BLAIR ‘PADDY’ MAYNE, DSO AND THREE BARS
AN IRISH RUGBY INTERNATIONAL BEFORE THE WAR, HE JOINED THE SAS IN JULY 1941 AGED 26 AND SERVED WITH THEM FOR THE REST OF THE WAR, COMMANDING ONE SAS FROM 1943-1945
The men of the Special Air Service knew they were in for a fight when they drove into northern Germany in the second week of April 1945.
Their operation, code-named Howard, was to provide reconnaissance for the Fourth Canadian Armoured Division as they advanced on the medieval city of Oldenburg. But waiting for them, concealed in the hedgerows and woods, were the last pockets of fanatical Nazi resistance. The SAS jeep force, comprising B and C Squadrons One SAS, was commanded by Lieutenant
Colonel Paddy Mayne, now a legend within the British army, whose DSO and two bars were testament to his fearless style of leadership.
Mayne split his force into two – C Squadron under the command of the veteran Tony Marsh and B squadron led by Major Dick Bond, a less experienced but nonetheless competent officer. They set off early on the morning of 10 April, crossing the River Hase and heading north towards the village of Börger.
Bond’s force was soon ambushed from a collection of farm buildings in a field to their west. Under heavy incoming fire, the men in the three jeeps at the front of the column had leapt into a drainage ditch that ran parallel to the lane to take cover. Bond and his driver had been shot dead by a sniper as they attempted to reach the stranded men.
Arriving at the scene, Mayne sized up the situation through his binoculars and then, taking a Bren gun from his jeep, he set off for the farmhouse with his driver, Billy Hull, at his
“MAYNE SLOWED BRIEFLY AS HE PASSED THE TRAPPED MEN, YELLING, ‘I’LL PICK YOU UP ON THE WAY BACK’”
heel. Under covering fire from the lane, the pair reached the building unscathed, and Hull drew the sniper out of his lair for Mayne to kill him with a burst from the Bren.
Returning to the jeeps, Mayne jumped behind the wheel of one and roared off down the road with Lieutenant John Scott standing behind the twin Vickers in the back, spraying the woods with bullets. Mayne slowed briefly as he passed the trapped men, yelling, “I’ll pick you up on the way back”. Reaching a crossroads, Mayne swung the jeep round and came tearing back with Scott still working the machine gun. Twice more the jeep drove up and down the road, until finally the enemy fire subsided and Mayne judged it safe to rescue his men, yanking them out of the ditch with his immense strength.
Mayne was recommended for a Victoria Cross, with the citation describing how his “exceptional personal courage and leadership saved the lives of many men and greatly
helped the Allied advance on Berlin”. But the recommendation was later downgraded to a fourth DSO, a decision that seemed to puzzle even King George VI who, upon meeting Mayne in 1946, asked why the VC had “so strangely eluded him”.
One of the men rescued by Mayne that day was Sergeant Albert Youngman, who served under the Irishman for three years in the SAS. “I owe him my life,” he recalled in 2010, when a campaign was launched for Mayne’s fourth DSO to be upgraded to a VC. “I don’t think the fact we’re talking about something that happened nearly 70 years ago matters,” he said. “Time is irrelevant: he should have been awarded a VC in 1945 and so this campaign is about righting a wrong.”
The campaign didn’t succeed, but nonetheless Mayne’s reputation as one of the greatest guerrilla fighters of any war remains undimmed.
BELOW: Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Mayne and Lieutenant John Scott used a jeep similar to this to tackle a German ambush and rescue trapped SAS men