 McLean then organized them into the 1st Partisan Brigade, and arranged their training and armament.After his evacuation from Albania in November 1943, McLean was awarded the Distinguished Service Order  and promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel.However, even after he left tension between the partisans and the nationalists in Albania was still causing concern to SOE at which point the Foreign Office and McLean devised a plan to unite them in a common struggle against the Axis forces there.