COMMANDOS
Dalla Grecia all’Italia: Special Boat Squadron/Service (SBS)
O.S.S. “Ginny Mission”
Lieutenant Colonel Robert "Paddy" Blair Mayne
DSO (3 Bars) Legion D'Honneur & Croix De Guerre, Mayne was born at Mountpleasant on the 11th January 1915 in the small town of Newtownards, Northern Ireland. He was the second youngest child in a family of seven, four boys and three girls. Education for the young Blair took place at three schools, Miss Brown's kindergarden, The Ards Academy and Regent House. It was while at Regent House that his prowess and skill at the game of rugby started to develop and even though he was only sixteen he was also playing for his local club side Ards RFC. He continued playing rugby and also took part in the sport of boxing at which he went on to become the Irish universities heavyweight champion. But it was rugby that was really his main passion and he gained many representative honours for his province, Ulster and six international caps for his country Ireland. Perhaps his greatest sporting honour was to be selected to play in South Africa as a member of The British Lions Touring Party of 1938.War: After initally joining his local unit Blair transferred to various other units, The Royal Ulster Rifles and The Cameronians before seeing his first action with The 11th (Scottish) Commando. This was at the Litani river (Sud Libano) as part of Layforce where he was mentioned in dispatches. David Stirling recruited him next and he became one of the founder members of Sas. This small unit went from strength to strength and Blair Mayne played a very large part in it's success being personally credited with the destruction of over 100 aeroplanes and sometimes carrying out 16 raids per week.After Stirling was captured Mayne assumed command of the 1st SAS which was then to be known as The Special Raiding Squadron (SRS). Under his sole leadership they fought some very hard and dangerous missions on the island of Sicily and also mainland Italy, Capo Murro Di Porco ?, Syracuse, Augusta, Bagnara and Termoli and Mayne as always led from the front and was in the thick of the fighting. At the young age of 40 he met his death in a car crash just a few hundred yards from his home on December 1955. |
…… After Courtney's departure his original SB Section continued its raids,
especially against German airfields on Sicily and Crete. However it came
increasingly under the influence of David Stirling and what was then referred
to as L Detachment, SAS Brigade. Following heavy casualties, such as the
Rhodes raid (13/9/1943) when only two of the ten-man team returned, it was
absorbed into the newly-formed 1st SAS Regiment in September 1942. A small
party under Tommy Langton had gone on the Tobruk raid that month; this is
often but erroneously credited as an SAS operation. In fact most of the troops
in the land force were from No.1 Special Service Regiment, the last
remnants of the Middle East Commandos.
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medals and awards
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In fact Raiding Forces carried out
381 operations on 70 different islands. The SBS detachments operated in
rotation from a secret base, a large schooner anchored on the Turkish coast.
Transport to and from targets was sometimes by Royal Navy Motor Launch, but
more often by the caiques( local fishing boats) of the Levant Schooner
Flotilla, crewed by the Navy and local volunteers.Lassen had been wounded on Simi but he and his "Irish" patrol were back in
action, serving with both M and S Detachments, although officially part of the
latter. He was often armed only with a Luger and a Commando fighting knife,
and always led from the very front. Most raiders preferred heavier armament,
Thompson guns, captured MP40s( " Schmeissers"), M1 carbines, Bren guns and .45
Colt automatics being popular, as well as the Italian mini-grenades known as "Red
Devils". Landing was by canoe, Goatley boat and seven-man inflatables ("Jellicoe
Intruders"), or sometimes directly from caiques.
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George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
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This
they soon did, but were unable to cut off the German retreat from Athens.
After liberating Athens Jellicoe formed an expanded task force( Pompforce),
with L Det, 4th Parachute Battalion, RAF Regiment armoured cars and engineers
and artillery. With these 950 men he was soon as far north as the Albanian
border, forcing the Germans to retreat further than they had wanted, and had
made contact with Sutherland, who was operating in that area. In the meantime
Lassen and M Detachment had been island-hopping in the Sporadhes, but had
decided to liberate Salonika. They commandeered four fire engines as transport
and chased the last Germans out the city. For the remainder of their time in
Greece the SBS were caught up in the fighting between the Royalist and
Communist Greek factions. Near the end of the year Jellicoe was sent off to
Staff College and Lieutenant Colonel David Sutherland took over command; he
was one of the few who had served under Courtney still remaining. The SB
Squadron now became the Special Boat Service and the detachments were renamed
squadrons. L Squadron rejoined S in Land Forces Adriatic, where the SBS
operated from a semi-permanent base at Zara on the Yugoslav coast, which they
shared with the patrols of the LRDG. M went to Crete to assist the guerillas
now besieging the Germans in a few enclaves. (Allied sea and air raiding meant
that the enemy on Crete and other islands could not even leave.) In early
April 1945 the 2nd Commando Brigade was fighting in the area around Lake
Commachio (valli di Comacchio) in northern Italy. Andy Lassen and the sixty
men of M Squadron were under command, initially patrolling the lake. The main
Commando assault was launched from the south-east corner of the lake on the
night of 8/9 April, with SBS men guiding in the assault boats through the few
deep channels in the shallow water. Lassen himself took a seventeen-man patrol
on a diversionary raid 2 miles(3km) to the north of the main landings.
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GLI AMERICANI |
O.S.S. Office of Strategic (or Secret) Services “Ginny Mission" | |
L'ordine di fucilazione per i 15 era venuto la mattina del 25 marzo dal generale Anton Dostler (a destra) capo del 75esimo C.d.A. tedesco. Gli ufficiali che avevano interrogato i prigionieri e il comandante della 135esima brigata, Colonnello Almers, chiesero che non si procedesse alla fucilazione, ma nel pomeriggio del 25 Dostler ordinò che venissero fucilati entro le ore 7 del giorno 26. Altri ufficiali tentarono di sospendere o posporre l'esecuzione ma non ci fu niente da fare. La decisione di fucilarli era contraria alla Convenzione di Ginevra essendo i commandos stati catturati in divisa. Anton Dostler sottoposto a processo nell'ottobre del 1945 si difese dicendo che aveva obbedito all'ordine di Hitler del 18 ottobre 1942 di fucilare tutti i commando catturati senza sottoporli a nessun processo. Egli disse che se si fosse comportato diversamente sarebbe stato sottoposto a giudizio dalla corte marziale tedesca. Dostler fu fucilato ad Aversa il 1° dicembre 1945. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-R5yOqwT7U |
The first OSS Operational Group (OG) unit
dedicated to missions behind the lines in Italy was ready in the Spring
of 1943. However, the OSS OGs played only a marginal role in the
landings at Sicily and Salerno. They demonstrated their value for the
first time during the landing at Anzio in January 1944 when they
provided intelligence to the Allied Command about the German
counterattack which gave the Allies time to organize and to resist on
the beach-head. OSS support activities in Italy at that time proved
important because until June 1944 the Italian front was the only one
where OSS agents could actually operate behind the enemy lines.
![]() Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler, in charge of the Italian Territory and who ordered the execution of the 15 agents, was later tried in Rome as a “war criminal” after Germany’s surrender and sentenced to death in December of 1945. His case created the legal precedent for the Nuremberg trials. In 1944, the OSS started supporting the Resistance with money, arms, and other materials via air drops in the center and northern parts of Italy. The OSS also sent agents to participate in special missions with the partisans and 4,280 Allied air operations were carried out behind the lines during the course of the war. http://www.ossinitaly.org/Missions/missions.html |
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