Stella

“One night, around the campfire after a dinner of bully-beef stew, someone opened an extra bottle of rum. ‘As it grew
darker, the men began to sing, at first slightly self-conscious and shy, but picking up confidence as the song spread.’
Their songs were not the martial chants of warriors, but the schmaltzy romantic popular tunes of the time: ‘I’ll Never
Smile Again’, ‘My Melancholy Baby’, ‘I’m Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’. The bigger and burlier the singer, Pleydell
noted, the more passionate and heartfelt the singing. Now the French contingent struck up, with a warbling rendition
of ‘Madeleine’, the bittersweet song of a man whose lilacs for his lover have been left to wilt in the rain. Then it was
the turn of the German prisoners who, after some debate, belted out ‘Lili Marleen’, the unofficial anthem of the Afrika
Korps, complete with harmonies: ‘Vor der Kaserne / Vor dem grossen Tor / Stand eine Laterne / Und steht sie noch
davor …’ (Usually rendered in English as: Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate, darling I remember, how you
used to wait.) As the last verse died away, the audience broke into loud whistles and applause.
To his own astonishment, Pleydell was profoundly moved. ‘There was something special about that night,’ he wrote
years later. ‘We had formed a small solitary island of voices; voices which faded and were caught up in the wilderness.
A little cluster of men singing in the desert. An expression of feeling that defied the vastness of its surroundings … a
strange body of men thrown together for a few days by the fortunes of war.’
The doctor from Lewisham had come in search of authenticity, and he had found it deep in the desert, among hard
soldiers singing sentimental songs to imaginary sweethearts in three languages.”
― Ben Macintyre, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

“Mayne never told anyone else about his secret attempt to find the remains of his beloved friend, for that would have revealed the other, gentler side to Paddy Mayne, and a hidden broken heart.”
― Ben Macintyre, SAS: Rogue Heroes - Now a major TV drama