Category: Real men

Jack Mann, who has died aged 100, served with the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) and was believed to be the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).

Mann volunteered to join the LRDG as a radio operator in January 1943. The unit was born of the expertise of a small number of prewar desert explorers. It ranged over huge distances in North Africa, travelling behind enemy lines and navigating with the aid of the stars and a sun compass – a primitive but effective device – to gather intelligence for the 8th Army.

Primarily a reconnaissance unit, the LRDG did not seek confrontation, but if it ran into trouble its vehicle-mounted machine guns proved highly effective. Mann was responsible for receiving and deciphering the double-coded messages that directed operations over great distances.

Using modified No 11 sets, housed in cabinets on Chevrolet and Ford trucks, he had to contend with high desert temperatures and sandstorms which degraded equipment and disrupted incoming signals. As the enemy’s range-finding equipment became more sophisticated, transmissions became increasingly hazardous.

The LRDG made the desert their accomplice. Their patrols believed that they could always outwit the Axis forces on the ground. Mann, however, hated the desert. “Don’t talk to me about sand,” he used to say. “I’ve had it in my eyes, my mouth, up my nose, in my food, everywhere.”

He served with the SAS in North Africa and Italy before moving to the RAF Ramat David camp in Palestine, then under British administration, where he took a parachute course. The training included jumping out of a truck at 20mph and leaping from the top of a 15ft ladder without a harness.

Mann subsequently moved to Nahariya, the base camp of the Special Raiding Forces, and transferred to the newly formed Special Boat Service as a radio operator – one of its original members. It was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Jellicoe, the son and heir of the 1st Earl Jellicoe, a naval commander at the Battle of Jutland and Admiral of the Fleet in the First World War.

Mann was seconded to the Greek Sacred Squadron, which had trained with the SAS and seen action in North Africa. The Squadron used small boats and took part in hit-and-run amphibious operations against German garrisons in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea and the Dodecanese islands.

These islands off the coast of Turkey were controlled by the Italians up to Italy’s surrender in September 1943; Turkey then claimed sovereignty over them. Churchill, who hoped to bring Turkey into the war on the Allied side, committed substantial forces in an attempt to seize the islands as a springboard for an attack on mainland Greece. The Dodecanese operation failed primarily because of lack of air cover.

Mann was involved in reconnaissance missions using kayaks and a camouflaged hide-out near Bodrum on the Turkish coast. On other raids, Royal Navy motor torpedo boats and launches took members of the squadron to Turkey, where they were transferred to fishing caiques. Their rations were sometimes supplemented by wild boar, and fish dynamited in the sea.

On one occasion, Mann had just finished preparing a meal when an officer pushed his way to the front. When Mann told him to get back in the queue, he was arrested and marched off to a military prison.

In his paybook, however, he had given his nationality as Russian Orthodox instead of Jewish and, using his language skills, he persuaded his jailers that he was a Russian and insisted that he be allowed to appeal to the Soviet authorities. They decided that he was too much trouble and returned him to his unit.

One night, Mann was asleep in his hide-out on the island of Chios when he and a comrade were awakened by a German “E” Boat, a fast motor torpedo boat, approaching the shore. The two men, armed with rifles but in their underwear, greeted the German crew in Greek.

The crew surrendered but they tried to be friendly, claiming that they were all Anglo-Saxons. Mann retorted that he was a Jew, ordered them to cut off their swastika badges and had them placed in the local prison. There they were made to clean a local building of faeces left by the occupying German forces.

Jack Mann was born Zacharia Zuckerman in Cairo on September 23 1925. His father, Zachary, who had died two days earlier, was an eminent dental surgeon from Bucharest in Romania who had gained his degree in dentistry in France.

His mother, Victoria, née Warshawsky, from Odessa, was Russian, spoke French and came from a well-to-do family. Mann’s uncle, Henry, was also a dental surgeon and treated members of the Egyptian royal family.

Mann spent the first years of his life living in Paris before returning to Cairo. He was educated at the Cairo Lycée Français, where he learnt Arabic, English, French and Italian. By 1942 he was learning from his relations in Europe that fellow Jews were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

He falsified his age in order to enlist in the British Army to fight the Nazis and joined the Royal Corps of Signals as a radio operator. He was subsequently recruited by the Intelligence Corps and tasked with infiltrating a POW camp to glean intelligence from captured Italians. He decided, however, that his Italian was not fluent enough to maintain his cover.

In 1945, after several more months liberating islands from German control, the Aegean Raiding Forces were disbanded. Mann moved to a naval base near Alexandria in Egypt, where he rejoined the Royal Signals. After the end of the war, he resigned from the Army.

As a Jew, he had been determined to fight the Nazis, and then to help the Jewish diaspora and displaced Jews of Europe when the war ended. In November 1947, the UN passed a resolution to divide British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Israel declared independence in May 1948. Arab armies invaded in what became known as the Arab-Israeli War and Mann joined the conflict to help establish a state of Israel. He was given the rank of major and put in charge of communications on the Southern Front.

Mann moved to Britain and worked in a shipping business based at Southampton. He subsequently became European sales manager for two leading chemical companies, a job which involved him in extensive travel. In his spare time he enjoyed swimming; he also had a passion for music and played the piano by ear. He also worked as a Samaritan and supported a number of charitable causes.

He remained closely involved with the veteran associations of the Special Forces in which he had served, and at his funeral his coffin was escorted by standard-bearers from the SAS Regimental Association, the SBS Association and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women.

Mann had a host of friends and a fund of amusing stories and was the best of company. On his 100th birthday last year he received a handwritten letter from the King, together with a bottle of champagne.

Jack Mann married first, in 1950, Elizabeth Fine. When the marriage came to an end, he married, in 1965, Helga Jorgas. She survives him with two daughters from his first marriage and two daughters from his second.

Jack Mann, born September 23 1925, died August 13 2026