Original subtitles

On 10th April, 1945, in the heart of Nazi Germany

eight British soldiers were caught in a brutal ambush.

BEN: They were pinned down by a hail of machine-gun and sniper fire.

As the enemy closed in, the end seemed inevitable.

But then. out of nowhere, a jeep stormed into view,.

Two British soldiers were charging headlong into the bullets.

At the wheel was Paddy Mayne - the most notorious leader of the SAS.

The SAS was a radical new combat unit

forged in the heat of the North African desert.

A handpicked group of rogue warriors

who attacked the enemy from behind their own lines.

But in 1943, the SAS had left the desert

to enter a darker and far more complex theatre of war.

With unprecedented access to the SAS files

unseen archive footage

and exclusive interviews with its original members

this is the remarkable story of the SAS' fight for Europe.

A new phase of the war that hurled them into their bloodiest battles yet,.

Well, I didn't hear it. The one that hits you, you never hear.

They would face the terror Of execution and the trauma Of civilian casualties...

We were there, quite literally, to liberate an enslaved people.

And they would be the first Allied soldiers to witness the nightmare

of Belsen concentration camp.

TONKIN: There is no way of describing the horror of that camp.

The SAS was a unit of battle-hardened desert Commandos

who fought in small groups behind enemy lines

and wreaked untold damage.

But the man who had created the SAS. David Archibald Stirling

was an aristocratic dreamer

who had once held lofty ambitions to be an artist

or perhaps a famous mountaineer.

Many at British HQ did not like his unconventional tactics

or the rogues and reprobates he had handpicked to fight with him.

Every man knew the risks.

Through a combination of intuition. Imagination and self-confidence

he had made a success of this radical new method of warfare.

But in 1943. Stirling was captured

and thrown into the Nazis' most secure prison: Colditz.

Now the SAS was under a very different commander.

The unpredictable and violent former Irish Rugby International

Major Paddy Mayne.

Mayne had built his reputation on the battlefield

as a warrior of the first rank

but unlike Stirling he had no interest in charming High Command

was often drunk and disorderly, and prone to acts of savagery.

The original men of the SAS have long since passed away

but in 1987 a handful of them told their story on film.

MAN: 57, take 1.

They all remembered the unit's most notorious fighter. Paddy Mayne.

He had a marvellous battle nostril

and what looked to be absolutely foolhardy

that was legitimate with Paddy

because of this extraordinary skill.

Paddy, who was a man that if you walked behind

you had no fear at all.

If you were with Paddy Mayne, there was no fear at all.

But I think Paddy always needed an eye on him.

We wondered whether Paddy had got the right connections

and he'd certainly ruffled a lot of feathers.

We wondered whether he could weather the storm.

For two years. Stirling had lead his men across the desert.

In July 1943, Paddy Mayne led them out of it.

For the first time. the SAS would be taking the fight to mainland Europe

The liberation would begin with the invasion of Sicily.

In July 1943, 160.000 soldiers on 3.000 ships

prepared to set sail across the Mediterranean.

The SAS would be leading them into battle,.

Mayne was ordered to leave Stirling 's original tactics in the desert.

His men would not be fighting behind the lines

but at the spearhead of the invasion.

The desert war was over.

Paddy Mayne was now leading his troops into a different sort of conflict.

Their target was the coastal defence battery at Capo Murro Di Porco.

A veritable fortress, defended by a range of heavy guns.

If Mayne 's men failed to knock out the battery

the invasion fleet could be blasted to shreds long before it reached the shore.

As the unit approached the coast, conditions turned against them.

And the weather got very, very rough. It got rougher and rougher.

And I remember Paddy saying to the captain

"You've got to land us, you know."

And "You must land us, whatever you do.

We've got to be landed."

BEN: At 1am the men climbed down into their landing craft

bucking in a heavy sea.

Many were sick into cardboard buckets

which immediately fell apart in their hands.

Through the gloom as they approached the target

shapes bobbed on the surface of the sea.

Allied paratroopers. blown off course

were fighting for their lives in the water.

Sergeant Pat Riley could hear the men drowning and screaming for help.

When we come to do the landing on Murro di Porco

the Americans, I think it was

that flew the airborne in

but unfortunately they dropped them short

and they fell in the sea.

And as we went along

there was a lot of airborne boys in the water

which we picked up

but then it came to a thing where we couldn't... couldn't.

It was jeopardising the operation so we had to push on.

HE SOBS

MAN: Why couldn't you stop for the guys in the water?

Well, we got an operation.

Please, those people, the casualties...

You can't.

People might find it hard to understand these days

perhaps ordinary units understand

but my idea that my first objective is to get there.

I've got gun batteries to destroy.

The guns were positioned atop towering cliffs more than a hundred feet high,.

Mayne ordered his men to scale them and storm the gun batteries.

But each one was protected by a ring of concrete pillboxes.

SAS veteran Reg Seekings had worked out a plan of attack.

What I'd done on board ship

I'd got the designs and measurements of the different pillboxes

and I'd worked out angles of fire

got a certain distance where the fire crossed

you could get underneath there in between the 2 guns

and all you had to do was just stick a grenade through the slit...

EXPLOSION

...and it was finished

and then run round and any survivors you finished off.

Mayne's men had put the guns out of action

allowing the invasion fleet a safe landing.

But they were about to come up against something

that they had never experienced in the desert.

As they began clearing the bunkers

Reg Seekings found terrified civilians cowering in the darkness.

I heard voices, I called them, and they came out

came filing out, these civvies.

They'd all taken cover

when the thing started on this gun battery.

And drawing up the rear was a young girl.

The only difference between her and my sister is

she was dark, my sister was fair

and a young girl about 14 or something like that

come out so proudly

and just as she got past me

a grenade went off nearby

and that just broke her

And she grabbed what obviously was her grandfather, I suppose

sobbing her heart out.

And this really cooled me down - the thought of my kid sister.

Now civilians were being dragged into the conflict.

The clarity and gentlemanliness of the desert war

suddenly seemed very distant.

As Mayne led his men up through Sicily

confidence in their new commander was growing.

BEN: During the house-to-house combat, Mayne was a ferocious whirlwind

but during breaks in the fighting, he was a beacon of calm

nonchalantly strolling the streets, camera in hand.

PIANO MUSIC

The port of Augusta was next to fall.

This unique footage shows Mayne's men throwing a boisterous looting party

instigated by their leader.

Paddy Mayne was seen pushing a baby's pram up the street

filled with bottles of booze.

He then used a hand grenade to blow open a safe in the bank

and was disappointed to find only a handful of silver spoons

and an old brooch.

ALMONDS: They'd have been Viking raiders, without a doubt, I think, most of them.

If ever there was a raider he was one, wasn't he?

He was the leader of a raiding squadron, in fact.

Drink and be merry boys, and so on, was very typical of the attitude

in which the Vikings sailed across the North Sea

to ravage the coasts of Britain and Europe.

The Allies had liberated Sicily

and on September 8th 1943, the Italian government surrendered,.

Now, the battle for Italy would be fought against crack German troops

who had no intention of giving up without a fight.

So far. Mayne had fulfilled his orders to attack head on

and was succeeding.

But Stirling 's unique idea was being eroded.

The unit was losing the advantage

that came with fighting in small groups behind the lines.

The full consequences of this would become horribly apparent

when they were ordered to storm the fortified port of Termoli.

Termoli was... it was terrible.

It was one of the worst times of the unit, actually.

The port of Termoli, on the Adriatic coast of Italy

was the lynchpin of the German fine

and the Allies were determined to break it.

After a morning of fighting, the port was in Allied hands

It felt like a pushover but their confidence was misplaced.

At dawn on October 5th

the Germans launched a counter-attack so fierce

it looked like the town was about to be recaptured by the enemy.

Most of the regular troops retreated

leaving Mayne's men and the Commandos to hold their positions

until the rest of the force could regroup.

Mayne ordered Reg Seekings and his troop to move as quickly as possible

to reinforce a point in the line

where another counter-attack was expected imminently.

Seeking 's 17 men boarded a truck

unaware that they were firmly in the Nazis' sights,.

Hiding at the top of the town clock tower was a German artillery 'spotter'

watching their every move.

Unknown to the British

he was pinpointing targets for the German Panzer gunners in the hills.

We loaded on to the trucks. And, well, I didn't hear it.

The one that hits you, you never hear.

Even Reg Seekings, known as the hardest man in the unit

was haunted by that attack.

The memory would stay with him for the rest of his life.

SEEKINGS: It landed right in the middle of us.

Just a foot or so behind me actually.

It was a shambles - terrible,

there was Sergeant McNinch.

He was actually sick, but he'd volunteered to drive the truck

and he was sitting there, and I said "For Christ's sake, Mac, come on."

And he's there with a big grin on his face.

And I said "Don't sit there with a bloody grin, you bloody idiot! Come on, out!"

And I grabbed him, and fell forward, and he was stone dead.

A piece of shrapnel had gone right through him

and killed him instantly with a grin on his face.

And another one, Henderson, Sergeant Henderson

he was hanging upside down on the truck

and one arm had gone

and you could see his heart, lungs, all pumping away

and he called to me, and said

"Take this tommy gun off my chest, it's hurting my chest."

And so I took him, got him, lowered him down

And then a chap named Skinner, who had just...

the one that got the grenade on his leg

he'd just returned from hospital to us, recovered from that

and he was on fire.

I never realised body burnt so fast.

And I don't know, it was just one of those things.

All the other carnage around you

but the sight of one of your friends burning

I thought, hell, the first thing that came to mind

I've gotta put it out.

And I went to look round

and there was a woman who used to do our washing

her and her daughters

they were laying there, blown open

all their stomach blown up like a balloon

and on, alongside the heap, was her eldest son

and as I stepped over the top of him to get some water out of this building -

they'd blown the front of the building in -

that he jumped up and ran around screaming with this huge balloon of gut.

So I caught him and I shot him - that was the only thing you could do.

Couldn't have him running around like that.

You could do no good for him.

Seekings turned back to try to find other survivors.

In the town square he was confronted by another harrowing scene.

A few minutes later, Seekings caught sight of the boy's teenage sister.

She was shell-shocked but uninjured.

He would never forget her expression of peculiar, dreadful calm.

The destroyed truck was photographed shortly after.

In the battle for Termoli

the unit had lost 21 men killed and 24 wounded.

It's shattering because these were the first men I'd actually commanded.

Men which I had trained, new men, and moulded them together.

They'd become more than just your men.

They were your friends, your pals, you know.

And they were good chaps, you know. Nice chaps.

Apart from anything else.

BEN: The fight for the town raged for another 12 hours.

But then suddenly the counter-attack ceased

and the Germans began to pull back.

Against incredible odds, Mayne and his unit had held Termoli.

The top brass at HQ were delighted with the victory,.

But Mayne was deeply affected by the loss of his men.

He had accepted a change of tactics

and now felt a personal responsibility for the outcome.

When things got rough, Paddy got more and more determined

and I think he became more clear out in what he wanted

and what he was going to do.

He didn't go ranting and raving mad.

He just became colder and colder and colder.

Late one evening in October, 1943

a young British prisoner of war sat down to a delicious meal

with a Nazi General.

Lieutenant John Tonkin of the SAS had been captured

during the raid on Termoli

and imprisoned in central Italy.

After refusing to divulge anything under interrogation

he was surprised to be invited for dinner

with a German divisional commander.

At the end of an oddly pleasant evening

the enemy general shook his hand

and wished him good luck.

Tonkin would soon find out why.

TONKIN, RECORDING: This is of interest to me

and it might be to future generations of our family.

In 1987 John Tonkin recorded his own very personal war memoir.

TONKIN: Our motto was 'Who dares wins'

which we somewhat irreverently transferred into 'Who cares who wins?'

For the first time, his family has given permission

for this unique and poignant testament to be broadcast.

As Tonkin was being driven back to his cell

the guard told him he was about to be handed over to the secret police.

TONKIN: Almost his exact words, very precise words, were

"I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say.

We now have orders which we can't disobey

that we must hand you over to the German special police

and they are people that I will tell you, quite frankly, we do not like

and I must warn you that from now on

the German army, to its shame, can no longer guarantee your life."

infuriated by the success of units like the SAS

Hitler had issued the infamous Commando Order.

All enemy soldiers caught operating behind the lines

were to be executed without trial.

His officers knew that the order was inhumane and illegal.

But as the Nazi zealots of the SS took control of the German army

the SAS could expect no mercy.

Tonkin realised he faced a stark choice: escape or die.

TONKIN: Every hour on that drive, the truck stopped

and the Germans used to get out

and they'd all congregate out there

and have a cigarette for a 10 minute 'smoko'.

And I then got my idea

and I started to work on the rope that held the canvas down

and slowly, bit by bit, I managed to get it off.

Way down this very rough mountainside as hard as I could go

and in due course the truck started up without any hullabaloo.

They hadn't missed me. And drove on its way.

Tonkin trekked south for days

until he stumbled into an Allied patrol and returned to safety.

Tonkin had narrowly escaped becoming a victim of Hitler's Commando Order

but others were not so lucky.

A week earlier, four captured SAS men were murdered in cold blood.

The fuhrer's revenge on the SAS had begun in earnest.

JANE STOREY: When my father was captured

he was a big believer that most people were good

so he actually had a great deal of sympathy, in a way

for the normal German soldiers

but not for the others.

He said he couldn't understand

how anybody could be so cruel and horrible.

I think he felt very patriotic.

He just wanted to do his bit for the country.

In the spring of 1944

the SAS was stationed in Britain for the first time

preparing for the last great push of the war: D-Day.

160.000 British. Canadian and American troops

were preparing to invade Nazi-occupied France.

But the SAS would not be joining the invasion force.

Instead. they would be going back behind the lines.

This secret battle map reveals the plan

to launch an unprecedented 40 SAS operations

all across occupied France.

Each with a very British code name that gave no clue to their true intent.

Their task was to blow up supply lines, blockade roads

arm the local Resistance

and stop the northward advance of the Panzers

in any way they could.

The SAS had grown into a mighty force of some 2,500 men.

This rare footage shows Paddy Mayne parading his new troops

on home soil for General Montgomery.

Mayne was fiercely proud of the SAS

and their reputation as hard-fighting rogues and reprobates

but he was about to enrol a man with a different kind of zeal.

He would meet him at dawn after an all-night drinking session

with desert original. Johnny Cooper.

COOPER: At that stage - I was struggling to get the blackouts down -

there was a bang at the front door.

So he said "Go on, Johnny, find out what it is."

Because none of the mess staff were on duty.

I mean, everybody was still in bed.

I opened the door and there stood this Padre.

He said "Captain McLuskey reporting for duty."

The Reverend James Fraser McLuskey was a gentle. devout man of God

who firmly believed his calling was to help the British war effort.

He had been training for months and had even learned to parachute

but so far his new commanding officer

had been chiefly interested in spirits of the alcoholic kind,.

MAN: Film roll 30. 34, take 1.

The Padres memories of that first meeting were also recorded in 1987.

MAN: What were your first impressions?

Somewhat chaotic!

The commanding officer and some of his best friends

had been celebrating the night before

and indeed into the morning

so the appearance of the mess was pleasantly confused.

So the shout from inside, from Paddy... "Who's that John?"

I said "New Padre reporting for duty."

"Bring him in, pull him a pint of beer."

So I went across and pulled him a pint of beer.

I said "Right, we're going for breakfast."

And went in for breakfast with the Padre with a pint of beer

Paddy and myself with a pint of beer

and that that was his initiation into 1 SAS regiment!

McLuskey, dubbed 'the parachute Padre'

would join the men on their missions behind the lines

and bring a spiritual element to this most ungodly bunch of warriors.

While the Padre would be going into action

Paddy Mayne, to his frustration, would not.

He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel

but the order was clear:

stay in Britain and coordinate operations.

Instead, the missions would be lead by his most trusted men.

One of the first would be the former Nazi prisoner

newly-promoted Captain John Tonkin.

He was to lead Operation Bulbasket

and parachute into the forest near Poitiers in west central France.

We got a sudden flap and a sudden warning came into the camp

and Paddy called me over and he said

"Well, you are due to leave tomorrow morning and you'd better get on with things."

Just after midnight on June 6th, a few hours before the D-Day invasion

Tonkin set out, in secret, for France.

TONKIN: The pilot was running straight in, very, very beautifully indeed

and then the green light came on

so I just pushed off

and it was absolutely beautiful.

Dangling in the air, drifting gently down

bright moonlight, no problems at all.

Soon after dawn

a young French secret agent greeted Tonkin at the drop zone.

A stilted exchange of passwords took place:

"Is there a house in the woods?"

"Yes, but it's not very good" said agent 'Samuel'

whose fantastical real name

was Major René Amédée Louis Pierre Maingard de la Ville-és-Offrans.

Major Maingard was Tonkin's link to the local French Resistance.

The region contained more than 7.000 'Maquis'

the name given to the complex constellation of local guerrilla fighters

who were sworn to defeat the Nazi invaders

and who would be vital to Tonkin's sabotage mission.

The Maquis were certainly brave but they were woefully under-equipped

largely untrained and prone to violent infighting.

And worst of all, they had been infiltrated by Nazi informers.

John Tonkin decided to put his trust in the Maquis.

It was a risky strategy but it was the only one available.

Tonkin's 40 men were parachuted in

along with an airdrop of supplies

including jeeps.

And suddenly the sky was absolutely full of jeeps and men and containers.

They all came roaring in together...

One jeep, I remember, one of its 90-foot parachutes tore and collapsed

and that jeep came down like a ton of bricks.

And the jeep fairly thumped into the ground and dug itself a hole.

Tonkin was now ready to set up camp in the woods and begin his mission.

TONKIN: Our initial tasks were to blow up -

and encourage the Resistance to blow up -

four main railway lines.

And we started up the jeeps, put the guns on them

put the fuel in them and headed out.

Across France. SAS units were parachuting in to conduct their sabotage missions.

Just as in the desert war

they would use jeeps to attack targets of opportunity.

And they now had a new weapon - air strikes.

By spying on German movements

they could call in a deadly barrage of fire from above.

If we could tell the higher commands

whether the German army or their air force was being reinforced

withdrawn or just maintained in any one area

the aircraft would pick them up.

The results of their missions in France are recorded in a unique artefact

the War Diary

held in secrecy by the SAS for seventy years.

This extraordinary scrapbook of combat reports

and original photographs

was put together by the men themselves

and kept in a leather binder liberated from Nazi Germany.

It lists the impressive tally of munitions, communications and rail links

that the SAS destroyed.

But there is another terrible list that makes for chilling reading.

For every SAS success

the Nazis exacted bloody reprisals against innocent civilians.

On 27th June, the diary records

the village of Vermot was burned to the ground.

On the same day, the village of Dun-les-Places

was given over to rape and murder.

21 civilians were shot by firing squad.

MAN: Fire!

GUNSHOTS

In the face of such atrocities

the SAS needed someone to keep up their spirits.

To supply this, one man took a leap of faith.

On June 22nd the Parachute Padre crashed to earth through a tree

and was found lying unconscious.

The next thing I knew, the Padre had landed with us.

And I thought "Oh, good God!"

Fraser McLuskey had parachuted in near Dijon

to minister to the men of Operation Houndsworth

another of the sabotage missions.

With him. he carried everything required

should the need arise for an impromptu service.

MCLUSKEY: Padres, by the Geneva Convention, are unarmed.

And I never carried arms.

And I think the men were glad to see the Padre

as a kind of symbol of the will of God

for peace for all men.

In the type of work they were doing

it was possible for a Padre to be there without being a nuisance to them.

That is to say that there were jobs to be done

and when we had drops from the air

another pair of hands were useful.

I could help the doctor sometimes, you know.

He even came out, and he was my driver on one or two things.

The only thing he didn't realise

that guns made such a big noise as they did.

HE LAUGHS

I had no doubt that the carriage of arms was necessary

and I suppose you might have said I wasn't altogether unprotected

because I had a large and burley batman

who came with me in the jeep or car or whatever I had

and who was possibly armed to excess.

HE LAUGHS

McLuskey provided something the SAS had never had before.

Someone who was prepared, without sentimentality

to tend to their spirits, even their hearts.

I had no doubt that the war was necessary.

I was quite sure that we were there, quite literally

to liberate an enslaved people.

And to keep the torch of freedom burning throughout the wildest fires we could.

COOPER: Everybody liked him.

A lot of them loved him.

Everywhere he went, he smoothed the feathers of fear.

He did a terrific amount of good in just his presence.

While the Padre was calming nerves in Operation Houndsworth

200 miles away, near Poitiers

Tonkin feared the net was closing around Operation Bulbasket.

Local intelligence indicated that a full-scale hunt

for the British saboteurs was underway.

Tonkin's wireless messages to HQ reflected his mounting fears.

"Troop movements in the area day and night."

"Situation serious. 400 Germans are looking for us."

"Area unhealthy."

Running low on supplies and keen for adventure

some of Tonkin's men were becoming bored and careless.

Two of my SAS troopers, extremely stupidly

had gone into the village of Verrieres from the camp

to chat up the girls and to have some wine

and then they'd stroll back again.

Well, that was crazy!

At first light, we were woken up extremely rudely.

Panic is an incredibly infectious thing.

The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming.

Run, run, run!

I was almost certain that they were trying to drive us into a trap.

Tonkin, and a handful of men, ran deep into the woods and escaped.

But most of the Bulbasket troop fled in the opposite direction

down the slope and into the valley

and straight into the hands of the enemy.

GUNSHOT

31 captured SAS men were now at the mercy of the Commando Order.

On the morning of July 7th

the prisoners were taken deep into the forest of Saint-Sauvant.

Burial pits had already been dug.

The prisoners' hands were tied.

Each man was escorted by two German soldiers.

There was no possibility of escape.

Lieutenant Richard Crisp. the only officer who could speak German

was read the execution order and relayed it to the men.

This picture was taken shortly before the ambush.

Only four of these men escaped with Tonkin.

The rest were executed.

Their bodies dragged into the forest and buried in the pits.

Today a memorial marks the burial site of the murdered SAS.

The victims of the single greatest atrocity carried out under Hitler's Commando Order.

Even long after the conflict

the battle-hardened SAS officer in Tonkin could not allow any display of emotion.

TONKIN: 31 SAS were caught

and that was the sad and horrible story about that particular episode.

JANE STOREY: I think one of the hardest things for dad must have been

that a farmer had been out looking for truffles, I believe, with his dogs

and they found the graves

the shallow graves of the men that had been murdered there in the forest.

So he had to go back and identify them.

There's supposed to be a certain amount of decency in war

and that just disappeared.

Having escaped, the irrepressible Tonkin fought on.

With just eight men.

TONKIN: We, from then on, started to get fairly rough with the Germans.

Wherever we could find them and locate them

we'd get the RAF to bomb them.

On July 14th he called in an airstrike on the SS who had attacked his camp.

150 were reported killed.

TONKIN: In the operating period of 43 days

we attempted 32 attacks

and only two of them were unsuccessful.

Over a three-month period

Bulbasket and the other SAS operations had provided vital support

in the successful invasion of France,.

They had destroyed 60 railway targets

killed or wounded 760 of the enemy

and taken 3,000 prisoners. Including a General.

In a theatre of war much darker and more brutal than the desert conflict

the SAS had proved their behind-the-lines tactics were as vital as ever.

CHEERING

On August 25th. 1944. Paris was liberated.

Amid the throng of celebrations drove an SAS jeep.

In the passenger seat was the hulking figure of Paddy Mayne

who had finally been allowed to join his men in France.

Three weeks earlier, Paddy Mayne had been parachuted in behind the lines

with orders "not to lead attacks but to coordinate action".

He therefore drove around from one operation to another

treating the whole thing as if it was an enjoyable, if extremely dangerous, holiday.

Driving Mayne on this Vacation' was SAS navigator Mike Sadler

who had come to understand his commander's complex personality.

SADLER: He was physically terribly tough

and a very nice and kind fellow most of the time.

Once he had gone beyond a certain point, drinking

he became somebody quite different.

After a splendid lunch that we had in a black market restaurant

we were all sitting round drinking our coffee and so on

and he suddenly produced a hand grenade

and pulled the pin out and stood it in the middle of the table.

We didn't know quite what to do.

We all sat wondering whether to dive under the table.

Some people did.

Others thought, well, he can't be intending to blow himself to pieces and us

so we just sat there.

And of course he'd cut the detonator off

so it was alright, but it was a sort of, you know

he liked to give somebody a fright.

BEN: It was a typically macho Mayne performance

but it was also symbolic of the kind of war the SAS was now fighting.

Filled with daring bravado, but with cruelty just beneath the surface.

For four years. the SAS had fought its unconventional war

across baking deserts and through deep forests

battling against invaders who wished to conquer and enslave the world.

But as the war entered its final. bloody chapter

the SAS found itself fighting against people defending their own land.

In March 1945 the SAS crossed the Rhine and entered Nazi Germany.

As the Allies chased the Nazis back into Germany

the SAS were in the vanguard

acting as a forward reconnaissance force

weeding out pockets of resistance and battling the fanatical SS.

BEN: The end of the war was in sight

and Paddy Mayne plunged into his final conflict

with a fervour that was either supremely brave, or suicidal

and possibly both.

With orders only to coordinate the action

Mayne hadn't tasted battle since the massacre of his men at Termoli.

He was itching for a fight.

And he brought along his own musical accompaniment.

He parachuted in with a gramophone strapped to his leg.

Paddy Mayne would invade Germany to the strains of his favourite Irish music

the ballads of Percy French.

PERCY FRENCH BALLAD PLAYS

As they advanced through Northern Germany

the forward column of Mayne's jeeps came under intense fire.

The action was mapped in the War Diary.

A group of SAS men were pinned down by the roadside

and cut off from any support.

Paddy Mayne realised that the only way to save them

was with a full-blooded charge.

"Who wants to have a go?" he asked.

MUSIC CONTINUES

GUNFIRE

With a volunteer gunner at his side

Mayne hurtled into a storm of bullets, laying down his own barrage.

When he reached the end of the road, Mayne calmly executed a U-turn

and, under heavy fire, ran the gauntlet again.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Mayne saved all of his men

picked up the wounded and dead

and, by some miracle, emerged without a scratch.

He said "People think I'm a big mad Irishman but I'm not.

I calculate the risks and have a go."

This, his final battle of the war, was fought in much the same way as the first.

Saving his men with a complete disregard for his own safety

and killing in prodigious numbers.

MUSIC CONTINUES

BEN: Paddy Mayne was recommended for the Victoria Cross

the highest British award for valour.

The War Diary contains the many citations he received.

By a single act of supreme bravery, he drove the enemy from their stronghold.

Not only did he save the lives of the wounded

but also completely defeated and destroyed the enemy.

This officer is worthy of the highest award for gallantry and leadership,.

And yet, Mayne was not awarded the Victoria Cross.

Here, on his commendation, the word VC is crossed out.

Quite why Mayne was denied the Victoria Cross

was, and remains, a source of deep controversy.

Perhaps some at HQ didn't want the SAS to be given the distinction.

Perhaps Mayne's drinking and brawling had counted against him.

But the real explanation may be simpler.

BEN: To merit the Victoria Cross

heroic actions need to be verified by independent witnesses.

In SAS operations - covert, fast moving, self-regulating -

such criteria are often impossible to meet.

Paddy Mayne may have been denied this ancient honour

because he was fighting a new sort of war.

For many in the SAS

the failure to award Paddy Mayne the VC

was proof that the regiment had never been fully accepted

by the military establishment.

Mayne had led the SAS on their fast charge against the Nazi diehards.

But as they advanced into the heart of Germany

it was John Tonkin who uncovered the full horror

of what Hitler's SS could do to ordinary civilians.

BEN: The SAS were heading for Berlin

when John Tonkin, in the lead jeep, caught the first whiff.

A cloying stench of fleshly rot and excrement

that seemed to hang in the air like a plague miasma.

The reek of pure evil.

The appalling smell grew steadily stronger as they advanced.

TONKIN: That is the main entrance gate to the administration block

of the totally infamous and unbelievable Belsen Concentration Camp.

There is no way of describing the horror of that camp.

You can only describe it as meeting some 30,000 walking skeletons.

When a prisoner got to the stage where they couldn't walk any longer

they just dragged them out and threw them into the pit

and there were living skeletons still in those pits.

A very, very grim story altogether.

While we were there, they were, just for fun

taking pot shots at the prisoners

and nobody was paying any attention

and I have never been so angry in my life.

So I went round and I got hold of all these... all their officers.

I took my men with me, and we lined them up

and I said

"Unless that shooting stops immediately

you are all going to die very horribly"

and I said "Now, get out and stop it"

and they went out immediately and the shooting stopped.

Tonkin gave orders to arrest the commandant of the camp

along with the rest of the guards.

Instead of exacting revenge on the SS

Tonkin demonstrated the meaning of civilisation.

My father had huge self-control when he was there in Belsen

not to have wanted to get rid of all of the officers.

Dad always said to us that we must never, ever forget

what happened there

so that it never happens again.

TONKIN: What a creed like Nazism can do to people is unbelievable

and this is a bit of a grim story

but the truth should be known because it's glossed over.

CHEERING

On May 8th. the war in Europe was officially over.

Millions took to the streets to rejoice on VE day.

The Prime Minister Churchill made the speech that it was all over?

And so you can imagine the army chiefs of the SAS

driving right up the steps into bars.

And the men had another reason to celebrate.

David Stirling. the maverick visionary who created the SAS

had been freed from Colditz

and was on his way back to London.

But Stirling was not quite free yet.

On his return. he was held in a psychiatric evaluation camp.

They assumed anybody who came out of Colditz

required treatment before they were safe

to be allowed back into normal circulation.

So we were put inside a camp which had a wide parameter

and so on

and they had all the official nannies there.

We were told we had to be there for two days.

For over two years. Stirling had been trying and failing to escape from captivity,.

He was determined not to fail this one last time.

I don't think there was anybody left in the camp at all by 11 o'clock.

We were all in London or gone home.

By 12 o'clock that evening I was in a nightclub.

By 2 o'clock I was having my first Roger for years.

Stirling was too late to rejoin his regiment.

It was assumed that a specialised unit like the SAS had no future in peacetime.

On October 4th 1945

the SAS received a crisp. unemotional memo from the War Office

with the directive they knew was coming.

"It has been decided to disband The Special Air Service."

Everyone was going to be sent back to their regiments.

Well, you can imagine people being away from their regiments for years

and all this comradeship in SAS.

It was frightening.

I asked for a favour

and I was told "Your day is over.

You're not a blue-eyed boy now."

And I said "Well, I'll stand on my own two feet

and I'll survive where you won't, you so and so."

That was an officer too.

ALMONDS: I'm inclined to think, at my present age

that I must have been a bit of a fool

but I still wouldn't have missed it.

We certainly unsettled people.

I think that the Germans knew who the regiment were

by the time the war came to an end

and I think we probably helped to speed it up.

We helped speed up the collapse in Europe.

I think as you get older

you appreciate it more in different ways.

It's not that you're so proud or so...

What's the word I can think of?

It's the family, it's the people, the friends

that you will never, ever - until you're dead - forget!

Ripped & Corrected By mstoll February 2017

Ripped & Corrected By mstoll March 2017 - Released on www.Addic7ed.com