The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and the SAS Regiment

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One can feel a degree of sympathy for Stirling because he was an ideas man and he was someone who found himself in a situation ie commanding officer of the SAS, who clearly wasn’t cut out for this role. In September 1967 Len Deighton wrote an article in The Sunday Times Magazine about Operation Snowdrop, a raid led by Stirling. The following year Stirling was awarded "substantial damages" in a libel action about the article. [20] Mercenary and arms dealer [ edit ]

This article is an edited transcript of SAS: Rogue Heroes with Ben Macintyre on Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and covert reconnaissance It was like being on the sea in a way. You could go in any direction. There was a great sort of freedom attached to being in the desert. There was so much variety – beautiful smooth surfaces, sand, and impassable great sand dunes hundreds of feet high –slowly moving across the desert with the prevailing wind, the sand dunes moving very, very slowly, perhaps a foot every year, but altering their arrangements quite considerably.Oh yes. They said what a good chap he was, and how sad. People on the whole didn’t think about being killed. We all thought someone else would be killed, but not us. I don’t know why it was. I suspect it was self-protection really. But Bill had a business career, was married with a young family: he was everything that David wasn’t. Discrete, modest, unassuming. He was finally captured by the Germans in 1943. He escaped and was recaptured by the Italians. After four more escape attempts he was sent to the notorious Colditz prison where he spent the rest of the war.

Mike Sadler had been captured along with Stirling in 1943 while trying to cross the Tunisian desert to meet the British-American 1st Army. In many ways, the formation of the SAS was an accident. It was the brainchild of one officer, a man called David Stirling, who was a commander in the Middle East in 1940. The parachute experiment Stirling left the Regular Army in 1947. He founded the Capricorn Africa Society, which aimed to fight racial discrimination in Africa, but Stirling's preference to a limited, elitist voting franchise over universal suffrage limited the movement's appeal. He subsequently formed various private military companies and was linked with a failed attempt to overthrow the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the early 1970s. He also attempted to organise efforts to undermine trades unionism and to overthrow the British government, none of which made significant headway. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1990, and died later the same year.Like his comrade and SAS co-founder David Stirling, Lewes found his time in the Commandos frustrating. Many operations were cancelled and others ended in failure. Learning from this, Lewes sought to refine the commando concept and develop a more effective way of using these highly trained soldiers. Hattersley, Giles (4 March 2007). "Playboy trying to keep the kingdom united". The Times . Retrieved 1 February 2021. Michael Alexander speaks to the author of a new book who thinks SAS founder Sir David Stirling should be regarded as a ‘phoney major’. Transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers in 1947, Stirling was granted the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel on his retirement in 1965. Overall, I loved the desert, I thought it was perfect. I was very sorry to leave at the end of the desert war.

Impressed by the success of German parachute units - particularly during the Battle of Crete in 1941 - Lewes endeavoured to set up his own small parachute raiding unit. Having obtained some equipment earmarked for India, he arranged with a few comrades, including Stirling, to make the first jump in the Middle East with little instruction or training. What Stirling excelled at was drinking and gambling. He spent much of his time in Cairo, whiling away the time in exclusive clubs and bars. He also had a rare talent for self-promotion, which led to his name becoming familiar to Winston Churchill, after Stirling recruited his son, Randolph, into the SAS. Recruiting from the old boy network brought Stirling men he was comfortable with. Mayne preferred to recruit men who were good fighters; it didn’t matter whether they were born well or dragged up from the gutter. Through James, who lived in Oxford at the time, he got to know another original SAS member Johnny Cooper.

‘Mystique’ of the SAS

The book paints a portrait of a man who was great at coming up with schemes and ideas and charming others into believing, and investing, in them. But Stirling did not have the discipline or talents needed to pull them off. To form the SAS and for it to succeed he needed Bill Stirling and Mayne. Everything he tried before and after the war was unsuccessful because he didn’t have such quality support. He was jealous of Mayne, a far better fighter and leader. His brother, though he never went on an SAS raid, was probably more important in the history of the unit than David ever was. Bill’s expertise was soon in demand elsewhere. He was sent to Egypt in January 1941 on a top-secret mission but once in the Egyptian capital he came to the attention of the high command. Lt-General Arthur Smith, the chief of the general staff, hired Bill as his personal assistant. Smith’s boss was General Archibald Wavell, the commander in chief of British forces in North Africa. The Special Air Service (SAS) is famous around the world. Its highly trained men are renowned for their skills in covert surveillance, close-combat fighting, and hostage rescue. The SAS was founded in the midst of the Second World War in a bid to undertake small-scale raids behind enemy lines and the elite raiding force has been running ever since. Who was David Stirling? It was not something people were enjoying at the time very often – well, it was exciting to be shooting off at things, yes, I suppose it was.