But after helping found the SAS with David Stirling life as a bobby on the beat lacks a certain excitement. Despite his hunger, he had refused to barter his woollen Red Cross vest for a loaf of bread from a visiting Catholic priest.

With “Gentleman Jim” Almonds’ passing eight years ago, we lost a man as proud to fight shoulder to shoulder with his comrades as he was willing to show kindness to the enemy if he felt it appropriate. He kept the diary for his wife, Iris May, who had a three-month-old baby son when he first went to war,” said Almonds-Windmill, a mother of two and grandmother of six. Mr Almonds also re-joined the SAS and fought Communist soldiers in the steaming jungles of Malaya, before retirement from military service at the rank of major in 1961. In September, following the Italian Armistice, the camp commandant asked him to reconnoitre the Port of San Giórgio for German troops. This,’ he said to them, ‘is for you, because the Italian people were very kind to me and looked after me when I was an escaping prisoner of war in Italy.The Crown agents have apparently allotted us a very low priority for supply… Urge most strongly that supply be expedited. But Mr Almonds, who had adapted lots of standard Army kit for the SAS, was captured before he could finish the work. The occasion was the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) Antiques and Fine Art Fair in central London and I was delighted that so many people took time to come and see part of my Special Forces collection. She said it was the wonderful conclusion of a dream that helped her father cope with solitary confinement.

This remarkable story of Jim Almonds (Gentleman Jim) is set in wartime England, the western desert, Italy and France, and recounts his formative role in the birth of the SAS. He had a way of making the most impossible request seem perfectly reasonable and anyone who did not immediately accede to his demands feel a total spoil sport. Blakeney laid up until dawn and then found himself with a few survivors including the officer he had dropped with, Lt Eoin McGonigal.Almonds jumped at the idea and along with Jock Lewis became one of the 65 originals to begin SAS training at Kabrit, which was then little more than a patch of sand near the Suez Canal. On 6 October 1941, he wrote: “Afternoon spent jumping backwards from a lorry at twenty-five miles per hour. September 1944 (Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant) (Special Air Service Regiment) commissioned Second Lieutenant [5].