Blair Mayne is still a legend in his home town of Newtownards where he is buried in Movilla Abbey, four miles from my home. He joined the Royal Ulster Rifles at the outbreak of war and was posted for initial training at St Patrick's Barracks, Ballymena, where he met brothers Ambrose and Eoin McGonigal, who had grown up in Belfast. All progressed to Commando units. Eoin was killed behind enemy lines in Libya, Ambrose became as deadly a warrior as Mayne. Post-war both men joined the legal profession, but while McGonigal made a successful transition to civilian life, Mayne could not, and the Newtownards folk came to dread his massive figure with its free-flying fists.
Numerous drunken attacks were hushed up, but the sequel came in 1955 when Mayne, returning from a party, crashed his Riley car into a farm vehicle in the town. Many heard the crash but nobody approached the figure slumped in the driver's seat lest it should arise and smite them as usually happened. The steering column had probably ruptured his aorta so he would have died in seconds. Today his statue stands in Conway Square and Blair Mayne Road runs past his former family home.
McGonigal became a QC and later Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. A remote and distant figure, the most powerful presence I have ever encountered before or since, he was willing to help youngsters and helped this novice court reporter with legal details of an important but complicated case. Thereafter he became almost approachable until the day I dared to mention Blair Mayne, possibly because we had reported the anniversary of his death. His scowl was so fierce that I can't remember his few words but I gathered that some men could make the transition to civil life, others could not.
As a judge he was much feared by barristers who appeared before him and who knew him as The Black Prince. The late Dick Ferguson QC said he felt on edge, "you half expected that he might pull a Uzi from under his robes".
His grandson Patric McGonigal has just completed a fascinating and superbly researched biography of Ambrose and his relationships with Mayne and other warriors: Special Forces, Brothers in Arms, published by Pen & Sword. One wonders whether we shall ever see the likes of these men again.