by Jon E. Lewis
By August 1941, Stirling had established his force at Kabrit, 100 miles south of Cairo. Equipment was conspicuous by its absence. The camp consisted of two small tents for personnel, one large supply tent and a wooden sign saying “L Detachment – SAS”. Being in his own words, a “cheekie laddie”, Stirling decided that the equipment L Detachment needed in view of the parsimony of the Quartermasters, would have to be “borrowed” from a New Zealand camp down the road. Thus the first – and highly unofficial – mission of L Detachment was a night raid on the New Zealand camp, filling L Detachment’s one and only 3 ton truck with anything useful that could be found.
The next day, L Detachment boasted the smartest – and most luxuriously furnished – British camp in the Canal Zone. Training then began in earnest. From the start, Stirling insisted on a high standard of discipline – equal to that of the Brigade of Guards – and the pursuit of excellence. To achieve such standards demanded a combination of the right character and sheer physical fitness. One early recruit to Stirling’s L Detachment, Fitzroy Maclean, recalled that: “for days and nights on end, we trudged interminably over the alternating soft sand and jagged rocks of the desert, weighed down by heavy loads of explosive, eating and drinking only what we could carry with us. In the intervals we did weapon training, physical training and training in demolitions and navigation.”
Additionally, everyone joining the SAS had to be a parachutist, since Stirling envisaged airborne insertions for his force. No RAF instructors – or indeed aircraft – were available, so the SAS developed its own parachute training techniques. These involved jumping from ever higher platforms or from the back of trucks moving at 30 mph. The unit then moved on to make its first live jump from a Bombay aircraft. Two men died when their ‘chutes failed to open. “That night”, recalled SAS “Original” Bob Bennett, “we went to bed with as many cigarettes as possible and smoked until morning. Next day every man (led by Stirling himself) jumped; no-one backed out. It was then that I realized that I was with a great bunch of chaps.” Thereafter parachute training progressed smoothly.
There were other problems though. Prime among them was the type of bomb which would be carried by the SAS raiding parties; it had to be small enough to be easily transportable, but big enough to do the job. The requisite device was invented by Jock Lewes, a small incendiary bomb made of oil, plastic and thermite. Appropriately enough it became known as the Lewes bomb.
Stirling sharpened his men for action with a training raid on the large RAF base at Heliopolis outside Cairo. An RAF Group-Captain had been unwise enough to tell L Detachment that their planned enterprise of attacking enemy aircraft on the ground was unrealistic. Although the airfield guards had been warned of their coming, and daily reconnaissance planes sent up, the SAS could not be kept out. After marching 90 miles across the desert by night and hiding up by day, they placed stickers representing bombs on the RAF aircraft before slipping away into the desert darkness.
To celebrate their success, L Detachment were given a few days leave in Cairo. Before they had lacked an identity, but training had made them into a cohesive unit. They took pride too, in their new unit insignia. The design of the cap badge was the result of a competition won by Sergeant Bob Tait who came up with a flaming sword of Damocles emblem. David Stirling added the motto “Who Dares Wins”. The one problem was the unit’s headgear: a white beret. After this drew unceremonious wolf whistles in Cairo, it was hurriedly replaced, first by a khaki forage cap, then by the famous sand-coloured beret.
After their leave, the men of L Detachment assembled to hear the details of their first real attack, scheduled for the night of 17 November 1941, when five SAS groups would parachute into the desert near Gazala and attack the five forward German fighter airfields. It was to be the opening prelude to Auckinleck’s attempt to relieve Tobruk. Stirling assembled his men. “With luck”, he told them, “we’ll polish off Rommel’s entire fighter force.” There were whistles and cheers.
Alas, L Detachment’s luck was out.
The weather forecast on the morning of 16 November looked ominous. The wind was strong and it looked as though it might rain – far from ideal conditions for parachuting. Even so, Stirling decided to press ahead with the mission, partly because Auckinleck expected it, mostly because many of the men who had joined the SAS had done so out of disgust for the continual cancellation of their commando operations. To call off the drop, Stirling concluded, would have been catastrophic for morale. At 19.30 the five Bombays containing L Detachment left the runway, flying first out to sea, then turning inland to cross the coast well behind German lines. The aircraft tossed around wildly in the wind, and the ground below was totally obscured by the darkness and the sandstorm. The drop was more than a failure, it was a disaster. Of his group, Stirling was the first to jump. It was so black and murky that he could not see the ground. He waited and waited for the impact. He recorded later that it was like being suspended in space. Then there was a smashing blow. For some seconds he was unconscious but luckily nothing was broken. It took him nearly an hour to assemble the rest of his stick who had been dragged all over the desert by the wind. One man could not be found, others were injured, and vital supplies were missing. They had some Lewes bombs, but no detonators and so could not carry out their mission. Stirling resolved on the spot that never again would detonators and bombs be packed separately. There was nothing to do but call off the planned attack and attempt to walk the forty miles into the desert for the planned rendezvous with a motor patrol for the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).
It took several days for the SAS parties to reach the LRDG rendezvous. Some never made it. Of the fifty-one officers and men who had jumped into the storm three days before, only five officers (including Stirling himself) and eighteen men were left. Any other man would have given up the idea of a special desert force.
Stirling, however, decided to press ahead. Fortunately for him the Eighth Army Command had more to think about than the fortunes of a small band of irregulars; the counter-offensive against Rommel had become bogged down by tough German resistance. So Stirling withdrew with the remnants of his unit to a remote oasis at Gialo, where he began preparing for another mission. He had already abandoned the idea of parachuting into the desert. At the rendezvous with the LRDG, David Lloyd-Owen of the latter unit had proposed that his patrols could get Stirling and his men to and from their targets. Although essentially a reconnaissance group such a task was easily within the LRDG’s capability. Stirling accepted with alacrity. Now at Gialo, Stirling and his men pored over maps. A quick success was obviously necessary to wipe out the failure of the first raid, if hostile elements at GQ were not to succeed in burying the fledgling SAS.
In only a matter of days Stirling’s idea was vindicated. In early December an SAS group under Paddy Mayne destroyed 24 enemy aircraft at Tamet airfield, while Bill Fraser’s party destroyed 37 at Agedabia. Two weeks later, Paddy Mayne led a six-man group back to Tamet and accounted for a further 27 aircraft. A group led by Stirling himself reached the airfield at Bagush but were unable to plant their bombs. Their improvized response to this situation was to prove so successful that it was used often in future: a motorized charge down the airstrip, blazing away at the aircraft with machine guns and grenades from the back of the LRDG jeeps.
Fitzroy Maclean later wrote of the huge success of these raids: “Working on these lines, David achieved a series of successes which surpassed the wildest expectations of those who had originally supported his venture. No sooner had the enemy become aware of his presence in one part of the desert than he was attacking them somewhere else. Never has the element of surprise, the key to success in all irregular warfare, been more brilliantly exploited. Soon the number of aircraft destroyed was well into three figures.”
It was not only aircraft which received the attention of the SAS. Stirling was quick to see the vulnerability of Rommel’s supply lines. Convoys were attacked, harbours raided. Recruits flocked to join L Detachment. Stirl
ing himself was promoted to Major in January 1942. Seven months later, Stirling’s force had grown to Regimental size (750 men) and was renamed 1 SAS.
Perhaps the real proof of the SAS concept was that it survived without the presence of its founder, it wasn’t dependent on the charisma and drive of only one man. David Stirling led from the front and in January 1943 he paid the price. He was captured in Tunisia by the Germans. The SAS went on without him, not only in North Africa, but into Italy, France, Holland and eventually Germany. By 1945, the idea David Stirling had conceived in his hospital bed had become more than a war-winning unit. It had become a legend.
EYEWITNESS: SAS in South East Asia
A former member of the SAS Regiment describes his experiences in Malaysia with a small team of troops sent to win the “hearts and minds” of the villagers along the border with Borneo and Indonesia. Many of the tribesmen had never seen a white man before, and winning them over presented novel problems to the British soldiers.
“When the confrontation between Indonesia and the fledgling Malaysia ended in 1968, the British presence was reduced to a mere token force, as the terrorist problem officially no longer existed. In practice however, there was still a problem, and the best military solution lay in wholesale search-and-destroy missions. But the British could not overtly engage in such operations and so they were disguised as ‘hearts and minds’ operations.
“There were, and still are, many primitive tribes living in the highlands. They were officially designated as being Aboriginal Peoples; government policy was to try to educate them slowly into the ways of civilization, restricting contact to essential medical services.
“So it was that various elements of Far East Land Forces found themselves ostensibly visiting Aboriginal villagers (when they could find them) in order to dispense medical supplies and basic medical aid. Weapons and ammunition could be carried because these were always taken into the jungle, even on exercise.
“I was attached to a ‘hearts and minds’ team as a specialist in combat intelligence. It was my job to talk – usually via an interpreter – to the headman of any village we came to and find out if there was any activity in the area. Gradually, I’d hope to build up some sort of picture of any terrorist organisation, figuring out who they were, where they were based, what weapons they had and so on. As well as myself, we had a signaller, a medic, four minders who could act independently if they had to, an interpreter/tracker who spoke some of the local dialects, and the boss, a young captain, who came from the same regiment as the minders.
“All in all, it was one of the best jobs I ever had – we were on our own and I got to see the kinds of people who you only ever read about; the Aborigines. Lovely, gentle people they were, but a little confused by some of the medical practices they were being taught.
“I remember one village we came to, the headman came out to meet us and the old boy had a very well developed chest – a sort of geriatric Page Three. It worried our medic quite a bit until finally we found out what had happened. Apparently a government team had been there about a year before, preaching the virtues of birth control. Then, when they left, they gave the village a year’s supply of birth control pills. Well there was no way that the headman was going to let valuable medicine be used by mere women, so he scoffed the lot himself. As a result he developed breasts as well as beginning to talk in a high pitched voice. Our medic explained that an enemy had cursed the medicine and with great ceremony the remaining pills were burned.
“We used to travel initially by Land Rover or canoe, though sometimes we were choppered in. We’d choose one village as a base and then try to cover a 1- to 20-mile radius around it. For weapons we had Armalites, SLRs, shotguns, grenades, some Claymore mines and a GPMG. Usually, the boss and a couple of minders would disappear off on their own for two or three days, particularly if we got what looked like hard into on a terrorist group somewhere in the area.
“In theory, if we found that there was a terrorist group nearby we were supposed to contact HQ Farelf, who would contact the Malaysian authorities, who would send in their own boys. In practice, if the boss thought that we couldn’t handle it ourselves he’d get in touch with another ‘hearts and minds’ team who would whistle over to give a hand. I’m not sure, but I think that prisoners were regarded as being an embarrassment, so if there was any action terrorists who weren’t killed were allowed to get away – after all the more stories they told their mates in Thailand or Burma about how unfriendly Malaya had suddenly become the better for all of us.
“The first time I saw action, I was driving the Land Rover back from the nearest town some 30 Klicks away. The track was an old logging road, so it was quite brutal. There was tall primary jungle on one side and burntout lallang (secondary jungle) on the other.
“Anyway, suddenly I heard that sharp ‘pop-pop-pop’ that means some joker’s using an SMG and the front offside tyre was blown out. This was at the very start of the ‘hearts and minds’ campaign, so I don’t think the terrorists had realized that the Brits posed an actual threat. But in a mad moment I got out of the vehicle – which anyway had slewed across the track – and shouted out: ‘You effing idiot, I’m British!’ Funny what goes through your mind at the time . . . all I can remember now is being furious because I’d have to spend time repairing the bloody tyre!
“There was a moment of silence during which I suddenly realized that I was not in a good position and that maybe I should try to sneak off into the lallang behind me. Then I hear a voice from the primary jungle shouting ‘Sorry Johnny!’ Then nothing. After about half an hour I finished shaking, changed the tyre – have you ever tried changing a tyre from underneath a vehicle? – and got back to camp. The boss and the minders were still laughing about it weeks later and for a time it looked as if ‘British Johnny’ was going to be my permanent nickname!”
EYEWITNESS: The Australian SAS in Vietnam
Andrew Freemantle left the British Army in 1969 and served for three years with the Royal Australian Regiment and Australian Special Air Service. He served for 11 months in Vietnam.
“On 22 May 1971, I was commanding the standby patrol in the Australian SAS squadron base on the hill at Nui Dat, South Vietnam. The task of my five man team on that day was to be prepared at short notice to deploy, by a variety of methods, either to reinforce or assist one of our patrols already in there.
“One such patrol (call sign 23, a five man recce patrol) had been operating for five days some 50 miles to the north of Nui Dat, in an American area usually patrolled by the 1st Air Cavalry and notorious for its high level of enemy activity.
“On 21 May, patrol 23 had reported seeing and hearing some main force Viet Cong constructing bunkers in an area of thick secondary jungle. The patrol had attempted a close recce, but it had great difficulty getting very close to the enemy because large numbers of dried leaves on the ground made quiet movement almost impossible. But it was clear from the number of enemy seen and the amount of general enemy movement in the area, that a significant position, possibly a battalion base, was being constructed.
“The commander of patrol 23 had decided to withdraw to a safer area and call for the assistance of a standby patrol. This would give him a better chance of being able to fight his way out if he got into trouble, or of being able to create a diversion should either patrol be compromised.
“So on the morning of 22 May, my patrol, patrol 15, abseiled through the trees to reinforce patrol 23, in an area far enough away from the enemy sighting to make it impossible for them to hear us. Various diversionary tactics were used to disguise the whereabouts of our helicopters, but because of the frequent chopper movements in much of South Vietnam (unlike previous jungle campaigns such as Malaya or Borneo) the use of helicopters to insert a covert patrol was not as risky as it might seem.
“Once on the ground we received an update of the situation. Then we patrolled carefully towards where patrol 23 had seen the enemy. This took several hours, but by 14.30 we were
in the vicinity of the enemy camp. By this stage our rate of movement had slowed to about 100 metres in an hour, and we were all acutely aware of an enemy presence, even though we’d not yet seen anyone.
“Without warning a Viet Cong soldier, dressed in green and carrying an AK-46, appeared from behind a tree about five metres away and opened fire. By this time in the tour we were quite quick on the draw, so he flew back in a hail of fire from our automatic SLRs and M16s.
“Then all hell broke loose. Obviously we’d walked right into the middle of what appeared to be a major VC bunker complex. Within a few seconds we were under fire from six occupied bunkers, dug in an L shaped configuration We were forced to go to ground in a shallow depression about seven metres from the nearest bunker.
“My patrol seemed to be under fire from three bunkers along the bottom of the L, and the patrol we’d been sent to reinforce was about 20 metres away, under fire from bunkers along the side of the L. The enemy, of course, were firing through slits in the front and sides of each bunker, so when we started to throw grenades at them they exploded harmlessly either on the trench parapet or on top of the metre or so of overhead protection that formed the roof of each bunker.
“But when the enemy threw grenades at us we had no such protection, and things became quite lively. Mick, my medic, was soon wounded in the shoulder and leg. I felt a great whoosh behind me and a stinging sensation in my backside. An enemy grenade had gone over our heads and exploded just behind us.
