Derring-do in the desert

The SAS was the first unit to be granted regimental status for generations. Its chief aim was to damage the enemy from behind their lines in the North African desert. It was an entirely independent unit, not answerable to any superior command and therefore anathema to the regular army mind. Its creator, David Stirling, had a record of complete allergy to discipline or serious work either at school at Ampleforth or later, briefly, at Cambridge, where the Master of his college sent him down after showing him a list of 28 transgressions and asking him to choose the three which ‘would be the least offensive to his mother’.

In 1940 he found himself fretting in reserve in Egypt in the group of three commando regiments recruited from the Household Division under Colonel Robert Laycock, code-named ‘Layforce’. Stirling’s first parachute jump left him unable to walk for eight months, which he spent studying every map he could find of the coastal strip and the area behind it. He thus formed a plan for working behind the enemy lines. By a great stroke of luck he had access to General Auchinleck, then Commander in Chief, Middle East Command, and was able to bypass all the intermediate levels of command which would certainly have sent him packing. He was then authorised to raise a force of six officers and 60 men, originating from Layforce which had by then been disbanded.

Their training was uniquely rigorous. Apart from parachuting, it included explosives, map reading, radio operating, first aid (including amputation in the field), navigation and intensive weapon training, memory training and, most daunting of all, night marches of up to 100 miles ‘with full load’. Their first sortie was a complete disaster, largely because of appalling weather conditions which would have caused a less obstinate commander to postpone operations.