Prized medals won by an American-born Wisbech policeman who became a legendary figure in the Special Air Service were sold at auction yesterday for a staggering £98,400.
Bidding for 'Pat' Riley's eight-medal group, which recognised his heroic service in the world famous unit – motto: Who Dares Wins – soared to almost double the pre-sale estimate.
A delighted Mark Quayle, head of Spink's medal department, said the price paid by a private collector was indicative of Riley's reputation as one of the SAS's most revered founding members.
'It reflects not just his status as a very well-known and very well-respected original member of 'L Detachment', as the SAS was originally known, but also the key part these early men played in setting up the unit.'
A tall, powerfully-built man, Riley, who patrolled the Fenland towns of Wisbech and March as a beat bobby either side of the second world war, was a notable amateur boxer who volunteered for special forces.
As big as a bear, as brave as a lion, 'Pat' Riley could hold his own against the hardest-fighting men among the elite ranks of the wartime Special Air Service.
A notable amateur boxer, the American-born, former Wisbech bobby famously took on and beat one of the unit's doughtiest warriors, fellow Fenman Reg Seekings, and even more memorably brawled with his commanding officer, the legendary Paddy Mayne.
But the redoubtable Riley reserved most of his considerable strength for roughing up Rommel's Afrika Korps and his Italian allies during a North African campaign that secured the SAS's reputation as the world's premier special forces' unit.
One of the originals, he was a towering figure in the early SAS whose coolness, courage and consistent good fortune was rewarded with promotion to regimental sergeant major, a commission and the award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, an honour second only to the Victoria Cross.
And that gallant record was saluted yesterday in a London auction room when his remarkable group of medals spanning 25 years fetched an astonishing £98,400 – almost double the auction estimate.
Of the more than 360 lots sold by Spink's, 'Pat' Riley's military honours, together with his Isle of Ely Constabulary warrant card, were the undoubted star attraction, specially chosen to adorn the cover of the sale catalogue.
It was an honour befitting a man whose extraordinary exploits on and off the battlefield read like a real-life ripping yarn.
Born in 1915 in the appropriately named town of Redgranite, Wisconsin, he moved with his family to England as a seven-year-old before eventually finding work as a teenager alongside his father and grandfather in a Cumbrian granite quarry.
By the age of 20, the 'jovial, round-faced' youngster was a British army soldier, his strong, six-foot frame perfectly suited to the role of Coldstream guardsman.
Three years' soldiering, which included service in Palestine at the height of the Arab Rebellion, was followed by a change of uniform.
On New Year's Day 1938, Guardsman Charles George Gibson 'Pat' Riley became PC Riley and a member of the Wisbech Division of the Isle of Ely Constabulary.
Over the course of the next 21 months, he pounded the 'beat' and a succession of opponents in the 'ring' as his career as an amateur fighter flourished. Among those worsted by the heavyweight from Redgranite was a tough Fenlander called Reg Seekings whose later war record would surpass even Riley's.
Twice they fought one another in the Women's Institute Hall, in Wisbech's Alexandra Road, and both times Riley came out on top with 'points' victories. The next time they met was in the Western Desert as the newly-formed SAS was preparing for its first operation - a daring parachute drop behind enemy lines to raid enemy airfields.
The mission carried out in November 1941 was a disaster. Blown off course by a torrential rain storm, the 55-strong party was scattered across the desert and lost all its equipment. Only 21 men made it back after a 10-day march through enemy territory during which Riley, by then a sergeant, further enhanced a reputation for determined leadership which had already been established while serving with the Commandos at the siege of Tobruk.
One of the survivors later paid tribute to Riley who he claimed was 'most part responsible' for their safe return. Jeff Du Vivier insisted: 'He was the one who kept us going because we just wanted to fall out and die. We were demoralised. When you're frozen stiff, soaked to the skin, hungry… you're not looking forward to a bright future, you just want it all to end.'
The infant unit continued to fare badly until the following January when a plan was made to strike at the enemy-held port of Bouerat, an important harbour for tankers supplying fuel to Rommel's army.
Despite being strafed by enemy aircraft and losing a canoe with which they intended to attack enemy shipping, they pressed on with Riley leading one small party against harbour installations and a petrol depot.
It was an audacious operation that was not without its amusing moments. Riley later recalled: 'We found an assortment of buildings stocked with rations and crates of spare parts. We placed our Lewes bombs as instructed and moved out… to quarter the area we had been given but came hard up against barbed wire. It could have been the perimeter and the last thing we wanted to do was bump a guard post or a prowling sentry.
'Just as we were making our way to what seemed to be the door I heard someone coming out. Before I could move I bumped into him…'
It turned out to be Major David Stirling, his commanding officer who was in charge of another team of saboteurs. As Riley remarked: 'Good thing neither of us was trigger-happy.'
Following another near miss they decided it would be safer to join forces and it was while they were together that Riley found himself caught up in a 'crazy' escapade to blow up a fuel truck.
When the first bomb failed to go off, Stirling and another man approached again only to discover the timer had activated. 'They took great dives across the road and down the bank as the bomb went off with a ruddy great bang,' recalled Riley. 'It then got hilarious. Out of the cab jumped this driver. No boots and no trousers either. Somebody fired his gun, into the air I think, and the poor bugger saw us and ran forward to surrender… I'm surprised he didn't die of fright..'
The result was a first success for the SAS and, for Riley, the award of a Distinguished Conduct Medal in recognition of his 'skilled and daring leadership'. The citation for the medal also made mention of him 'bluffing' enemy sentries to carry out his work of destruction.
Riley's rock-like presence in the unit was confirmed when Stirling appointed him the SAS's chief instructor, responsible for recruiting and training.
According to Stirling's biographer, 'Big Pat', as he was widely known, became the CO's 'staunch right-hand man' and it was upon his 'foresight and professionalism' that much of the unit's success depended.
Although he managed to find his way onto a number of desert raids, it was only after returning from an officers' training course that he resumed a more active role in a force now commanded by Paddy Mayne.
The two men, both keen boxers, were great friends, but that didn't prevent them coming to blows en route to the invasion of Sicily. An apparently inebriated Mayne was seen by Riley to be grappling with a fellow officer. It looked as though he was being throttled.
'There was no time to lose,' recalled Riley. 'I pulled Paddy round and hit him hard on the jaw. He went down... but he just got up without a word. Then after a minute, he said, 'Come on, Pat, let's have a drink'.'
That their friendship did not suffer was evidenced a few months later when, in the midst of the battle of Termoli, in southern Italy, with shells 'crumping into the streets' around them, they continued with their game of billiards! At one point, during a particularly fierce bombardment, Mayne chalked his cue, with what Riley took to be, Francis Drake-style insouciance. 'I thought to myself, 'Well, if you can do it, chum, I'll do it with you',' recalled Riley. 'And we did. We finished the game, and then went outside.'
Riley hadn't gone far when the street in which he was standing suddenly became a blur of rubble and smoke. 'The next thing I knew I was halfway down the street,' said Riley, 'lying on my back.'
Eighteen men were either killed or fatally injured in the blast and, over the course of three days' fighting, the unit lost a third of the 207 men who started the action.
But once again 'Big Pat' Riley's luck had held and he came through a bruising scrap with enemy tanks unscathed to be posted back to Britain for another training job, preparing new SAS recruits for the invasion of France.
Typically, he managed to wangle himself a place in the frontline yet again, leading a section of heavily-armed jeeps in a series of frantic fire-fights in the closing weeks of the war.
To the end, Riley continued to bear a charmed life. In one of his last combats, he and his section succeeded in clearing a wood of enemy troops where a battalion of paratroopers had failed.
It was a fitting climax to a brilliantly successful war career that was impossible to match in civilian life. Returning to East Anglia after being demobilised, the SAS lieutenant found himself once more a humble police constable in March and Wisbech.
But not for long. Post-war Fenland life proved far too sedate for him He resigned and volunteered instead for the Malayan Regiment, then engaged in a struggle against a communist insurgency.
His post-war services brought him into contact again with the SAS which had been reformed to help combat the 'rebels' in the forests of south-east Asia. He soldiered on until 1959 when he retired to run a pub in Colchester before eventually taking a managerial job with a security firm.
One of the SAS's greatest heroes, the seemingly indestructible American-born honorary East Anglian died peacefully in 1999, aged 83, a larger than life figure to the very end.
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