Exhausted, filthy but unbowed, the birth of the SAS
First ever photograph of elite unit is uncovered showing abortive raid in Egypt as research pins its exact beginnings to 75 years ago
BONE-TIRED and caked in dust, the soldiers of the newly formed SAS stand side by side in the desert.
Hours earlier, more than half their comrades had been either killed or captured in an abortive raid, but the men of the soon to be famous force still manage to raise what might pass for a grin in the bright sunshine.
The newly discovered photograph from 1941 is the only known picture of the elite unit’s first raid, conducted by a band of soldiers known as The Originals. This extraordinary historical document has been discovered as part of research which has also determined the founding date of the secretive unit as August 28, 1941 – 75 years ago today.
A wealth of detail of the early days of the Special Air Regiment (SAS) has been disclosed in a recently completed 13 year project to commemorate every member of the regiment killed in the Second World War.
The 800 page roll of honour for the SAS and its forerunner, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), contains the stories of the 374 men who died during the conflict.
Published for the 75th anniversary of the SAS’s founding, the threevolume memorial, has been compiled from an exhaustive trawl of service records, operational reports, medal citations, memoirs, diaries and family letters.
Its author, a former soldier who uses the pen name Ex-Lance-Corporal X, has shed light on the earliest chapters of the regiment and saved for posterity stories that risked being lost as veterans died out.
The photograph of the survivors of the first ever SAS operation shows some of the regiment’s most famous figures. The picture was taken by then Capt “Jake” Easonsmith, who at the time was an officer in the LRDG, and shows the aftermath of the SAS’s disastrous first raid, codenamed Operation Squatter.
Only a few months earlier, a young Scots Guards officer called Lt David Stirling had proposed creating a force of raiders to operate deep behind enemy lines, attacking air fields, supply trains and ammunition dumps.
On its first mission, the unit had been due to parachute deep into enemy territory to destroy aircraft at Axis airfields, in preparation for a major British offensive to relieve the siege of Tobruk.
This came after Erwin Rommel’s troops, backed by the Italians, had swept across Libya, forcing the British to retreat to Egypt while leaving a garrison at Tobruk to defend its port.
The raid on the night of Nov 16 had been meant to demonstrate the effectiveness of Stirling’s new force, but proved to be a costly failure.
Planes took off from Kabrit in Egypt, to deliver the parachuting raiding party to attack airfields at Timimi and Gazala, west of Tobruk, with the instruction to destroy “as many aircraft as possible”. The operational order noted: “It is most important that the enemy should be unaware of your having landed or of your presence.”
But one plane was shot down with the loss of 13 parachutists and crew and the others jumped into heavy rain and a gale. Containers of equipment were blown away and parachutists were badly injured as they landed on rough ground in high winds.
Widely dispersed, the assault force was in no position to mount an attack and decided to trek the 36 hours back to the rendezvous point to be collected by their “taxi service” of LRDG jeeps.
By the end of the operation, 32 of the 53 “operatives” had either been lost, killed or captured. The following month Lt Stirling, knowing that failure would mean the end of the special unit, sent his remaining troops back to the airfields by land using jeeps, where they destroyed more than 60 planes.
A 1943 file marked “most secret” concluded that after the first operation it was “found inadvisable to carry out any more parachute operations in the Western Desert. Long-range operations proved much more successful.” Difficulties of parachuting
in the desert included “changeable weather, difficulties of accurate navigation owing to lack of landmarks, casualties on landing owing to rough country”.
Capt Easonsmith took the picture as he commanded the LRDG patrol that drove behind enemy lines to pick up the survivors. Standing next to the then Capt Stirling, who is wearing sunglasses, is another key SAS figure Lt Blair “Paddy” Mayne, who took over as leader of the SAS later in the war when Stirling was captured in 1943.
Mayne, a lieutenant at the time of the raid, had been an Irish rugby international before the war and went on to become one of the most decorated officers of the conflict, winning four Distinguished Service Orders, the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre.
Several of the survivors from Operation Squatter went on to be killed in missions later in the war.
Capt Easonsmith himself was killed in 1943 in an ambush during the battle of Leros, where he and other SAS men were defending the island after the Nazi invasion of Greece which followed Italy’s surrender and withdrawal from the war.
The photograph – showing in the foreground his silhouette holding the camera – remained with his family, who had no idea it showed the first SAS raid.
The research has also uncovered more detail of what happened to some of those lost on the raid, such as Pte Douglas Keith.
He is often recorded as dying from his wounds soon after the raid, but in fact the soldier had been made prisoner by the Italians and the following month was put on a transport ship from Benghazi across the Mediterranean, along with other PoWs. On Dec 9 the SS Sebastiano Venier was attacked by a British submarine, HMS Porpoise, that was unaware its prey was carrying 2,000 prisoners in its hold.
Pte Keith’s family were later told the Italians had declared their son missing after the vessel was sunk.
The author’s painstaking research has also discoverd the date of the founding of what was then known as L Detachment, SAS Brigade.
It has generally been accepted that Stirling came up with the idea sometime in July 1941, but the actual founding date has remained unknown.
But documents recovered by the author show the first detachment was formed on Aug 28 – the day The Originals first assembled at their makeshift camp at Kabrit in Egypt.
The roll of honour has also confirmed the identities and details of six soldiers from the SAS and seven from the LRDG who were either unknown, or until now had only been suspected of being members.
Poor paperwork, secrecy, spelling mistakes and wartime confusion meant that some casualties were only recorded according to their parent unit, with no mention of them being attached to the SAS.
In some cases the research has put names to casualties described in operational reports, but whose identities were not known. New names have been added to the SAS official memorials in Hereford and Stirling.
The author said his research had also recognised 21 French and Greek citizens killed while officially attached to the British SAS.
“This is the first time that illustrated biographical entries have been written for each wartime casualty of the SAS and LRDG, with new casualties having been identified,” the author told The Sunday Telegraph. “Not only are their stories engagingly human but they underline the commitment made by those who died in the course of their duty.” Profits from The SAS and LRDG Roll of Honour 1941-47 will go to Combat Stress.