1SAS celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day, 8 May, in Belgium. Paddy Mayne and B and C Squadrons were in Brussels, en route to a rendezvous with A and D squadrons at Poperinghe, 70 miles west. The next day the regiment was reunited, celebrating in drink and song. Ian Wellsted and Bill Fraser were present, recovering from their wounds, and Wellsted recalled that: ‘Belgians drifted up and grouped themselves around us. Soon they began to sing and we sang back, singing together the old songs of the last Great War.’1
Within 24 hours 1SAS and 2SAS were in England, but not for long. On 15 May the two regiments began embarking by aircraft for Norway and by the end of the month 760 men and 33 tons of stores had been transported north to Bergen. There they spent the summer, ostensibly overseeing the disarmament of 300,000 Germans but in reality enjoying the warmth of the weather and of the locals. Back in Britain, meanwhile, plans were afoot to send the SAS Brigade to the Far East. David Stirling, released from captivity in April 1945, formulated an idea with Brigadier Mike Calvert. The pair then lunched with Winston Churchill to discuss the possibility of the SAS operating in China to sever the Japanese supply line to Malaya. On 16 July Calvert informed the War Office of the operational strength of 1SAS (490 officers and other ranks) and 2SAS (587 officers and other ranks), and suggested they ask for ‘volunteers’ to fight the Japanese. The scheme appeared to be gathering momentum when, on 5 August, Field Marshal William Slim, commander of the 14th Army, wrote to Calvert from London’s Savoy Hotel where he was staying on a visit to the capital. ‘I shall go into the question of the employment of the SAS regiments in that area [Far East] soon,’ he promised. The next day the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japan and within a fortnight Emperor Hirohito ordered his country to surrender.
On 25 August the two SAS regiments sailed from Norway for Britain and soon the Brigade was being broken up. First to go were the Belgians, returned to their own army on 21 September, followed by the two regiments of French SAS on 1 October. There was no reprieve for 1 and 2SAS, even though in a letter to Calvert General Miles Dempsey, commander of the Second Army, wrote: ‘I always enjoyed having detachments of the SAS in Second Army, and their work was always up to the standard one expects of them. I wish I had been able to see more of them.’
The brutal truth was what need did the British military have for such a force now that the world was at peace? The era of special forces’ units was at an end, at least it was in the eyes of many staff officers, those ‘fossilised shits’ that David Stirling so despised.
The two British regiments received confirmation of their disbandment on 4 October, four days after 2SAS had held a service of Thanksgiving at St Peter’s Church in Colchester. The Reverend Kent, the regiment’s padre, read out the names of their dead before telling the congregation: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and bless you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you his peace, now and evermore.’
On 1 October 1SAS paraded for the final time at Hylands House in front of Brigadier Mike Calvert. Despite their imminent demise the men were immaculate with polished boots and maroon berets. Only Paddy Mayne stood out. The man who above all others epitomised the ethos of the SAS insisted on wearing his sand-coloured beret to the very end. Six years after the end of the war Fraser McLusky published his wartime memoirs entitled Parachute Padre. In the epilogue he recalled the misery of the night of 26 June 1944 when A Squadron was on the run from the Germans having been forced to flee their forest camp. It was cold and wet and they were carrying a badly wounded Reg Seekings. ‘I wondered why,’ wrote McLusky in his book, ‘in the peace and security of home, I had never realised how lucky I was. If the privileges of the normal were ever mine again, would I learn to remember their value? Fourteen days as a guerrilla had sorted out my scale of values. What would happen if I ever returned to the settled life of peace?’2
Fraser McLuskey died in 2005 aged 90, after a life rich in achievement. In the years immediately after the war, he was a Church of Scotland minister in Glasgow; then in 1960 he was called to St Columba’s, London, one of two Church of Scotland congregations in the capital. In 1984 he was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly and in 2003, two years before his death, he addressed the wartime SAS veterans for the final time in a service at St Columba’s. As for his ‘parishioners’, as McLusky called his former SAS comrades, they experienced both triumph and tragedy in their post-war lives:
Herbert Castelow: Having escaped the fate of Captain Pat Garstin and the others, Castelow rejoined the SAS and was awarded the Military Medal during Operation Archway. Returned to the north-east of England and died of a heart-attack in 1973 aged 57.
Harry Challenor: Joined the Metropolitan Police and later worked for the Flying Squad in Soho. In the 1960s he was convicted of planting evidence on a suspect and was plagued by mental health problems in later years. He died in 2008.
Johnny Cooper: Was awarded an MBE while serving with the SAS in Malaya in the 1950s. Cooper also operated in the Yemen before retiring to Portugal. He died in 2002 aged 80.
David Danger: Joined a firm of printers after the war but missed army life and reenlisted, retiring in the 1970s as a lieutenant-colonel. He died in 2009.
Gordon Davidson: Left the army and entered the world of business, while maintaining contact with the SAS. He died in 1990.
Peter Davis: Emigrated to South Africa and became a successful businessman. He was murdered during a robbery at his Durban home in 1994.
Henry Druce: Resumed his career with MI6 after the war and later emigrated to Canada where he worked in the shipping industry. He died in 2007 aged 85.
Jeff Du Vivier: Resumed his career in the catering industry and was restaurant manager of the Prestwick Airport Hotel for many years. He died in 2010 aged 94.
Roy Farran: Remained in the army and was accused of murdering a Jewish youth in Palestine in 1947, a charge on which he was acquitted. He emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, where he became a journalist and cabinet minister in Alberta. He died in 2006.
Brian Franks: Returned to the hospitality industry after the war, serving as general manager of the Hyde Park Hotel from 1959 to 1972. Franks was also Honorary Colonel of 21SAS for many years, and later Colonel Commandant of the SAS Regiment. He died in 1982 aged 70.
Bill Fraser: Court-martialled and reduced in rank for drunkenness while in command of a company of Gordon Highlanders in 1946, Fraser left the army shortly after. In 1954 Paddy Mayne wrote to tell a former comrade that ‘poor old Bill Fraser has collected a three year prison sentence for breaking into some thirty odd houses’.3 Upon his release from prison Fraser worked in a bakery and then as a costing clerk for a Midlands’ engineering firm. He died in 1975.
Tony Greville-Bell: Served with the SAS in Malaya before embarking on a successful career as a sculptor and then script writer in Los Angeles. He wrote the cult film Theatre of Blood and died in 2008 aged 87.
Alex Griffiths: Spent his working life painting miniature soldiers that he sold from a Mayfair shop. He died in 2004 aged 83.
Charlie Hackney: After demob, Charlie Hackney worked for Rolls Royce and for the Yarrow Admiralty Research Department. A Chelsea Pensioner in later life, he died in 2008 aged 90.
Ken Harvey: Returned to Rhodesia and became an architect, designing many of Bulawayo’s finest buildings. He continued to hunt big game into his 60s and died in 2005 aged 81.
Vic Long: Married his wartime sweetheart and for 30 years worked as a driver on the London Underground. He died in 2007 aged 83.
Bob Lowson: After a two-year recuperation from the wounds sustained in April 1945, Lowson married and spent his working life with Shell in his native Merseyside. He died in August 2013 aged 92.
James McDiarmid: Emigrated to Australia after the war, and the last contact any of his old comrades had was in the 1960s when he was a cadet instructor in a New South Wales public school. He retired to Queensland’s Gold Coast and died in 2009.
Tony Marsh: Remained in the army until the late 1950s when he took up a position in Bermuda with the Trade Development Board. He was a leading figure in the Royal Bermuda Yacht club and died on the island in 1984 aged 64.
Paddy Mayne: Left the army and returned to Belfast where he was appointed Secretary of the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Despite the role, Mayne struggled to adjust to a life without war and his bouts of heavy drinking were legendary. In 1954 he wrote to Des Middleton to tell him that ‘I have very little information about any of the chaps’.4 A year later Mayne died at the wheel of his treasured red sports car while returning from a night out. He was 40.
Des Peter Middleton: Married and went into teaching after the war, first in Africa and then in England. He taught at the Rowena School for Girls in Kent for a number of years and died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1980, a year before he was due to retire.
John Noble: Initially joined the Metropolitan Police after demob but emigrated to British Colombia in the 1950s and spent 18 years in the Canadian Army. He died in 2009 aged 87.
Sid Payne: Rejoined the engineering firm that he’d worked for before the war and remained with them until retirement. He died in 2014 aged 94.
Harry Poat: Returned to his native Guernsey and the family tomato-growing business. He died of lung disease in 1982 aged 67.
Cyril Radford: Transferred to the Parachute Regiment after the war before joining the Customs and Excise, for whom he worked for 30 years in Cyprus. He died in 2008 aged 84.
Duncan Ridler: Enrolled in the London School of Economics after the war and then worked as an economist for the United Nations. He died in 2005 aged 85.
Mike Sadler: Indulged his love of sailing after the war, while also working for the Foreign Service. He lives in the south of England.
Reg Seekings: Emigrated with his wife to Rhodesia and became a tobacco farmer, while also lending his expertise to police anti-terrorist units. Returned to England and died in 1999 aged 78.
Bill Stirling: A successful businessman after the war, Stirling later retired to run the family estate as the laird of Kerr. He died in 1983 aged 71.
David Stirling: Settled in Rhodesia post-war and founded the Capricorn African Society, an organisation devoted to establishing a community without political and racial barriers. That failed so he returned to the UK in 1961 and became involved in providing security services to foreign heads of state. He was knighted in 1989 and died the following year aged 74.
Jimmy Storie: Spent nearly three years as a POW and returned to Scotland where he worked in the tiling business. He died aged 92 in January 2012, the last of ‘the originals’, those 66 soldiers recruited by David Stirling in the summer of 1941.
Arthur Thomson: Returned to his native London and built up a successful second-hand car business. Later entered local politics and died in 2009 aged 89.
Harry Vickers: After recovering from his wounds, Vickers became an estate surveyor in the Old Ministry of Works. He died in 2007 aged 86.
Denis Wainman: Joined the Metropolitan Police but resigned and spent the majority of his working life as a teacher of art in a secondary school. He died in January 2013.
Bob Walker-Brown: Remained in the army after the war and commanded 23SAS from 1961 to 1963. Later he worked for the Defence Intelligence Staff of the Ministry of Defence and he died in 2009 aged 90.
Peter Weaver: Ran a chicken farm in Essex for many years, played club cricket into his 50s, and died in 1991 aged 79.
Ian Wellsted: Remained in the army until 1967 before emigrating to New Zealand where he ran a holiday camp with his wife. He died in 2002 aged 83.
Johnny Wiseman: Returned to the family business of manufacturing spectacles and finished up as company director. He died in 2005 aged 87.
Albert Youngman: Unable to settle down after the war, Youngman left Britain and worked overseas, first in Nigeria and then running a thriving import-export business in Hong Kong. He returned to the UK for a few years but has since retired to south-east Asia where he still lives.
