Mayne was painted as a sullen, inarticulate and undisciplined Irishman whom only Stirling could bring to heel. He may have been in Rhodesia but it was curious that when a tribute to Mayne was run in The Times the following week it was written by Brian Franks, a relative latecomer to the SAS, having joined in June 1944. He founded the Capricorn Africa Society, which aimed to fight racial discrimination in Africa, but Stirling's preference to a limited, elitist voting franchise over universal suffrage limited the movement's appeal. Calvert was invalided back to the United Kingdom in 1951 and replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel John Sloane. These three and another seven brought the total number of IRA men killed by the SAS in the 1990s to 11.

The history of the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) regiment of the British Army begins with its formation during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, and continues to the present day. The last recorded meeting between Mayne and Stirling was at an SAS reunion in December 1947 in London; a reporter from the Observer newspaper was present and wrote of Mayne that his ‘immense charm and cunning could only be compared to his mountainous physical proportions’. It was a response to the rise in black nationalism across African nations, and he found support from white settlers. In May 1942, he drove the car straight into occupied Benghazi, in Libya, bold as brass, talking his way through an Italian checkpoint and outmanoeuvring German cars.The SAS was also deployed during the Balcombe Street Siege, where the Metropolitan Police had trapped a PIRA unit.

Series two will take the SAS into mainland Europe and will take our heroes to the limits of their endurance. In mid-1970s, Stirling became increasingly worried that an "undemocratic event" would occur and decided to organise a private army to overthrow the government. His Boy's Own heroics captured the imagination of the British people, who needed a reminder of past glories. SAS pattern parachute wings, designed by Lieutenant Jock Lewes and depicted the wings of a scarab beetle with a parachute.He even added a couple of inches to his height, stating that he was 6ft 6in and thereby surpassing his brother Bill's 6ft 5in. We're gonna to take it to after the end of the Second World War and then see what happens, because the story just keeps it going… and it just gets more and more incredible. But I certainly wasn't going to question the long-established narrative that David Stirling was the Phantom Major, the guerrilla genius, and Mayne and Bill his enthusiastic, if less capable, sidekicks. O.E] in early 1940 and he realised in a short time that the British military was woefully under-prepared and ill-informed of the requirements for irregular warfare.

The SAS came into being, in part, because its founder would not take no for an answer,” wrote Macintyre. Rommel’s lines of supply and communication were now stretched precariously thin and vulnerable to attack. Believing that taking his idea up the chain of command was unlikely to work, Stirling decided to go straight to the top. In 2002 the SAS memorial, a statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was unveiled on the Hill of Row near his family's estate at Park of Keir.Surrounded by a large German force, they were forced to disperse; later, it was discovered that 36 men were missing and that 32 of them had been captured and executed by the Germans. That year the SAS had become a brigade; it was a far cry from the small and poorly led unit of the early days.