Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, OBE was a British mountaineer,
World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.
Life before the war Stirling was born at his family's
ancestral home, Keir House in the parish of Lecropt, Perthshire. He was the son
of Brigadier General Archibald Stirling, of Keir, and Margaret Fraser, daughter
of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat,. His cousin was Simon Fraser, 15th Lord
Lovat, and his grandparents were Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet
and Lady Anna Maria Leslie-Melville. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith of
his mother, he was educated at the Benedictine Ampleforth College and
Trinity College, Cambridge. A tall and athletic figure tall). He was training
to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out.
World War II and the founding of the SAS Stirling was commissioned into the Scots
Guards from Ampleforth College Contingent Officer Training Corps on 24
July 1937. In June 1940 he volunteered for the new No. 8 Commando under
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock which became part of Force Z. After Layforce
were disbanded on 1 August 1941, Stirling remained convinced that due to
the mechanised nature of war a small team of highly trained soldiers with the
advantage of surprise could exact greater damage to the enemy's ability to
fight than an entire platoon. Aware that taking his idea up through
the chain of command was unlikely to work, Stirling decided to go straight to
the top. On crutches following a parachuting accident, he stealthily
entered Middle East headquarters in Cairo in an effort to see
Commander-in-Chief General Claude Auchinleck. Spotted by guards he ran
into one office, only to come face-to-face with an officer he had
previously fallen out with. Retreating rapidly to shouts of "Guards, Guards",
he dodged into another office and came face to face with Deputy Commander
Middle East General Ritchie. Stirling explained his plan to Ritchie, the
latter immediately convincing Auchinleck to allow Stirling to form a new Special
Forces unit. The unit was given the deliberately misleading name "L
Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade" to reinforce an existing deception of a
parachute brigade existing in North Africa.
Short of equipment, particularly tents and related gear, at the outset when
they set up base at Kibrit Air Base, the first operation of the new SAS was to
relieve a well-equipped New Zealand unit of small tents, a large tent and
contents including a bar and a piano. A truck and a series of bluffs managed to
convince curious onlookers and the New Zealand unit that all was well.
After a brief period of training, an initial attempt at attacking a German
airfield by parachute landing on 16 November 1941 in support of Operation
Crusader was disastrous. 42 of his 61 officers and men were killed, wounded or
captured far from the target after being blown off course or landing in the wrong
area, during one of the biggest storms for thirty years. Escaping only with the
help of the Long Range Desert Group who were designated to pick up the unit
after the attack, Stirling agreed that approaching by land under the cover of
night would be safer and more effective than parachuting. As quickly as possible
he organised raids on ports using this simple method, often bluffing through
check posts at night using the language skills of some of his soldiers.
Under his leadership, the Lewes bomb was invented by Jock Lewes, the first
hand-held dual explosive and incendiary device. American jeeps, which were able
to deal with the harsh desert terrain better than other transport, were cut
down, adapted and fitted with obsolete RAF machine guns. He also pioneered the
use of small groups to escape detection. Stirling often led from the front, his
SAS units driving through enemy airfields to shoot up aircraft and crew,
replacing the early operational strategy of attaching bombs to enemy aircraft on
foot. The first jeep-borne airfield raid occurred on the night of 7–8 July 1942
when Stirling's SAS group attacked Bagush airfield along with five other
Axis airfields all in the same night. After returning to Cairo on 16 July,
Stirling collected a consignment of more Willys Bantam Jeeps for further airfield
raids. His biggest success was on the night of 26–27 July 1942 when his SAS
squadron with 18 jeeps raided the Sidi Haneish landing strip and destroyed over
20 German aircraft for the loss of one man killed. After a drive through the
desert and evading enemy patrols and aircraft, Stirling and his men reached
the safety of friendly lines on 29 July. These hit-and-run operations eventually
proved Stirling's undoing; he was captured by the Germans in January 1943.
Although he escaped, he was subsequently re-captured by the Italians, who took
great delight in the embarrassment this caused to their German allies. A further
four escape attempts were made, before Stirling was finally sent to Colditz
Castle, where he remained for the rest of the war. After his capture, his own
brother Bill Stirling along with Paddy Mayne took command of the SAS.
In North Africa, in the fifteen months before Stirling's capture, the SAS had
destroyed over 250 aircraft on the ground, dozens of supply dumps, wrecked
railways and telecommunications, and had put hundreds of enemy vehicles out of
action. Field Marshal Montgomery described Stirling as "mad, quite mad"
but admitted that men like Stirling were needed in time of war. According to John
Aspinal, Stirling reputedly personally strangled 41 men.
Private military company Worried that Britain was losing its
power after the war, Stirling organised deals to provide British weapons and
military personnel to other countries, like Saudi Arabia, for various
privatised foreign policy operations. Along with several associates, Stirling
formed Watchguard International Ltd, formerly with offices in Sloane Street
before moving to South Audley Street in Mayfair.
Business was chiefly with the Gulf States. He was linked, along with Denys
Rowley, to a failed attempt to the overthrow Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi
in 1970 or 1971. Stirling was the founder of private military company KAS
International, also known as KAS Enterprises.
Watchguard International Ltd was a private military company, registered in
Jersey in 1965 by Stirling and John Woodhouse. Woodhouse's first assignment
was to go to Yemen to report on the state of the royalist forces when a
cease-fire was declared. At the same time Stirling was cultivating his
contacts in the Iranian government and exploring the chances of obtaining work
in Africa. The company operated in Zambia and in Sierra Leone, providing
training teams and advising on security matters, but its founders' maverick ways
of doing business caused its eventual downfall. Woodhouse resigned as Director
of Operations after a series of disagreements and Stirling ceased to
take an active part in 1972. Great Britain 75
In mid-1970s Great Britain, Stirling became increasingly worried that an
"undemocratic event" would occur and decided to take action. He created an
organisation called Great Britain 75 and recruited members from the aristocratic
clubs in Mayfair; mainly ex-military men. The plan was simple. Should civil
unrest result in the breakdown of normal Government operations, they would take
over its running. He describes this in detail in an interview from 1974, part
of which is featured in Adam Curtis's documentary The Mayfair Set, episode 1:
"Who Pays Wins". In August 1974, before Stirling was
ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained
and published his plans, and eventually Stirling – dismayed by the right-wing
character of many of those seeking to join GB75 – abandoned the scheme.
Undermining trade unionism During the mid to late 1970s, Stirling
created a secret organisation designed to undermine trade unionism from within.
He recruited like minded individuals from within the trade union movement,
with the express intention that they should cause as much trouble during
conferences as permissible. One such member was Kate Losinska, who was Head
of the Civil and Public Services Association. Funding for this
"operation" came primarily from his friend Sir James Goldsmith.
Later life Stirling was the founder of the
Capricorn Africa Society – a society for promoting an Africa free from racial
discrimination. Founded in 1949, while Africa was still under colonial rule, it
had its high point at the 1956 Salima Conference. However, because of his
emphasis on a qualified and highly elitist voting franchise, similar to
Disraeli's "fancy franchises", educated Africans were divided on it. Conversely,
many white settlers believed it to be too liberal. Consequently, the society's
attempt to deal with the problem of different levels of social development
in a non-racial way was ineffective, although it received a surprising
validation when the South African Communist Party used Stirling's
multi-racial elitist model for its 1955 "Congress Alliance" when taking over the
African National Congress of South Africa. Stirling resigned as Chairman of
the Society in 1959. That year, following gambling losses he was obliged
to note John Aspinall - I owe you £173,500 in the accountant's ledger. One
night in 1967 he lost a further £150,000. In 1968 he won substantial
damages in libel against Len Deighton, among others.
Honours Stirling was knighted in 1990, and died
later that year, 11 days before his 75th birthday. In 2002 the SAS memorial, a
statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was opened on the Hill of Row near his
family's estate at Park of Keir. Two bronze plaques were stolen from the
statue sometime around the end of May 2014. The current Laird of the Keir
estate is his nephew Archie Stirling, a millionaire businessman and former Scots
Guards officer. See also
List of French paratrooper units References
Additional reading Significant Scots: biography of Sir
David Stirling Virginia Cowles. The Phantom Major: The
Story of David Stirling and the SAS Regiment ISBN 1848843860 ISBN
978-1848843868 Gavin Mortimer. Stirling's Men: The
inside history of the SAS in World War Two ISBN 0304367060 ISBN 978-0304367061
Gavin Mortimer. Stirling's Desert Triumph: The SAS Egyptian Airfield Raids
1942; Osprey Raid Series #49 ISBN 9781472807632