SCARES WINS
ECCENTRIC, TRUE STORY OF LEGEND WHO FORMED S.A.S. feared no one as he changed the way wars are waged
web
well concealed underneath this raffish, toffish exterior. “He was incredibly brave and he was also a brilliant judge of character, able to sum up whether or not people from very different walks of life had that very hard-to-define quality for this kind of warfare. “I think he is rather an underrated figure if you take him at face value as this lanky, not very f it, chain- smoking, harddrinking, joking upperclass deer-stalker type. “He w a s h i g h l y intelligent and had a grip of the strategic nature of war and how important that is in terms of m orale and translating the war for people back home.” Stirling was born in Keir House, his family’s ancestral home in Perthshire, and originally wanted to be an artist and later a mountaineer. As a lieutenant with no battle experience, to bypass those who objected to his plans for a new kind of warfare, he sneaked into the British Army HQ while on crutches from his parachute accident.
He got his plans to General Sir Neil Ritchie who ultimately secured him permission to form his force of six officers and 60 men – to the fury of many on his own side.
Ben, who gained access to the SAS’s previously secret war diary and archives, said: “A lot of middle- ranked staff off icers thought, ‘ Who is this aristocrat who has decided to run his private army?’
“There was also a feeling that blowing planes up in the middle of the night and running away into the desert was just not cricket. He made no secret of the fact he hated them too.”
The first SAS operation was a disaster and they lost 21 out of 55 men. But their second destroyed 60 aircraft in attacks on airfields in Libya and the success that followed earned him the nickname The Phantom Major from German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Winston Churchill backed him but the
Sunday Mail
casualties took their toll on the SAS’s leader. He was eventually captured in 1943 on a mission to drive through retreating German lines.
Ben said: “He was not one to display any kind of public weakness but what gives Stirling away is that his body began to break down.
“He started to get terrible migraines and his desert sores became much worse.
“To dr ive through a retreating army and try to link up with your allies is a pretty nutty thing to do.”
Stirling escaped four times before being sent to Colditz Cast le where he saw out the war. A statue commemorating him and the SAS dead was erected on Hill of Row near Doune, Stirlingshire, in 2002. SAS: Rogue Heroes, BBC2, tomorrow, 9pm.