Derring-dos of the SAS mavericks – author Damien Lewis in Stratford for literary festival
MAJOR Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne sounds like an action hero invented by Hollywood. But in his new book SAS Forged in Hell, bestselling author and military historian Damien Lewis brings the Commander of the SAS and the most decorated British soldier, gloriously to life.
The book is full of jaw-dropping accounts of derring-do as it plots the journey of the SAS led by Mayne through Europe in 1943. He and his men had been ordered to fight their way through the most heavily defended enemy shoreline to help the Allied advance in leading the way to liberate occupied Europe from the Nazis.
“What I like about the SAS is you are talking about people who are fighting the good fight for all the right reasons: to defeat a greater evil,” Damien told the Herald ahead of his appearance at the Stratford Literary Festival on Sunday (29th October).
Damien fell into writing after a career reporting from warzones for the BBC, Channel 4 and other broadcasters.
“I wasn’t interested so much in the ‘bang bang’ as they call it, more in reporting on what war did to civilians. My first foray into real war zones was in Burma in the mountains that border Thailand, where the Kayin tribe was one of the groups fighting the Burmese. It wasn’t the adrenaline rush of war but the grim reality of those caught in the crossfire that inspired me – the people’s fight for freedom and justice.”
While recovering from life-saving back surgery, a publisher suggested turning the story of Mende Nazer, who was a modern slave woman captured in Sudan and enslaved in the UK, into a book. That first book was published in 2005 and turned into a film, and since then Damien hasn’t stopped writing – and has now sold millions of copies of his books.
Although he has written a number of books on the SAS already, for this latest he was given unprecedented access to the Mayne family archive.
“I was contacted by Paddy’s niece, Fiona Ferguson, asked if I’d be interested in coming to visit them at their Northern Ireland home and look through the contents of Mayne’s war chest, which they had just found,” he explains. “It had all his wartime memorabilia which had been secreted away in the attic. So that was amazing.”
That treasure trove and Damien’s meticulous research meant that he had more than enough material for a trilogy.
“It was meant to be one book but when I saw the material, one book very quickly morphed into two, and it’s going to end up being three,” explains. “So Forged in Hell is the second in the trilogy of telling of Mayne and his wartime history. The first book, Brothers in Arms, tells of the first 18 months of World War II which is really the war in North Africa. Forged in Hell tells of their move from North Africa to fascist and Nazi Europe to bludgeon open those steel shores servicing at the tip of the ally spear.”
The third book in the series will be published next year.
He continues: “Forged in Hell opens with the operations in Italy the first attempts by the ally forces to crowbar open fascist and Nazi occupied territories and it follows these band of warriors from there. It’s a rollercoaster ride.”
It is no surprise to hear that Damien won the trust of the family; he is not just obviously clever and knowledgeable but his conversation is easy, thoughtful and full of empathy – perfect qualities for an SAS hero as it happens.
“The book delves into the sacrifice those men were forced to make,” continues Damien. “It’s inconceivable that you could go through five years of repeated back-to-back missions without deep lines of trauma to the inner psyche so it goes into that at the end as well.
“Interestingly an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) told me that people who are most open to the condition are people with imagination and empathy. Those two characteristics were crucial to the SAS because you needed to imagine ways to attack the enemy and you needed empathy to lead men into these impossible situations, and the only way to get men to follow you is for them to believe in you and love you. So the things you needed to wage this kind of warfare are also the things that make you open to trauma.”
It’s Damien’s vivid depiction of characters such as Mayne that make his work a compelling read. And, he adds, there is no need for embellishment or artistic licence on his part.
“You don’t need that because there is actually so much raw material to draw from. Earlier in the year I interviewed one of the two last surviving veterans of SAS, a chap called Alec Borrie. It was the last interview he did before he sadly passed away. He told me: ‘We followed Paddy Mayne into hell itself the reason being is that if anyone could take you into hell and bring you out alive it was him. You just knew when you were in his presence that if there was one man who had that ability. And we loved and revered him.’
“There are so many testimonies like that, and you draw upon letters and diaries and weave all that together. You don’t need to take artistic licence and it’s quite the reverse – you couldn’t make these stories up if you tried. They are so extraordinary if you wrote them as fiction people would say that couldn’t happened.”
SAS Forged in Hell is published by Quercus today (26th October). Damien appears at the Stratford Literary Festival on Sunday at 4pm. Buy tickets at www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk
