Remarkable band of Rogue Heroes
THE BBC drama series Rogue Heroes concludes tonight and, despite one or two obvious flaws in the depiction of one of its lead characters – Blair Mayne – has done much to bring the wartime exploits of the SAS to light and in particular the contribution of the remarkable Ulsterman and Lions rugby star.
Unless I missed it when making the coffee, however, it has singularly failed to mention that elite rugby background and the winning mentality which Mayne transferred from the rugby field to the battlefield. The producers have surely missed an integral part of the jigsaw in that respect. Mayne the rugby player explains Mayne the soldier.
In North Africa alone he is thought to have destroyed 70 enemy aircraft – some reports suggest nearly 100 – off his own bat on SAS raids in 1941 and 1942 and that’s before he wreaked havoc in Italy, Germany and France and moulded the SAS in his image. He ended the War with the DSO, three bars, the Croix de Guerre and Légion D’honneur, Britain’s most decorated soldier in World War 2.
Rogue Heroes is terrific fun and captures the SAS vibe brilliantly but it does rather make out Mayne to be a mercurial Irish drunk and roaring boy as well as a wannabe poet. In reality it wasn’t that black and white and, although he fell off the wagon spectacularly on occasions, Mayne was sober as a judge and a ruthless fighting machine 99 per cent of the time. Not to mention an athlete in his mid-20s who had already competed with the very best and shone.
Mayne first came to prominence on the 1938 Lions tour of South Africa when some of his wilder and more eccentric ways came to attention when he played in 20 of the 23 matches on tour and waged a weekly guerrilla war against the man mountains that generally out muscled Lions.
It was a famously rowdy tour with Mayne often at the epiman,
centre but tough going as well as they criss-crossed Southern Africa on spartan goods trains, often sleeping on board especially on an 11-day round trip to play a couple of games in Rhodesia when they slept on board for seven of the 11 days.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the 1938 Lions – the last Lions team to wear blue jerseys incidentally – bred a number of other war heroes who sometimes get overlooked in Mayne’s considerable shadow.
Amongst those there would be Irish wing Squadron leader Charles Vesey Boyle, a Dubliner who rather like Mayne played merry hell with German and Italian forces in North Africa.
Boyle, after joining up with the Royal Artillery as a gunner and surviving the retreat from Dunkirk, switched to the RAF where his swashbuckling talents immediately came to the fore with No. 55 squadron where he flew Baltimore bombers, a versatile and agile light aircraft.
Rather like Mayne he and his squadron enjoyed a roving brief in support of the 8th Army as they grappled with Rommel’s forces, generally flying in advance of the Allied
bombing small Italian and German airfields, attacking columns and recovering scattered Allied forces. While Mayne attacked from the ground and the desert, his old mate Vesey was swooping in from the sky.
Later, he followed Mayne and the SAS to Italy, this time piloting a Boston aircraft and, by the time the War ended, he had completed 101 missions, 99 with his revered navigator Ross Harper alongside him, and been awarded the DFC for “setting a fine example of keenness and courage at all times”.
As a rugby player he seemed set for many more Irish caps than the nine he had earned when hostilities were announced. Possibly his biggest claim to fame was that it was his task to mark Prince Alexander Obolensky at Lansdowne Road in February 1936, the first match after Obo had routed the All Blacks. He didn’t give the flying England wing an inch and scored a try as Ireland claimed a notable 6-3 win.
Another interesting character was Scotland centre Duncan Macrae from Balmacara up in the Highlands where rugby was not commonplace. Macrae had just completed his studies as a doctor when he toured in 1938 and, when war started, he joined 4th/5th Seaforth Highlanders and won the MC for his part in the Battle of Valery en Caux in 1940. Later that summer he and his division were captured and sent to the huge Stalag V111-B POW camp in Silesia where he spent the remainder of the hostilities helping to keep Allied soldiers alive and well in the camp’s improvised medical centre.
Wales wing Bill Clement, one of the hardest tacklers in the tour party, was another 38 lion to win the MC. He was commissioned into the 4th Battalion of the Welsh Regiment and was awarded the MC for his actions in the Battle of Caen in 1944. Clement was one of just four members of his platoon to survive their engagement with the enemy despite sustaining a leg wound early in proceedings.
After recovering from wounds received and by now a Major, he returned to the fray in the Netherlands in 1945 when he was again wounded in action but nonetheless survived. After the War he made soldering his career and served until 1965. In later life he became a much-respected secretary of the WRU.
One Blue Lion who didn’t survive was another Ulstercolumns, flanker Rob Alexander, who was ever present during the Tests and one of the few forwards who along with Mayne had the physical prowess, skill and courage to take the battle to the enemy.
A dual Ireland rugby and cricket international, the former RBAI student was serving in the RUC when war was declared and joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He was killed near Catania during fighting at the Simeto River on July 19, 1943 while leading his troops in a dangerous counter attack. A fellow officer, David Cole, recalled: “Bob passed me on the way. I wished him luck. He paused for a second and whispered to me with a smile, ‘It’s suicide’, and then went on.”
And there were others, not least Elvet Jones the dazzling Llanelli wing who earned selection despite not making the Wales team that year. Jones was injured mid-tour and only played in 12 of the 24 games but claimed two hattricks – against South West Districts and Rhodesia – and got the Lions on the front foot in the third and final Test with the first of their four tries. Jones joined the RAF at the start of hostilities, rose to the rank of Squadron Leader and was awarded the Belgian military cross for his efforts.
Meanwhile in the Army, England wing Jim Unwin was to became a Lieutenant Colonel while another English back on the 38 tour, centre Basil Ellard Nicholson, joined the Royal Engineers and played an important role in the planning and logistics of the D Day landings. Elsewhere, Ireland centre Harry McKibben, having survived Dunkirk evacuation in the heavily bombed HMS Icarus, spent most of his war fighting in the Burmese jungle where he rose to the rank of Major General.
A remarkable band of brothers by any criteria, in fact Rogue Heroes in their own right.