by Pete Scholey
When the men of ‘L’ Detachment exited their lumbering Bristol Bombay aircraft on the night of the operation, they jumped into pitch darkness and a howling gale. The worst storm in 30 years was raging. I have always loved parachuting, but even though the equipment and the aircraft we used in my day was far better than that available in North Africa in 1941, a night drop into near gale-force winds over hostile terrain in enemy territory would rank among my worst nightmares. For ‘L’ Detachment, it was a complete disaster. On hitting the ground they found it impossible to spill the air out of their parachutes and release their harnesses, the wind dragging them across the floor of the desert over punishing rocks and through razor-sharp camel-thorn bushes. Paddy Mayne’s troop suffered two casualties who were too badly injured to continue and the other groups fared even worse. Some soldiers were dropped miles from their intended landing areas and losses of men and equipment made the operation completely unviable, although Paddy did make it to his target airfield with his troop and just enough ordnance to do the job. Unfortunately, it began to pour with rain, turning the ground into a quagmire and filling the desert wadis with near impassable torrents of water. Paddy also discovered that the fuses for the bombs they were supposed to place on the aircraft were, like the men, soaked through. The soldiers had no means of detonating the explosives. Abandoning their mission, they began a long, miserable trek to their rendezvous in freezing conditions. The operation was a complete failure and of the 55 men who embarked on the mission, only 21 returned – the rest were either dead, missing or captured. Paddy’s group, however, had come close to hitting its target and, had the abominable weather not intervened, another group would also have done so. Next time, they would not be so unfortunate.
Three weeks later, Paddy led a raid on an airfield at Wadi Tamet, Libya. Instead of relying on risky parachute jumps to reach their target, they were driven into the area by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a reconnaissance unit whose vehicles had been used to extract the raiders on the previous mission. It was only logical that if the LRDG could get ‘L’ Detachment out of the target area, they could also get them in. Paddy’s six-man team placed bombs on 14 aircraft, destroyed the instrument panels of a further ten, blew up a bomb store and a petrol dump, destroyed a few telegraph poles and attacked a building manned by 30 Italian troops. They then returned to their LRDG transport and were ferried back to the unit’s new base at Jalo Oasis, shared by the LRDG and ‘L’ Detachment. Two weeks later they went back to the same airfield and destroyed a further 27 aircraft, and were fighting their way out of the now heavily guarded facility when one of their bombs went off prematurely, betraying their presence. Once again, they sustained no casualties while inflicting a crushing blow upon the enemy. Following this raid, Paddy was promoted to captain and awarded his first DSO.
Of course, Paddy wasn’t the only officer leading raids on enemy airfields. There were others enjoying almost as much success, but by the time SAS operations in North Africa drew to a close in 1943, Paddy was credited with having personally destroyed well over 100 aircraft – far more than any Allied fighter ace! Throughout the two years that they fought in North Africa, the SAS developed new techniques and tactics for launching their attacks. They worked closely with the LRDG but began using their own vehicles – heavily armed jeeps fitted with Lewis guns that had been used on Gladiator fighter planes. They learned how to navigate themselves across the desert and developed convoy drills that we were still practising when we were training in the same Libyan Desert almost 25 years later, albeit with Land Rovers instead of the old Wilys jeep. Paddy remained at the forefront of the Regiment’s endeavours, not least when David Stirling was captured in February 1943. Stirling’s brother, Bill, was in the process of establishing and training a second SAS regiment but it was Paddy, now Major Mayne, who took over command of 1 SAS. This is an interesting point to note. Had Paddy been the kind of maverick that some stories would have us believe, a loose cannon of a man barely in control of his own psychopathic temper, there is no way that he would ever have been allowed to assume control of any regiment in the British Army, even one as unconventional as the SAS. The high command would not have presented that sort of authority to anyone they thought might cause them a problem.
There were elements in the upper echelons of the army, however, that did not believe that there was any further use for the SAS desert raiders. The desert war was won and there was pressure to disband the Regiment or merge it with another unit. It was now Paddy’s job to fight for the survival of the SAS. The kind of courage and determination that were required in the field under fire, the quick thinking and decisiveness that were needed to press home an attack or get his men out of a tricky situation, now had to be adapted for use in the boardroom battles of army staff meetings where the Regiment’s future was at stake. Had he been a complete hothead, Paddy would not have been able to appreciate that negotiation and compromise were the tactics he had to adopt. But this was a man who had trained as a solicitor while studying law at university. He knew how to argue his case, he had practised the art of negotiation, he understood when he should give ground in order to achieve his ultimate goal and, although changes were made – the Regiment’s name was changed from 1 SAS to the Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) and the overall command structure into which it fitted was altered – Paddy kept the Regiment together as a unit. The man whom many would have us believe was an undisciplined adventurer also earned a fearsome reputation for insisting on strict discipline and instigated a vigorous training regime for his men to prepare them for the new role they were about to play.
On 10 July 1943 the SRS was tasked with undertaking an amphibious landing at Capo Murro Di Porco in Sicily in order to destroy coastal defence batteries that threatened the main force poised to invade the island in Operation Husky. The mission turned into a demonstration by Paddy and his men of how well they could adapt to different challenges. They captured the target battery plus three others, taking 450 prisoners and killing over 200 Italian troops. Two days later Paddy led the way as the SRS stormed ashore during another amphibious landing to take the town of Augusta. For his actions in Sicily, Paddy was awarded a bar to his DSO with the citation from Colonel H. J. Cator stating that:
In both these operations it was Major Mayne’s courage, determination and superb leadership which proved the key to success. He personally led his men from the landing craft in the face of heavy machine gun fire and, in the case of the Augusta raid, mortar fire.
The SRS continued to serve under Paddy during the campaign in Italy until January 1944, when they returned to the UK to a base in Scotland. After a period of leave they were to begin retraining for yet another new role – one more akin to the raids they had conducted behind enemy lines in North Africa. With the newly promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Mayne in charge, the SRS became 1 SAS Regiment once more, part of a far larger SAS brigade. Their new training regime was to prepare them to take part in the invasion of France in June. They would be expected to parachute deep into France and work with local resistance groups to sabotage rail networks and other lines of communication in order to prevent reinforcements reaching the battlegrounds in Normandy. When the time came, 1 SAS mounted several such operations, but Paddy, as the commander of the Regiment, was barred by military policy from infiltrating behind enemy lines – the British Army did not want the commander of one of its regiments to be killed or captured in enemy territory. Paddy argued long and hard to be allowed to join his regiment in the field and was eventually granted permission with the provision that he fulfilled a command role and stayed out of the firing line. They might as well have told the rain not to fall.
On 7 August 1944 he was dropped into the area west of Dijon that was the base for Operation Houndsworth (the invasion of France had been launched two months previously). As the Allies advanced out of Normandy, the SAS was kept very busy, with Paddy crossing and recrossing the German and American lines by jeep in broad daylight on several occasions to guide reinforceme
nts to his unit. Brigadier R.W. McLeod, officer commanding the SAS Brigade at the time, stated that ‘It was entirely due to Lt. Col. Mayne’s fine leadership and example, and due to his utter disregard of danger that the unit was able to achieve such striking success’, these words appearing in McLeod’s recommendation for the award of a second bar to Paddy’s DSO.
By the spring of 1945, the Allies were pushing into Germany and it was here that the Paddy Mayne legend took on the aura of a Hollywood film script. An incident at Oldenburg graphically illustrates the attributes that went towards making him a true hero and demonstrates his astonishing intuition and inspiration in battle. He was cold-hearted and ruthless in action, yet harboured a deep affection and loyalty towards those who served under him that could easily justify putting his own life on the line whenever he felt it was necessary. That was just what he did at Oldenburg. The citation for what became the third bar to his DSO reads as follows:
On Monday, April 9, 1945, Lt-Col. Mayne was ordered by the General Officer Commanding Canadian 4 Armoured Division to lead his Regiment, then consisting of two Armoured Jeep Squadrons, through the German lines. His general axis of advance was north-east through the city of Oldenburg with the special task to clear a path for the Canadian armoured cars and tanks and to cause alarm and disorganisation behind the enemy lines. As subsequent events proved, the task of Lt-Col. Mayne’s force was entirely and completely successful. This success, however, was solely due to the brilliant leadership of Lt-Col. Mayne who, by a single act of supreme bravery, drove the enemy from a strongly held key village, thereby breaking the crust of the enemy defences in the whole of this sector.
The following is a detailed account of the Colonel’s individual action which called for unsurpassed heroism and cool, clear-sighted military knowledge.
Lt-Col. Mayne, on receiving a wireless message from the leading Squadron reporting that it was heavily engaged by enemy fire and that the Squadron Commander had been killed, immediately drove forward to the scene of the action. From the time of his arrival until the end of the action, Lt-Col. Mayne was in full view of the enemy and exposed to fire from small-arms, machine-guns and snipers’ rifles. On arrival he summed up the situation in a matter of seconds and entered the nearest house alone and ensured that the enemy here had either withdrawn or been killed. He then seized a Bren-gun and magazine and, single handed, fired burst after burst into the second house killing and wounding all the enemy here and also opening fire on the woods.
He then ordered a jeep to come forward and take over his fire position, he himself returning to the forward section where he disposed the men to best advantage and ordered another jeep to come forward. He got in the jeep and with another officer as rear gunner, drove past the position where the Squadron Commander had been killed a few minutes previously and continued to a point a hundred yards ahead where a further section of jeeps were halted by intense and accurate enemy fire. This section had suffered casualties in killed and wounded owing to the heavy enemy fire and the survivors were unable at the time to influence the action in any way until the arrival of Lt-Col. Mayne. The Colonel continued along the road all the time engaging the enemy with fire from his own jeep. Having swept the area very thoroughly with close-range fire he turned his jeep round and drove back down the road still in full view of the enemy.
By this time the enemy had suffered heavy casualties, and were starting to withdraw. Nevertheless, they maintained an accurate fire on the road and it appeared almost impossible to extricate the wounded who were in the ditch near the forward jeep. Any attempt at rescuing these men under these conditions appeared virtually suicidal owing to the highly concentrated and accurate fire of the Germans. Though he fully realised the risk he was taking, Colonel Mayne turned his jeep round once again and returned to try and rescue these wounded. Then by superlative determination and by displaying gallantry of the very highest degree and in the face of intense enemy machine-gun fire, he lifted the wounded one by one, into the jeep, turned round and drove back to the main body.
The entire enemy position had been wiped out. The majority of the enemy had been killed or wounded leaving a very small remnant who were now in full retreat. The Squadron, having suffered no further casualties, were able to continue their advance and drive deeper behind the enemy lines to complete their task of sabotage and destruction of the enemy. Finally, they reached a point twenty miles ahead of the advance guard of the advancing Canadian Division, thus threatening the rear of the Germans, who finally withdrew. From the time of the arrival of Colonel Mayne, his cool and determined action and his complete command of the situation, together with his unsurpassed gallantry, inspired all ranks. Not only did he save the lives of the wounded, but also completely defeated and destroyed the enemy.
The citation was submitted by Brigadier J. M. Calvert as a recommendation for the Victoria Cross (VC) and it was signed by him, Major-General Vokes, who commanded the IV Canadian Armoured Corps; Lieutenant-General Simonds, General Officer Commanding II Canadian Corps; General Crerar, Commander First Canadian Army; and Field Marshal Montgomery, 21st Army Group. Eyewitness accounts from those who took part in that engagement vary in terms of detail, but it is clear that the citation was an attempt by those who knew him best to have Paddy’s cumulative and outstandingly brave and effective leadership on so many occasions recognized by recommending him for the award of the VC. The award was, however, ultimately downgraded to a third bar to his DSO.
Colonel Stirling maintained his view that it was a ‘monstrous injustice’ that Paddy was not awarded the VC for his outstanding bravery during World War II. ‘It was the faceless men who didn’t want Paddy and the SAS to be given the distinction’, he wrote. Colonel Stirling’s views were supported by the then Chief of Combined Operations, Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, who wrote a personal letter to Paddy Mayne when the war ended.
My Dear Paddy,
I feel I must drop you a line just to tell you how very deeply I appreciate the great honour of being able to address, as my friend, an officer who has succeeded in accomplishing the practically unprecedented task of collecting no less than four DSOs.
You deserve all and more, and, in my opinion, the appropriate authorities do not really know their job. If they did they would have given you a VC as well.
Please do not dream of answering this letter, which brings with it my sincerest admiration and a deep sense of honour in having, at one time, been associated with you.
Yours ever,
Bob Laycock
The reason why Paddy was denied the VC is probably down to a technicality. The VC is awarded for individual acts of bravery in the face of the enemy, but Paddy actually called for a volunteer to man the twin Vickers guns on his jeep before he set off. Lieutenant Scott stepped forward to join Paddy in the jeep and, while some accounts also have Paddy firing a Bren gun as he drove, it was Scott who poured fire on the enemy from the Vickers and covered Paddy as he picked up the wounded. Nevertheless, this was a supreme act of bravery and even King George VI was reported as wondering why the VC had ‘so strangely eluded’ Paddy. In 2005, 60 years after the Oldenburg incident, 100 MPs signed a motion in the House of Commons calling for Paddy to be given the VC during the 150th anniversary year of the award, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
Yet Paddy counts as one of my heroes not because of any injustice that may have been done to him over the VC, but because of all that he achieved. He established beyond doubt that the SAS was capable of adapting to different situations and bringing its specialist skills to bear in a number of diverse roles. That fundamental flexibility has become the bedrock of the Regiment’s philosophy – the SAS has to be as special when it comes to covert operations behind the lines or raiding enemy facilities as it is at storming terrorist-held buildings or protecting vulnerable diplomats. All of us who later served in the Regiment owe a debt of gratitude to Paddy Mayne. I would love to have served under him. I might have had a few smacks in the mouth for being cheeky, but I’d hav
e been proud of those bruises.
To have survived his years of fighting without a scratch would seem to support the view that Paddy led a charmed life, although it later transpired that he had sustained a back injury, probably during the disastrous Timini jump, that grew worse as the war progressed. He told no one about it during his service with the SAS, but it plagued him so much when he embarked on a voyage with an Antarctic survey team after leaving the army that he had to be hospitalized.
The last ten years of Paddy’s life were spent without real purpose, searching for a role. His job as secretary to the Northern Ireland Law Society neither held his interest nor filled his days. He tried poultry breeding like his father before him and took real pleasure in his garden. He played golf when he had the time as well as chess and cards. He was good at bridge, better at poker. He idolized his mother; when playing rugby before the war, it was his mother, not his father, who used to accompany him in the car to watch the game and who drove home with him. After the war, he spent much of his time looking after her when she was an invalid in the family home.
Those who knew him during his latter days could be divided into two distinct groups: those who were proud to be in his company and those who were afraid to be. His riotous nature still had a tendency to prevail when he had had a few drinks and he could be a dangerous man to be around. Having survived the carnage of war relatively unscathed, it was all the more tragic that Paddy Mayne should be killed in a peacetime car accident. At around 4.00am on 15 December 1955 he was driving home when his red Riley sports car struck a lorry parked at the roadside. The car careered across the road and rammed into a pole carrying electricity lines. He was killed instantly.