I, and I would have thought a significant portion of the non-Tabloid reading public, have always had an interest in the activities of our Special Forces, no doubt because we know little of what they get up to and so our over-active imaginations fill in the gaps. I always imagined the exploits of the SAS to be a combination of the gadgetry of James Bond, the dirty underworld of John Le Carre and the debonair flamboyance of Biggles (that last one is a bit of a fib).
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On reading this history of the origins of the SAS, I was proven wrong in almost every aspect. Their activities were dirty, devious, hugely dangerous and frequently a disaster, initially. Of gadgetry, there was little – a very basic but successful bomb, some adapted Jeeps and the latest in modern weaponry. The men of “L Detachment,” as it was initially known, were quite the opposite of flamboyant and debonair. For the most part they were intelligent, hard-headed, athletic individualists, bored of twiddling their thumbs as they waited for the war in North Africa to start. Of all of them, their founder, David Stirling – known to his men as “the Giant Sloth” for the relaxed, lazy facade which hid a keen, manipulative and stubborn mind – was the most debonair, wheedling and charming his superiors in to letting him try his wild but brilliant idea for using Commando sub-units of about five men to destroy entire airfields etc.
In his opinion, the “fossilised shits” who were running the war wouldn’t understand “L Detachment” and its purpose and so he needed as much autonomy as possible, which he was given initially. This opinion was well-founded – the SAS were disliked and frequently misused by these “fossilised shits”, particularly after his unfortunate capture. His brother, Bill, took over but he didn’t have David’s charming, manipulative way with his superiors and so the SAS commanders frequently had to fight their corner to make those at HQ understand what their sphere of activity actually was.
The book covers the formation and initial training of “L Detachment” in the desert, their removal to Sicily and Italy where they were for the most part successful in their mission to destroy German morale and trick them in to thinking there were whole Companies of Allied forces waltzing about behind the Axis lines. The action then moves to Europe, as the 1 and 2SAS as they were then known, were sent to France to work with the Maquis resistance fighters and report back on enemy movements. Then, as quickly as they appeared, the men dissolved back in to normal soldiers and civilians.
Mortimer explains Stirling’s efforts to find the right sort of men, most of whom had been in the disbanded “Layforce”, a Commando unit of 200 men which had been an unmitigated disaster due not to its remit, but its deployment (too big and unwieldy to be effective, which is what gave David Stirling the idea of reducing the unit’s size), and interested officers he filched from other units. As is always the case with madcap ideas, madcap men are needed to man them. There was no shortage of them in North Africa. They were all bored, all ready to spark at the smallest hint of action, and all volunteers. He hand-picked sixty men and carted them ninety miles east of Cairo, isolating them from bars, women, and any other distractions which might make them lose their focus. Mortimer briefly outlines each of the main players’ previous activities and their areas of expertise, and then delves in to their training, most which seems so utterly extra-ordinary that if he had not found archival and pictorial evidence to prove its veracity, you would be excused for thinking he had made it all up.
As expected the men were put through a punishing training regime of learning how to navigate in the desert, move noiselessly, survive on minimal rations and so on. It is the extra activities they endured which leave the reader shaking their head in disbelief – Mortimer does not even have to try and inject an air of disbelieving exhilaration in to his writing as the information he discovered does it for him. Jock Lewes, in charge of One Troop and the early training of recruits, as well as the inventor of the Lewes bomb which became infamous for its simplicity and devastating destructiveness, was as tough and demanding a leader as they come. He thought nothing of training his men hard for nine or ten hours a day and then dragging them out of bed in the middle of the night for a sixty mile forced march with a 75lb pack. When he decided that jumping from a wooden platform did not simulate a parachute landing well enough, he had his men jump from the back of a lorry travelling at 30-35mph. Unsurprisingly, injuries were frequent. Any man he deemed physically or emotionally unsuited to the rigours of the job he ruthlessly RTU’d, leading men to complete extraordinary feats of endurance, such as Private Doug Keith marching forty miles in bare feet after his boots disintegrated twenty miles in to an exercise.
The other main player of the fledging SAS was Blair “Paddy” Mayne, leader of Two Troop, an Irishman whose talent for guerrilla warfare was second to none. Mortimer has found some brilliant stories about the man who was the brawn to Lewes’ brains – a hulking 6’ 4” menace when drunk, he was as gentle as could be when sober. Lieutenant Gerald Bryan, a fellow officer of Mayne, recalled how Paddy took a turn against him one evening when drunk, and started to punch him. The next morning, Paddy asked him in outrage who had done it to him, having no recollection of having done it himself. As Bryan liked him when he was sober, he lied, telling him he had walked in to a door. Only two men, Reg Seekings and Pat Riley, could stand up to Paddy when he was drunk or in a temper and as a result he respected them, resenting the over-awed fear others tended to show in his presence. It is stories such as this which lend the human element to the dangerous work these men were doing.
Mortimer demonstrates well the excitement these men felt at doing something of worth which had never been attempted before, as well as the fears they had to overcome in order to be given what was then the coveted white beret. He alludes to, but rightly does not try to explain, the composure with which the men accepted the loss of their comrades during training and the initial exercises. They were upset of course, but the suggestion is that the men calmly accepted that they were venturing in to unchartered territory and that things were bound to go wrong, which they sometimes did in spectacular fashion.
For example: On the detachment’s very first operation, a storm of almost biblical proportions brought the men to an abrupt halt when their equipment was either lost in the drop or drowned as the heavens opened. Stirling lost 34 men to death or capture. With quite extra-ordinary strength of mind and will, he continued with “L detachment,” sure his idea could and would work. A few useful changes to the command structure meant that Major General Neil Ritchie, who had supported Stirling’s idea in its infancy, now headed the Eighth Army. Despite a few shaky starts and with Ritchie’s support, “L Detachment” began to reap what they sowed as they were given free rein (up to an extent) to attack aerodromes hundreds of miles behind enemy lines. Such missions were almost always a success with Paddy Mayne’s troop destroying over 50 aeroplanes in only two expeditions.
It is clear that Mortimer is on safe ground when he details the origins of the SAS and it is also clear that he loves his topic. His writing is entertaining, peppered with amusing anecdotes of the bizarre training the recruits to “L Detachment” were put through, but serious and sobering too when it needs to be, particularly when 1SAS as they were later known, were sent to Sicily and Italy to harry German troops from behind their lines. He does not linger overmuch on the horrors they witnessed; as usual, the author doesn’t need to. A brief description of an entire truck of 1SAS soldiers being blown to bloody strips does not need embellishment or deviation from the quote given by the first SAS solider to arrive on the scene. The hideous but necessary euthanasia, if I might call it that, by a bullet to the head by a bullet to the head of a little boy who was caught in a mortar blast needs no further explanation than that which is given. The murder of captured members of the SAS by German soldiers for being “terrorists” is a solemn reminder that these men were walking a dangerously fine line between soldier and spy. Mortimer rightly does not try to add to or alter the memories of the SAS men who witnessed such atrocities. He lets them and the mountain of documentation he has uncovered do the “talking” for him.
The book is a veritable goldmine of information and has whetted my appetite to discover more about Special Forces branches worldwide. If I had any criticism of it, I would say that I would have liked to have seen more photographs of the men on exercises, in the thick of it all. There are some and they are very illustrative for the reader. However, the men were there to do their jobs, not to play photographer, and they did not have the curse/luxury of camera phones to record their activities. I imagine also that photographic evidence would have been invaluable had it fallen in to the wrong hands.
Four Anchors
Magda
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