David Stirling: Founder Of The Sas: The Authorised Biography of the Founder of the SAS

Product Information

In this gripping and controversial biography Gavin Mortimer analyses Stirling's complex character: the childhood speech impediment that shaped his formative years, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the jealousy and inferiority he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, the cold-blooded killer Paddy Mayne. They operated deep behind the German lines, driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa. Prior to Schurch’s court-martial for treachery in late 1945, Stirling denied he had revealed any sensitive information.

Of the original 55 men, some 34 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 to hit the region. He set up a training school in Scotland where he taught fledgling Commandos – many of whom would go on to be members of the nascent SAS, including David Stirling and Mayne – how to survive and fight behind enemy lines.Over the next few years, I interviewed scores of veterans and what struck me was the reverence in which Mayne was held, and to a lesser extent Bill Stirling, who raised a second SAS regiment in 1943. He made four further escape attempts, before he was sent to Colditz Castle, where he remained as a prisoner for the rest of the war.

But I certainly wasn't going to question the long-established narrative that David Stirling was the Phantom Major, the guerrilla genius, and Mayne and Bill his enthusiastic, if less capable, sidekicks. On crutches following a parachuting accident, he stealthily entered Middle East headquarters in Cairo (under, through, or over a fence) in an effort to see Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Command General Sir Claude Auchinleck.

There are several threads here that refer to David Stirling, none on a quick look are a suitable home for this review by Saul David of the book 'David Stirling: the Phoney Major: the Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS' by Gavin Mortimer. After the war, Stirling never achieved any real success, other than building his own myth once Mayne was safely out of the way. He persuaded me to let him in on it in the last days,” wrote Lewes to his father, “when all arrangements were made.