patricia, whom he married after the war, had a daughter, Sally Sadler, who survives him. His wife is deceased. Until he moved to his nursing home in Cambridge a few years ago, he lived in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 90 miles west of London.

After the war he went on a year-long expedition to Antarctica with an SAS colleague, Major Blair (Paddy) Mayne, Colonel Stirling’s successor in the SAS. Mr Sadler later joined the British Foreign Office for what may have been kept secret. work. Friends and journalists who interviewed him said he adamantly refused to discuss his postwar activities, other than to say they were “foreign service work.”

Mr Sadler had gradually lost his sight, but he celebrated his 100th birthday in 2020 with a celebratory gathering of friends at the Special Forces Club in London. “He talked about it enthusiastically on the phone,” said his friend Dominique Legrand, “and his voice was as energetic as ever.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.