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

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Gavin says David Stirling tried to portray himself in later life as a kind of “devil may care buccaneer – a gambler”. 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. But in an era when pulling down statues is all the rage, is it time to erect a new one? Of Bill Stirling, the real hero of the SAS. Stirling received a knighthood and numerous military awards before his death on November 4, 1990, aged 74. He was an action man, he liked firing weapons. Paddy was a great one for a party and he was inclined to have one pulled out of bed in the middle of the night just to join a party. I found that sort of thing rather maddening, but he was so nice you couldn’t really mind.

The whole SAS started out its success by being terrifically secret. David didn’t want any publicity at all, and we never had any to start with, not until the raid of the SAS on the Iranian embassy, which took place in the presence of the television cameras. He guided the group on a five-day, 100-mile trek, without a map, or any food provisions, to link up with the 1st Army. In the biography, Mortimer analyses Stirling’s complex character: the childhood speech impediment, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the “jealousy and inferiority” he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, Paddy Mayne. Bridge of Allan-born David Stirling was a Scots aristocrat, mountaineer, and cowboy who dropped out of Cambridge University to be an artist in Paris, later joining the Scots Guards. David Stirling, by contrast, was the “frontman”. He was “quite charismatic and quite forceful and a very good salesman”.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. Stirling was depicted by Connor Swindells in the 2022 television historical drama SAS: Rogue Heroes. [33] Gavin Mortimer called the series SAS: Rogue Heroes "David Stirling’s version of how the SAS was born." [34] See also [ edit ] It’s a controversial question posed by best-selling writer, historian and TV consultant Gavin Mortimer in his new book ‘David Stirling The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS’. The unit was disbanded after the war ended, but in 1947 it was re-formed as part of the Territorial Army, becoming a regular Army unit again in 1952. That’s why he was able to get away with it really. He came from the upper class. He was very much an establishment man.

But was the Perthshire-born officer really a military genius, or was he in fact a shameless self-publicist who manipulated people, and the truth, for his own ends? Analysis of character The SAS: Savage Wars of Peace: 1947 to the Present, by Anthony Kemp, John Murray, 1994, pp. 88–89 [ ISBNmissing]However, the real David Stirling, he claims was “immature and undisciplined and insecure and just purposeless”. Death of Paddy Mayne But while Stirling spent the rest of the war in Colditz, Mike managed to escape with another SAS soldier and an Arabic-speaking Frenchman. 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. In the 10 years after the war, David had spent most of his time in Southern Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),” says Gavin, “and he had nothing to do with the SAS. 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.

Through James, who lived in Oxford at the time, he got to know another original SAS member Johnny Cooper. 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.

Return to civilian life

In the space of 15 months, the Luftwaffe and the Italian Regia Aeronautica suffered the loss of more than 250 aircraft and dozens of supply dumps. Nicholson, Rebecca (30 October 2022). "SAS: Rogue Heroes review – is the follow up to Peaky Blinders fun? Does Arthur Shelby like a drink?". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 October 2022.

In the book that inspired the series, author Ben Macintyre described Stirling as “one of those people who thrive in war, having failed at peace”. From a clan of eccentric Scottish aristocrats, Stirling had tried his hand at various pursuits. He moved to Paris in an attempt to become an artist, then pledged to be the first man to climb to the top of Mount Everest – despite zero climbing know-how, or the number of actual climbers who had perished up there. Heading to America, he was working as a cowboy – a humble ranch hand – when war broke out. According to regimental tradition, Mayne was recruited into the SAS from a prison cell, where he was awaiting court martial for striking his commanding officer. Whatever the truth of this story, Mayne proved to be a great asset to his new unit. 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 In fact, it was Bill Stirling, working in Cairo at the time, who wrote much of the memo and made sure it was read by senior officers. Mortimer notes: A small group burst into the officers’ mess and gunned down the Germans and Italians inside, then destroyed 24 aircraft, fuel tanks, an ammunition dump and a line of telegraph poles.The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and covert reconnaissance 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? After his capture, Stirling’s war was over, despite a number of abortive escape attempts, which eventually led him to Colditz. The SAS thrived under Mayne for the rest of the war. Following Mayne’s untimely death in a car crash in 1955, Stirling once again used his powers of self-promotion to create his own myth, appropriating many of Mayne’s qualities and successes along the way. A heavily armed patrol of L Detachment, Special Air Service troops in North Africa, 1943. David Stirling assiduously (and disingenuously) took credit for the creation of the service. Image: Wikimedia Commons.