"Tributes have been paid to one of the last surviving members of the original wartime SAS after his death aged 98. Lance Corporal Alec Borrie passed away at his home in Dagenham, East London, earlier this month after suffering from pneumonia. He had been bedbound for several months after recovering from coronavirus. Referred to by comrades as 'Boy' because he was just 18 when he signed up, he served under legendary SAS commander Paddy Mayne, who asked him when he joined the unit in 1944 if he liked 'killing people'. Lance Corporal Borrie was among members of the SAS who were ordered by Winston Churchill to 'cause a nuisance' by conducting guerilla operations against the Nazis during the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the summer of 1944. He later carried out 'Nazi hunting' operations inside Germany in April and May 1945 under Mayne's command before he was badly injured a few weeks before VE Day when his Jeep was blown up by a mine. Lance Corporal Borrie's death means that Mike Sadler, 102, is the only surviving member of the original SAS, which was formed in 1941 by Lieutenant-Colonel David Stirling... ...Born in Soho Square in London in 1924, Lance Corporal Borrie was making bomb boxes for engineering firm Vickers when he signed up to the British Army in 1942. He initially joined the Gordon Highlanders but was then transferred to the Highland Light Infantry and then posted to the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland. In an interview with History of War Magazine, he told how he volunteered for the Special Air Service because he 'wanted to get off the Orkney Islands', which were 'like the Arctic'. He added that he did not know what the SAS was when he signed up with two others, both of whom also survived the war. During a ten-minute interview, Mayne asked him how he 'felt about killing people', prompting Lance Corporal Borrie to say: 'I haven't done it but I think it will be ok.'" www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12127503/One-WWIIs-original-SAS-members-Alec-Borrie-dies-aged-98.html
