Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In the Second World War no British soldier was more decorated than Lt-Colonel Robert Blair Mayne: four DSOs Croix de Guerre L?gion d’honneur. ‘Paddy’ Mayne as he was known was an exceptional man endowed with great physical strength and with uniquely swift reflexes which enabled him to respond to threats of attack with split-second timing and devastating consequences to the enemy. Tributes to his military skill and gallantry come from men well qualified to judge. Colonel David Stirling DSO OBE cites Paddy as one of the rare group of six the founder-members of the Special Air Service. Brigadier Mike Calvert DSO and Bar Croix de Guerre credits Mayne with having destroyed more German aircraft in North Africa than the RAF. Having survived the carnage of war unscathed it was all the more tragically ironic that Paddy Mayne should be killed in a peacetime car accident. That was more than thirty years ago. Now for the first time with access to personal letters and family papers SAS secret files and records (now declassi- fied) together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and with eyewitness accounts from many who served with him Roy Bradford and Martin Dillon have written a gripping and revealing biog- raphy of this Rogue Warrior. Paddy Blair Mayne was a complex character an exasperating mixture of diametrically opposed qualities. Undismayed how- ever by the ferocity of his outbursts vented on foe and friend alike (including two of his Commanding Officers) and undazzled by the brilliance and panache of his exploits the authors have presented a rounded and perceptive portrait of a man who although a flawed hero was unquestionably one of the most distinctive fighting men of the campaigns in the Western Desert and Europe. (SP)