SAS Rogue Heroes: What is true and what’s fiction in hit BBC show

When Algerian actress Sofia Boutella bumped into Ben Macintyre at a screening of the new series of SAS Rogue Heroes, she playfully asked the journalist-cum-historian why he hadn’t included her character in his best-selling non-fiction account of the legendary regiment.

After all, her sultry French-Algerian spy Eve Mansour was a mainstay of the original TV adaptation and has returned in the blockbuster One sequel as an emissary of prickly Free French leader Charles de Gaulle.

“I couldn’t write about you,” Macintyre admitted. “Because you didn’t exist.”

In fact, Mansour is a fictional invention of Steven Knight, the TV genius behind the hit show and, previously, Peaky Blinders.

“There were no women with the SAS in the North African desert,” Macintyre confirmed. “Eve is fabricated. And that’s fine with me because, as the series boldly declares in the opening credits of each episode, ‘This is NOT a history lesson’.”

Indeed, while the explosive (literally) mix of fact and fiction has won millions of fans, there’s been occasional grumpiness from critics about playing fast and loose with history.

Yet Boutella’s Mansour, in Macintrye’s own words, “is essential to the plot, providing romance, glamour and emotive complexity. A drama series is not a documentary. It is a work of the imagination, creating a new emotional reality within the broad parameters of the known past”.

So, as it returns to One tonight, just what is fact and fiction, especially when it comes to the show’s pivotal character, Major Paddy Mayne?

The new series returns following the real-life capture of the regiment’s founder, David Stirling, in North Africa at the end of season one, with the inspirational new leader of the SAS smashing up a Cairo hotel after being denied permission to return to Ireland for his father’s funeral.

Mayne, played by Jack O’Connell, 34, takes on five or six Red Cap military police before being banged up in a military prison where Stirling’s older brother, Bill (Gwilym Lee), visits him to try and persuade him to return to action.

As SAS expert Damien Lewis reveals, this is partly true.

“Family meant a great deal to Mayne. He was refused compassionate leave and jailed for the subsequent fracas,” says Lewis.

“However, Bill Stirling did not visit him in a Cairo gaol to beg and cajole him into saving the SAS.

“Bill Sterling was commanding No.62 Commando in Britain – the body of men which would form the nucleus of recruits for the second SAS Regiment, 2 SAS, which he would go on to form in May 1943.”

After months of unrelenting desert raiding against the Germans and Italians, Mayne, 28, and his men had finally been given leave in Egypt.

Then on January 20, 1943, he discovered his father William had died aged 65.

“Mayne asked for compassionate leave, so he could travel home to be with his family,” writes Lewis in SAS Brothers In Arms.

“Unbelievably, after all he had achieved, his request was point-blank refused.

“‘Poor old Paddy had the news that his father had suddenly died,’ [SAS medic Malcolm] Pleydell would write home. ‘What a rotten time to get the news – he can’t get home either’.”

With Stirling now a POW, there was no one left to fight Mayne’s corner when he fell foul of authority.

“Though Stirling was seen as being ‘quite, quite mad,’ he had powerful connections. Mayne, the arch-raider, did not,” Lewis adds. “None had given more than Mayne.

“His sacrifices were legion, as were his triumphs. Yet he’d been denied the chance to say a proper farewell to his father.”

David Lloyd Owen, commander of the Long Range Desert group and one of Mayne’s admirers, claimed to have seen him throw three MPs down the steps of Shepheard’s Hotel. And he was certainly held by the authorities.

O’Connell’s Mayne also drinks, smokes and swears, a depiction his family objected to in season one. Lewis adds: “He never smoked as far as we can tell. A top class sportsman – the Irish Universities heavyweight boxing champion and an acclaimed Irish and British Lions Rugby international – he was made the SAS’s PT (physical training) officer upon its formation.”

The real-life Mayne was also renowned for never swearing, according to Lewis. And during preparations for the Italian landings of July 1943, he upbraided his own men for swearing during a training exercise.

“Mayne became incensed about the foul language being used,” writes Lewis.

“He called a halt, before unleashing his own extremely colourful string of expletives. ‘You see, I know just as many as you do,’ he warned his men, ‘and even some you may possibly never have heard of’.

“He understood men did swear when under extreme pressure, or if pushed to the limits, but if it reached the stage where it threatened the unit’s morale and esprit de corps, he would stamp it out mercilessly.”

He did, however, adore poetry and like to quote it at moments of stress, as portrayed in Rogue Heroes. During the invasion of Sicily, in some of the new series’ most poignant moments, Mayne’s men are forced to ignore drowning British airborne troops whose US-made gliders have crashed into the sea as they approach the enemy coast.

Again, this did happen, though the events of the night were quite different. Rather than the glass-smooth ocean depicted on TV,

the night of the assault was a raging storm, which was why so many gliders carrying 2,500 British assault troops failed.

“Mayne and his men had no idea of the airborne disaster they were about to sail into,” explains Lewis. “He did not give a speech aboard the ship about leaving the men to drown as in the show.

“When the lead landing craft discovered the first crashed glider and the men clinging to it, Mayne dragged the nearest man aboard to discover what happened.

“The craft coming behind pulled in at least five other airborne troops.”

But there was little room aboard the packed vessels and neither could Mayne risk further delay.

First light was barely two hours off and the enemy gunners would soon see the mass of Allied ships sitting offshore. The harsh decision that would torture Mayne and his men was unavoidable.

“The SAS’s mission to take out the shore guns had just attained an even greater significance,” writes Lewis. “With the sea littered with gliders, together with their hapless passengers and crew, Mayne’s raiders might be the only ones amongst the spearhead to make it ashore.”

When they land in south-eastern Sicily, they are depicted as yelling orders at the tops of their voices as they assault the cliffs under fire. “In truth they climbed them silently in darkness, and fixed bayonets to charge the enemy positions with cold steel to the fore – Mayne and [SAS sergeant] Reg Seekings’ plan to put the fear of God into the Italian defenders.”

Neither did the Italian defenders pretend to surrender, then open up on the British special forces as in Knight’s show.

“The Italians did surrender en masse, but they did not do so to subsequently drop the ground and enable a machine gun bunker to open fire,” says Lewis. “A deception of this type did happen later, but it was in the open and in daylight, after the main gun emplacement had been seized.

“It involved a small group of Italian soldiers with a white flag, and one behind them with a machine gun who cut down and mortally wounded Corp Geoffrey Caton.”

After securing the clifftops, the SAS were unable to fire a flare to call in the Allied invasion fleet, as dramatically portrayed on screen – though not through lack of trying.

Lewis reveals: “In the chaos of battle they had lost or forgotten the sticks to mount the rockets on.” He writes in SAS Forged in Hell: “They first tried propping one on a rock. It toppled over and fizzed on the ground, scattering green sparks and a second did no better. A third and fourth were hurled into the air, where they ‘cavorted about like drunken aerial torpedoes’, getting no more than 20 feet off the ground.”

Fortunately, keen eyes aboard the command ships spotted the pyrotechnics, the Royal Naval gunners were ordered to stand down and minutes later the Allied fleet was steaming ashore.

Several scenes in the new series show Mayne shoot his gun into the air to demand attention or threaten someone. Although undoubtedly dramatic for TV purposes, it never happened in reality. “Mayne never pulled a gun on his men or shot over their heads to gain attention, as depicted in the pre-Italy briefing tent,” says Lewis.

“He had far too much physical and psychological presence to ever need to do that, not to mention respect. He was renowned for being soft-spoken and understated – yet commanding an iron respect and following.”

Another of the new seasons’ brilliant set pieces comes in episode two, when Mayne and Reg Seekings, played by Theo Barklem-Biggs, pose as fishermen to reconnoitre the Italian port of Augusta, launching the attack with bazookas.

“In truth, a white flag of surrender has been spied above Augusta, so Mayne was sent in to take the port,” says Lewis.

“But the surrender was a sham, and as the landing craft sped ashore they came under withering fire, and several of Mayne’s men were killed. Mayne, typically, was the first ashore, leading from the front.”

Neither did Mayne desecrate a church as portrayed on TV, but he did blow up the safe in the port’s main bank. Inside, was little treasure or cash, but he did discover a stash of documents that were handed over to military intelligence.

Mayne’s respect for religious faith is best summed up by this excerpt from SAS Daggers Drawn: “While Mayne was not an openly religious man, there was something that drew SAS padre [Fraser McLuskey] and the SAS commander together – this man of God and this man of war.

“Those who got to know him well, and the padre was one, learned to appreciate Mayne’s ‘deep and simple reverence’ for what faith truly stands for.”

Sadly, neither did Boutella’s French agent, disguised as a nun, infiltrate the Italian prison camp where her lover, David Stirling, was being held.

Nor did popular SAS Sgt Jim Almonds, played on screen by Corin Silva, rejoin the regiment in Sicily following the assault on Augusta. Almonds, who had been captured earlier in North Africa when the SAS attacked on the port of Benghazi, did not escape until many months later.

He was finally posted back to his regiment in time for D-Day, which we will presumably see in season three.

Ben Macintyre adds: “Drama can do what factual history cannot – in this case giving credit to the many female agents who really did operate in the war and received little recognition.”

• SAS Rogue Heroes is on One at 9pm tonight and available via iPlayer