The Daring Dozen by Gavin Mortimer

Author:Gavin Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Daring Dozen: 12 Special Forces Legends of World War II
ISBN: 9781780964553
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

On 1 October, 1SAS paraded for the final time at Hylands House in front of Brigadier Calvert and the following month, having tied up all the loose administrative ends, Mayne left the British Army as one of the most decorated soldiers in its history. He did not return to Northern Ireland and the firm of solicitors for which he had briefly worked before the outbreak of war; after six years of adventure that would have been far too dull. Instead Mayne signed on for a two-year expedition to Antarctica with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, along with two other former 1SAS officers – Mike Sadler and John Tonkin.

The survey’s objective was as much political as it was scientific, the aim being to establish a number of bases in the Antarctic region in the face of claims from Argentina and Chile. Mayne flew by air, arriving in Montevideo, Uruguay, before his fellow expedition members who came by sea. Left to his own devices for a few days Mayne drank a lot and began keeping a journal, a feature of which was references to bouts of acute pain.

Mayne had suffered an injury to his back at some point during the war, although he concealed his suffering from his comrades. When exactly the injury occurred is not known, but it might well have been during that first fateful L Detachment raid in November 1941 when the unit parachuted into a gale-force storm. The pain intensified when the expedition left Uruguay for the Falklands in January 1946 and when they arrived in Port Stanley, Mayne was examined by two doctors, who ‘talked of paralysis and serious trouble, so I am going home. It is still hurting me quite a bit. I think the movement of the ship causes a lot of the trouble.’32

Mayne arrived home in Northern Ireland in March 1946, preceded by several articles in the local press heralding the return of their prodigious son. The theme was uniform: Colonel Mayne, war hero and bravest of the brave, is coming back to Belfast. Such unwanted attention would become the bane of Mayne’s life.

In April he was appointed Secretary of the Incorporated Law Society of Northern Ireland, and he was enrolled in the Belfast Arts Club, the golf club and the sailing club. Although his back injury prevented him from resuming his rugby career, the 31-year-old Mayne was a regular spectator at matches in the Province. He moved back into the family home in Newtownards and bought a red Riley Roadster, a sports car that was soon a regular sight on the road between Belfast and Newtownards, ten miles to the east of the city.

But beneath the surface Mayne struggled to reconcile himself to the banality of civilian life after six years of thrilling adventure. There was also the psychological fallout from his war service. Like most men of his generation, Mayne was loathe to admit that the horrors of combat might have scarred him mentally. It was an era of the ‘stiff upper lip’ and there was no such thing as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

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