4

THE DESERT RAIDERS

But this is the struggle not to be avoided,
the sore extreme of human-kind,
and though I do not hate Rommel’s army
the brain’s eye is not squinting.

Sorley MacLean, ‘Going Westwards’

The birth of the Special Air Service, like many creation stories, over time became rich in myths. One of these concerned the circumstances in which Mayne joined the unit.

In reality, however, during July 1941, while David Stirling awaited approval to establish his new unit, Mayne was enjoying a fair portion of what a convalescing combat soldier would wish for: good food, a comfortable bed, some of his books, bathing in the Great Bitter Lake and being cared for by nubile young nurses.¹ He began this pleasant regime on 13 July, when he left No. 19 General Hospital, and he had two weeks of it before returning to the ME Commando Base. His former unit, No. 11 Commando, was still in Cyprus, for it was not due to complete its tour of garrison duty until the following month. When it did, Layforce would finally disband. As early as 2 June, Mayne had applied for a transfer to the Far East, and in a letter to his father he felt fairly confident that his application would be successful. By mid-July he was still of the same mind when he told his brother Douglas, ‘I think I should get it.’² What he could not tell them was that ‘it’ was a Military (Commando) Mission assigned to act as guerrilla-warfare instructors to the Chinese Nationalist Army of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.³

Japan had now been at full-scale war with China for some time; and as early as 1940, Churchill wrote to Commonwealth prime ministers and Britain’s commanders-in-chief overseas expressing the government’s estimate that Japan would soon join Germany in the conflict. He anticipated that they should organise paramilitary warfare, and to this end he would send them ‘well-equipped experts in this form of warfare’.⁴ Then, in November 1940, Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the USA and Britain for aid. After lengthy discussions with the Chinese, the British Commander-in-Chief Far East in April 1941 was given the task of recruiting men for a guerrilla operation; and he was promised a British contingent from Commandos in the Middle East, and an Australian contingent, for what was to become No. 204 Military Mission to China.⁵ They would be sent to the Bush Warfare School in Burma, where one of the instructors was Capt Mike Calvert (who would later become Brigadier of the SAS); and in July 1941 the Australian contingent was already on its way to Burma; when Layforce disbanded, the British contingent would follow. The complement that Laycock was looking for was about ten officers and 100 other ranks.⁶ No. 204 Military Mission was secret: it would be politically embarrassing if Japan got wind of it, for, of course, Britain and Japan were not yet at war. So it is understandable that Mayne was confident he would get the transfer: with his record in the Litani operation, he had to be a very credible volunteer; and the whole idea appealed to him. Unless some better offer turned up.

David Stirling, who was a lieutenant in No. 8 Commando, was among those who were disillusioned with the way Commandos had been used. But he was convinced that small groups of highly trained men would be effective in attacking enemy airfields and lines of communication that were particularly vulnerable in the desert. At the General Staff level, Auchinleck had replaced Wavell as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Forces, but continued with Wavell’s policy decision to disband Layforce. So when No. 11 Commando returned to Egypt, the final dissolution of Layforce would take place. It was therefore an opportune time for Stirling both to put forward his ideas and to discuss them with Col Laycock, head of Layforce (and formerly Stirling’s CO of No. 8 Commando). Stirling got Laycock’s enthusiastic support.⁷ The two met in Cairo on the eve of Laycock’s departure by air to the UK, where he was to take part in discussions on the future of Special Service troops in the Middle East. Stirling wrote a brief letter to his mother which Laycock would post in the UK.

I am not sure what I shall do now but I am attempting and may succeed in establishing a permanent parachute unit. It would be on a small scale but would be more amusing than any other form of soldiering.

. . . I wish I had known earlier that Bob Laycock was leaving tomorrow. I have got to give him this letter tonight and it is very late . . .⁸

In their discussion Laycock and Stirling talked about personnel, for, if Stirling received authority to form a unit, its members would be drawn from Layforce.

Stirling wanted Jock Lewes from No. 8 Commando, who had already experimented with parachuting and whose ideas he valued. Names of other officers in Nos 7 and 8 Commando may have cropped up as well. But Laycock suggested that Mayne, formerly of No. 11 Commando – and of whom Stirling had no knowledge – would be a good choice. Now, by all accounts, Laycock was a shrewd individual. Stirling had no combat experience at this stage and he needed someone who had proven himself a highly competent troop commander in action – and Mayne was such a person. Laycock was the only senior officer in Egypt at the time who knew the details of the individual troop actions in the Litani operation, for he had used them as the basis of his recommendations for recognition.⁹ He learned that there had been antipathy between Mayne and Geoffrey Keyes, but he reasoned that Mayne would be a considerable asset in a unit whose leader had a more relaxed management style. Laycock’s recommendation was more than sufficient for Stirling; and neither of them regretted it. Indeed, in the years that followed, as we shall see, Laycock had a patron’s interest in Mayne. For example, two years later, when Mayne led his unit in an outstandingly successful raid, Laycock described him in a letter to a general as ‘Major Mayne DSO, ex 11 Cdo’.¹⁰

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 half 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.

I tried the instantaneous fuses and they did not work either.

I remained there that night hoping to dry the fuses, but the next day was cloudy and there was insufficient sun.

Also, I found that a deep wadi about twenty-five yards wide, running between us and the aerodrome, was full of water.

I withdrew that night, 18/11/41, some twenty miles on a bearing of 185 degrees. The next night I did a further five miles on that bearing and then turned due west for approximately three miles, where we contacted the LRDG.

There was nothing of importance seen on the withdrawal except two Italian tents . . . We moved up to them at dusk hoping to get rations but we found them empty.

The whole section having behaved extremely well and although lacerated and bruised in varying degrees by their landing, and wet and numb with cold, remained cheerful.

Sgt McDonald, the Section Sergeant, proved himself an extremely good and able NCO.

I am certain that given normal or even moderate weather our operation would have been entirely successful.³⁸

Stirling’s section had been dropped far from their original dropping zone; the containers with their explosives had been scattered and could not be found. In addition, most of the section had been injured on landing and one man was lost; only Stirling and Sgt Tait were fit enough for action. Without explosives and far from their target it was hopeless; Stirling ordered the injured to set off for the rendezvous under Sgt Yates, but as a result of a navigational error the group ended in an area where they were picked up by an enemy patrol. Stirling carried out a reconnaissance of the coast road with Tait before setting off for the rendezvous. Lewes’s section, too, had landed far from the dropping zone; all were accounted for, but one of them was too badly injured to move and had to be left where he was. They recovered sufficient numbers of explosives to enable them to carry out an attack on planes, but they were far from their target. Lewes’s decision that night was to make for the rendezvous. The remnant of these three sections were all who returned. The first L Detachment raid had ended ingloriously. As we shall see later in Brig Wynter’s letter to Mayne, it appears that none of the reports written by Stirling, Lewes or Mayne was sent to HQ. But Mayne kept a copy of his.

At Beda Littoria, the raid by No. 11 Commando ended in failure. Laycock accompanied Keyes and the party from two submarines, Torbay and Talisman, but not all of those on Talisman were able to get ashore that night due to the heavy sea. Laycock lay up in the rendezvous wadi for its return the following night. The group under Keyes went ahead and attacked the house at Beda Littoria at midnight and a brief firefight ensued. (The raid is visually very effectively re-enacted in the pre-credit sequence of the film about Erwin Rommel, The Desert Fox 1951, directed by Henry Hathaway.) Keyes and Capt Campbell started a room-by-room search, but, on reaching the second room, Keyes, illuminated by the light in the hallway, threw open the door, received a burst of gunfire and fell fatally wounded.³⁹ Of the group who landed, Laycock and Sgt Terry (who would later join the SAS) were able to reach Allied lines after a long march through the desert. That the Rommel raid had been misconceived became apparent: it had never been Rommel’s headquarters; it was the headquarters of Rommel’s quartermaster. As for Rommel, ‘he himself would never have pitched his tent so far from the front.’⁴⁰ Keyes, for his gallantry, was posthumously awarded the VC. But the ill-fated raid was the death knell for No. 11 Commando; it was finally disbanded. On the face of it, something similar might have been expected with L Detachment. Yet this did not happen.

Although the first raid turned out a failure, Stirling was convinced, as he observed enemy traffic on the coastal road during his reconnaissance with Tait, that the basic concept of the unit was correct. Mayne had even more reason for such conviction. Of course it was due to the skills of the aircrew that they had reached the dropping zone; it was luck that no more of the section had been badly injured on landing; but, thereafter, it was Mayne’s competence and determination that had brought them to within striking distance of Timimi airfield. Next time they would succeed.

For the remnant that returned, disappointment was overlaid by the loss of friends and comrades. Jim Almonds expressed the sense of loss when he wrote in his diary on 26 November, ‘In our tent, the beds remain empty and their personal effects lie strewn where they left them. I don’t have the heart to alter things.’⁴¹ Among those who did not return was Mayne’s friend McGonigal.

Lessons were learned from Operation No. 1. Parachuting, as a means of reaching a target, had its limitations: not only could the group be scattered far and wide, the level of injuries sustained on landing could prevent a small group from operating. However, if they could be brought out by truck from a rendezvous after a raid, they could also be brought in accurately to a point from which they could proceed on foot to the target.

On the wider front, ‘Operation Crusader’ was not going according to plan: Rommel, with characteristic dash, had counter-attacked brilliantly, but his position was precarious. This development notwithstanding, Auchinleck replaced Gen Cunningham, Commander of the 8th Army, with Gen Ritchie. As the consequences of ‘Crusader’ preoccupied MEHQ, Stirling thought it better to move the remnant of L Detachment further from MEHQ and deeper into the desert. He was recommended to move to Jalo Oasis, which had recently been taken from the Italians. Stirling had to come up with success and, confident now about their means of progression to the area, he boldly planned four separate raids. The landing ground at the end of the wadi at Tamet was to become what is described in the chronicle as Operation No. 2 (B), and Mayne had with him Sgt McDonald, who had been in his section at the attempt on Timimi, and Parachutists Chessworth, Seekings, White and Hawkins.

His group was transported by S1 Patrol of the Long Range Desert Group, which was navigated by Mike Sadler, formerly of the Rhodesian Anti-Tank Battery. Sadler had been brought up in England but as a teenager had left to study agriculture in Rhodesia. In September 1939, on the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the Rhodesian forces. Thereafter, he transferred to the LRDG where, the SAS soon learned, he was a highly skilled navigator. It was his first encounter with Mayne and it made a lasting impression on him. Before they reached the drop-off point, one of the SAS team, Hawkins, asked Sadler if he could borrow a rather attractive dagger that Sadler had showed them: it had the Nazi emblem on, for Sadler had bought it on a cycling holiday in Germany in 1936. After the raiders set off from the rendezvous, the LRDG, deep in a wadi, waited. Hours later, when it came, the effect of the light and sound caused by planes, bomb dumps and fuel dumps exploding, though not experienced close up by those waiting, was impressive nonetheless. The six returned without any casualties (the only loss, it seemed, was Sadler’s dagger) and as the LRDG team drove them back to base, some of the raiders graphically described what had happened. Mayne said little. His written report is brief. In marked contrast with the report of Operation No. 1, its style would characterise the remainder of his reports on his desert raids – it may well have been the style that collectively they agreed suited their work.

Execution

Party left Jalo Oasis to reach Wadi Tamet being lightly and inefficiently strafed by Italian air force on the way.

Left LRDG trucks at 1830 hours, returned at 0300 hours. Party was then conveyed to Jalo.

Results

(a)   Bombs were placed on 14 aircraft.

(b)   10 aircraft were destroyed by having instrument panels destroyed.

(c)   Bomb dump and petrol dump were blown up.

(d)   Reconnaissance was made down to the seafront but only empty huts were found.

(e)   Several telegraph poles were blown up.

(f)   Some Italians were followed and the house they came out of was attacked by machine-gun and pistol fire, bombs being placed on and around it. The inhabitants there appeared to be roughly thirty. Damage inflicted unknown.

Remarks

The guards were slack and when alarmed wasted many rounds in misdirected fire.⁴²

Shortly afterwards, the newspapers printed embellished accounts from what was presumably a briefing paper Stirling issued for release to the press. Interestingly, copies of some of these newspaper accounts were inserted back-to-back with Mayne’s report in the unit’s chronicle, in ironic juxtaposition. Two of them give a flavour of their tone, and were to provide the basis of different variations over the years:

Raid on Tamet Landing Ground, Newspaper Cuttings

In the officers’ mess of an Axis aerodrome just beyond Sirte 30 German and Italian pilots sat one night drinking, laughing and talking. The campaign was not going too well for them. Rommel was retreating. But they were still a long way from the fighting line. The mess snugly blacked out, a bright fire was burning, some of them were playing cards.

Suddenly the door flew open. A burst from a Tommy gun swept the card players and drinkers at the bar. Drinking songs turned to shouts of fear, and those who were not killed or wounded desperately trying to make for the doors and windows were mown down. They were 500 miles behind the front line, but a British patrol was in their midst. Not one left the room alive.

The second more specifically points to the leader of the team:

A British lieutenant, a famous international sporting figure before the war, walked into the mess with one man. They pushed the door open and pressed the triggers of their Tommy guns. It was all over in a minute. He threw a time bomb on the roof of the mess. Then on to the next job.⁴³

These newspaper accounts, however, were merely the harbingers of what was to come for both the unit and for Mayne.

Of the other three raiding parties that night, only Fraser had success, the biggest bag of all, his group destroying thirty-seven aircraft. This was vindication indeed for the unit, and Stirling sensed that, without pausing, they should strike again.

On 24 December, Mayne raided Tamet airstrip for the second time. This time he had some rotation of personnel: Sgt McDonald, Parachutists Bennet, White, Chessworth and Hawkins. They drove to within three miles or so of the airfield and then made an approach by stealth. They found that the enemy had taken heed of their previous visit: guards were sited in groups of seven or eight around the field and there were signs of greater vigilance than a fortnight earlier. The raiders silently went about their work, placing bombs on twenty-seven planes. They had enough bombs for some transport parked nearby and for a fuel tank. However, the technology of the fuses of the Lewes bomb was not flawless, and one exploded before they had finished their work. Silhouetted by burning planes, the raiders came under machine-gun fire and had to use grenades to fight through an encircling cordon. It was an impressive achievement, for they had destroyed twenty-seven aircraft without suffering any casualties. Tamet airstrip henceforth became known in the unit as ‘Paddy’s Own’, since his groups had damaged or destroyed fifty aircraft there within two weeks.⁴⁴

Stirling also made his second attempt on the Sirte aerodrome, but found that an armoured enemy division was moving along the coast road. Hours were lost before they could approach, leaving insufficient time to carry out the raid. On 27 December Fraser’s party reached their objective and lay up to observe it. They found it used by planes during the day for refuelling and bringing reinforcements, but deserted by night. For three frustrating days this pattern continued; and then Fraser withdrew. On their return, there was some confusion about the rendezvous point and they began to run short of water, so they had to resort to stalking any isolated enemy trucks they came across. It took them until 11 January to reach base camp. Lewes and his men reached Nofelia and found forty-three planes on which they began placing bombs. When the bombs exploded, however, the effects were not as spectacular as they had hoped because the planes’ fuel tanks were empty. Next morning the party was spotted and strafed by a Messerschmitt 110, and Jock Lewes was killed.

The military hierarchy now began to take notice of the unit’s achievements: Stirling and Mayne were each awarded the DSO – a distinction usually awarded to more senior officers – and Stirling was promoted to major and Mayne to captain. A unit of Free French parachutists under George Bergé was by now attached to L Detachment and undergoing training. But Jock Lewes’s death was keenly felt in the unit, for he had made a unique and lasting contribution to its rationale and development.

When it came to replacing Lewes as training officer, for such a flexible thinker Stirling showed a certain rigidity in his assumptions. Fraser and Mayne were his two experienced officers, but Fraser was still missing. So Stirling appointed Mayne, presumably reasoning that he had no alternative. However, Mayne was to remain at Kabrit and supervise the training while Stirling left with a raiding party. It was Cowles who first reported that there was discord between Stirling and Mayne over this arrangement; but, as with much of this early period, there is no documentation, such as a war diary, to examine. Stirling gave his version of events, but Mayne’s case was never put. Certainly, in later years Stirling seems to have indulged in rationalisation by arguing that Mayne must have had a blockage with administration; he seems not to have asked himself how it was that Mayne was so effective as a manager and administrator when he later took command of the unit. For, as we shall see, Mayne was a very capable organiser. Cowles depicted him as Achilles, sulking in his tent while the battle raged outside Troy’s walls, and had him growing more disgruntled when he heard that Rommel had launched an attack – the emergence of a caricature of the one-dimensional action man. But, in truth, Mayne seemed not to have too much difficulty in keeping his mind off the disappointing war news. For example, during the last week in January he met Jane Kenny, the Nursing Sister from Longford whose patient he had been the previous June. They arranged to meet again, but, before they did, on 4 February Jane Kenny wrote to Barbara Mayne:

I met your brother one day last week and when I congratulated him on winning the DSO and said how well he looked, he replied, ‘I wish you’d write and tell my sister, because I’m afraid my letters are a bit erratic, and I know they worry about me at home if they don’t hear from me.’ So I promised I’d drop a line and tell you how well he is. . . . When he was a patient he loaned me one of Percy French’s books, which I hadn’t time to finish before he went away. He tells me now that he has a second copy, so I’m going to borrow it again – any little bit of Ireland out here is welcome.⁴⁵

When Mayne wrote to his sister Frances on 8 February, he made no reference to his present duties, but mentioned his forthcoming promotion.

I am becoming a captain. I am rather sorry, as I was fond of my two pips. I have had them a long time, but it is backdated to 1st September so it means a few extra shekels.⁴⁶

When Stirling returned, he had second thoughts about whether the training role had to be fulfilled by an officer, for he did not appoint Bill Fraser, who was back on duty, but Sgt Maj Riley.

In the meantime there was a new urgency on the military front, for the momentum of Rommel’s advance at the end of January had brought the Panzerarmee to Gazala, so the airfields in the Benghazi area were to be attacked. With the loss of Jalo Oasis, the LRDG moved to Siwa as a base. Siwa Oasis, a large fertile settlement, was one of a chain of oases in the outer Libyan desert. It had a long history: for centuries it had been a halt on the caravan routes and indeed had been developed as a Roman settlement. There were artesian wells; Cleopatra is supposed to have bathed in its waters. In addition, it had had an important oracle, which was said to have been consulted by Julius Caesar, among others. However, long before the Second World War, its former glory had departed. While there was still the grandly styled, but unprepossessing-looking, Farouk Hotel, the houses had fallen into decay. Crumbling mortar had been picked over by the wind and fine dust lay all around. Yet to the raiders, just as to travellers in the past, it offered welcome respite.

On the ides of March, defying augury, Stirling left Siwa. And, sure enough, on the 17th, two days later, one of their transports struck a thermos bomb and two men were injured; but, more importantly, Stirling’s ultimate aim for the raid was to be thwarted. He was determined to extend the unit’s capability. Rommel’s supply lines were relatively short across the Mediterranean; his supplies via Italy were landed at either Tripoli or Benghazi. Stirling’s idea was to attack shipping, not by a seaborne assault, but by an overland approach, penetrating a harbour town under cover of darkness, blending the raiders’ transport with vehicles used by the Axis forces, launching collapsible Folboats (folding kayaks), attaching limpet mines to supply ships, and retreating as they had come. He had tried out the idea at Bouerat and had got as far as the harbour. Their destination, from where they would launch their attacks – the Jebel Akhdar, the Green Hills, a range of rolling hills with deep valleys, water and trees – was very much of a contrast with the desert terrain. Accompanying the party was a Belgium, Bob Melot, who served with General Staff Intelligence. He was older than most of the others; born in 1895, he was a veteran of the First World War, having served as a pilot in the Belgian Air Force where he received the Croix de Guerre.⁴⁷ He spoke several European languages, and having married and lived in Alexandria for years, he also spoke fluent Arabic. He and Mayne formed a friendship at Siwa which was to last until Melot’s death in 1944.

The qualities of individualism and determination which characterised many of those who had been recruited were further developed by the unit’s work, as the next operation shows. On the night of 20 March, Mayne had with him Bennet, Rose and Byrne when he left to raid Berka satellite airfield. Their target lay between the coast road and the sea. Progress was slower than expected; boulders impeded the truck’s progress and it was an hour and a half after midnight before the team set out on foot. First they came upon the airfield defences and found two German sentries guarding an anti-aircraft gun. They also spotted some bomb dumps. As they were behind schedule, Mayne subdivided the group into pairs, taking Bennet with him to look for aircraft and leaving Rose and Byrne to deal with the bomb dumps. While they were silently at work, one of the Lewes bombs went off prematurely; this was followed by the bomb dumps exploding. Unhindered, both pairs of raiders disappeared into the darkness. Rose and Byrne made for the foothills and took stock. They had been given two rendezvous points: the first in the foothills and the second, a vehicle rendezvous, some thirty miles further on. In Byrne’s view they were too late for the first rendezvous and he was for going on to the second; Rose felt equally strongly that they should go to the first rendezvous. Unable to agree, they separated.⁴⁸ When he failed to find the second rendezvous, Byrne decided to walk south the two hundred miles or so to the fort of Bir Hacheim. He eventually ran out of water but met some Arabs, who fed him and filled his water bottle. Striking out again, he made further progress but was later picked up by the Germans and taken prisoner. However, Rose met up with Mayne and Bennet. They were indeed too late for the first rendezvous so they set off for the second, but their map was lacking in detail and they were unable to find it. There was no alternative but a long walk through the desert, so Mayne decided that they would make for Tobruk. There were Senussi tents in the area and in preparation for their walk they approached one and asked for water. What happened after that is conveyed in Mayne’s own words of the time, in a letter to his brother Douglas.

At the moment I am about fifteen miles from Benghazi, so I won’t be able to post this for some time. We did a raid on the local aerodrome three nights ago and one of the party hasn’t returned yet, so we are waiting for him. It’s a very pleasant country here, great change from the desert. Some of the people who know the South Downs say that it is very like it – low hills and valleys, lots of wild flowers and long grass. It’s like a picnic; only annoying thing is the Jerry planes flying about, but we are well camouflaged. Luckily, the Italians treat the Senussi very badly so they will do anything to help us. The day and night after the raid we couldn’t find our rendezvous. The maps are awful, we had been walking from 1.30 am to 7 o’clock the next night and couldn’t find the damn place anywhere. We must have covered about fifty miles, first of all getting to the drome and then coming away. It was dark and we were due here at dusk. It was no good walking around in circles in the dark and I had more or less resigned myself to a 250-mile walk to Tobruk, and so we (three of us, two corporals and myself) went to the nearest Senussi camp for some water and, if possible, a blanket.

The Senussi were very suspicious at first, but once they were sure that we were ‘Inglesi’ everything changed and we were ushered into one of the tents, our equipment brought in, blankets put down for a bed. There was a fire just outside and everyone crowded in. First of all they boiled us some eggs, which were damned good, then platters of dates and bowls of water and a huge gourd of goats’ milk was brought in. I think that the form is that they never wash the gourd, and the sourer it gets the better they like it, and I think they must have liked this stuff very well. This gourd kept going round and round and we soon gathered that the best-mannered people take a great suck and the real connoisseurs a hearty belch. The belch wasn’t difficult. This went on for a long time. We knew no Arabic and they no English, but everybody knew what everybody else was talking about. Then they started brewing tea, awful stuff, must have been made with dandelions, talk about bitter – this was in little glasses. After the first round I pretended to be asleep.

Eventually the party finished and everyone started for their own tents, the three of us lying on the blanket. I don’t think that I have ever been more tired. Nearly every one of the old fellows, before they left, tucked the blanket round, pushing it in under our feet and in at the side – there was a chorus of ‘Sidas’ and the show finished.

All this time the host’s wife had been lying on her bed with two or three smaller Senussi, who looked about three years old. The Lord of the Manor then went out, brought in a goat and three kids, tied them to the tent pole, and we settled down for the night.

And now listen to this and never disbelieve in luck again or coincidence, or whatever you like to call it. The men who were waiting for us at the rendezvous – and they would have left next morning – had got a chicken which they had bartered for some sugar. They wanted it cooked and had an English-speaking Arab with them, so they sent him to get it cooked. In that area there must have been thirty or forty different encampments spread over the three-odd miles we were from each other and he picked the one that we were lying in to come to so we won’t have to footslog it across the desert!

We have been here now for two days and the trucks for three and I imagine that every Arab for miles around knows where we are and not one of them would go and tell the Jerries or the Eyeties where we are.⁴⁹

Unaware of Byrne’s capture, the party left on the deadline and on the morning of 24 March, Mayne and his two companions returned to the Jebel.⁵⁰

Of the raiding party leaders, only Mayne was successful: he accounted for fifteen aircraft destroyed. Dodds, who had led another group, was unable to get onto Slonta airfield because of its defences; another party under Alston failed to find Berka main airfield; Fraser discovered only one aircraft on Barce; and Stirling got onto Benina on two occasions, only to find it each time bereft of aircraft. However, what Stirling wanted to prove was the unit’s ability to raid Benghazi. And this he did. But having successfully penetrated the town to its harbour, Stirling was stymied, within a stone’s throw of shipping, by being unable to assemble the folding boat. But it was only a technical problem – he would not be deterred from trying again. He had earlier recruited a number of officers to whom the unit appealed. As far as political connections were concerned, he could not have gone higher when he secured the interest of Randolph Churchill. He also recruited Fitzroy Maclean and the Earl Jellicoe.

On 8 April L Detachment was due to begin training for further parachute operations; Stirling wanted to build the unit up to and beyond its original establishment, but in the meantime some leave was due. Unknown to his colleagues, Mayne went to Gazala to look for the grave of Eoin McGonigal. Grief at the loss of McGonigal was not something he shared with others; nor did he show his feelings. In time, though, he did talk about him, for Fraser McLuskey, the unit’s first padre, said, ‘Paddy often spoke of McGonigal’⁵¹ and Sadler, too, recalled that he often talked about McGonigal.

Now, Gazala, between 31 January and 24 May 1942, was not high on the list of places to visit for a British officer on leave. It was defended by the Allies as the northern bastion of the Gazala Line which stretched southward to Bir Hacheim. To its west lay a minefield and beyond that was No-Man’s-Land. Gazala lay some five hundred miles west of Alexandria, so Mayne may have negotiated a lift with the RAF or the Army. When he got there, he spent some time making enquiries and searching, though in vain. On his return to Kabrit, he wrote to McGonigal’s mother and told her of his quest and its failure. On 2 June 1942, Mrs McGonigal replied:

My Dear Blair

I have just got your very kind letter and really feel that I can’t thank you enough for all your great kindness. It was terribly good of you to have gone to Gazala and taken so much trouble to try to find Eoin’s grave. I know he did not have an identity disk – I think he just wanted to be an unknown soldier – but I had hoped he had been found and buried, as I meant to go to Gazala after the war. However, you know how much he hated a fuss so it is PERHAPS BETTER as it is – just as he wanted. I miss him so much – more in fact every day – but I know he is safe and happy and terribly interested in what you are all doing. I am sure he has been with you in your operations since he died. . . .

She ended:

Thank you so much for all your goodness – it has made such a difference.

Yours very sincerely

Margaret McGonigal⁵²

Some who lose a close friend in combat try to immure themselves thereafter by adopting an attitude of indifference. Mayne did not.

It is something of a paradox that Gen Ritchie, the senior officer at MEHQ, who is credited with seeing the potential in David Stirling’s original memorandum and who gave his support to the raising of a unit which so eminently suited desert warfare, should have been the one to preside over the preparations for the defensive concept of the Gazala Line. The line stretched from Gazala to Bir Hacheim and comprised mine-marshes between a series of boxes, behind which was placed the armour capability. It was reminiscent of the Western Front in the First World War. This against an opponent who had already proved himself in desert warfare to be a master of agility and speed of movement! And, as though to prove it again, on 26/27 May Rommel swept south of Bir Hacheim then struck north behind the Allied line, heading for Tobruk. The earlier gains made under ‘Operation Crusader’ were reversed, and Egypt and the Suez Canal were once again under threat. With this development, Rommel’s airfields in the Benghazi area had to be attacked again.

On 8 June, three groups of raiders left Siwa Oasis. Stirling went to Benina, Mayne was allocated Berka satellite airstrip for a second time and Lt Zirneld led a group of Free French to attack Berka main airfield. With Mayne were Cpls Lilley, Storie and Warburton (this was the second of that name in the unit: Kenneth Warburton had been killed in parachute training on 16 October 1941). At Benina, Stirling had success, destroying five planes and attacking aircraft hangers in addition to between twenty and thirty aero engines.⁵³ The French party destroyed or damaged fourteen aircraft.

Lack of coordination among the services compromised Mayne in this attempt. Waiting for the return of the raiders, the LRDG party at the rendezvous were under the impression that ‘an ill-timed’ attack on Berka airfields by the RAF had hampered the raiders.⁵⁴ Storie, who is now the only survivor of the raid, put the emphasis on the timing of the French raid.

The French went in before the arranged time and the Germans were alert and in their armoured cars and there we were in the drome. It was hopeless, we split into two: Paddy and I went together and Warburton and Lilley went together.⁵⁵

Lilley and Warburton separated and Warburton was later captured. At daybreak, Lilley found that he was still within the perimeter of a very large enemy camp and set off openly walking to the perimeter. He was stopped by an Italian soldier, who tried to take him prisoner; Lilley had to overpower and strangle the man before he could get away. Next morning, Mayne and Storie found in their line of march, a German command car with a line of soldiers searching for them. They took cover immediately and lay waiting as the line of men came closer. Suddenly, the advancing troops stopped, some little distance short of where the raiders lay, and grouped round the command car. Then, apparently in response to a radio message to discontinue the search, they departed. Hardly believing their luck, Mayne and Storie continued on their way and reached a Senussi encampment where they joined Lilley, who had got there ahead of them.

Back at the rendezvous, Stirling and Mayne decided on a hitherto unplanned reconnaissance behind the enemy lines. What followed was an audacious face-to-face confrontation between members of the unit and the enemy. There was no subterfuge about their vehicle or their uniforms; but they did have with them Karl Kahane, who had previously served in the German Army before emigrating to Palestine and who was a member of the Special Interrogation Group (SIG). In its various narratives, this incident appears not to have been written up in exaggerated form. Several of the group who were there – Stirling, Cooper, Storie and Mayne – have retold it. The earliest account must be Mayne’s; and, as always with his most vivid letter-writing, it was addressed to his brother Douglas:

I have been up in the desert on one of our raids – got back three days ago. It wasn’t for my liking. I prefer the long nights, more time to get away, though my luck was as good as ever. Still after aircraft. In the last month I got forty off. I was shot up a couple of times and, bar losing some kit which was burnt – the blighters set my car on fire – I was OK. I had a party last time I was back in the Sergeants’ Mess. I had just broken the century in planes so it was fairly hectic, a dangerous place to go to – you are never quite certain what is in your glass. I remember in one of your letters you were complaining of not having seen a Jerry – that came to me forcibly about a week or so later. I had been raiding Berka drome and after I got back to our rendezvous we decided, the CO and myself, to have a look at Benghazi – so we took a truck. I was driving, the CO beside me and four of our lads in the back, also a Free Austrian. Well, we drove onto the road and started gaily down with headlights on. We got about five, six miles and then we saw a red light being swung. That didn’t worry us as always before it was only Italians and we shout ‘tedesco’ (German) and drive past. But they were getting wise to us and this time we see a bloody big contraption like a five-barred gate that was mixed up with a mile or so of barbed wire and so we stopped. The sentry was in the headlights and right enough an Italian. Our Austrian started to do his little piece and shouted out that we are Germans in a hurry and to open the blankety gate. The wop wasn’t so sure so he hollered for the guard – about ten Germans headed by a sergeant major, Tommy guns, grenades and rifles. I was scared to look further in case I saw tanks and machine-guns. I gathered later that the conversation ran like this:

Fritz: ‘What’s the password?’

Karl (our Austrian): ‘How the — do we know what the — password is, and don’t ask for our — identity cards either. They’re lost and we’ve been fighting for the past seventy hours against these — Tommies. Our car was destroyed and we were lucky to capture this British truck and get back at all. Some fool put us on the wrong road. We’ve been driving for the past two hours and then you so and sos, sitting here on your arses in Benghazi, in a nice safe job, stop us. So hurry up, get that – gate open.’

But Fritz isn’t satisfied, so he walks to about three feet from the car on my side. I’m sitting there with my Colt on my lap and suddenly I remember that it isn’t cocked, so I pull it back and the Jerry has one look and then orders the gates to be opened. Which they did in a chorus of ‘Guden Nachtens’ (sic) [and] we drove on. We thought later that he came to the conclusion, the same one that I had come to, that if anyone was going to be hurt he was going to be a very sick man early on.

We drove on at any rate and came on a lot of tents and trucks and people (at Lete) got our machine-guns up from the bottom of the truck and started blowing hell out of them – short, snappy and exhilarating. The story is far too long and I am fed up writing – at any rate we cut into the desert, chased by armoured cars. We climbed the escarpment. We had 40 lb of explosives, which blows when set off by our own delayed-action fuse. The fuse had got set off by the bumps but it is so fixed that after it cracks there is twenty seconds. We all got out at any rate. But there is no use writing this stuff, people think you are shooting a line – the most fantastic things happen every time we go out.⁵⁶

The account loses nothing in its understatement – especially the escape from the truck as the fuse burned. Storie’s perspective on the incident where the fuse burned is equally laconic.

But to get up the gradient we had to get out and shove the truck, then get back in again. And all of a sudden there was the smell of burning. Someone had stood on a pencil so the fuse was burning. We jumped off the truck and, in a few seconds, up in the air it went.⁵⁷

There were many resourceful, competent and courageous men in this unit, but an aura began to surround Mayne: he was a most incredibly successful operator. He, himself, in two letters to Douglas, put it down to luck. And luck certainly played a part. But it was much more than that: he had extraordinary abilities when it came to reading the situation in the field. There have been indications of it in what he wrote, from the Litani river action report, the Timimi report and implicit in his understated reports of other raids. And those who served with him recognised it. In No. 11 Commando, as Macpherson put it, ‘His troop thought the world of him.’⁵⁸ But as his sustained record of achievement grew, raid by raid, it became clear to all that he was an outstanding leader. Mike Sadler had by this time transferred to L Detachment from the LRDG; he referred to Mayne’s qualities:

He was terribly observant and concentrated. He really concentrated on the job in hand and he really knew what was going on. Most of us, I think, when the bullets were flying, probably shut our eyes and ducked, but he went on and was quite conscious of what was happening and who was where and all that kind of thing. I thought that perhaps his legal training helped him concentrate – I don’t know whether it did or not – whereas David was more inclined to be focusing on the strategic considerations – lessons learned – and planning for the next operation. But Paddy was a tremendous operator – there’s no question about it. And he gave you great confidence in those situations.⁵⁹

What accounted for his success, as Sadler has alluded, included cognitive powers, intuitive skills and a strong bonding with his men. Yet some of his contemporaries found it difficult to describe Mayne in the round; they tended to express his qualities in single characteristics: fearless, quiet, morose, fond of drinking sessions. And again, Sadler points to reasons for this:

I can always see him, in the desert, particularly. I can picture him very clearly – he made such a clear impression on one. I think I knew him better later in the war; I saw quite a lot of him then. But he was an enigma at that stage. I didn’t know him well enough to think about him I suppose, other than as a very keen operator, and so I really didn’t think about him, his basic character: well I was only about twenty-two, I suppose, and I never thought of that sort of thing at all. So I was really badly briefed or badly trained to think about him.⁶⁰

It took the arrival of a non-combatant, someone who was trained to observe not only physical symptoms but human behaviour – the medical officer, Malcolm James Pleydell – to begin to give a pen portrait of some of Mayne’s qualities and to assess the calibre of man he was. And, interestingly, Pleydell’s insights are consonant with those of a second non-combatant who would later join the unit, and some of them are confirmed by Mayne’s later wartime correspondence and, especially, his postwar journal. Pleydell was fascinated by the range of characters in the unit and the way they went about their work. He took notes, and two years after leaving the unit, he wrote the first book about the SAS, Born of the Desert. Published under his first and second names, his account not only evokes the beauty and harshness of the desert landscape, it provides vignettes of Stirling and Mayne, as well as some other figures in the unit. Mayne was no self-publicist: he would not discuss far less boast of his achievements. Nor was he a loner. Pleydell noticed that Mayne made friends with many of the Royal Navy personnel whose mess the unit shared. But balancing that convivial spirit was an important skill in a combat leader – the ability to assess others. And that was a characteristic brought home early on to the new medical officer.

On this particular evening, however, I did not know him so well. One only sensed that here was a quietly forceful and rugged leader who could be relied upon in any emergency; a man who was as ruthless as he was quick-witted in action. Later on I used to think that you were as safe as you possibly could be when you were with Paddy, because he took such great care of the people who were under him. But there was one thing that it did not take long for you to find out, and that was his shrewd judgement of character. ‘Shooting a line’ cut absolutely no ice at all with him and he could detect it straightaway. Some people, anxious to create a favourable impression, thought that because he was so quiet then they had better do most of the talking, but he could ask the most discomforting questions in the blandest of manners, and he could cut a person short with hardly a word spoken. No, it did not pay to pretend when you were with him, and this evening you could almost see him sizing people up from the very questions they were asking.⁶¹

This was a characteristic that remained with him throughout his life.

However, on 21 June 1941, when Stirling and Mayne reached Siwa after the Berka and Benina raids, they found the LRDG in the process of moving out. The Gazala battles were over: that day Tobruk had fallen to Rommel’s Panzerarmee; and later that same day Rommel learned that the Führer had promoted him to Field Marshal. Four days afterwards, Auchinleck dismissed Gen Ritchie as Commander, 8th Army and took on the role himself, in addition to his responsibility as General Officer Commanding Middle East Forces.

Changes also came about in the way L Detachment operated. Hitherto, the unit had been conveyed by the LRDG, but, according to the official account of Special Forces in the Middle East, in June 1942 ‘Capt Mayne suggested to Major Stirling that Jeeps should be provided to carry men of L Detachment during the last stages of the approach to an objective, in order to save walking.’⁶² The idea was adopted, and then adapted by installing two Vickers K guns on each of fifteen Jeeps. According to Jellicoe, the unit had only four days in which to prepare them.⁶³

On 3 July, the unit left Kabrit, but with the enemy now as far east as El Alamein they had to head south to the northern rim of the Quattara Depression, and four nights later Stirling and Mayne made for Bagoush. The airfield was close to the road, where Stirling positioned himself with a small group, setting up a road block. Mayne and five men went on foot to stalk aircraft. Pleydell, at the rendezvous some distance to the east of the airfield, described the effects: ‘There was a terrific flash which lit up the skyline like summer lightning.’⁶⁴ Mayne and his group had destroyed twenty-two planes. But Mayne was far from satisfied: there had been about forty aircraft lined up on the field; he subdivided the group and systematically placed bombs on all planes; yet they counted only twenty-two explosions. When he examined some bombs in his sergeant’s bag, he discovered that the primer was damp because it had been inserted in the plastic too long in advance.⁶⁵ Frustrated, he rejoined Stirling and told him what was wrong. They had a brief discussion, then both of them drove their Jeeps back to the airfield and onto the runway and opened up with the Vickers K. The result was that another twelve planes were destroyed; they had developed an alternative to an approach by stealth.

Stirling had to return to Cairo for replacement vehicles and supplies on the evening of 12 July; Mayne also went, bringing back wounded. While he was in Cairo, Stirling received an Instruction (No. 99) from HQ 8th Army giving a revised set of targets and a new order of priorities: tank workshops, tanks, aircraft, water, petrol.⁶⁶ Returning to Bir el Quseir on 23 July with reinforcements and new vehicles, Stirling decided to try out a new tactic of making a mass attack with Jeeps in full moonlight. Three nights later, on 26/27 July, in a grand finale to the month’s work, Stirling led this mass attack with eighteen Jeeps on Sidi Haneish airfield. Sadler navigated them to the perimeter, then they formed up in two columns and Stirling’s Jeep, like the Fighting Temeraire at Trafalgar, led the formation through the rows of planes with spectacular effect. Storie was one of the raiders:

On that night we had only one man killed. It was very successful. I was in the last Jeep and it got caught in barbed wire; we had to drag it for miles before we could stop and cut it.⁶⁷

About thirty planes were destroyed although only about eighteen burst into flame.⁶⁸ So it was all the more galling for Stirling at the end of July, at what must have been a high point for him, to be ordered back to Cairo to take part in planned future operations.

On the wider military front, Auchinleck (still operating as commander-in-chief and commander of the 8th Army) had fought Rommel to a standstill at the first battle of El Alamein. The Allies knew from the code-breaking work of Ultra that Rommel had been stretched to the limit and was desperately short of fuel and tanks; the same source revealed that he was unlikely to be resupplied until September. In addition, Maj Gen Dorman-Smith’s appreciation of the situation pointed up that Rommel had only three serviceable ports at which supplies could be landed: Benghazi, Tobruk and Matruh. Stirling found in Cairo that, in a sense, he was a victim of his earlier determination to carry out significant damage at Benghazi harbour. Continuing with its policy of making strategic use of the unit, Middle East Headquarters determined that L Detachment should be part of a larger force, which Stirling was to lead and which would attack and paralyse Benghazi harbour. Operation Bigamy incorporated L Detachment, a naval detachment, part of the Special Boat Section and two LRDG patrols, the whole group being called ‘Force X’, whose objectives were: block the main harbour; sink all shipping and lighters in the harbour; and destroy oil storage and pumping plants.⁶⁹ Stirling had reservations. Compared to the way L Detachment’s raids were planned, too many people were involved and he had doubts about the security of the plan.⁷⁰ Between the early planning of Operation Bigamy and its execution, the Prime Minister had visited the Middle East and there had been further changes at the top. Auchinleck had been replaced by Gen Alexander as commander-in-chief, and Gen Gott had been appointed to command the 8th Army. However, his subsequent death when his aircraft was attacked resulted in Montgomery being given the appointment.

On 4 September, Mayne led the advance party, which consisted of 5 officers and 118 other ranks. When he arrived at the first rendezvous, Mayne sent Bob Melot along with Lt Maclean and a private from the Libyan Arab Force to carry out a reconnaissance.⁷¹ The information that came back was ominous: about 5,000 Italian troops were dug in, apparently prepared for an attack. Stage one of the operation involved attacking the fort on the escarpment; Melot led a small group, bluffing his way to the gates, calling out in Italian that they were Germans sent to relieve the garrison; but the ruse was spotted. In the short engagement that followed, the defenders capitulated but Melot was wounded. Without him, they had no other guide who knew the route from the escarpment in detail and so by the time the force reached the approach to Benghazi, it was four hours late. Not only that, the enemy was lying in wait. After a fierce and costly exchange, Stirling ordered a withdrawal. The operation was a disaster. The internal GHQ report of the raid listed seven factors contributing to its failure: the first was that ‘The strictest control must be exercised on those who are brought into the planning.’⁷² But the failure did not redound on the unit. It had achieved a higher profile, having been at the centre of what was MEHQ’s brainchild; indeed, moves were afoot for its enlargement and redesignation.

On 28 September 1942, the unit was reorganised and called 1 SAS Regiment; Stirling was promoted to lieutenant-colonel; Mayne advanced to the rank of major and was given command of A Squadron. He chose his men from among the most experienced of L Detachment and from the more recent recruits. The Allied build-up was almost completed; the assault on Rommel’s forces was imminent; and A Squadron’s role would be integral to the development of the forthcoming battle: attacking lines of communication, ammunition dumps and transport, followed by airfields and retreating enemy transport.⁷³ The period that followed was a very successful one for the unit. Bill Fraser, now a captain, was Mayne’s second-in-command, Mike Sadler was commissioned and was now a lieutenant and among the newcomers to the squadron, of whom more will be heard, were Harry Poat, Sandy Wilson and Tony Marsh. While its priorities were clearly enumerated, it was up to the judgement of the Squadron Commander as to how and when they were carried out. Mayne’s plan was to establish forward bases in the Sand Sea and from these to harry and impede the enemy.

They arrived at the remote oasis of Kufra, deep in the Great Sand Sea, on 13 October. The following day, Fraser left with a party on the first leg of the long drive north to the railway line east of Fuka; Mayne, with Donohue, Ward and Allan, met with Marsh’s group and attacked a convoy. These were the first of numerous raids, but the period is not comprehensively documented; most of the information comes from radio signals. Throughout October and November they continued their attacks, changing the priorities as they were instructed in the light of the 8th Army’s progress. The railway line, convoys and, later, airfields were their targets. It was also a time of exceptional individual achievement. This was when Sillito carried out his epic walk of 180 miles to reach the squadron’s forward rendezvous in the Sand Sea; it took him eight days.

Mayne, in a letter to Douglas, gives a vignette of their work:

I am lying here beside a three-tonner, under its tarpaulin, in the sand, and listening to the wireless. It is pleasant now, cool and fresh, but in the summertime it is no place for any Christian body. We are in the Sand Sea about 200 miles from the nearest oasis and just going out and acting the fool from here. The loot question has looked up very well in the last few days – inside a week first of all we came on a Heinkel, which had force-landed. The crew were tapping for assistance – they got it. Out of it we got automatics, a shotgun and a Rolleiflex camera. It is a nice one with the reflex viewfinder. I bought it off the laddie who found it. Then I was on a job and on the way back I ran into a nice soft convoy. We were like a lot of pirates – 10 days’ beard – the poor wee Jerries and Eyeties driving along as happy as you like, 160 miles behind their lines. We whipped in from behind and the first they knew was our bullets, smacking through their three-tonners. Out of it I got another camera, a very nice little one, £15–£20-worth. I’ll send you some photographs, not snaps.

Funniest thing were the prisoners – we can never afford to take many, as they eat too much of our rations, so I intended only to take one. I put him on the truck and told the others to beat it, but he started to cry and the others looked so pitiable at being left that I took a couple more – they are useful at washing dishes and keeping my equipment clean.⁷⁴

Mayne’s gleeful description of their acquiring and trading for loot, set alongside his more restrained account of his prisoners at the Litani operation, carrying his men’s booty for them, shows that he had no scruple about following the age-old practice of troops helping themselves to the spoils of war. Indeed, to this day, in his old home are his high-powered German binoculars – courtesy of the Wehrmacht.

Expanding the unit while at the same time increasing its operational activities meant that new recruits lacked some of the induction lessons that their senior colleagues had received. Storie was the most experienced member of a two-jeep patrol that ran into trouble.

This time they were all new except myself: even the officer was new. We went into this recce and came across trouble and we had to get out. The Jeep I was in was hit by an armour-piercing shell; it took the engine right out of the Jeep. But what used to happen with the old hands – if you got hit, one of them would swing right round and pick you up – but they were new boys and had not been taught this. So we were left high and dry. We got out of the Jeep and got away.⁷⁵

They walked to the rendezvous area, which they estimated to be twenty-five miles distant, but found that the others had gone. Running short of water, they made their way north to the coastal road. They found an abandoned British truck and started to drain its radiator when they were surprised by a German patrol. Next morning, Storie found himself on a plane bound for Munich.

The second battle of El Alamein marked the opening of the final phase of the desert war. With Rommel in retreat, A Squadron was ordered to move further west to Bir Zalten to keep pressure on a retreating army. The squadron had been active over the previous two months while B Squadron was built up and trained. Then Stirling came out to Bir Zalten and outlined the situation to Mayne. In the short term, A Squadron was to operate between Agheila and Bouerat while B Squadron covered further west. Beyond that, however, Stirling envisaged that the regiment would be involved in mountain warfare in the Balkans, so when A Squadron’s work in the desert finished, it would undergo ski training at the Cedars Warfare Mountain Training Centre in Syria. In the meantime, Stirling would join B Squadron; he took Sadler with him as navigator, for he intended at some point to link up with the 1st Army, which had landed in Algeria.

When its operations were over, A Squadron began to move back to base. Mayne and one other rank arrived at Kabrit on 7 January 1943; the bulk of the squadron followed.⁷⁶ A spell of leave before beginning new training had to be delayed a few days, for Commander-in-Chief Gen Alexander visited Kabrit on 14 January. He was shown demolitions with Lewes bombs and treated to a demonstration of the firepower of the jeep-mounted Vickers K. Then, for Mayne, the world of family and home was brought in sharply when he received news that his father had died suddenly on 16 January. The following week, though, on 24 January, along with the sixty-five officers and men of A Squadron, he left Kabrit for the ski school of the Cedars of Lebanon where the resilient Bob Melot, recovered from his wounds at Benghazi, joined him as a member of the unit.

The unit’s final days in the desert – like those of its beginning – are rounded off by a myth centred on Mayne. However, this is not part of the ‘revelation according to Cowles’: it first appeared from anecdote in Bradford and Dillon and duly became a tenet of accepted belief.⁷⁷ The theme is by now familiar: a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer. It went along the lines that Mayne, aggrieved because he had been denied leave to go home on the death of his father, sought out the well-known BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby at his Cairo hotel to give him a doing for allegedly reporting from the safety of the city instead of being at the front experiencing what the war was really like. Intercepted before he could reach his quarry, in one account he knocked out (not three or four or even five, but) six military policemen before being taken to the cells, from where next morning he was released following a signal from (an amazingly swift and responsive) MEHQ to the effect that this officer was too valuable to be reduced to the ranks.⁷⁸ Of course, in reality, at the time of Mayne’s father’s death on 16 January 1943, Dimbleby had already been in London for seven months, having been recalled by the BBC in June 1942.⁷⁹ If there had been a problem with Dimbleby’s credibility with the military, it was not because he broadcast from Cairo: it was because of his concern for verisimilitude, recording a particular unit or squadron’s progress at the front and extrapolating from that to the general military situation.⁸⁰

But beneath that tale, there probably lie half-remembered grievances with the media. For example, while the press printed gung-ho versions of Mayne’s first raid at Wadi Tamet airfield and referred to a well-known international sportsman, the unit was not named. Perhaps the most flagrant example of the achievements of the SAS not being acknowledged by name occurred as late as the 1944 short official account, The Eighth Army, September 1941 to January 1943, prepared for the War Office by the Ministry of Information. This account said ‘The Long Range Desert Group, under Lieut-Colonel (then Captain) David Stirling, and the Middle East Commando carried out two remarkable raids on Sirte and Agedabia airfields, destroying, in all, sixty-one machines.’⁸¹

It was not surprising that these raids were attributed to the LRDG, for they had been the unit that had principally carried out such attacks in the past. What is surprising is that David Stirling should later write that Mayne was callous on that first Wadi Tamet raid, because his own actions on a couple of operations were broadly similar.⁸² One occasion, which was referred to earlier, was recorded by Mayne about the time he, Stirling and some others attacked enemy tents and trucks with their machine-guns. A similar opportunity turned up when Mike Sadler set out with David Stirling in a three-jeep patrol to destroy enemy communication lines near the coast and turned their machine-guns on some soft-skinned transport. Comparing their actions is rather pointless, for according to the war policy of the time, these attacks were but one aspect of a strategy which had been pursued by the Allies. As early as January 1941, the LRDG took completely by surprise a fort at Murzuk and shot down some soldiers strolling outside it.⁸³ The details of how Mayne led his attack on the building at Wadi Tamet may be impossible to get at now. There is his own brief summary of results which suggests that he used his favoured weapon at close quarters, his Colt revolver; there are the newspaper articles based on Stirling’s press release; and Reg Seekings, who was in the team, said that fire was returned from the house. The LRDG, however, kept a log of each of their patrols; and while they were not present with Mayne on the airfield, they had to have a verbal report from him for their own records. Their account is close to what he wrote, and concludes, ‘a house containing about 40 of the enemy was “soundly shot up”’.⁸⁴ Over the period of the desert war, surprise attacks of this kind were carried out by Special Service units. No moral opprobrium was attached to them by the High Command: Gen Wavell wrote of the enemy’s lively apprehension of the work of the LRDG; and his successor, Auchinleck, sanctioned the attack by No. 11 Commando on the house at Beda Littoria. So there is no sound basis for singling out Mayne’s actions that night for judgement in isolation.

As the part the SAS played in the desert war drew to an end, news began to percolate through that Stirling and most of a small group with him had been captured in his attempt to reach the 1st Army in Tunisia. But not until 14 February was it announced that he was missing presumed captured, though Sadler, Cooper and a French sergeant who were with Stirling managed to escape.

Stirling had achieved much: the efficacy of the idea had been proven; a new unit had been born, which recruited men who had qualities of individualism and initiative and a strong sense of discipline. It was the end of a remarkable period of his leadership. But the period of the nascent unit was also rich in myth. Seen through European eyes, of course, there has always been a mystique about the desert, particularly through the meeting of two cultures. Then there was also the nature of the desert war: armies fighting in the open without involving the civilian population. There was also the esteem in which Rommel was held by his enemies; and of course the Afrika Korps did not have the sinister trappings of the SS and Gestapo. Mayne’s part in the unit’s success had been that of a soldier who was supremely professional. His competence and leadership qualities were the stuff that myths are made of, but he also had a very powerful strength of mind. For example, Pleydell noticed that some in the unit used euphemisms of war, describing raiding as good sport or good hunting. But Mayne did not. As Mayne was leaving to go on a raid one night, Pleydell wished him good luck. Mayne responded that he thought there might be some ‘good killing’. Pleydell reflected not that this characterised some savage beast slouching off into the desert night (as some have supposed), but someone having intellectual grit, for he concluded, ‘I wondered if I could ever think of “good killing” and felt rather weak-minded and unwarlike in my inability to do so.’⁸⁵ Rommel’s army, nonetheless, represented the Third Reich; and when the poet Sorley MacLean, who fought in the 8th Army, expressed his conviction that he was fighting a just war, he adopted a hard logic like Mayne: ‘And though I do not hate Rommel’s army/ the brain’s eye is not squinting.’ For Mayne, motivation and strength of mind were to be important qualities in the years ahead: if the unit was to have a future, it now lay with him.