around this was to go into politics, and on this stated ground Maclean tendered his resignation in 1941 to Alexander Cadogan, an FO mandarin. Maclean immediately enlisted, taking a taxi from Sir Alexander's office to a nearby recruiting station, where he joined the Cameron Highlanders, his father's regiment, as a private. Later, his erstwhile employers discovered that his resignation had been merely a ruse or legal fiction along the lines of taking the Chiltern Hundreds. Maclean was thus forced to run for office and, despite his self-confessed inexperience, was chosen as a Conservative candidate, and eventually elected MP. Prime Minister Winston Churchill jocularly accused him of using "the Mother of Parliaments as a public convenience". Benghazi and the desert retreat After basic training, Maclean was sent to Cairo, where David Stirling invited him to join the newly formed Special Air Service (SAS), which he did. They worked closely with the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a mechanised reconnaissance unit, to travel far behind enemy lines and attack targets such as aerodromes. Maclean's first operation with the SAS, once his training was completed, was to Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, in late May 1942. He was joined on this operation by Randolph Churchill, son of the prime minister. They drove from Alexandria via the seaport of Mersa Matruh and the inland Siwa Oasis. They crossed the ancient caravan route known as the Trigh-el-Abd, which the enemy had laced with little bombs, and camped in the Gebel Akhdar, the Green Mountain just inland from the coastal plain. Once inside the occupied city, their patrol came face to face with Italian soldiers several times; Maclean, with his excellent Italian, managed to bluff his way out of all of these encounters by pretending to be a staff officer. They spent two nights and a day in the city. They had hoped to sabotage ships, but both the rubber boats they had brought with them failed to inflate, so they treated the visit as a reconnaissance mission. The drive back was uneventful, but nearing Cairo, Maclean, along with most of his party, was seriously injured in a crash and spent months out of action. Once he had recovered, Stirling involved him in preparations for a larger SAS attack on Benghazi. They attended a dinner with Churchill, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke, and General Harold Alexander, who was about to assume