This is a colourful biography from The Mirror:
The Lions King: Hard-drinking, brawling rugby star who became war hero and original member of the SAS
By
Rod McPhee
Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne carved out a stellar career with the 1938 touring Lions then took the courage he showed on the rugby pitch into the Second World War, joining the SAS as a founding member.
When the British and Irish Lions psych themselves up to tackle the All Blacks in New Zealand tomorrow morning, they should draw on the heroics of one of their greatest legends.
Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne was the ultimate, old school, action man who juggled rugby with battling Nazis and boozy brawls.
After carving out a stellar career with the 1938 touring Lions, he took that stealth and courage he had shown at rugby on to the battlefields of the Second World War.
There, he became a founding member of the elite Special Air Service, the SAS, in 1941.
Mayne was the archetypal commando, too, with a love of drinking, brawling and practical jokes. But he also became Britain’s most decorated soldier — only narrowly missing out on receiving the Victoria Cross.
And it was all down to a series of daring raids in which he proved himself as fearless as he was ruthless. In one incredible incicent, he went 250 miles behind enemy lines to attack German army barracks inside a hut at Cairo in Egpyt.
Martin Dillon in his biography, Rogue Warrior Of The SAS: The Blair Mayne Legend, writes: “With a crash, the door of the hut burst open. Framed in it stood a giant of a man in khaki battle gear, a sandy-coloured beard under an officer’s peaked cap.
“The Tommy Gun clenched to his right side spoke. The talk and laughter turned to shouts, screams and gasps of horror. Burst after burst, he fired.
“There were 50 rounds in the drum. Within seconds, the hut was littered with dead and dying. As the wounded tried to crawl for cover, any cover, a final burst blew out the lights. Only the firelight now played on the bloody bodies. Then, Paddy Mayne was gone.”
The raid on the troops of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, took place on December 14, 1941, just a week after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the US into the conflict.
But it was just one of many attacks Mayne spearheaded in locations across the North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. He earned himself a long line of honours — and not just from the British military.
He received the Distinguished Service Order with three bars, one of only seven British servicemen to receive that award four times during the Second World War. The post-war French Government also gave him the Legion d’honneur and the Croix de Guerre.
Born in County Down, Northern Ireland, in 1915, Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne grew up to become the ultimate alpha male. Not only was he handsome and sporting - excelling at golf, cricket and rifle shooting - he was also intelligent, taking a degree in law with a view to becoming a solicitor.
But it was his rugby union skills that showed the greatest promise, and by 1938 he rose through the ranks to become a member of the British Isles team - the forerunner of the Lions.
One match report recalled how he played with “ruthless efficiency” and marvelled at the way he: “covers the ground at an extraordinary speed for a man of his build, as many a three quarter and full back have discovered.”
During the First Test in South Africa in 1938, however, he also displayed other characteristics associated with old school rugby players.
His most notorious bit of tomfoolery came when he went on a late night hunting trip and returned to his teammates’ hotel room, broke down the door and announced: “I’ve just shot a springbok.”
And sure enough there was an antelope draped over his shoulders. “Jimmy Unwin (another teammate) has been complaining that the meat here isn’t as fresh as it is back home.”
After taking it to Unwin’s room, where he threw it into his bed and cut his leg open with the animal’s horn, he then dumped it outside the room of the South Africa manager, with a note saying: “A gift of fresh meat from the British Isles touring team.”
He drank copious amount of booze and would smashed up the hotel room of one or two of his colleagues.
His teammate, centre Harry McKibbin recalled how he’d burst into their rooms in the middle of the night, knocking the doors off the hinges, and smashing up all the furniture until: “all the chairs and tables and things were just so much bits of kindling around us in the room while we were still in bed.”
Not to mention the legendary story of when he met a team of convicts working on the Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, who were being shackled as they slept at night underneath the seating. Sympathising with one of the men, who said he’d only committed a minor crime, he returned after dark and sprung him using boltcutters.
Mayne’s partner in crime was Welsh hooker Bunner Travers, and they’d both go off, dressed as sailors, to get into scraps at the docks of Durban, just to satisfy his taste for violence.
Colonel David Stirling, one of the men who knew Paddy best, said he was prone to “outbursts of satanic ferocity.”
He believes he had two sides to his character. The action man he had become, but also the frustrated, cultured lawyer. His law career had been stifled by pursuing rugby then by the outbreak of war in 1939, when he received a commission in the Royal Artillery.
Col Stirling said: “This frustration explained at least some of his violent acts and his black moods. Among its positive effects it also explained Paddy’s astonishing intuition and inspiration in battle.”
And Col Stirling would know. He was the man who first recruited Paddy to join what would become the SAS, carrying out the most dangerous missions of the war.
It was a field of war which required someone as brave and single-minded as Paddy, particularly in the Western Deserts of Egypt. It was there that defeating the overwhelming forces Rommel, who had a stranglehold on North Africa, was essential to winning the war.
Col Stirling said: “On one of his early operations Paddy was brilliantly successful but he pushed ruthlessness to the point of callousness. His temperament and moods made him a difficult subordinate....quick-tempered, audacious and vigorous in action but not one who took kindly to being thwarted, frustrated or crossed in any way.”
Mayne carried out raids in France, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya. His speciality was using Jeeps to carry out hit-and-run raids inflicting maximum damage on the enemy - not just troops but also their war capability. It’s claimed he personally destroyed more than 100 Nazi aircraft.
Many of the procedures and techniques which are still used by the SAS were devised and implemented by Mayne during the first four years of the service.
After another daring raid, one of his last, on Oldenburg in North West Germany on April 9, 1945, he was initially awarded a VC. But this was downgraded six months later to a lower honour, the Distinguished Service Order with three bars.
It’s a move which has baffled military men and military historians. Even King George VI enquired why the Victoria Cross had “so strangely eluded him”
Some say it was because hot-headed Mayne, who’d became Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the war, had punched the second in command in his battalion during one heated exchange. Others say it was down to a technicality - because the raid in question was multiple acts of bravery, not a single act.
Either way, an Early Day Motion put before the House of Commons in June 2005, which was supported by more than 100 MPs, called on the VC to be reinstated. Though it failed, there’s still hope it might eventually succeed, though it will have to be awarded posthumously.
After the war Mayne had to quit rugby due to back pain, believed to be an injury caused by his time in the SAS. Though he achieved his ambition of becoming a solicitor, he still retained a reputation.
Legend had it he’d frequent multiple drinking dens in his home town of Newtownards and nearby Belfast, where he’d challenge any man in the bar to a fight. Legend had it he’d always win too.
Even his death, aged 40, was far from usual. He was killed in 1955 when he was in collision with farm vehicle as he staggered home after yet another boozy night on the tiles.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lions-king-hard-drinking-brawling-10757429
