HE was the hard-as-nails rugby-playing warrior whose extraordinary acts of bravery helped turn the tide against the Nazis.
But for decades, the secret war chest of Lieutenant Colonel Blair “Paddy” Mayne was hidden from history.
The World War Two hero – whose exploits as a founding member of the SAS are told in new BBC1 series SAS: Rogue Heroes, based on Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name – led a series of extraordinarily daring operations, including missions that saw him personally destroy more than 100 German aircrafts.
After a bruising ambush with the enemy in Hanover in 1945, his battle-weary men stumbled across a huge leather-bound book gifted by Adolf Hitler to the local council.
Within its hollowed-out pages, Blair – played by Jack O’Connell in the six-part series – stashed the Regiment’s war diary, alongside invaluable photos that The Sun can today reveal for the first time.