Drafted into the Scots Guards at the outbreak of the war, he soon wound up at Bill’s Commando training school, where Bill quickly learned ‘what the Guards had known for several months: David Stirling was indolent and temperamental, a disruptive influence’. In August 1974, before Stirling was ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained and published his plans. He can speak the language of soldiers, and has met all the surviving 'Originals' of 'L' Detachment (SAS). The answer probably lies in the fact that he was a powerful, influential and litigious man, who had friends in high places and - through his private security company that supplied mercenaries to the world's trouble spots - associates in dark ones. Watchguard International Ltd was a private military company, registered in Jersey in 1965 by Stirling and John Woodhouse.

The histories we were all exposed to in the years after WW2 were almost all written by members of this class who thought there was nothing wrong with their god-given right to command, irrespective of actual ability. According to Stirling, he was Mayne's saviour, recruiting him into the SAS in 1941 as he languished in a military prison on a charge of knocking his CO unconscious. It doesn't denigrate David Stirling's actual achievements, merely points out how he failed to give credit where due (which seems to be the result of a personality flaw).Drawing on interviews with SAS veterans who fought with Stirling and men who worked with him on his post-war projects, and examining recently declassified governments files about Stirling’s involvement in Aden, Libya and GB75, Mortimer’s riveting biography is incisive, bold, honest and written with his customary narrative panache. The story of Stirling’s unfortunate encounter with Schurch has been told before, notably by Ben Macintyre in his bestselling SAS: Rogue Heroes. 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 proved to be disastrous for the unit.

I also think that discussion about the British officer class system (which in my opinion hamstrung the British military for many generations) is completely valid. Among her biographies are: Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man, The Astors: Story of a Transatlantic Family, The Romanovs, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune and Great Marlborough and His Duchess.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Her book about her own experiences as a journalist from 1936-42, Looking for Trouble, has recently been re-issued by Faber Finds. Stirling was not training in North America for an attempt on Mount Everest’s summit when war broke out in 1939, as he later claimed, but rather working as a ranch hand because his exasperated family hoped it might give the feckless youth some focus and direction. Seekings, who had fought in the SAS since its inception, said that when the war ended Mayne and Stirling "weren't speaking to each other.

His biggest success was on the night of 26–27 July 1942 when his SAS squadron, armed with 18 jeeps, raided the Sidi Haneish landing strip and destroyed 37 Axis aircraft (mostly bombers and heavy transport) for the loss of two men killed. These hit-and-run operations eventually proved Stirling's undoing; he was captured by the Germans in January 1943 having been dubbed "The Phantom Major" by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Stirling - who neither attended Mayne's funeral or paid tribute to his exploits - came back to Britain and was soon collaborating with a well-known American biographer, Virginia Cowles, on his war memoir. This is an important book that properly explains the early history of the SAS and David Stirling’s true role. Then in December 1955, Stirling heard that Mayne had been killed in a car crash; at last, the chance he'd been waiting for.He was the son of Brigadier-General Archibald Stirling, of Keir, and Margaret Fraser, daughter of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat (a descendant of Charles II). Mayne was one of the few men who had seen through Stirling and recognised him for what he was: an incompetent egomaniac. Stirling's new special operations unit was, at the outset, short of equipment (particularly tents and related gear) when the unit set up at Kibrit Air Base.