SAS hero who fought Rommel’s army dies aged 100

Its influence on the birth of the modern conception of special operations also featured prominently in the hit BBC show SAS Rogue Heroes.

Mann also later served in the SAS and its naval equivalent, the Special Boat Service (SBS).
The SAS Regimental Association mourned his loss, saying: “Jack volunteered to join the Army and thanks to his language skills and experience, he was selected for special operations serving in the LRDG, SAS, Special Boat Service and SOE and went on to carry out daring missions behind enemy lines across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.”

Jack Mann served in the special forces (Photo: AJEX)[Missing Credit]

Profiling him in 2014, the JC wrote: “For 69 years, Jack Mann has refused to talk about what he did in the war.

“As a member of the Special Operations Executive, his missions behind enemy lines were shrouded in secrecy.

"Until now, he and his erstwhile comrades have kept those secrets, but Private Mann, the last SOE fighter alive, has now spoken about his covert operations.

“The soldiers of the SOE were known as Churchill’s secret warriors — he wanted them to “set the lands of the enemy ablaze” — who attacked German and Italian positions in the Mediterranean theatre, in small teams behind enemy lines.

“They wore no uniform, blending in with local communities, waiting for the moment to strike. If they were captured, they knew their commanders would deny all knowledge of their existence, and they would be treated as spies, suffering the consequences [spies were routinely summarily executed if captured].

“One of their most celebrated missions was Operation Postmaster in 1942, a raid on a German depot refuelling and rearming U-boats off the west African coast. The SOE boarded and made off with a number of German and Italian ships while their captains were ashore being entertained by a businessman — in reality a British secret agent.”

Mann, who was a radio operator on the mission, told the JC: “Fighting was never my speciality, but I was in the middle of it. Each patrol would have a radio operator with them… how are you going to escape with no radio?”

He said that he had decided to join the army in his late teens after he learnt about the Shoah: “One of my uncles was a big Zionist, and he heard about how Hitler was killing Jews, and I said I was going to help [fight him].

“I joined the army, and British intelligence soon heard I had skills with languages and came to me.

Jack Mann lived to 100 (Courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“The Germans had strict instructions from Hitler himself to ‘catch that group and kill them’. They killed three of our boys,” he recounted, in reference to the infamous Commando Order, in which the Nazi leader himself instructed that any captured commandos be executed, even if uniformed and surrendering, in violation of the Geneva Convention. 

Dan Fox, president of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen said this week that Mann was “a hero. A gentleman. An inspiration”.

But in 2024, laying a wreath on Remembrance Day at Jewish Care’s Betty and Asher Loftus Centre, Mann said: “I can’t say I’m a hero. My job was communications, and that’s what I did.

“I tell everyone, my children, my grandchildren to never forget because war is terrible, I know because I was in it.”