The Daring Dozen (21 page)

Read The Daring Dozen Online

Authors: Gavin Mortimer

Tags: #The Daring Dozen: 12 Special Forces Legends of World War II

BOOK: The Daring Dozen
11.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

New recruits, officers and men alike were exposed to the SAS’s brutal training regime designed to weed out the weak and the lazy. Everyone, even veterans of the desert, had to undergo a parachute course at Ringway, Manchester, and there were lessons in explosives, firearms, unarmed combat and map work. There were frequent field exercises in the countryside surrounding Darvel, with the men jumping from an aircraft and then laying dummy charges on selected targets, and at Kilmarnock railway depot they learned all about the most effective way of blowing a train off the tracks.

Mayne had been wary from the start of Roderick McLeod’s appointment as brigadier of the SAS Brigade. He was a soldier with no previous experience of the SAS and Mayne feared he would see them as an adjunct to the Parachute Regiment, to be used in large airborne operations at the expense of their more specialized skills. His concerns were justified when, on 25 March 1944, McLeod wrote to Mayne outlining what he expected of the SAS in the impending invasion of France: ‘Infiltration will be by land, sea or air according to circumstances, and training in all methods will be carried out.’ Four days later Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) issued the SAS Brigade with its operational instructions for the invasion. Thirty-six hours before the main invasion fleet began landing, the SAS were to parachute into Normandy between the landing beaches and the three Panzer divisions in reserve, and prevent those reserves from reinforcing the front line. It was, as David Stirling wrote later, ‘bloody suicidal … it would have been quite ineffective and marvellous opportunities would have been totally missed’.

Mayne was said to have been dismayed by the instructions, but it was David Stirling’s brother, Bill, who argued against the mission in his capacity as commanding officer of 2SAS. Why Mayne took a back seat is not known, although the two may have agreed that Bill Stirling’s words would carry more clout with the staff officers at SHAEF than Mayne’s. Whatever the reason, Stirling did indeed bring about a change of orders (although he resigned anyway) and it was agreed that the SAS Brigade would carry out 43 missions in France. With the exception of one operation –
Titanic
(involving a six-man party dropping into Normandy a few hours ahead of the main invasion fleet to spread confusion with dummy parachutes) – all missions were to occur deep behind enemy lines with the objective of impeding German forces as they headed north to prevent an Allied breakout from the landing beaches.

SAS parties parachuted into central France throughout June and Mayne followed their progress from his headquarters. Daily messages were transmitted from the signallers in France, allowing Mayne to assess the situation on the ground, and organize resupplies by air if necessary. Jeeps were soon being dropped by parachute to the SAS raiders, along with fresh arms and ammunitions, additional clothing (the summer of 1944 was exceptionally wet in France) and luxuries such as cigarettes and chocolate. He also instructed Regimental Sergeant Major Rose to send letters to the families of all the men in France, reassuring them that their son/brother/husband was fine, but temporarily unavailable.

On 7 August Mayne parachuted into France along with Mike Sadler and two other SAS soldiers. The original intention had been to drop east of Orléans, where a party of men from D Squadron were engaged on Operation
Gain
, to inform them of their impending role in a new mission codenamed
Transfigure
.
Transfigure
would involve both D Squadron and Bill Fraser’s A Squadron, acting as reconnaissance troops for a major Allied offensive aimed at crushing German resistance west of the Rhine. (
Transfigure
was never put into operation because of the American breakout from the Cotentin Peninsula that began in late July.)

Mayne had to reorganize his plans when D Squadron’s camp was overrun by Germans, and so he inserted further south, among the dark forests of the Morvan, west of the city of Dijon, where A Squadron were operating under Bill Fraser. Mayne didn’t stay long to enjoy the hospitality of A Squadron. Taking a jeep, he set off across northern France to check on the progress of the other various SAS operations. By now the Allied breakout from Normandy was quickening. By the end of the month Paris was liberated and the Germans were falling back towards Belgium.

In total the SAS Brigade was estimated to have killed 7,733 German soldiers during operations in France, as well as accounting for 740 motorized vehicles, seven trains and 29 locomotives, in addition to the 400 air strikes provided by their intelligence. In return 330 of their number had been killed, wounded or were missing. General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, expressed his gratitude in a letter to Brigadier McLeod in which he asked him to pass on his ‘congratulations to all ranks of the Special Air Service Brigade on the contribution which they have made to the success of the Allied Expeditionary Force’.

Mayne’s reward, other than receiving such high praise for his men from the Supreme Allied Commander, was a second Bar to his DSO. The citation described his role in organizing his troops in France during August and concluded:

During the next few weeks he successfully penetrated the German and American lines in a jeep on four occasions in order to lead parties of reinforcements. It was entirely due to Lt-Col Mayne’s fine leadership and example, and his utter disregard of danger that the unit was able to achieve such striking success.
23

Apart from a sojourn in Brussels in the early winter of 1944 (where C Squadron was employed on counter-intelligence work), Mayne was in England as the war in Europe approached its climax. The SAS Brigade had a new brigadier in ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, recently returned from Burma where he had performed fine work with Orde Wingate’s Chindits. There was talk of 1SAS being deployed to the Far East once Germany had been beaten, as well as the possibility of an operation in Norway.

But there was still work to be completed in Germany. On 18 March a combined force of 1SAS and 2SAS (codenamed ‘Frankforce’ after Brian Franks, CO of the 2SAS contingent) departed the regimental HQ of Hylands House in Essex, destined for the Rhine. However, Mayne remained in England, preparing B and C squadrons for their imminent entry into the Third Reich. David Danger, Mayne’s signaller, remembered that in time-honoured fashion Mayne ensured that once the day’s business concluded the pleasure began. ‘We had these parties at Hylands with Paddy and he had a Shillelagh, which he banged and the party would start, and you didn’t leave until you asked Paddy and if he didn’t like it you had to stay there and drink. There were some wild parties.’
24

Yet despite his uncompromising attitudes to drinking and training, Mayne could be compassionate if the mood took him, particularly to his younger soldiers whom he regarded as surrogate sons. One of them, 20-year-old Bob Francis, had fallen in love with a French girl during operations in France in September 1944. The pair became engaged and the Frenchwoman came to London where she found a job working for the French food ministry. Knowing that the regiment was shortly to resume operations, Francis asked Mayne if he could have a couple of days’ leave with his fiancée. Mayne gave Francis a week.

Then Paddy asked ‘where are you going to stay?’ I said I had no idea. He said ‘I have friends who have a hotel’. He wrote the name of this hotel in Queen Anne’s Gate and told me to go there and he said we’d be well taken care of. Then he asked if I had any money. When I replied ‘a little bit’, he reached into his pocket and gave me £10. I’d never seen such a sum… Anyway we were at the hotel for three or four days and when I went to pay the bill the two ladies who were running the hotel said ‘There’s no bill, Blair has said it’s to be charged to him.’That was on top of the £10 he gave me.
25

On another occasion Lieutenant Denis Wainman, a young officer who joined the regiment in late 1944, arrived at Hylands from his parachute course to find the place deserted except for Mayne. His CO explained that the regiment was somewhere north on a training exercise, one which Mayne was shortly to go and inspect. The pair drove up together during which time Wainman saw another side of Mayne: ‘We took it in turns to drive and we stopped at some place for a drink and Paddy said “The trouble is that any place I’m at, if there’s a dance or anything, I have to be there as the colonel. There are all these majors there with their wives and it’s all very difficult. So now I’m going to take my crowns off.” So he went in to this bar as a Second Lt and we had a beer and talked… They’ve said all sorts of things about Paddy down the years and yes he was a tough character but he was also very gentle and very intelligent.’
26

On 6 April Mayne led B and C squadrons on what was to be the regiment’s last operation of the war. It was codenamed
Howard
, and their role was to carry out reconnaissance patrols for the 4th Canadian Armoured Division as they pushed into northern Germany towards the medieval city of Oldenburg. It was a dangerous, dirty mission, the SAS pitted against the fanatical dregs of the Nazi regime, most often teenage members of the Hitler Youth, but sometimes also professional soldiers defending their homeland. One such confrontation unfolded on 10 April as the two squadrons continued towards Oldenburg.

Mayne was travelling with C Squadron, while B Squadron was commanded by Major Dick Bond, a relatively inexperienced SAS officer. David Danger was in the back of Mayne’s jeep, alongside a gramophone and a stack of Irish discs.

On the front of the jeep there was a big loudspeaker and when we went across [to Germany] we used to play his records on this thing, and all the troops that were parked by the side of the road waved and sang. Paddy had the idea that he was going to harangue the German forces through this loudspeaker and call on them to surrender, and I was to operate this thing and play various Irish tunes if necessary… I was the one who got the message over the radio that the rest of the squadron had run into an ambush and one of the officers had been killed. Paddy asked what was happening and when I told him he threw me off the jeep and set off down the road.
27

What happened next remained a bone of contention for many years among those members of 1SAS present. On arriving at the scene, Mayne discovered that Bond and his driver were dead and a number of soldiers were pinned down in a ditch. The fire was coming from the woods to their right and from a group of farm buildings between the lane and the woods.

Mayne’s response demonstrated that even after five years of fighting he had lost none of his destructive energy. First he ran across the open field to the outhouses, scoping out the German sniper believed to be concealed therein. Satisfied that he knew his position, Mayne returned to the column and took a Bren gun from a jeep. Mayne and another soldier, Billy Hull, then doubled back to the buildings and together flushed out and killed the sniper. Back on the track Mayne jumped into the driving seat of a jeep and, with Lieutenant John Scott manning the twin Vickers in the back, roared off up the track, past the stranded men and towards a crossroads. Now within sight of the Germans in the woods, the vehicle came under heavy small-arms fire, but Mayne nonchalantly swung the jeep around at the crossroads and sped back with Scott pumping bullets into the trees. He repeated the procedure until the enemy fire subsided, and only then did he stop to pick up the men from the ditch.

Mayne was put forward for the Victoria Cross and few doubted he would receive it, a fitting finale to what had been a spectacular war. The citation for the award, signed by Brigadier Calvert, Major General Vokes of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, 21st Army Group, stated: ‘There is little doubt that Mayne’s exceptional personal courage and leadership saved the lives of many men and greatly helped the Allied advance on Berlin.’

Three months later, however, the award was downgraded to a DSO, ostensibly because Mayne had not acted alone but with Scott. This was a specious line, one that could be contradicted by dozens of other VCs. In all likelihood the decision to deny Mayne the VC was one purely born of spite by senior staff officers. Not only did they view the SAS as a bunch of renegade irregulars, besmirching the reputation of the British Army, but Mayne was an uncouth Irishman, prone to heavy drinking and insubordination.

It was not a view shared by King George VI. When he presented Mayne with his fourth DSO at Buckingham Palace he asked why it was that the VC had ‘so strangely eluded him’. Mayne was said to have replied: ‘I served to my best my Lord, my King and Queen and no one can take that honour away from me.’
28

The ambush that cost the lives of Bond and his driver, a Czech Jew called Mikhael Levinsohn, was the last great adventure of Paddy Mayne’s war. There were further skirmishes during Operation
Howard
but the 4th Canadian Armoured Division was finding the going tough and their advance had been reduced to a crawl; the SAS were reassigned to the 2nd Canadian Division further north towards Esenz on the North Sea. But they still took casualties and as late as 29 April, Mayne sent a signal to A and D squadrons who were pushing up towards the Baltic Sea port of Lubeck, informing them: ‘Squadron now plodding along through bog and rain on their feet. Tpr. Kent killed by mine. Nobody very happy.’

Mayne must also have been contemplating his own future. Germany was on its knees and word had just reached him of David Stirling’s release from captivity. Mayne had led 1SAS for two and a half years and now faced the prospect of handing the reins back to Stirling. To compound his uncertainty, there was still no clear role for the SAS after the end of the war in Europe, and Mayne feared the brigade might be misused by SHAEF as it nearly had been prior to D-Day. He expressed his concerns to Brigadier Calvert, far more of a soldier’s soldier than Roderick McLeod, and received the cabled reply: ‘Understand your worries. You are quite right to raise them… Hope can put you on good wicket soon as possible.’

Other books

The New World by Patrick Ness
Too Hot to Hold by Stephanie Tyler
Disturbing Ground by Priscilla Masters
The Piranhas by Harold Robbins
Kasey Michaels by Escapade
Daughter of the Wind by Michael Cadnum
Restless Billionaire by Abby Green
The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman