Listen to the episode here.

Angie continues with her love affair with SAS member Paddy Mane. Join us as she takes us through his work during WWII. Paddy is quite the hero. While demurely accepting medals for his valor, our favorite Irishman is leading his troops miles behind enemy lines and making the lives of the Axis powers rough.

This story pairs well with:

Paddy Mane’s Intro to the SAS

Transcript

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two friends join forces after compulsively studying history means learning the back stories behind them, word vomiting on friends, coworkers, and mailmen, and coming together and telling each other the story we’ve only recently learned. I’m host one, I’m Teresa, and then I’m host two. 

Angie: Oh, I cut you off. I mean, the queen of cutoff, apparently. 

Theresa: I mean, look, it’s episode 138. We’re going to die on the way. They don’t know by now. 

Angie: Sorry, guys. I’ll just that’s you. That’s my apology for the next 138 episodes. 

Theresa: Yeah, I mean, if you wanted a professional podcast with a script and out back and forth without some people, you know, having friends, doing life together and enjoying another one’s company, go find something else. 

Angie: We’re sure this is not that. No, we do offer a ton of research and great sources, but we are also entirely unscripted. 

Theresa: Entirely unscripted. And I’ve never heard the story that Angie’s going to tell me. And so all of my reactions are just that reaction. 

Angie: I wish I wish you guys could have seen her face just that it was like, do you see me? Do you see me like, you know, in your eyebrows go up? 

Theresa: I mean, look, anyway, I’ve got anime eyes. These things take up a third of my skull when I blink. My face disappears. They’re cute. 

Angie: Thank you. OK, don’t go into the haters. 

Theresa: Oh, I, you know, I shoot. I can hate or I can listen to the haters and recognize that they’re cute. Be like, yeah, they are huge, aren’t they? 

Angie: I don’t think there’s any haters, but if there are, I’ll punch you in the face. 

Theresa: I don’t know if you’d have an opportunity. I don’t know if you’ve met me. I just kind of bull right through them. 

Angie: Honestly, and I just sit back and watch. It’s way more fun for me 

Theresa: when I need my help at all. No, like in karate, whenever this the instructor goes, we’re going to do some partner work, Teresa, be nice. What? Teresa be nice. 

Angie: Literally was minding in my own business this time. 

Theresa: We’re going to be partner work. I know your job is not to hit him as hard as possible. Oh, well, that’s rude. OK, thanks for using my full government name in that one. Put my hands in my pockets. You know what? 

Angie: That actually is a perfect segue for my story today, for your story. 

Theresa: OK, so you have been covering Patty, Maine for legit. It’s been a month of Patty, Maine. And like, so are you going to take over the whole episode and just wrap up Patty so that, you know, we can come to some sort of conclusion? 

Angie: Crescendo. Yeah. Yeah, because here’s the thing. If I don’t wrap it up today, you will never hear the end of it for me. I will continue for another 12 episodes. 

Theresa: I mean, at that point, a minimum podcast. 

Angie: It truly so I thought for everybody that has the short time, what is that? Short times, short brain span, whatever. Yeah, short attention span. Wow, thanks. Short time. OK, yeah. Short time. And attention. 

Yeah. Short times again for your attention that I would do my best to whittle this down into an hour and I am going to try so hard. So please bear with me. That said, my disclaimer for this is I am leaving a ton out. 

A ton, a ton. If anything I have said over these last few stories has resonated with you, please just go read the books, go read the articles, go watch the YouTube. There’s so much great information out there, not just about Patty, Maine, but about a team, about his unit, about the other men on his unit. 

Please just go find it and regale yourself because it is so much fun and so inspiring and so, so World War II in a nutshell. So in my last few stories, my sources are mostly the same. Danny and Melissa’s books, Band of Brothers, Forged in Hell, excuse me, Dagor’s Drawing, those are my, that’s my main source. And then Hamish Ross has a great biography on Patty, Maine. 

That’s really, really marvelous. I highly recommend that. And there’s tons of articles from the BBC to Warfare History Network. I try to mention them as I cite them. So for my last two episodes, I told you about his early life, his time in rugby, his time with Petter and Commando 11. And that sort of, and his time with Ian McGonigal, right? Like that sort of all leads us to him recovering from malaria in hospital in Egypt. 

So I think that’s just a fun visual anyway. Like he’s sort of mining his own business, covered in sweat, bored to death, like literally hating life when he gets this new assignment. And he is like ready, he’s gunning. 

Let’s do this. So he’s recovering in Egypt. He is approached by this high-born man called David Sterling. So the fledgling unit that Sterling feels Maine would be a great fit for. The L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade. Now, this is like decidedly a deceptive name, right? Because the L in L Detachment kind of applies. There’s a detachment K, A through K, right? 

Theresa: Like, wait, so he creatively named it on purpose. Yes. Oh. 

Angie: There was a lot of forethought into his planning when he came up with this. So this already gives the enemy something of a problem to look at, right? In fact, Rommel himself, like Irwin Rommel, like Field Marshal Rommel. 

Theresa: Yeah, yeah. He gained a healthy respect. Right. 

Angie: He’d gained a healthy respect for the SAS later, saying that, quote, this one unit had caused me more harm and damage than any other unit of similar size within Allied forces. OK. So there are real problems for him. So as I mentioned earlier, Maine lets McGonagall know about this new unit and they both took it up together. And instead of heading to Asia where he was previously going to go when he was done being sick, they head to North Africa. And it’s September of 1941. Maine, McGonagall and crew arrive to a sign in the desert that simply says Sterling’s Rest Camp. 

It’s in Kibrit in Egypt. It’s believed that when they showed up to this camp, it was less than prepared. The camp was sandblasted and empty, and there are no supplies. One could say that their first mission was to borrow or liberate the needed supplies from a camp of New Zealanders nearby, including, but not limited to, tents and all other gear, including the camp piano. 

Theresa: And so a piano just being carried off overhead by a handful of men. Yes. 

Angie: They won’t notice that thing. No. And this act, in my opinion, pretty much, like this first act, pretty much sums up the rest of the FAS, like in a nutshell. They are great at scavenging. So these guys, they’re in the desert. 

They’ve just stolen a camp’s worth of gear and then the real training begins. Now, if it’s not clear already, this unit was not a customary normal unit. This unit was designed to harass and upend the enemy behind their own lines, like sometimes hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory. 

And all that starts here in Kibrit. So this unit is super unorthodox in many respects, but some of their key training involves familiarizing themselves with all sorts of weapons, even though it’s chosen by the enemy, because when you’re traveling light, you’re likely going to need to scavenge, like I said earlier. So you’re going to need to know how to shoot everything you come across. All the ammo, all the weapons, right? 

Like you’re going to need to understand how this works. Additionally, one of the other really crucial elements for these boys, they’re taught to fight and work in the dark. So they had to, quote, feel utterly at home in darkness. This does a couple of things for them, right? It gives them the cover of darkness, but it also works to demoralize the enemy in more ways than one, which is a huge part of their game because the night was. 

Right. If you don’t know where your enemy is coming from, you’re always on edge. And they have no clue where the essay is coming from. Like I said earlier, for the sake of this whole episode, it’s going to be whittled down to like the bare bones of recommend reading on stuff like I mentioned earlier. 

Let me skip forward a little bit. OK, so one of the things that they’re learning in the desert. And I find this so funny. They need to learn how to parachute. Like not all of them are jump certified yet. 

Theresa: And I just so I feel like that’s part and parcel to any kind of special operations. Well, you would think that, right? 

Angie: But like also this is sort of the beginning of special forces. So they’re still figuring out what they need to know how to do. Like special forces had been around, but not to this extent, not to this like level of deep behind enemy line territory. How do we get there? Right. So some do know how to jump. Most don’t. And one of the other training officers develops this like full proof plan, which is taking them out into the desert in the back of trucks at varying speeds and having them jump out because you can’t get called to special air service without doing this. Right. I mean, initial plan. 

Theresa: You say that we did something like that in college, but we use shopping carts in the quad where we would go along the cement walkways and then just launch it into the grass and the wheels would catch and they would just fling you into the mud puddles that would that would collect. Yeah. Perfect. And that’s not a good result of broken bound. 

Angie: Well, it did for these guys. There were a lot of injuries in this. So initially the first means of infiltration for them was via parachute. Like that was what they thought was going to be the most convenient. 

But by the end, infiltrations of them would take any shape necessary to get where they needed to go, both in the desert and in Europe. And they would end up growing to favor the American Willis Jeep. We call it a willy. 

Theresa: There’s your willy Willis. Yeah. 

Theresa: Well, they’re formal. They’re classy. 

Angie: They are so classy. But back to the desert. So they’re training to be dropped by the IRS, excuse me, the RAF by jumping out of the back of their trucks, like I mentioned, right? So one of them, HR Fitzroy McLean, who would eventually rise to Brigadier rank reports for days and nights on end, we trudged internably over the alternating soft sand and jagged rocks of the desert weighed down by heavy loads of explosives, explosives, eating and drinking only what we could carry with us. In the intervals we did weapon training, physical training and training, training in demolitions and navigations. 

They’re busy from day one, training, training, training, training for marches that are miles and miles long, which in turn would give them the physical stamina to be able to walk back 100 miles to Allied lines when they were captured behind lines. Like that was a regular occurrence for them, right? And they’re having this problem, right? 

So as they’re training, operations are getting the green light to go and then they’re promptly getting the red light. For one reason or another. Side note here, high brass, super not fond of these guys. Really? Yeah. They’re not, they’re not keen on this sort of type of guerrilla warfare that they are partaking in. 

Theresa: Oh, this is the, okay. That’s exactly why it’s the un-gentlemenly warfare. Right. 

Angie: They’re not keen on that. They would much rather you just march out to the enemy and see the wise their eyes and blast everybody apart like that. 

Theresa: That’s, that’s, yeah, swords were the most gentlemanly thing to fight with. Exactly. Yep. Okay. 

Angie: Um, uh, their ideals and their motto, which is who dares win. Um, a high command based on this who dares win motto and this kind of rag tag lifestyle, they lead high command sort of does whatever they can to brush this unit into the dustbin over and over again. Cause it doesn’t go well because Churchill himself sort of loves them. Mm hmm. Um, but on top of that, there’s on top of the high brass, not being a big fan of them, there’s a ton of reasons why missions could be canceled, right? 

Like whether or information change or faulty information, all sorts of stuff. Right. So they finally get their first operation. They get their first go ahead and it’s operation squatter. Their goal is targeting airfields at Timoney, um, which is West of Tobruk. Uh, so I think you mentioned it a moment ago, but this is Erwin. And almost Africa core, like they’re here to oust him out of that. 

Theresa: Did probably do anything outside of Africa. Like he had to, but that’s all I really know about. 

Angie: He did. We’ll talk about him later. Okay. Great. Yeah. Um, however, operation squatter, it’s a disaster from the beginning. It is a travesty actually think like the storm of the century in the desert. 

So you have a storm and you also have a sandstorm of gale force winds. They’re told there is no reason the plane should be in the air today. Not at all. Not, not, no, this is, we haven’t had a storm like this in 30 years, but Thurling is convinced this is like their only chance and they need to make it happen and all his cells agree. They’re like, yeah, put us up. We can handle it. 

Um, so just for a lineup here, there are 65 guys. Five bomb bay transport planes and all the gear they’re going to need right off the bat count one of those planes out. It was shot out of the sky. Everyone on board was killed. Oh, great. 

Theresa: That’s like, that’s a good omen. Yeah. 

Angie: Um, of the 65 that left the airfield that day, only 22 make it back. And then, wow. Yeah. Zero enemy aircraft are destroyed because even if a team, a team or a loan guy makes it close enough to the enemy target to like where they’re trying to cause this chaos, the demo gear is soaked and utterly useless. This is a disaster in more ways than one, right? Like this is supposed to be the mission that sets them apart. 

And in a way it sort of does. It sets the tone for their relentless nature and their willingness to put everything on the line every single time. So let me just tell you a little bit about what happens to some of these guys. 

If you survive the jump, you might not survive the landing. Several were shredded by the desert because of the gale force winds and their inability to remove themselves from their shoots. From their shoes? 

Theresa: Their shoots, their parachute. Oh, shoots. Okay. I was like, I have never been more afraid of footwear in my life. 

Angie: God, I’m not wearing any. Um, so some are captured. Some are killed. Some never make the landing in the first place. Like it’s, it’s truly a travesty. The worst part of this story though, is that the crew that McGonagall’s with, very few ever make it back. And it would be years before Patty knew what happened to his friend. Years. In fact, Hamish Ross says in his book that it was not until October of 1944. So that means 1944. When Jim Blakely, Blakeney and Roy Davies had escaped from the POW camp and were rep, repatriated back to Britain in the SAS. 

So the truth was known, right? At that point, they make it back to the SAS. One of them reports saying, after landing Ian lay up until dawn and found himself, so excuse me, the reporter is saying this. After landing, I laid up until dawn and I found myself alone with other members of the party, including Lieutenant McGonagall, who was badly injured and died later. 

The belief is he sustained heavy, heavy wounds from his land and didn’t make it past the night. This event would shape the way Maine does everything forward in my opinion. And I know it haunts until his dying day. In fact, it would be months later, like months later, when Maine finally gets his first leave, he takes a vehicle and he drives off into the desert in search of him, McGonagall, based on some shaking until they receive. 

Oh, he crisscrosses the desert looking for anything to say what happened to McGonagall. So this is a disaster, right? And Raul is super low and they need some wins. Like they needed that to be a win, but now they really need some wins. And they would get them. They would infiltrate enemy bases and destroy as many planes as they could. 

In one instance, not only does Maine’s team ruin multiple planes, but Maine sees a barracks and knowing it’s full of the pilots, he kicks the doors in and basically says, sup, eating fellas, and removes the rest of them from the flight list forever. Sterling, yeah, just Bren gun it all the way into the room. Sterling sees this as a bit over callous, but it would win Maine his first DSO. So this is a medal called the Distinguished Service Orders for, quote, succeeding in destroying 24 enemy aircraft beside the bomb dumps, petrol dumps, et cetera, and shot the staff, pilots, et cetera, in the officer’s quarters. 

No prisoners taken. It goes on to say courage and leadership and his skill and devotion to duty. The citation for his DSO praised the fact that he led this raid in person and himself destroyed and killed many of the enemy. So as a side here, Sterling kind of gives him the ringer for this one because he feels the death of the pilots was quite callous, but then Sterling himself later goes on to do something very similar only they weren’t pilots. And Maine’s retort to him is it takes years to train a pilot. That’s why I took the pilots out. You killed mechanics. You killed grunts. 

Theresa: Oh, which one was worse? Right. So Maine saw this barracks of pilots as a opportunity to take some of these elite level, like you can get a plane up and going within a few months, you cannot get a pilot up and going, not you. 

Theresa: You can take. A car mechanic teach him a couple of things that now they can they can limp along a plane. Right. 

Angie: But you can’t take a Formula One driver and get him to. Yeah. Right. And so that’s sort of his his thought process in this and Sterling eventually, I think sort of gets it, but they kind of go back and forth for a while about it. 

Now, earlier on the same raid, they were a little bit too generous with the bombs that they had brought with them. So they had to get creative and Maine just started ripping the instrument clusters out of the dashboard with his bare hands, which is pretty impressive because even Reg Seekings, this is one of Patty’s own men. He was a champion boxer as well. He couldn’t figure out the strength it took for Maine to be able to do that. Because I mean, let’s just do it. 

Theresa: That seems like some decent grip strength. 

Angie: Yeah. And they so by the end of the night, 10 more planes. Would have been destroyed in this way with Maine having the highest count. 

Theresa: With just going in and using your murder mittens to rip out the dashboard. Buddy had some murder mittens. 

Angie: Just saying they were like Hamhawks. Massive hands. And so I’m thinking all those years on the rugby field played off this night. Right. And this raid would sort of start this what I’m going to call healthy rivalry rivalry between Maine and Sterling. Sterling is not quite as astute in the field as Maine is, but where Sterling succeeds is in the halls of power. So he’s great at rubbing elbows with the higher ups and getting his men what they need while Maine is great on the ground. That doesn’t mean Sterling doesn’t have some victories in the air on the ground. It just means that Maine saw very quickly who was good at what and really honored Sterling for his ability to speak to the authorities because that was not Maine’s jam at all. So the sort of competition this goes on for a while. In fact, all the way up to 1943. 

Theresa: This feels very. Gimli and Legolas. 

Angie: Yes. It’s very much that. Yes. Only Sterling was very tall. So I think he was like six, five. He was not a short man. So you don’t have that visual, but have the visual of the account, the count competition for sure. Like I said, this this competition, it goes on from 41 to January of 43. One mission after the other, destroying whatever they can from the German Africa course, hindering their way forward and filling the germs with dread. 

Because like I mentioned earlier, the Germans couldn’t initially figure out where they were coming from and thought they were coming in from the ocean and had no idea that for all these months, they were basically living right under their noses, hundreds of miles behind enemy lines. I think it’s pretty awesome. That’s pretty badass. Right. So excuse me, I just lost my spot. Um, so it’s January. It’s 1943. Sterling is captured and he would remain so until the end of the war. In fact, war history online has this great write up saying quote on January 10, 1943, the legendary Sterling was captured when a special German unit ambushed his column. In Tanzania, he managed to escape and join a group of Arabs to meet. What did I say? 

Theresa: Tanzia. That’s Tunisia. Sorry. No, I mean, I could be completely wrong. I might be making up a whole place. 

Angie: No, you’re right. I added letters because I was reading the next word down. So he manages to escape that group and he joins a group of Arabs, but they sold them to the Germans for 11 pounds of tea. 

Theresa: Wow. Yeah, you know, you can do that. It’s weird that it’s 11 pounds of tea that first I was like, they sold them for 11 pounds. That also makes sense. But no, pounds is a measurement, not a currency. In this case, yes. 

Angie: The Phantom major, which would be Sterling’s nickname, tried unsuccessfully to escape four times from prison camp in Italy and then spent the rest of the war at the impregnable Kulditz prison in Saxony, Germany. So right before he had been captured, before Sterling had been captured in all those wild months, they were considered desert sea raiders and they had destroyed over 250 planes, countless other vehicles, fuel depots, communications and railways. And I think it is fair to pause at this moment and tell you that up to this point, as in Sterling’s command, Maine serves as his discipline officer. Would you like to know how he handled being the discipline officer? 

Theresa: Yes, yes, I would. Okay. 

Angie: So I should start with saying none of the guys in this unit want to be sent home, right? They’re all, they’re here for a reason. They all either volunteered or were chosen to be here. And neither Maine nor Sterling, I would assume, want to do the paperwork that sends someone back to their parent unit and Maine fully believes in those guys. So as discipline officer, his means of handling issues are two. Either A, whatever you’ve been caught getting in trouble doing, you’re going to go in the ring with me. Because remember, he’s a champion boxer. 

You’re going to take as many rounds in the ring with me as you can. And that’s it. Settled. 

We know the talk of the problem again. Or, and my personal favorite, if you can tell me a story that I find to be so entertaining about why you did what you did, I’ll forget it ever happened. That’s up there. 

Theresa: There was a person I saw on a video and they said, I let my kid insult me or tell jokes. But they, they have to make me laugh. And if they make me laugh, they’re not in trouble. But if they bomb that joke or toast, right? 

Angie: So the, the sort of story that goes along with that is that he, there was one evening where one of the men was supposed to return, you know, say by 10 o’clock. I don’t know if that’s the actual time, but he was two hours late. And when he finally showed up, Maine was like, young man, what, what’s your deal? And the guy kind of looks around and then looks at Maine straight in the face and says, well, um, you know, I was walking back to base and I went to light a cigarette and the wind was blowing and I couldn’t, I couldn’t lie. Couldn’t lie my cigarette. So I turned around to have put my back to the wind, lit my cigarette and started walking. I walked for two hours in the wrong direction before I realized I was in the wrong direction because, you know, it’s the desert stir. 

Sir. It’s obviously a bold, safe lie. Like he was just out having fun and Maine could not stop laughing. So he was like, right then carry on. And that’s, that’s how he dealt with their problems because for him, it was not like, infractions like that seems really in the grand scheme, things super, super useless when these guys are good at what they do. And if they have not committed some sort of atrocity, then they’re going to keep going about their lives and Maine’s going to forget about it. 

If you can tell them a joke or keep up with them in the ring, which I think is pretty freaking fantastic. So after Sterling is captured, though, Maine gets command of the SAS and they would cause so much more chaos for Rommel. Like if anything, if anybody has an inkling to read any of the books that I’ve mentioned, please read Brothers in Arms because there is so much about their time in the desert. That if I like had 17 hours to share, I would share, but what they do in the desert is phenomenal. 

So I’m just going to tell you about my favorite part of the book. The men are living out in it like they’ve lost their base. So they’re living out in the desert, like the Bedowins, like they are out. 

And they found this sort of rock outcropping where they’re able to park what jeeps they have remaining under it. And like camouflage it and they’re sort of they’re living in there and it’s that it’s the SAS. It’s some of the guys they’ve captured. It’s a couple of foreigners that have sort of joined their ranks and they’re all they’re all living in this sort of wild and absolutely free existence out in the desert. 

And the unit doctor Malcolm played out. He’s watching them and they’re having this night where like the bonfires roaring and there’s, you know, imagine being able to see the stars without city lights for hundreds of miles. Right. Like that’s what they can see. 

Yeah. And so they are seeing songs to the open sky and they are just having their very best time. And Malcolm played Aile writes in his journal, would they condemn? Would they be bitter? And then Lewis goes on to add, he just didn’t know. In a sense, it didn’t really matter for only those who were here who had lived in this moment would ever understand. 

There was something about this place, this time, this life that made the seemingly impossible possible, not to mention utterly unforgettable. They would never forget this. This is also where they would appropriate appropriate their unit song, Lily Marlene, which was a German marching song that they rewrote in their own words. 

In fact, Maine himself would write a good chunk of the lines. They still little Lily Marlene because in their unit at the time are a couple of German POWs that they take under their wing because one of the things that I can’t speak to all allied units, but this unit was very big. On treating POWs well. So if you come across this, we are going to do our very best to inform you that you are safe. You will be cared for. 

You will be fed and you will be protected. And doing that allowed the POWs the sort of freedom to like not try to be terrible or try to escape. And in fact, a lot of their POWs would try to stay on with them as like mechanics and cooks and things like that because they’re safe with them. So they’ve got a couple POWs staying with them. And one of the guys, I can’t remember which one, but one of them demands a song from the Germans. So the Germans sing in Lily Marlene and right about that point, they’re like, and that’s our new unit song. And if you get a second, just there’s a lot of YouTube, you can listen to it. It’s pretty fun. 

Theresa: You know, say that and all I can hear is there’s a littered Cohen song called Famous Blue Raincoat. And there’s a line that says, and you came home alone without Lily Marlene. And I didn’t know the reference. Now you do. 

Angie: Now you do. In the song, Lily Marlene is mentioned that she will never see her boyfriend again. So yeah. By early 1943, the war in the deserts waning and some sources say that kind of along with everything else they did, the ruin the Germans day that by this point, that accounted for up to 400 planes. Whoa. Main alone counted for more than twice that of any allied air air fighter in World War Two. 

Like any single fighter, mainly counted for double their kill. Geez. But like, let’s don’t tell the RAS because they’re real picky. So as I said, the Desert War is coming to a close and High Command has their eyes peeled for other jobs. 

Mainland Europe is where it’s at. Leading up to July of 43, Maine begins like overtraining his men with some of the most intense training you can remember. Or like you can imagine, like remember, most of their work is done at night. So they are trained and trained and trained and trained some more to do everything they do at night. So they scale almost your cliffs with their packs on their back. 

They’ve cleaned everything. They’re prepared for a very different war than they had been fighting for. And they’re not like they’re physically prepared, but I don’t think you can ever be mentally prepared for what you’re going into. Right. Right. 

Like it’s a whole new ballgame. The thing with Maine is that it said over and over again by his men that they knew he would put more stake in their lives than anything else. Like they were precious to him. He wrote home for them when they otherwise couldn’t. Like if they were in hospital or if they were missing, he would make sure their families knew what was going on. 

It was a personal offense to him when any one of them went lost. As I said, you know, he goes and looks for a McGonagall, right? Right. And he was doing that on his days off. 

Right. When he tells McGonagall’s mother, she writes back saying, I quote, I have just got your very kind letter and I really feel I cannot thank you enough for your great kindness. It was terribly good of you to have gone to Gazala and taken so much trouble to find Ian’s grave. I know he did not have an identity disc. I just think he wanted to be an unknown soldier, but I had hoped he had been found and buried as I meant to go to Gazala after the war. I miss him so much. More in fact every day, but I know he is safe and happy and terribly interested in what you are doing. I am sure he has been with you on all your operations since he died. Thank you very much for all your goodness. 

It has made such a difference. He would also send home what photos he had. He was an average photographer, so he was constantly taking pictures of his guys. If he had photos of them or had their personal effects, he would send them on to their parents or their wives or whatever once they passed. But for his men living, they knew that if he asked something of them, it wasn’t with intent for him to leave from the rear. 

He was going to be in first. So they had no problem following him into the jaws of hell. Like, yes, sir, let’s do the thing every single time. That said, I think that it just highlights the intense seriousness with which he took his job, but also the love he had for these guys. And I think that sort of makes going into Operation Husky a little bit easier when you kind of understand where he is like mentally and that he views their lives as his. priority and his own success or failure. 

Theresa: He really values each of their lives. Absolutely. 

Angie: I mentioned Operation Husky in the Underworld episode. Operation Underworld or excuse me, Operation Husky is basically the dress rehearsal for Operation Overlord, which is known as the Battle of Normandy, right? This is when we storm the beaches of Europe and we do the whole thing. So Operation Husky would see Maine and his men literally punch their way through the Nazi and fascist Italians of Sicily to take the island for the Allies because they need kind of an inroad. And Sicily seems like the most logical step to make it onto the mainland. Like we’re going to stop here, see what we can do here with this idea that we’ve got brewing, and then march forward. If Sicily works, we can take Normandy. 

Like that’s the gist of what they’re thinking. Okay. Okay. So the operation as a whole takes from the 9th of July of 43 to the 17th of August. They were to spearhead for this joint forces operation, taking down gun batteries and outsting the access from the island. In doing so, they would take one of the hardest, most senseless death counts of the war. 

Good Lord, if I could speak, it would be either. When one afternoon they’re like loading up their trucks to go out on patrol and a sort of attack of mortar rounds hits their vehicles and they lose several of their best men, several of their men that had been with them since the very beginning. And I think this was one of the hardest, if not the hardest moment of the war for me besides losing Ian. But this is also the moment that haunts the rest of them for the rest of the war because that particular moment should have never happened. 

And it was just by sheer luck that the Axis found them. So there’s that. Patty Mayn would receive the second bar to his DSO because of his leadership and his bravery and sissily. I don’t think it mattered a little, even a lick to him. He didn’t join the war for medals and he would tell King George himself that later. 

He would write to his sister saying, quote, have you heard? They have given me a bar to my DSO, still managing to bluff them. Hope yours fit as I am. Give my love to mother, yours be. But not to be all down in the dumps here. There was a few moments in sissily where he let the boys let their hair down and have fun. Normally they had strict rules they had to follow about conduct and whatnot. But there was one evening after a battle where they had cleared the town and he gave the boys two hours to loot. 

You cannot loot. But he gave them two hours to do so. And he knew what the ramifications of that were as a lawyer. 

Like he could be court-martialed for that. But they’re hungry. They’re thirsty. They have marched their way through sissily. They can find some food. 

They’re going to be just fine. So they find the booze. They find what’s remaining of the food. They find a pinot and they drag it out into the street. A what? A self-playing piano. Oh, okay. And they drive it out. 

Theresa: They drag it onto the second piano. This is the second piano they’ve stolen. 

Angie: I know. They love pianos. I think it’s hilarious. Only this one plays itself. So there’s a couple of guys that take a turn at looking like the absolute master of the piano, but they are absolutely not. 

Which I think is really funny. The brothel, all that emptied out. This town is literally a ghost town. So some of the boys take, they go into the brothel and they take a look around and they come out dressed as some of the finest ladies you’ve ever seen. They even have, right? They even have a master of ceremonies who’s wearing a black top hat, cane and all. One guy finds a gelato cart and he hands out treats. The Padre, for whatever reason, happens upon the biggest cache of booze you could find. And just prior to this moment, the Padre comes across two guys that are rifling through somebody’s house and he’s like, what is he doing? 

And they’re clearly looking for a ball. And they’re like, he kind of gets him on a little bit of a talking tool about trying to steal somebody else’s alcohol. Then like 20 minutes later, they find him with a will barrel full of beer, like champagne, wine, whatever. And his response is, it’s for Blessing the Dead. And then two news reporters show up on the scene because remember, this is an allied attempt here, right? Right. 

And they capture as much of the impromptu carnival as they possibly can and they are delighted by it. At this time, Maine and one of his guys, Bill Deakins, blew up the bank safe in a loony tunes move kind of way and find documents. They’re all in Italian and a few silver spoons. Not long after this, an Army Provost Marshall, who’s like the military police, gets wind of their liberation of Italian goods and comes down to see what’s up. 

Theresa: Nothing, sir. 

Angie: Maine’s remain, he says. I observe that there have been considerable pilfering by your men in this area and I would like to have your explanation. Do I make myself clear? According to Damien Lewis, Maine’s response makes complete sense. 

Quote, you certainly do. And in a flash, Maine’s blue-gray eyes had turned icy and cold, but the young officer failed to detect the telltale danger signs. And in a few short strides, Maine crossed the room, grabbed the MP by the scruff of his neck, lifted him up and propelled him through the door. 

Get out, you mongrel dog, and stay out if you don’t want your mongrel neck broken. Lewis points out that the MP was blessed to get the door and not the window. Nobody had any further questions after that. Surprise, surprise. 

Right? Lewis gives us this brilliant description of what it was like getting back on board the ship. So they come to Cisley on board this ship called the Ulster Monarch, which had sort of become their floating home. And he says, quote, it was mid-afternoon when a profession, procession, had formed heading for the docks. 

One that Deacons described as surpassing any gathering at the finish of a jumble sail. One man loaded his booty into a pram, and then several others followed suit. There were typewriters perloined from the odd shop or office and armed fools of bottles, those not just used in celebrations. Fittingly, the Padre clutched several. One joker suggested he was bringing home the communion wine. Let it be known also that they brought the piano with them, and it would remain on board the Ulster Monarch for the rest of her service. 

Theresa: Wow. 

Angie: So several of Paddy’s men would receive metal after metal for their involvement in Operation Husky. And then from Cisley, they would move their operations into Italy to continue that spearhead punch, because they’re so very good at it. This particular area would be called Termally, and with its success, and again, this is like, so this is successful, and this is also another Allied Joint Task Force that would secure the Allied advance along the Eastern section and would sort of help to unhinge all the German defenses in the area. This battle is also the largest tank battle of the Italian campaign against the 16th Panther Division. So I don’t know if you know what that is, but like, the 16th Panther Division is the German equivalent of the U.S. Sherman tanks. Right. 

And it’s a whole lot of them. And our guys are sitting there with their willy-jeeps, like, okay, I guess this is what we’re going to do. They would fight their final battle in Italy at what they would call Bren Gun Ridge on October 6th. During this battle, one of his men, the man who was called Goldsmith, would say that Maine was, quote, immensely brave, almost to the point of recklessness. He always led from the front and was idolized by the men he commanded. At this battle, another of his men was able to locate and liberate a jeep from the nearby MPs and was able to, like, ferry ammo back and forth to the front with it. 

The MPs wanted to arrest him, but like, are you going to tell his commander that in the heart of battle? No, no. Right. So, and they took one look at Maine and they’re like, yeah, okay. You know what, we passed. 

Theresa: I got to go walk my fish. 

Angie: Pretty much. So, the battle of Bren Gun is a battle for the ages. And just as it’s getting really hairy for Maine and the men, right, they’re outnumbered, they’re outgunned, it’s a whole thing. He gets word of reinforcements that are coming. 

It’s the 76th Division, Irish Brigade, the first royal Irish fusiliers, the sixth royal, Inish-killing fusiliers, and 15 Sherman tanks. So, Maine turns to his men and says, quote, you’ll be all right now, lads. The Irish are coming and they’ll sort it all out for us because they’re all Irish and they are on their way. 

To say he is a proud Irishman is kind of an understatement, I think. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. I’m going to fast forward because there’s so much, right? But I could share, by the end of this mission, they get to go home, at least for a minute. Because then it’s on to France to be a pain in Hitler’s ass when you know your job, you know? Look, he’s good at one thing. 

Right. Their goal would be at this point to ensure that mass disruption of German reinforcements and, like, gear and whatnot stops coming north. So, in the over-simplest, like, the most oversimplified way, the SAS job, once again, would be to go deep behind enemy lines and piss everyone off. They would work with the French resistance in sabotage and just adored ambushing German columns as they wound their way through the French countryside. Now, for a bit. Okay, so once they make it into France, at this point, High Command is like, Patty, you are literally a Lieutenant Colonel. 

You can’t be out in the field. And Patty’s like, but dad, I think that’s where my friends are, right? And so High Command is sort of able to keep him safe for, like, a second. But he knows his guys in France are suffering. They are dealing with a terrain they have never had to play on before. They’re dealing with a whole different set of battle ideas, like, okay, in the desert, there was almost this gentlemanly conduct amongst the ranks they would encounter. 

But in France, they are dealing, like, they’re seeing the beginning of the hatred of, like, the fanatical side of things. So, and he knows this. And so he keeps like, okay, guys, I got to go. 

Okay, guys, I got to go. And you can imagine that High Command can’t keep him there very long. And he does literally whatever he can do to get on the ground with his men. So by this point, France is not safe. Hitler has released his Kill Commando Order. Are you familiar with this? 

Just remind me. So Hitler pretty much takes commandos as a personal offense, commandos of any kind, but particularly SIS. So instead of capturing them as a POW, like you would, like, a normal soldier, like a trooper or whatever, well, not a trooper, but like an infantryman, if you bear any of the markings of a commando unit, it’s kill on site, torture and kill on site. 

Oh, geez. And at this point, they are beginning to suspect, but they’ve not read any official documentation expressly stating that that’s the case, but they’re starting to very much understand that that is in fact what’s going on. And him and his men are, like, commandos, right? 

So this is a bit problematic. And Hitler takes the SAS as, like, a personal vendetta, like, he is out specifically to get them. Like I said, torture or shoot on site. So either way, if you’re an Allied Commando or you look like an Allied Commando, you’re cooked, as the youth say. So once main lands in France, like he finally gets to go ahead from High Command to leave, he then basically disregards all High Command orders to stay at base and stay out of the fray. Like he leaves them on red for weeks. Like they keep sending messages and he keeps, like, crumpling the paper and hanging up the phone, you know? 

Oh, I can’t hear it click because they have no clue what it’s like on the ground and he is literally not going to hide in the box, right? For his heroics in France, he would receive another bar to his DSO. So he is collecting the glitter, if you will. 

Theresa: The glitter. He is collecting the glitter. Really? Okay. Yeah. Collecting the glitter. 

Angie: At one point, and this is just a funny aside, they get word while main is still in, like before he’s made it into France, they get word of one of Rommel’s locations in France. And the SAS is like, you know, we could spend, we could send just like a handful of guys and we could get them, we could take them. 

Wouldn’t be hard. And main is like, absolutely not. Like, at the end of the day, you will have to cross 700 kilometers with Rommel. 

No, do not go after Rommel. And they sort of all assume that the reason he says that is because main wants to do it himself. That’s kind of what I was thinking. But in reality, the location of Rommel was just way too far away for them to pull it off safely. And so main’s looking at this like a bigger picture like, yes, I could send you in to your death if that’s what you’re aiming for, because you still have to figure out how to transport him back. Because the problem is catching Rommel, like killing Rommel is one thing, right? 

But catching Rommel and sending him back to Britain would have been such a huge, like to bolster morale. Right. That’s the goal. We want him to survive so we can put him on trial and all of that jazz. So I’m not going to say yes to you driving 300 miles one way to collect him and then 300 miles back to your base so you can exile him. Like, no, this is a terrible idea, guys. And there’s like another whole story here about someone else finding out about Rommel being here at this time. That’s just absolutely wild. But that’s neither here nor there. That’s for a whole other podcast. And in France, like one of the things they’re contending with is civilians, right? 

They didn’t really experience civilians in the desert and even in Italy and Sicily they experienced them but not in this concentrated village sort of way. Does that make sense? No. So, okay, in the desert there’s almost no civilians, right? Sure. There’s the Vettelwins that you come in contact with now and then and the Vettelwins love them so they’re often very well cared for by the 

Theresa: people that they meet in the war. The French civilians are not a fan. 

Angie: Most French civilians are a fan but the problem is the Nazi, if an SAS unit comes in and it clears the town or it ambushes a line of Nazi vehicles coming through, the way the Nazi handle this is punishing the villagers. 

Okay. Right? So, for the first time in the war for them they’re seeing this all out like hatred being put on people that have nothing to do with what’s going on. So the SAS has a real like morale problem with this. Like these people did nothing and you murdered a whole town because we came through here. 

So they’re seeing this for the first time and it’s no bueno. So now Patti and his men are doing their very best to keep innocent life safe while still doing their job and to say that that was taxing was an understatement. The other thing that they’re dealing with is the French resistance, which is on their side, right? 

They want to be helpful but it can be a little bit hard to organize. Like they have translators and they have guys that speak French and the French resistance has people that speak English. So it’s not like a translation issue for them but it’s more of a who are we listening to sort of thing. 

Like who’s actually part of the French resistance and telling the truth and who is Nazi pretending to be part of the French resistance. That seems like a problem, yeah. Right? There’s a little bit of, it’s hard to tell what’s fact from fiction there for them. So they are constantly on edge. They’re exhausted. They have no proper fortifications with which to work with. 

They’ve been at this for almost three months and they need to be relieved. And eventually he’s able to get us into safety and they spend the winter training and having a very good time in England. On their way to England they stop off in Paris for a bit where the boys cause general ruckus and have a great time. 

But now they know like we need some recoup time. So they spend the winter of 44 hold up in this great 18th century estate called Highland’s House, or Halon’s, pronounce it however you wish I guess because it’s H-Y-L-A-N-D-S. So Halon’s House. Now Halon’s House has already served as a hospital during the First World War and the lady of the house, Christine Hanbury, she had lost her husband in 23 and her only son Charles Jock Hanbury was one of the first R-E-F pilots to be killed in a flying accident. Oh, so for her she feels like it’s her duty to offer up her grounds and her home to this sort of unruly looking bunch. 

Like they constantly talk about how they’re perpetually unshaved and their hair’s long and shaggy and they just, you know, cause you can’t come across the proper shaved basin. Right. Right. So she opens the doors and just gives them free reign of the house. She said it was quote, her bit to disrown that man Hitler. I like her. I simply adore her. 

I’m hoping to find more information on her cause she sounds like such a fun woman. It’s safe to say she adores Maine and his men and they in turn adore her right back. They turn her banquet hall into a mess where she is a regular guest in her own house and would regale them with her world travels. One night they get a little bit too loose with the beverages and they drive the jeeps into the main hall. And then, and then one of them dares Patty that he can in fact not drive the Jeep up the stairs and park it on the balcony. 

He does with two 90 point turns. She comes down the stairs and says, now Patty, that’s enough. It’s high time you all go to bed and hat in hand. They all go to bed because the lady of the house said so. She has no qualms with the Jeep being parked on her balcony for the evening and just goes to bed. 

Theresa: She doesn’t know what that’s the future ladies problem. Present ladies going back to bed. 

Angie: Pretty much the next morning they’re all standing there. How the hell do we get it up here in the first place? And now we have to get it back down. 

I’m unclear on how they got it back down, but they did get it back down. Also at this point, because you know they’ve been through hell in France. They’ve got a lot of guys in hospital recovering from wounds or some of them are definitely sewing signs of what we now know today as PTL. They’re not going to be in the ISD, but one of them in particular is injured and sick. And Patty is super worried about him. So he sends a couple of guys down to the hospital to visit him. They’re visiting these guys all the time, but he sends a couple of guys down there to find out what earthly delights they could possibly bring to him to make him feel better. And the guy’s response is, I just want to come home. 

I hate it here. Get me out of the hospital. I just want to be back with you guys. And so they get home and they’re like, Patty, he just wants out. He wants to come back to Halein House, right? 

And he goes right then. So he calls the hospital up and the hospital says, absolutely not. We will not release him. His wounds are too severe. He’s far too sick for this. 

He needs to stay in hospital until at least the sickness is gone. Gets off the phone, turns to his men and says, well, I guess we’re breaking him out tonight. So they break him out of the hospital that night and bring him home. And miraculously, the sickness goes away and his wounds start to heal. He was super stressed. 

Yeah, he carries on with life just fine. What I would love to know that’s not in any of the books is the conversation, if there was one, with the hospital and anybody else about their missing soldier? Now, back to the war. 

I didn’t almost done. The plans for them are to head to Germany itself. So it’s now spring of 45. So they’ve had a good rest. They spent the winter in England, right? It’s spring of 45 and their mission on the first day in Germany is now under what they call Patty Force. So they have the SAS. 

That’s their name, but they are working under the name Patty Force, which I think is just super fun. Their first day, they end up getting hunkered down like a group of his men get like basically trapped in the like outskirts of this city under heavy fire from the Germans. Maine gets word of this and is like, well, there is a handful of our men laying in a ditch. We need to go get them out. And there are like, you can see the German forces around and they’re very like, they’re ready for this. So Maine takes one gunner and one man to provide support from a window that was sort of above the house. They had already cleared and he makes this suicidal run back and forth. So they’ve got the Vickers K gun on the back that the gunner is just firing like crazy. Maine’s firing like crazy and they’re driving back and forth to load their injured and casualties into the Jeep and get them out. 

They get them all out. And this event alone should have, in my opinion, qualified him for the Victoria Cross, but that’s a whole other issue. While in Germany, they were also some of the first allies to see a concentration camp, they saw a Bergen-Belsen and the whores within, and that’s where some of their greatest frustration stems from because a lot of the locals nearby didn’t believe that something that atrocious could happen. Like they had no idea. 

They believed that it was just British propaganda to drum up against the whole Nazi regime and everything. But then Richard Dimbley shows up. Do you remember Richard Dimbley from the Spaghetti Hoax story? 

Theresa: You say that and now I’m like, maybe. He’s the reporter, right? Uh-huh. 

Angie: So he can speak about spaghetti and he can speak about wartime atrocity. He shows up and basically shows the world what’s happened in these concentration camps. And so his men sort of get some vindication from that because people are now seeing what they saw for the first time. Once they leave the camp, at least two of Patty’s men are on the hunt for high-ranking SS officials, and they realize very quickly that their problem was the Hitler youth. These guys aren’t even big enough to hold their weapons, and they found themselves more often than not because they’ve been, you know, fanatical. They’ve been indoctrinated. 

Right. They’ve been totally indoctrinated. And these two guys realize they’re on the hunt for Reich members. 

They’re on the hunt for high-ranking SS officials. But they keep coming across this Hitler youth, and they spend most of their time trying to convince them to surrender before they get killed. Because they’re kids. They’re 13, 14 years old. 

And that is devastating to me. These two men are called Cooper and Seekings, and they end up taking the surrender of 500 German officers and then leave them waiting for the main body of Allied troops. So they find them in a field. The German generals come to them and they’re like, hey, we’re starting to realize maybe the war’s not going great for us. We’d like to surrender and point out this field full of 500 officers. And so Cooper and Seekings take their surrender, take their weapons, and leave them in the field and tell them to wait for the rest of the Allied troops. They then go on to Sackamayor’s office. 

But right as they’re having fun with this, they get word that an armistice has been signed and they are past the armistice line. So they need to like turn tail and return stat. So they gun it back. They drive by waving and smiling to their 500 surrendered. 

Like, see it, deuces. And then they get, I don’t know, a handful of days off before they’re sent to relieve 300,000 Germans of their weapons in Norway. Wow. Right. So once the war ends for them, because at this point, right? Hitler’s dead by April 30th of 1945. The Battle of the Bulge has happened. 

The only war that’s sort of left raging at this point is the Pacific War. So they’re initially thought that they would be transferred to the Pacific to do some similar type of things there. But they get sent off to Norway to relieve everyone of their weapons. But once the war ends for them, they head back to England. 

Let me give you just a quick visual of what this looks like. They drive back across Europe to where they’re supposed to land, like where they’re supposed to embark on their ships. Having sent a message to High Command to bring any vehicle they find with them, because most of their jeeps are toast now. So they’ve confiscated things like salon cars and half trucks and lorry trucks and tanks for their own purpose. And so High Command’s like, yeah, I guess. 

So they come back across in this column of vehicles that are literally loaded down with them. Flying massive Nazi flags. Because for them, this is like we’ve done it. We’ve won the war. This is the spoils of war. 

Theresa: Plunder of war. I try to combine both. 

Angie: Yeah, exactly. So Patty himself is driving this beautiful red salon car that he had liberated earlier in the war, like not much earlier, like a few months before. Maybe not even a few months, but he found the salon car, he loved it, so he drives it back and it’s flying massive swastikas as they go down the road. 

But also on the side of the car are the winged dagger of the SAS. Holy cow. They had so much fun. One of the other cool things that they did that I didn’t put in my notes was when they liberated the town of Scream, they… Hitler did this thing with his… I don’t know if he did it with every city or just his favorite cities or exactly what the case was, but he gave each village a chronicle of their own history where they were from like the beginning of the journey to present and then the village was supposed to finish writing it out. 

So they take the chronic of Scream and they make it their own. That is the SAS war diary today. Somewhere in this time frame is where they pick that up. They remove the Nazi emblems and they put the SAS emblems on it and they turn it into this like scrapbook of SAS history, which was hidden in Patty’s wall back in Newtonards, Ireland for decades. No one knew about it. 

Yeah. When they finally found it, they opened it up. It was literally a scrapbook of World War II, which is amazing. So they made it back to England, back to the story here. They get one more good time at Hayland House. They have a dance with the grandlady and Patty parades his boys a final time on October 16, 1945. So in October of 1945, the regiment is disbanded and by November, Maynz cleared his desk, but I just want to find this little bit. I’ve lost my notes. 

So they clear their desks, even if they even had any. And Maynz doesn’t really know what he wants to do after the war, right? Like he’s just spent the last several years of his life literally living in the wild like a feral beast having all the fun. Yeah, his job was to see everybody else’s problem. Exactly. How can they be expected to go back to normal life after that? And this sentiment isn’t just carried by Patty. It’s carried by most of them in. Like what are we supposed to do? 

We can’t just take desk jobs now. So he joins an expedition to Antarctica. You know what? This checks. Right? This expedition doesn’t last long for him. He’s not overly impressed with the commander of the unit and not to mention he has been suffering from a wartime injury. 

That will not go away. So in pretty short order, he finds himself back in Ireland where he takes up caring for his family and lawyering. May never marries. He spends like the next nine years of his life enjoying the ideal country side during the day. He’s a great family man, but he is definitely struggling with PTSD and he doesn’t sleep well. Like maybe a couple hours a night. So he’s kind of always doing something, right? But none of that stops him from being a good friend, a good uncle, a good son, a good brother, a great neighbor, and a great lawyer. In fact, in those nine years, he becomes the secretary of law to the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Then on the evening of December 14, 1955, after nine years of working in law and caring for his sisters and mother, he’s driving home from an event at what I think can be compared to like a moose lodge. 

It’s about 4 a.m. He was evidently speeding down the road in his Ryley car, which is this really cool little sporty car of the era. He hits a parked lorry truck and as Hamish Hamish Ross says that he canons into the pole overhead that’s holding the cables. 

It breaks him into and kills him almost instantly. A local resident sees it doesn’t see the accident. What he sees is the phone like the electricity pole sparking and he assumes there’s a repairman working on the pole. He doesn’t realize it’s been a car accident. 

It doesn’t get reported until 7 a.m. But he dies the way he lived fast and hard. This is a man who drove back and forth through heavy enemy fire, shuttling men in machine because it was the right thing to do. 

This is a man whose best friend would say I’ll shoot you Blair when you got a little too spicy. This is a man of war whose statue holds a book of poetry instead of a gun. I just think that’s what it took for him to embody what it took to win the war. I want to finish the story off by telling you how he finished off their final parade back in September. 

Here’s a bit of his speech. He quotes from the boys of Killi Run, which is an Irish folk song. Some of them went for glory. Some they went for pillage. 

Pillage was the motto of the boys of Killi Run and in true main status, finishes to the boys saying something like, we came for the pillage, but maybe we got a wee bit of the glory too. And this time 490 hands salute him back in unison. Wow. Could you imagine 490 guys under your command? 

No, I cannot. I think the world is grateful. So that is the story of my favorite hero of World War II. That is Patty Main. And there is so much more. So, so much more. So I’m saying guys. 

Theresa: Okay, so the Patty Main fan club is going to spin up here shortly. And if you are absolutely dumbfounded at the incredibleness of this forgotten hero, rate, review, subscribe, send this to your person who shouldn’t command 400 humans. And on that note, goodbye. Goodbye. 

Theresa: Thank you.