Lieutenant Colonel Blair (Paddy) Mayne: Rogue Hero of the Ulster, Ireland and British and Irish Lion's rugby teams, Royal Ulster Rifles and the Special Air Service (S.A.S.)
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Robert Blair Mayne was born on 11th January 1915, to William Mayne and Margaret Boyle Mayne (née Vance) of Mount Pleasant, Newtownards, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. He was known to his friends as Paddy.
Mayne was from a Scottish Presbyterian family who had settled in the Strangford Peninsula early in the 18th Century.
His great grandfather, William Mayne, established the present family home, known as Mount Pleasant, at Newtownards and began a wine and grocery business there.
The business had passed to his grandfather, Thomas and on to his father, William.
William was a successful businessman, owning property and running a retail business in Newtownards while living at Mount Pleasant, a property set in around 41 acres of grounds overlooking the town.
Paddy's mothers family, the Vance's were a linen family. Margaret's grandfather, Gilbert Vance had been a linen merchant in Belfast. Margaret was a strong and determined woman, traits that she no doubt passed onto her son.
Maynes names were also drawn from his mother's side.
Robert Blair Mayne was named after his mother's cousin, Captain Robert Blair of the 5th Battalion. Border Regiment, who was killed in action the following year and awarded a posthumous Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
There was a military connection on Mayne's father's side of the family as well. He was a descendant of Major Gordon Turnbull who led the famous “Scotland Forever” charge by the 2nd “Scots Greys” at Waterloo.
Robert Blair Mayne was the second youngest of seven siblings. He had two older brothers, Thomas and William. His younger brother was Douglas, and he had three older sisters, Molly, Barbara, and Frances.
Mayne attended Regent House Grammar School in his hometown of Newtownards, Co. Down.
It was there that his talent for rugby union became evident, and he played for the school 1st XV and also the local Ards RFC team from the age of 16.
While at school he also played cricket and golf, and showed aptitude as a marksman in the rifle club.
After leaving school, Mayne attended Queen’s University, Belfast, and studied law, with a view to become a solicitor.
While at Queens, he took up boxing, and took to it like the proverbial duck to water. He became the Irish Universities Heavyweight Champion in August 1936.
Soon after followed the final of the British Universities Heavyweight Championship. Mayne lost out narrowly defeated on points.
Mayne continued to play rugby while at Queens.
In 1937, he won the Scrabo Golf Club President’s Cup with a handicap of 8. Later the same year, he won his first international rugby union cap in a game against Wales.
He would go on to win five more caps for Ireland as a lock forward before selection for the famed British Lions tour of South Africa in 1938 becoming Lion #307
While the Lions lost the first test, a South African newspaper stated Mayne was "outstanding in a pack which gamely and untiringly stood up to the tremendous task". He played in seventeen of the twenty provincial matches and in all three tests.
lionsrugby.com/2022/10/31/life-of-a-lion-blair-paddy-mayne/
During the 1938 tour, Mayne’s antics became the stuff of legend much to the despair of the team’s management. Harry McKibben who played centre in the team, told stories of how Mayne would smash up hotel rooms, leaving them barely more than a pile of kindling.
When not causing mayhem in hotels, Mayne was often found in pubs around the docks in Durban. There, he and Welsh hooker Bunner Travers would dress as sailors, drink, and pick fights with the local longshoremen.
On returning from South Africa he joined Malone RFC in Belfast.
In early 1939 he graduated from Queen's and joined George Maclaine & Co in Belfast.
Mayne won praise during the three Ireland matches he played in 1939, with one report stating:
"Mayne, whose quiet almost ruthless efficiency is in direct contrast to O'Loughlin's exuberance, appears on the slow side, but he covers the ground at an extraordinary speed for a man of his build, as many a three quarter and full back have discovered."
In March 1939, prior to the outbreak of World War II, Mayne joined the Territorial Army in Newtownards.
He had previously been a member of Queen's University Officer Training Corps, and so he received a commission in the 5th Light Anti-Aircraft Battery, Royal Artillery.
In April 1940, Mayne transferred to the Royal Ulster Rifles.
Following the fall of France in 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a call to form a “butcher and bolt” raiding force. 11th (Scottish) Commando formed, and Mayne joined the new unit.
His close friend in the Royal Ulster Rifles, Eoin McGonigal, a Catholic from south of the border, joined him.
Both men ticked all the key requirements: they were fit, strong swimmers and during training for their new role in Scotland, they were quiet and dedicated.
In the early hours of 9 June 1941, Mayne saw action for the first time in the Syria-Lebanon Campaign, playing a prominent role in the Litani River operation against Vichy French forces.
His troop captured some 80 prisoners and several guns, and he was mentioned in despatches (MiD) for his courage, but he went down with malaria in July.
The battle at Litani River was brutal and bloody. Around a third of the strike force, more than 130 officers and soldiers, sustained injuries, were captured or killed.
Mayne placed the blame on the ineptitude of his commanding officer whom he considered inexperienced, arrogant and insincere.
Reports suggest the fiery Lieutenant struck his superior. These sources say that Mayne was awaiting court-martial and almost certain dismissal.
In 1941, David Stirling, an officer in the Scots Guards floated the idea of a small commando team to take the fight to Rommel in the Desert. Among those that Stirling wanted for this crew was Paddy Mayne.
Mayne’s heroics and leadership at Litani had brought him to the Scotsman’s attention.
The problem, of course, Mayne was languishing in a cell having struck Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Charles Tasker Keys.
Released after promising not to strike his future commanding officers, Mayne played a key role in establishing what would become the Special Air Service.
From November 1941 to the end of 1942, Paddy took part in and led night raids behind enemy lines in the desert. The Special Air Service became a scourge of Axis forces, destroying hundreds of planes in airfields around Egypt and Libya.
By September, Mayne was commanding No 2 Troop, L Detachment of the SAS, and was delighted that his countryman and friend from the Royal Ulster Rifles and 11 Commando, Lt McGonigal was again serving with him.
However, in November 1941, Mayne took part in a largely unsuccessful raid in Libya that cost McGonigal his life.
Mayne was devastated by his death and went to look, unsuccessfully but at great risk, for his friend’s grave.
Later he wrote a tender letter to McGonigal’s mother, expressing his condolences for her loss.
On 5 December 1941, Mayne helped to lead a successful attack on Tamet airfield near Sirte in Libya. The raiders destroyed fourteen enemy aircraft and damaged a further ten, and for his part in this audacious attack Mayne received his first DSO.
But he did not rest on his laurels, and just three weeks later, as General Claude Auchinleck pushed Erwin Rommel’s forces back past Benghazi to Agedabia, Mayne and his men returned to the same airfield where they then destroyed a further twenty-seven planes.
For the next year, Mayne participated in many night raids deep behind enemy lines in the deserts of Egypt and Libya, pioneering the use of military jeeps to conduct surprise raids. It is estimated that he personally destroyed up to 100 aircraft on the ground.
For his part in the Wadi Tamet raid on 14 December 1941, which destroyed enemy aircraft and petrol dumps, Mayne was awarded the DSO. He also received a second Mention in Despatches in February 1942, along with a promotion to captain.
Mayne took command of 1st S.A.S. Regiment in 1942 following the capture of founder and leader David Stirling.
A later split of the S.A.S. saw Mayne take command of the Special Raiding Squadron (S.R.S.), a unit he led through the Italian campaign of 1943.
In mid 1943, Mayne's unit the SRS was chosen to take part in the invasion of Sicily. On two ships, they arrived off the Sicilian coast on the evening of 9 July, tasked – as part of ‘Operation Husky’ – with capturing and destroying the coastal battery at Capo Murro di Porco.
The battery, called Lamba Doria, sat on the southern tip of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Syracuse. Here, on top of a headland called Cape Murro di Porco, the Italians had direct line of sight of the invasion beaches.
The battery’s three 6 inch guns could have wreaked havoc on Allied troop transports anchored like sitting ducks offshore. The SRS had been told that the success of the entire invasion depended on them knocking out the guns before they could open fire.
After Mayne's unit knocked out the first battery Mayne decided to make use of the wide latitude in his orders to attack three additional targets.
The SRS after-action report, probably written by Mayne himself, explained what happened next:
“The main task being successfully achieved the Squadron assembled at Farm DAMERIO and Major R.B.Mayne, D.S.O decided to push North-westwards and attack C.D. [coast defence] Battery which had opened fire on us.”
As to whether the second battery fired at the SRS, or the shipping, or both, there are conflicting reports.
At least two accounts by SRS men say the battery fired only on ships, but an Italian report mentions the battery firing on approaching enemy troops, although it’s not clearwhich.
The second battery was known as AS 493 by the Italians, with the ‘AS’ identifying it as one of many batteries in the Augusta & Syracuse Fortified Zone.
The SRS report continued:
“Left Farm DAMERIO at about 0600 hrs and proceeding towards new objective mopped up several bunches of enemy snipers and defended Farms.”
One of these farms was Casa Mallia, which sits close to the high point of the ridge. The house had a small look-out turret on its roof. This gave wonderful views over the peninsula, and it was possible to see AS 493 a mile away, especially its
large rangefinder tower.
Mayne ordered the SRS mortars to bombard the battery while 1 and 2 Troops advanced to capture it and put it out of action.
The SRS report continues:
“Pushing forwards 3” Mortars engaged C. D. Rangefinder and Gun positions.”
AS 493 was a dual-purpose battery, with both an anti-aircraft and an anti-ship role. The battery’s rangefinder was a large stereoscopic device for measuring the exact distance to a target such as a ship.
It was mounted in what looked like a turret on top of a pyramid, to give it maximum height and view. Usually in Italian batteries there was a bunker-like room below the range-finder, which was the fire control centre, from where instructions went to the guns.
The SRS mortar detachment was commanded by Captain Alex Muirhead. His mortars had already done sterling work in the taking of the Lamba Doria battery, opening the attack by firing 60 HE (high explosive) shells and 12 smoke shells.
Muirhead recorded his lessons from this first action:
“Hits on buildings & gun area by H.E. causing casualties & confusion. Smoke [shells] caught 2 cordite dumps. Smoke invaluable as incendiaries [on] houses or grassland. H.E on hitting tile roof penetrates before exploding.”
Muirhead now repeated a similar mix of shell types in a series of fire missions against AS 493. The first was fired at a range of 1700 yards, from near Casa Mallia. “Bursts in the target area” were seen.
The team then moved forward 250 yards, to a position in front of the farm, and fired again. This time there was “one hit on Range Finder tower”.
Finally the SRS mortar men went forward almost as far as AS 493 itself, and cheekily fired on it from an improbably point-blank range of 250 yards. It seems they set up behind a house close to the battery’s perimeter, with Muirhead noting:
“Possible to fire at this range if no wind or behind house. Hits in gun pits”.
We have several accounts by Italian gunners in AS 493. One of them, an officer, noted the effectiveness of the SRS mortar fire. The officer had earlier led a patrol towards Lamba Doria, which he discovered had been overrun. He wrote:
The SRS report on this attack concluded:
“Nos. 1 and 2 Troop attacked and after meeting with strong opposition No. 2 Troop captured the Gun position numbering:
5 A.A. Guns 75 to 80mm
1 Large Rangefinder.
4 4” Mortars.
Several M.Gs and L.M.Gs.”
The capture of AS 493 fully vindicated Mayne’s decision to head north rather than west, but more was yet to come. Up ahead were two more batteries guarding the entrance to Syracuse’s harbour.
One was another anti-ship battery like Lamba Doria, this one called Emanuele Russo. The SRS report describes how the battery was captured by just a handful of troopers:
“No. 1 Troop went forward and one section captured gun position 156287 […] Prisoners Battery commander and personnel.”
British troops man one of the captured 76mm guns in AS 309. In the background, Allied shipping fills Syracuse’s harbour. Source: NARA
The other, and last, battery was numbered AS 309. It consisted of six 76mm dual-purpose guns. It was dealt with by Muirhead’s mortars alone. He wrote that the results of firing 22 bombs at it were:
“Cordite dump on fire. Hits on guns or barracks[.] H.Q. evacuate[d]”
Muirhead’smortar men were the unsung heroes of the clearing of the Maddalena Peninsula. They carried the heavy mortar tubes and base plates, and scores of rounds of heavy ammunition, for miles in scorching sun and intense heat.
They then fired with verve and accuracy, and to telling effect.
After the last two batteries had been dealt with, Mayne finally led his men westwards. They spent the night at a farm called Luogo Ulivo. It was only a thousand yards from the highway where the SRS had been expected to join the main force on the first day.
Instead they did this the next morning, the 11th, nearly a day late. This had no detrimental effect on the possible further operations mentioned in Mayne’s instructions, as apparently no such operations were required on the 11th.
It was not until the next day, in the afternoon of the 12th, that the SRS set sail again in Ulster Monarch on an operation, this time to capture the port of Augusta.
The citation for Mayne’s second DSO read: ‘By nightfall SRS had captured three additional batteries, 450 prisoners, as well as killing 200 to 300 Italians.’ Perhaps most incredible of all, the SRS had suffered just one man killed and two wounded.
Two days later, 12 July 1943, the SRS also spearheaded the amphibious landings mounted at the ancient Sicilian port of Augusta, forty-seven kilometres north of the cliff-top battery they had just disabled, and for his part in this action Mayne received a first bar to his DSO.
Late in the afternoon of 12 July 1943, the SRS embarked in landing craft to assault the port of Augusta. The SAS’s mother ship was SS Ulster Monarch, in peacetime a passenger ferry that crisscrossed the Irish sea.
The landing was not completely unopposed - with both small arms and fire from a shore battery. Ulster Monarch was anchored just off Izzo Point, at the southern tip of Mount Tauro east of Augusta, and was right under the bluffs where battery AS674 was sited.
As can be seen from the Admiralty photo in the Imperial War Museum there are shell splashes around the destroyer HMS Tetcott which along with the bow gun on SS Ulster Monarch are engaging the shore batteries.
Under this barrage of protective fire, the SAS in their landing craft ran the gauntlet intact and landed on the east side of the deserted city.
This second raid was also part of the citation for his DSO, which praised Mayne’s ‘courage, determination and superb leadership which proved the key to success’.
In early September 1943, the SRS pushed on and mounted an attack at Bagnara Calabra in Calabria, helping to establish a bridgehead on the Italian mainland for the Allied advance.
In January 1944, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and appointed commanding officer of 1st S.A.S. Regiment.
Paddy led the S.A.S. through the final campaigns of the war in France, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Norway.
Often the S.A.S. teamed up with other allied units and worked extensively with resistance groups such as the French Maquis.
At the height of the Battle of Normandy, on 9th August 1944, Mayne parachuted behind enemy lines. In France, he conducted reconnaissance before returning again on 19th August near Orleans.
From there he pushed through enemy lines killing many German soldiers with machine guns mounted on Jeeps. This led to the second bar on his DSO. Many such raids were carried out throughout France in 1944.
Mayne cultivated a reputation for fearless leadership and the use of pioneering tactics.
Among these was using heavily armed military trucks and jeeps in hit-and-run raids in the desert, especially against enemy airfields.
Proof of this success lay in the impressive tally of destroyed aircraft, with some accounts suggesting he personally took out 130 enemy planes.
During the Second World War, Mayne became one of the most decorated soldiers in the British Army.
As a Lieutenant in the Middle East on 24th February 1942, he received the Distinguished Service Order.
Over the next three years, he received three bars to the award, first as Captain (Temporary Major) in Sicily on 21st October 1943, again in Normandy on 29th March 1945, and finally as a Lieutenant Colonel in northwest Europe on 11th October 1945.
The British Army issued Paddy with the 1939-1945 Star, the Africa Star with 8th Army Bar, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Star, the Defence Medal, and the War Medal.
An Oak Leaf added to the War Medal indicated he was Mentioned in Dispatches during Operation Exporter on the Litani River with 11th (Scottish) Commando in the summer of 1941.
Following the end of the war in Europe, the French government awarded the Ulsterman the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme.
Mayne also received a citation for the Victoria Cross, the highest military honour awarded by the British. This came after he single-handedly rescued a unit in 1945.
King George VI was among many people surprised that Mayne never received the prestigious award.
However, although the VC recommendation was signed by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Allied 21st Army Group, Mayne instead received a fourth DSO.
In April 1945, SAS soldiers were on German soil for the first time, with ‘B’ and ‘C’ Squadrons, under Mayne, keen to get behind enemy lines and wreak more havoc. This was part of "Operation Howard" with the SAS providing reconnaissance for Canadian 4th Armoured Division.
On 9th April 1945, 'B’ Squadron had become trapped by heavy gunfire behind enemy lines near the village of Borgerwald in northwest Germany, and a major was killed.
Showing “brilliant leadership and cool, calculating courage”, Paddy executed a “signal act of supreme bravery”.
When Mayne arrived on the scene, he quickly went into the open and, firing from the shoulder, launched a ferocious onslaught on a farm building until all enemy soldiers in it were dead or wounded.
Next, he drove a jeep in full view of the enemy and with all guns blazing, to rescue two wounded comrades.
Under fire, one by one, Mayne lifted the men to his Jeep and brought them to safety.
It has been said that a level-one award such as the Victoria Cross (VC) is only given when the chance of death is 50% or more. A report from Brigadier Calvert, dated 11 June 1945, said:
“There can only be one explanation why Colonel Mayne was not killed by what had already proved deadly and concentrated fire: the sheer audacity and daring which he showed in driving his jeep across a field of fire momentarily bewildering the enemy.”
“Colonel Mayne from the time he arrived dominated the scene. His cheerfulness, resolution and unsurpassed courage in this action was an inspiration to us all”.
Undoubtedly, it was a suicidal mission to rescue his comrades and ensure that the enemy retreated further.
Colonel Mayne’s mission was a complete success. In the words of Brigadier Calvert:
“Not only did he save the lives of the wounded but he also completely defeated and destroyed the enemy.”
The award of the Victoria Cross by the 1931 royal warrant is bestowed upon those who display acts of conspicuous gallantry and for a signal act of valour in the presence of the enemy.
Mayne more than attained that standard, but the mistake lies with the word “signal”, which is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as:
“an event or statement that provides the impulse or occasion for something to happen.”
It was not a planned event, and Mayne certainly qualified for the award. However, the word “signal” was misread as “single”.
Mayne had been accompanied in the jeep by Lieutenant Scott, who provided covering fire, and, therefore had not acted single-handedly, which meant that he was deemed to be ineligible for the award.
That mistake by a high-ranking civil servant — Jack Ganning, a military secretary — resulted in Mayne being stripped of the award. Instead, he was given a third bar on his Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
As evidence that Lieutenant Colonel Blair Mayne was supposed to get the Victoria Cross, on his citation, “VC” was marked, but stroked out, for the commendation. That is important evidence, and it clearly demonstrates that he was meant to receive the Victoria Cross.
We are not the only people who cannot understand why that medal was not awarded. King George VI asked how it was that the Victoria Cross eluded “Paddy”, and he enquired into why the award was downgraded.
When he asked Winston Churchill to explain the demerit, Churchill was said to have been shocked and saddened by the glaring omission.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's uncle, Major General Sir Robert Laycock, who, at the time, was Chief of Combined Operations, wrote a letter in which he stated that Blair Mayne deserved a Victoria Cross and would have received one had the proper authorities known their job.
“I feel I must drop you a line just to tell you how very deeply I appreciate the great honour of being able to address, as my friend, an officer who has succeeded in accomplishing the practically unprecedented task of collecting no less than four DSO's.
(I am informed that there is another such superman in the Royal Air Force.) You deserve all the more, and in my opinion, the appropriate authorities do not really know their job.
If they did they would have given you a VC as well. Please do not dream of answering this letter, which brings with it my sincerest admiration and a deep sense of honour in having, at one time, been associated with you. Yours ever,” Bob Laycock
On 15th April 1945 two members of the SAS were among the first allied troops to liberate a German concentration camp. In this case it was the infamous Bergen-Belsen camp.
Lieutenant John Randall and his driver were motoring through forests of pine and silver birch in northern Germany when a terrible smell hit them, a cloying stench of rot and excrement that seemed to hang in the air like a plague miasma.
The reek of pure evil, it grew stronger as they advanced.
They came to a pair of impressive iron gates, standing open at the entrance to a sandy track. They drove in and, after half a mile, reached a barbed-wire fence.
A handful of SS guards stood idly by and stared listlessly at them. Machine-gunners in watchtowers looked down but made no move. Randall was struck by the neatly tended flower beds on either side of the gate, and the gleaming whitewashed kerbstones.
One hundred yards further on, they were in hell itself.
In a clearing, beside rows of huts, shuffled an aimless army of ghosts: withered semi-skeletons with sunken eyes and parchment skin, some clad in black-and-white striped prison garb, but many almost naked.
The prisoners converged on the Jeep, plucking at the men’s uniforms, pleading for food, help, protection. ‘There were hundreds of them and an over-powering stench,’ said Randall.
Some 50 yards beyond was a spectacle that made Randall retch: a vast pit, 50ft square, containing a contorted mass of bodies, a charnel pit filled to overflowing with the dead, and the main source of the appalling smell.
He and his driver were the first Allied soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Some 60,000 prisoners were still packed into an area designed to accommodate 10,000.
A few minutes later Randall was joined by others from the troop. ‘We stood aghast,’ one recalled. ‘We simply could not comprehend that human beings could treat their fellow men in such a brutal and heinous way.’
At that moment there appeared a smiling figure in SS uniform who introduced himself as Josef Kramer, the commandant. He offered the visitors a tour of the camp, declaring absurdly that he was not responsible for the condition of the inmates.
Ushered into the nearest hut, a horrified Randall recalled: ‘Emaciated figures peered out at us, in fear and surprise, from the rows of bunks. Lying among them, on the same bunks, were dead bodies.’
The SAS men’s instinct was to obliterate every one of the guards in a burst of gunfire, but somehow they managed to control their fury. They locked the commandant in the guardroom and set about distributing whatever rations they had to the prisoners.
The SAS soldiers who stumbled on the camp recalled that day as the worst in their lives. Randall could not get the smell of death out of his hair or the lingering stench from his clothing.
He could never expunge it from his memory. ‘The smells and sights of these dead bodies haunted me.’
In May 1945 Mayne and his SAS were sent to Norway to supervise the surrender and disarmament of German troops. There were 300,000 German troops in Norway at this time so this was no mean feat.
In October 1945 the SAS was disbanded and Mayne was demobilised.
After a period with the British Antarctic Survey in the Falkland Islands, cut short by a crippling back complaint that had begun during his army days, Mayne returned to Newtownards to work first as a solicitor and then as Secretary to the Law Society of Northern Ireland.
Suffering severe back pain, which even prevented him from watching his beloved rugby as a spectator, and ill at ease with the mundanity of post-war life among provincial lawyers, Mayne became reserved and isolated, rarely talking about his wartime service.
The back pain that ended his career in The Falklands even prevented him watching his beloved rugby at Ravenhill.
On 13th December, 1955, aged 40, he had been drinking and playing poker in a pub not far from his home in Newtownards.
He later left, and went on to a friend's house where he drank some more. He drove homewards in his Riley sports car at 4am.
The car collided with a parked vehicle just a short distance from his home.
As news of his death spread, the town of Newtownards came to a standstill.
Thousands of mourners attended the funeral on 16th December 1955. His death was mourned throughout Northern Ireland and beyond.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blair Mayne’s grave is in the family plot at Movilla Cemetery, Newtownards, Co. Down.
In 1997, a statue at Conway Square outside Newtownards Town Hall was dedicated in the presence of an S.A.S. guard of honour. Paddy’s legend lives on both in his home country and around the world.
A mural dedicated to his memory stands at the junction of Queen Street and Upper Movilla Street in Newtownards. A road in the town is named in his honour, although plans to rename the local leisure centre sparked controversy.
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