Mike Morgan - Daggers Drawn: The Real Heroes of the SAS and SBS

This special new selection of stories is dedicated to my great friends Arthur Huntbach and Rennie Roberts, brave, colourful warriors of the wartime SAS, and to 22 SAS veteran Graham Tommo Thomson, a connoisseur of all things written about this extraordinary regiment and its unique history.

I would like to thank the many SAS veterans of the Second World War who have helped with key information and advice for this book regarding Regimental matters and history, especially the late Maj Roy Farran, one of the outstanding commanders of the wartime SAS, for his friendship over many years, his informative correspondence, advice and encouragement.

Also, I am especially grateful for his permission to quote at length from his classic wartime book Winged Dagger .

The extensive selection of authentic photographs, many rare and previously unpublished, have been provided from the collections of wartime veterans of the SAS, the Imperial War Museum and my own sources.

I am grateful to all veterans and their families who have played a part including Denis Bell, George Daniels, Gary Hull, Arthur Huntbach, Tom Robinson, Mark Rhodes, Steve and Kevin James, Jan Weekes and family and also the Blair Mayne Association of Northern Ireland.

There have been many more supporters, both individuals and past and present members of the Regiment too numerous to name. My thanks to all.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the debt I owe to the SAS soldier who inspired me to become interested in the history of the Regiment in the first place - my late father Cpl Jack Morgan. An original wartime veteran of the 2nd SAS Regiment, he later served in Italy working on the intelligence of Maj Farrans famous missions, the secret planning for the major behind-the-lines SAS drops in support of the D-Day invasion of Europe and the liberation of Norway.

My memories of his skill, determination and steadfast resolve provided the motivation and inspiration to write this book.

By Major Roy Farran, DSO, MC and two bars

How the SAS was Born

David Stirling, Paddy Mayne, Anders Lassen VC, Roy Farran

Jock Lewes, Fitzroy Maclean, Bob Lilley, John Sillito, Johnny Cooper

Derrick Harrison, Chalky White, Ian Fenwick, Bill Fraser

George Jellicoe, David Sutherland, John Lapraik

George Bebe Daniels, Philip Pinckney, Reg Seekings

Brian Franks, Bill Stirling, Eric Barkworth

Denis Bell

Maps

Official Citations: Lt Col Robert Blair Mayne and Maj Anders Lassen

By Major Roy Farran DSO, MC and two bars Former 2nd SAS Operational Commander

A personal appreciation of the Special Air Service Regiment and its most famous fighting son, Lt Col Paddy Mayne DSO and three bars.

Although I was a late arrival and fought in the Western Desert and Crete with my own parent regiment, the 3rd The Kings Own Hussars, I am very proud that I was recruited later into the Second SAS by Sandy Scratchley in North Africa. It is an invidious distinction to single out different SAS characters for praise that is apart from the obvious stars like David Stirling himself, Blair (Paddy) Mayne, and George Jellicoe etc., and I cannot do it. I admire and am proud of them all. Indeed I am very proud to have been associated with such a band of heroes of all ranks. I also feel that those who have served in the SAS since the Second World War have been worthy successors of the originals. Honour and praise to them all!

Paddy Mayne was a great friend of mine and I have stayed in his home at Newtownards a neat white house kept in immaculate shape by his mother. Blair Mayne was a very strong man and played rugby football for Ireland, one of the few areas where north and south combined for a united team. He was an Orangeman but knew the words of all the Irish rebel songs as well as The Sash Me Father Wore. So did I, and once in his company I began to sing The Foggy Dew in a pub in Belfast. Paddy was horrified and sprang to my defence when hostile Orangemen took umbrage. He was strong enough to bend an iron bar or a nail in his bare hands. Yet, except in his cups, he was very gentle. Of course, in action he was like a Viking who runs berserk and I can quite well imagine his pulling the dashboard out of a Messerschmitt when his party had run out of explosives and ammunition, as he actually did in an early desert raid. He was fearless when his blood was up.

David Stirling had recruited him in Cairo when he was in trouble for banging together the heads of two military policeman who objected to his pulling trees out by their roots along a main boulevard. When he had been drinking he was a holy terror, but brave as a lion. His officers and men adored him, even though they were terrified of him when he was taken with drink. He was a great soldier with good tactical sense and his men would follow him anywhere. I only fought alongside him once at Termoli and was most impressed by him and his raiding force.

Paddy was quite well read and had a very soft voice on most occasions. He did not get along with women I think he was frightened of them in some way, although he was neither a homosexual nor misogynist. Towards the end of his life he did become very attached to a girl who knew how to handle him. He was not a bigoted Ulsterman either and one of his best friends was Ambrose McGonigal, ex-SAS, Roman Catholic and a judge after the war. Some accounts leave the impression that Paddy Mayne was an alcoholic and drunk most of the time. That is just not true although he enjoyed a party. Most of the time, he did not drink at all.

Mayne was a fascinating character and reminded one of some Celtic warrior of ancient times who could mow down his opponents with a double-edged claymore that no one else could even lift.

Nazi Atom Bombs and More Untold Secret History of the SAS

Since this top-selling book was first published in 2000, it has gone out to countries all over the world including Europe, America, Japan, New Zealand and Australia even Germany and has been reprinted many times.

Told entirely from an individual perspective, its not only a firm favourite with the public and military buffs, but with veterans and serving members of the Special Air Service Regiment and current leading serving Special Forces in the USA and Australia and New Zealand as can be seen by its many positive reviews. Its extensive photographic record rivals, or surpasses, that of any Second World Two book on the SAS. This, combined with its wealth of distinctive and exciting true life stories, has ensured that Daggers Drawn is now firmly established as a British classic of the genre.

Now seven more true life stories, most of which have never been told before, make this new edition a special collectors item.

The authentic wealth of SAS contacts in this book are a key part of its success, and for this I must acknowledge the part played by my late father Corporal Jack Morgan, of the elite wartime 2nd SAS Intelligence unit, whose connection opened the door for me to meet many of the outstanding veterans of 1st and 2nd SAS, whose stories are so vividly told within. He was a brave, highly intelligent and modest man, and Im sure he would be proud to know that his son has kept close contact with so many SAS wartime veterans over the course of more than a decade, including several who served with him and who have acknowledged his personal contribution to the war effort.

Inevitably, the remaining veterans are now steadily dwindling, with those surviving being in their late eighties or early nineties, and the comment is often heard that there are now no new stories to be told about the wartime SAS. However, this most certainly is not the case, as this new edition so strikingly shows. The story of the SAS in the Second World War is now a key part of history, but there are still many stories and important facts still to be discovered, including key omissions lost in the mists of time by accident, or deliberately. Most of the official records of the SAS mysteriously vanished at the end of the war, in any case.