by Hamish Ross
When Stirling got authority to establish the unit, he set about recruiting. He probably went first to Lewes, because he knew him and needed his ideas and organising skills; he went to see Mayne because he had been commended by Laycock. Stirling always made clear that it was he who approached Mayne and that Mayne, initially, was sceptical. He was sceptical with good reason: he had peremptorily left No. 11 Commando because of its new leadership, and here he was being offered a job by a man his own age, who had just received permission to form a unit – through what looked like an old boy network – and who had no combat experience. The offer was all too redolent of the frying pan and the fire. He had already expressed a wish for a transfer to a military mission to the Far East, so Mayne had quickly to assess both Stirling and his ideas. What Mayne thought of the encounter he probably never committed to paper; but later he wrote that Stirling was a master of the art of making you feel a most important person.11 Mayne probably observed that characteristic over the eighteen months that they worked together, rather than deduced it from their first meeting. But Stirling’s description of a close-questioning, critical Mayne rings true, for a few years later, when Mayne was to join another small unit, he committed his thoughts to paper and he closely analysed the qualities of its leader. Here he was satisfied that he could work with Stirling and, equally importantly, convinced by his ideas. He agreed to join. And he probably recommended to Stirling that, when opportunity arose, he should speak to Eoin McGonigal; for, as we shall see, Mayne adopted a sense of responsibility for what befell his friend.
North African Desert 1941–3
However, at this point McGonigal was still with No. 11 Commando on garrison duty in Cyprus. Although the Commando continued nominally to be part of Layforce, it temporarily ceased to come under its control and was therefore not open to recruitment until its garrison duty was completed the following month.
The proselytising started in Cyprus: we had one or two visitors who came to the mess, sewed their seeds and then departed. But the hard recruiting did not begin until we went to Egypt.12
By the time the Commando returned to Egypt on 7 August, though, the policy climate concerning Commandos in the Middle East was beginning to change. When Laycock arrived in the UK in July, he met, among others, the Prime Minister. As a result, Churchill wrote a minute on 23 July to the Chiefs of Staff. There was no ambiguity about Churchill’s wishes (although he prematurely promoted Laycock) and he did not mince words over the way MEHQ had handled Layforce.
I wish the Commandos in the Middle East to be reconstituted as soon as possible. Instead of being formed by a committee of officers without much authority, Gen Laycock should be appointed the DCO with his forces placed directly under Adm Cunningham, who should be charged with all combined operations involving sea transport and not exceed one brigade. The ME Command have indeed maltreated and thrown away this valuable force.13
But an earlier decision had been made to establish L Detachment, SAS Brigade with the proviso that it recruited from Layforce. Now, while Nos 7 and 8 Commando were no longer viable as units, this was not the case with No. 11 Commando, which was now based at Amaryia.14 It would have to be a reduced force, so there would be some rich pickings for other units, but Keyes was not in the business of offering up personnel. So Stirling made his visit to Amaryia and set out his stall.
Most accounts of the forming of L Detachment have dealt with personalities from Nos 7 and 8 Commando, but No. 11 Commando provided twelve other ranks – about 20 per cent of the new unit’s complement – and of the six officers Stirling recruited, three had seen action in the Litani river operation: Mayne, McGonigal and Fraser. McGonigal was posted to L Detachment on 15 August 1941, Fraser on 18 August and the twelve other ranks on 28 August.15
Rumour came too. Because Mayne, the esteemed commander of No. 7 Troop, left without any ceremony, speculation was rife. It had been fuelled by low morale as the Commando continued its duties in July; a sure indication of this, in an elite unit, was that court martial proceedings were initiated against six other ranks, four of whom were NCOs.16 Colourful accounts of Mayne’s progression from the Commando to the SAS came into circulation.
And so it was revealed to Cowles, whose book appeared in 1958, that in the beginning, when the SAS was created, Mayne was brought forth from prison and invited to join.17 However, the problem with this revelation was why on earth Stirling should have taken the trouble to approach someone in prison in the first place; Cowles supplied the solution that Stirling had earlier recruited Fraser and McGonigal and, at the end of his interview, McGonigal came up with a ‘By-the-way-I’ve-got-this-friend-but-unfortunately . . .’ kind of request. This, too, became part of accepted belief. But the absurdity of this version has been obscured for years. It is inconceivable that McGonigal would produce such fiction about his friend: Mayne ‘wasn’t ever under close arrest’,18 said Tommy Macpherson, who later became Adjutant of No. 11 Commando and had access to the files. Secondly, the version falls because McGonigal was not even in a position to be interviewed by Stirling until after the first week in August. And from what is now known from Jock Lewes’s letters, Lewes had not initially committed himself to join Stirling.19 Which would mean that (unless the remaining two officers, Bonnington and Thomson, had joined first) less than three weeks from the vesting date for the new unit,20 Stirling had not recruited any officers. Thirdly, whimsy could not have accounted for Stirling – in forward-planning the structure of his unit – dividing it into two troops: No. 1 Troop commanded by Lewes and No. 2 Troop commanded by Mayne. (Stirling understandably placed Fraser and McGonigal in No. 1 Troop.) The next step in the development of the myth came two years later, when Marrinan, writing about Mayne, set reason aside and followed Cowles in blind faith. For although he had read (because he quoted part of it) the letter that Mayne had written in hospital, he painted a scenario of Mayne in a hellhole of a prison in the desert, about one hundred miles from Cairo.21 It was in the tradition of the Foreign Legion stories of P.C. Wren (Mayne had read some of these too, for he referred to them) – all that was missing was a touch of the cafard. But with Bradford and Dillon the fabrication attained its apogee when they proposed that the incident had been triggered by Mayne’s resentment at a decision taken by Keyes;22 a decision that Keyes was not in a position to make until some point after 4 October 1941.23 By this time Mayne had been gone from the Commando for three and a half months, and, far from in a huff at being excluded from the Rommel Raid, he had in fact been in the SAS for the previous month and a half. So for decades until now a fiction about how Mayne progressed from the Commando to the SAS has been accepted and remained unchallenged.
Mayne’s own account of joining L Detachment is quite unexceptional and fits the pattern of his looking around in June for a more interesting posting. He told it to Mike Blackman, who edited the unit’s chronicle, ‘Birth, Growth and Maturity of 1st SAS Regiment’, which is now referred to as the ‘Paddy Mayne Diary’. Its introductory paragraph about Mayne reads:
Chafing under too many cancelled operations, his restlessness drove him in September 1941 to throw in his lot with Lieutenant-Colonel David Stirling’s band of desert raiders. This was work which appealed to him.24
On 1 September, L Detachment’s structure was shown as two troops, each commanded by an experienced officer: Lewes commanding No. 1 Troop and Mayne commanding No. 2 Troop. Mayne enjoyed the work from the start. On 9 September he wrote to his sister Barbara that he was in a new unit and that ‘McGonigal is here with me’.25 An ethos began to develop: Stirling’s qualities as a person and a leader earned respect and he set a tone for the unit; Lewes’s technical brilliance and ability to find solutions to problems helped imbue a spirit of inter-dependency; people were motivated; the creative skills of others like Jim Almonds helped devise means of simulating parachute falls. The response of the men was expressed by Jimmy Storie, who was one of the twelve who came from No. 11 Commando: ‘In the SAS you were treated as men; in the rest of the army you did
what the sergeant said or the lieutenant said, but in the SAS . . . you got your say.’26 This culture of trust and challenge stemmed from the basic idea of what could be accomplished by small groups. Training was the key. If Commando training was rigorous, L Detachment’s was much more so. There were two deaths in training when the parachutes of Duffy and Warburton failed to open. Throughout, however, morale was much higher than it had been in the Commandos. The unit’s conception had come from junior officers and it was characterised by enthusiasm and commitment.
Meanwhile, on 23 September, No. 204 Military Mission to China left Egypt on the first leg of that long journey that would take them along the Burma Road and then across the border into China.27 Had fate not intervened, Mayne would probably have been in their number.
However, when Laycock returned to the Middle East in mid-September, after successfully lobbying the Prime Minister, he found that in MEHQ there was still no overall rationale for the use of Special Service forces. Keyes wrote that Laycock was having difficulty in making headway and facing all kinds of obstruction from staff officers.28 Then a conference was held in early October where it was proposed that a Middle East Commando could be reinstated by designating L Detachment as 2 Troop; 11 Commando as 3 Troop; the former Middle East Commando divided into 4 and 5 Troops and the Special Boat Section as 6 Troop. It was a bureaucrat’s solution that met the letter of the requirement. Laycock ‘condemned’ the proposal; its implementation was first postponed and finally abandoned.29 Nonetheless, L Detachment had a clear focus for its work: airfields, lines of communication, transport Lager deep behind enemy lines. On the other hand, No. 11 Commando, by then a force of about 110 men, as late as the end of September had no clear purpose. Until, that is, 4 October 1941, when a plan emerged for it to carry out a raid synchronised with one undertaken by L Detachment to precede the forthcoming Allied offensive.
The timing of the offensive, Operation Crusader, was scheduled for 17/18 November. On the assumption that the headquarters of Gen Erwin Rommel was situated at Beda Littoria, Middle East HQ authorised No. 11 Commando to carry out a raid at midnight on 17 November whose purpose was the capture or death of the commander of the Afrika Korps. At the same time, L Detachment would be in place to attack enemy aircraft on the airfields of Timimi and Gazala at precisely fifteen minutes after midnight.30 L Detachment would go in by parachute, No. 11 Commando by submarine. Whatever the contribution of these raids might turn out to be for the offensive, their successful prosecution was vitally important for both units: one trying to establish itself as a credible force, the other anxious to re-establish a role for a smaller Commando.
Both Stirling and Keyes felt the strain. Stirling was informed a few days before the due date that the weather forecast predicted high winds, and was advised to cancel.31 However, if he did so, he would be following the pattern of frustration that all who had been in the Commandos knew too well and the morale of the unit was paramount. On 13 November, the commander-in-chief visited the unit and watched an exercise and, as he left, thanked them for being a unit in whom he trusted.32 Keyes, for his part, was excited about the raid, but he had a reservation, too. On 13 November, he wrote a letter to his parents which was only to be sent in the event of his being posted missing, taken prisoner or killed. He described the nature of the raid he was undertaking as ‘dirty work at the crossroads with a vengeance, on the old original conception of Commandos’.33 However, he added, ‘I am not happy about the future really.’ Two days later, on 15 November, Stirling also wrote to his mother, but in a lighter tone: ‘It is the best possible type of operation and will be far more exciting than dangerous.’34 During the run-up to the raid, Mayne’s letter to his mother on 4 November because of its brevity suggests that he was very much occupied. He said that that he was fine and told her, ‘McGonigal is also well’.35
Almost the whole of L Detachment was committed to the raids on the airfields at Timimi and Gazala – five sections of ten to twelve men in five aircraft. They proceeded in two stages: on the morning of Sunday 16 November, they flew first to Bagoush and from there they were flown to the dropping zone that evening. At Bagoush, to relieve the tension, some of L Detachment broke into a cupboard, which served as the drinks store for the RAF Officers’ Mess, and removed some of its contents to their tent. While they were drinking a libation to the success of the raid, they were interrupted by the RAF station commanding officer, who reported the matter, and they were subsequently upbraided by Lewes.36
It has been generally assumed that there is no extant operational report of that first raid, but Mayne’s report of the raid on the airfield at Timimi exists – he retained a copy. Entitled ‘To Commanding Officer, SAS Brigade’. In structure and style it follows the pattern of the Commando troop commanders’ reports of the Litani river action and as such may reflect Pedder’s manual on report writing. In its detail it reveals Mayne’s methodical approach to an action; and it shows that on that first raid Mayne’s party came closest to destroying aircraft – they were in a position to attack the airfield. Mayne’s report begins with the plan of attack and their arsenal of hand weapons and bombs. The unit’s Nos 1 and 2 Troops had been further subdivided for the raid. Mayne had responsibility for B Troop, which comprised No. 3 Section, including Lt Bonnington and nine other ranks, and No. 4 Section, which came under Mayne’s command. He had with him ten other ranks: Sgts McDonald and Kershaw, Cpl White, Parachutists Seekings, White, Hawkins, Arnold, Kendall, Chessworth and Bennet.37 Both sections were to make contact after dropping, advance as a troop with No. 4 Section leading, and lie up for the day about five miles from the airfield. On the night of 17 November at one minute to midnight, No. 3 Section would attack planes on the east side of the airfield; No. 4 Section would attack those on the south and west sides. Contact with the enemy was to be avoided until fifteen minutes after midnight; thereafter Thomson sub-machine-guns and instantaneous fuses could be used if necessary.
According to the plan for B Troop, on the evening of 16 November, No. 3 Section were to leave Bagoush on No. 4 Flight at 1920 hr, with Mayne’s Section on No. 5 Flight twenty minutes later. They were well supplied with explosives, and food and water was carried in the bomb racks: No. 3 Section had five containers of two packs each, one container with two Thomson sub-machine-guns and one container of reserve dates and water; No. 4 Section had six containers of two packs each and two containers of submachine-guns, as well as personal equipment in accordance with, as Mayne put it, ‘squadron arrangements’. In the event, both planes left forty minutes behind schedule: Mayne’s plane took off at 2020 hr, twenty minutes after No. 3 Section had left. Mayne wrote, ‘I did not see them again.’ His report continued:
No. 4 Section left at 2020 hours and reached landing ground at 2230 hours. There were no incidents on the flight there and we were dropped as arranged.
As the section was descending there were flashes on the ground and reports which I then thought was small arms fire. But on reaching the ground no enemy was found so I concluded that the report had been caused by detonators exploding in packs whose parachutes had failed to open.
The landing was unpleasant. I estimated the wind speed at 20–25 miles per hour, and the ground was studded with thorny bushes.
Two men were injured here. Pct Arnold sprained both ankles and Pct Kendall bruised or damaged his leg.
An extensive search was made for the containers, lasting until 0130 hours 17/11/41, but only four packs and two TSMGs were located.
I left the two injured men there, instructed them to remain there that night, and in the morning find and bury any containers in the area and then to make to the RV which I estimated at fifteen miles away.
It was too late to carry out my original plan of lying west of Timimi as I had only five hours of darkness left, so I decided to lie up on the southern side.
I then had eight men, sixteen bombs, fourteen water bottles and food as originally laid for four men, and four blankets.
We marched for three and a ha
lf hours on a bearing of 360 degrees covering approximately six miles and laid up in a small wadi which I estimated was four to six miles from the aerodrome.
Daylight reconnaissance made on 17/11/41 showed the aerodrome to be some 6 miles due north. There were seventeen planes on the southerly side. Some AFVs and motorcycles were seen also. There was one tent between us and the aerodrome.
I decided to leave our lying-up position at 2050 hours, leaving the packs there, taking one water bottle and two bombs per man, two group leaders carrying the TSMGs and returning by groups to that position after the attack and then proceeding as a section to our RV.
It had rained occasionally during the day and at 1730 hours it commenced to rain heavily. After about half an hour the wadi became a river, and as the men were lying concealed in the middle of bushes it took them some getting to higher ground. It kept on raining and we were unable to find shelter. An hour later I tried two of the time pencils and they did not work. Even had we been able to keep them dry, it would not, in my opinion, [have] been practicable to have used them, as during the half-hour delay on the plane the rain would have rendered them useless.