SAS Part I: Who Dares Wins

The SAS (Special Air Services) is a unique military organization created by the British during World War II. The History Channel in the UK is showing a series of programs called "The Originals". "The Originals" refers to the 13 remaining original SAS in the third month of the first year of operation. Needless to say, the survival rate for the original SAS in the first year of their existence was lower than that of an average Tommy or Joe. Yet, their effectiveness against far greater forces was so extreme and destructive that Hitler wrote an order:

Captured SAS must be handed over at once to the nearest Gestapo group. These men are dangerous. The presence of SAS troops must be immediately reported. They must be ruthlessly exterminated.

Very rarely were SAS troops imprisoned. Even though they wore uniforms, most were either immediately executed or brutally interrogated before being killed. By the end of WWII, the SAS had killed or captured appx "12,517 enemy soldiers, destroyed 7 trains, cut 122 railways, destroyed 700 vehicles all for 161 casualties out of 2500 men." This rate of effectiveness drives modern day special forces to incessantly improve, select only the best and strive for ever more creative means of effecting the enemy while placing themselves in extraordinary, life threatening positions and suffering few casualties as possible. Yet, when such units do suffer catastrophe, it often includes the entire unit because no man will leave his brother behind.

Another surviving concept of the original SAS was the idea that an operating unit could be made up of many different ranks, yet no man was more important than another. It embodied the modern idea that rugged individualism, mental toughness and superior capabilities were paramount. David Stirling said that "the man is the regiment, the regiment is the man". The "padre" for 1 SAS was quoted:

Men were individuals and everyone mattered. It was not a large regiment, 350 strong at this time, but everyone knew each other and everyone seemed to be friends. There did not appear to be a great deal of discipline in the ordinary sense, but no unit in any army ever possessed a greater degree of loyalty to their CO or their regiment. - Rev. Fraser McCluskey MC DD

It is this closeness, the sense of camaraderie that special operations units like the US Navy Seals has fostered. The apparent casualness of any unit is belayed by the individual discipline of each member. Such ideas as mission leaders not necessarily being an officer or the highest ranking member of the team, but, in fact, the person most capable of performing and leading the necessary operations based on experience.

The three founders of the SAS embodied the very spirit and idea of the modern special forces soldier. David Stirling "the dreamer", Jock Lewes "the thinker" and Paddy Mayne "the fighter". Even today, the ideal special forces soldier will embody these concepts with the daring and will to carry out even the most extreme and risky missions.

Like the struggle to create the US Special Forces, the idea was not well received by the established British military. These groups were looked at as "mercenaries" and "private armies" that did not belong in the armed forces of warring nations. Many regarded them as little more than "uniformed terrorists" barely within the laws of warfare. The established military could not imagine the role of such organizations within the context of a conventional war.

The British Military had long memories. They had just concluded a bloody war with the Boers only forty years before and, while some British officers admired the sheer will and cunning of their opponents, others found the "commandos'" tactics to be ungentlemanly, un-chivalrous and dishonorable. Reflecting modern guerrilla warfare, the commandos would ambush whole columns, avoid frontal attacks and leave the British military little in the way of measuring, fostering or reporting military success.

The generals wanted decisive battles with decisive outcomes that could have a decisive effect on the outcome of the war. Special Forces and commando raids amounted to a waste of men and materials for little except harassment. But, for the British, the war was not going well. The United States had not entered in the war. Supply shipping to England was continuously harassed and in danger of breaking all together.

The British had suffered major set backs. In 1940, over 300k troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, France fell to Germany and Germany began the "Battle of Britain" by initiating attacks on British air fields, preparing for the invasion of Britain.

The HMS Hood was sunk by the Bismarck in May 1941. The pro-Nazi French Vichy government had signed an agreement with Germany allowing Nazi forces to use Lebanon and Syria, two French "mandates" from the WWI Sykes-Picot agreement, in an attempt to capture the Suez Canal, cutting off shipments of basic materials and Middle East oil supplies. The danger to the survival of Britain and its commonwealth was immediate. Morale at home was wavering under the fear of subjugation by Germany.

Enter Subaltern (2nd Lieutenant) David Stirling, Jock Lewes and R.B. "Paddy" Mayne.

When the war started, Stirling joined the Scots Guards as a subaltern, but soon volunteered for 8 Commando, named after it's commander Captain Robert Laycock as Layforce.[snip]

Young David Stirling got his first taste of this in Layforce which was dismantled in all but name prior to arriving in North Africa. Special Forces as used in North Africa seemed doomed by this unfortunate circumstance.

A movie treatment for "The Originals" discussed the situation and Stirling and Lewes meeting:

North Africa, 1941. Germany is winning the war. As bad news comes in from every front, three young soldiers chafe against military discipline. Each is, in his own way, extraordinary, but each is also a misfit: Jock Lewes, athlete and visionary, driven by an obsessive sense of destiny, impatiently executing futile commands of "superiors" still fighting the last war; David Stirling, son of a general but himself one step from court martial, gifted with irresistible charm but as yet unaware of its potential for anything but landing him in hedonistic scrapes and rescuing him from the consequences; Paddy Mayne, ferocious, courageous, confined to a prison cell for assaulting an officer.

Paddy Mayne had been mentioned several times in dispatches and had already shown his mettle in the allied campaign in Lebanon and Syria at Litani River where Mayne was credited with nearly single handedly capturing four machine gun nests and dragging injured men to safety while under heavy gun fire.

Jock Lewes, also an athlete, had a different start. He'd been in Berlin before the start of the war with a possibility of joining the foreign service through his uncle. According to letters Lewes sent home, he had fallen in love with a young woman who was a member of the Nazi party and was nearly seduced by the pomp, order and drive of the regime. But, he was in Berlin the night of Kristallnacht and was quickly disillusioned, writing home:

'I have been struggling to believe or rather retain my belief in German sincerity but only a fanatic faith could withstand the evidence they choose of their own free will to put before us,' he wrote to his parents. 'I have great faith in Britain and I swear I will not live to see the day when Britain hauls down the colours of her beliefs before totalitarian aggression.'

Lewes's disillusionment with Germany turned to bitterness. He broke off all contact with his fiancée. 'I shall willingly take up arms against Germany, almost gladly,' he wrote.

Each of these men are at loose ends, kicking around between units, trying to "get into the fight" with various success and little satisfaction. Stirling went to three different units before getting into 8 Commando and heading to North Africa. Mayne was in the brig. The argument with his commanding officer stemmed all the way back to Litani River when he felt that the use of his commandos as a frontal attack force was a misuse of their capabilities and had resulted in many wounded and deaths. Having completed their mission with success, they were now rotting away on Cyprus where his commanding officer seemed happy to be, the Army having yet to figure out how to use commandos effectively.

When Layforce "8 Commando" arrived, Lewes is put in charge of training.

When Lewes is given a chance to train a small detachment of commandos, he is none too pleased to have Stirling as one of his charges, and Stirling does not take naturally to Lewes' gruelling training regimen. Things go terribly wrong, and the unit is disbanded...

Lewes is already developing the training that will be put in place for the future SAS. At one point, he scrounges parachutes and takes Stirling and other commandos up for a parachute drop, but they are using an old plane unsuitable for parachuting. The jump is unauthorized. Stirling is injured when his chute catches on the tail of the plane. He's laid up for two months in the hospital with a back injury. His time in 8 Commando and meeting with Lewes was not totally unproductive, though 8 Commando was being disbanded. He began sketching out the make up of a regiment of special forces, their training and their potential use.

His experience has shown that his command is not interested in utilizing these forces and are not open to changing their tactics and strategies. He decides to go right to the top, leaving the hospital on crutches and making his way Middle East command HQ. Military order is strict here and no one can get in to see a commander without having a direct order or appointment.

Stirling proves his ability as an unconventional thinking when he by passes the guard by climbing over the fence, using his crutches as a ladder.

"

It took him rather by surprise but he was very courteous and he settled down to read it. About halfway through he got quite engrossed and forgot the rather irregular way it had been presented.

"When he finished the paper, he said, 'This is something we can use, this paper looks like real promise'. That was the beginning of the SAS."

If Stirling had been caught before finding General Ritchie, he would have been thrown in prison.

Instead he was promoted to captain and tasked with raising a special force of 65 officers and men, which he called "that band of vagabonds".

He went about selecting what he described as a group of "misfits, rogues and rule-breakers" who were to change modern warfare for ever.

"In a sense, they weren't really controllable. They were harnessable - they policed themselves."

Stirling, aware of the problems with the use of commandos, struck a deal that the SAS would report directly to HQ and that they would develop their own plans of operations in coordination with regular army. They were designated SAS Brigade Detachment 'L' to fool the enemy over their size.

Stirling set about recruiting the men and officers. One of his men suggested Paddy Mayne. Stirling used his new connections with HQ leadership to get Mayne out of the brig. Making Mayne promise that Stirling was "one officer he wouldn't hit." SAS 'L' instituted a tough training program:

This bunch of veterans indulged in a training regime that seemed frighteningly difficult to the new arrivals. ‘L Detachment’ would go for hikes in the desert with a full load of 75 lbs on their backs. Watching them depart on their marches terrified the watching Sappers who wondered if they were about to embark on some very tough military training and wondered at the wisdom of turning craftsmen and artisans into storm-troopers.

The camp at Kabrit was used to prepare troops for depth attacks on the enemy including seaborne landings that were being planned. The distances in the desert meant that any advance ran out of air cover. Plans were being hatched to seize airfields behind the enemy lines to improve the support to forward troops.

The first mission started out as a disaster. SAS 'L' lost 60% of their troops on the first jump behind enemy lines in North Africa:

The first mission for the SAS (November 17th 1941) was to jump behind enemy lines and gather intelligence as well as harassing and tying up German forces while the British mounted the offensive. It was a disaster. Because moral was high and the troops well trained, Stirling decided to jump despite terrible conditions. Many men never made it back, of the sixty-six who went only twenty-two returned. While disastrous, Stirling and his officers Lewes and Paddy Mayne learned much from the experience.

November 17 became the birthday of the SAS. One of the things that Stirling, Lewes and Mayne had learned was that parachuting into the unpredictable North African weather with a large force was dangerous to the mission. The SAS began to use land and amphibious methods to insert behind enemy lines though they later used parachute insertions into France during their missions with the Maquisards (French Resistance).

HQ was on the verge of disbanding the unit after the disaster, but Stirling, who had climbed a fence with a broken back to get his proposal heardwas not going to go quietly:

Without orders, he told his men to return to their camp secretly the following month to be transported behind enemy lines and resume their mission to disable enemy aeroplanes.

It was a resounding success with scores of Axis aircraft disabled in just one night, and it set a stunning precedent.

Night after night, Stirling and his men walked or drove into the desert, planted bombs on the German planes and escaped into the night while, back at HQ, top brass struggled to find out who was doing the good work.

He became known as the "Phantom Major" among German troops after destroying nearly 400 enemy aircraft as well as scores of fuel and ammunition dumps in attacks behind German lines.

It was this attitude that led to the SAS motto: Who Dares Wins. The unit held a contest to create their own SAS insignia. A winged sword on a crusader shield was actually created by Cpl Robert Charles "Bob" Tait. It was actually the sword "excalibur". The wings were added by Jock Lewes, originally meant to depict flames, represents their parachute capabilities and reflecting their creation in the Egyptian desert. The wings, like the sword, were changed by the original tailors in Cairo. They mirror the sacred Ibis wings of Isis. The Cairo tailors also mistakenly replaced "Excalibur" with a Roman gladius, but the design stuck though it has routinely been misconstrued as a winged dagger. Early on and throughout the war, the unit had been chastised for wearing an "unofficial" insignia, ordered several times to stop wearing it and, finally, after tenacious, long defiance, the insignia was recognized as an "official" designation.

During their training, Lewes had discovered that the bombs they were using were totally unsuited to the tactics and needs of the unit. The SAS were a "hit and run" squad. The conventional bombs they had would not stick to the air craft or cause enough damage. Lewes set about creating a bomb that would not only "stick", but ignite the fuel in the air craft wings and cause massive destruction. The bomb became known as the "Lewes Bomb" and its concept can be seen in use throughout the war. It was approximately 1lb in weight and one soldier could carry up to ten or more per mission.

The SAS also engendered another well known special forces attitude: Lead From the Front. Stirling, Lewes and Mayne routinely went on missions with their unit. Lewes was killed early on when returning from a mission, by a lone Messerschmitt 110 fighter. returning from a successful raid, the troops were riding in a lorry (truck) when the Messerschmitt spotted them and went on a strafing attack. Lewes was shot in the back as he and others jumped from the truck. He was the lone casualty of the raid. He has no grave, only his name on the memorial plaque at El Alamein.

Stirling later stated that Lewes should have received the recognition that Stirling had for the creation of the SAS. Some believe that Lewes' early flirtation with the Nazi Socialists Party had made it impossible for the MoD to recognize his contribution.

The SAS began to use Jeeps for their lightening fast strikes against the enemy. The jeeps were mounted with four Vickers K machine guns, originally scrounged from obsolete air craft. The machine guns were rugged and particularly suited to the tough terrain. Loaded with alternating tracer rounds, they were very handy for lighting up German air craft fuel.

The technique used by the SAS on these attacks was the "spear".

The first mass jeep raid took place in late July 1942, with eighteen of the vehicles attacking Sidi Haneish. First they approached the airfield in single file, then fanned out into line abreast formation and opened fire to kill and confuse the enemy guard force. A flare was fired and the jeeps changed formation again, driving onto the airfield itself in columns of two with the first three forming an arrowhead around the navigator's vehicle. They opened fire again, this time with all 68 machineguns(4 on each jeep), firing at 1200 rounds per minute each, and drove around the airfield. At least forty aircraft were destroyed and one SAS man killed.

Paddy Mayne was said to have jumped from the jeep and ripped the control panel out of plane when a bomb had not detonated as planned. RSM Bob Bennet remembered Paddy Mayne's exploits:

"During the war, he led dozens of men, including me, on Robin Hood like dare devil raids, hundreds of miles behind enemy lines."

He would do outrageous things like wonder on to an air field with a satchel thrown over his shoulder full of bombs. Then he'd admonish the Italian sentry for not challenging him, "I MIGHT be a British Agent!" he told the startled sentry.

Leading from the front continued to have its dangers for the SAS leadership. Stirling was promoted to Lt. Colonel and given charge to build the SAS into a full regiment, rolling in several other commando, intelligence and paratrooper groups. In early 1943, the 1st SAS was working in conjunction with the 8th Army. As was their modus operandi, the SAS was far out in front of the front lines when Stirling's unit was over taken.

Later operations moved westward as the enemy retreated toward Tunisia. In January 1943 the SAS were far ahead of 8th Army and coming close to 1st Army, the Anglo-American forces which had landed in Algeria and were soon threatening Tunisia themselves. Stirling and a small patrol were trying to get through to 1st Army when they were surprised and captured by German armoured cars. They quickly escaped, but Stirling was picked up by an Italian patrol several days later.

The " Phantom Major " was destined to spend most of the rest of the war in POW camps. He escaped four times, but his 6 feet 5 inch height always gave him away; he ended up in the infamous Colditz castle, the place where the Germans sent persistent escapers.

The SAS was thrown for a loop, but not knocked out. Other officers stepped forward to lead the SAS like Stirling's brother Bill and Brian Franks. The fight in North Africa was almost over for the SAS, but their exploits in Europe were just beginning.

Watch the SAS: The Originals on the History Channel UK (for our British friends and those with extended satellite service in the US; the rest of you will just have to read about it here) -

SAS-The Originals: Dare To Win
SAS: Let Battle Commence
SAS - The Originals: Death in the Sun
SAS Warrior (Paddy Mayne - brief video here)

Books to read:
The Originals - Gordon Stevens
Jock Lewes
Roque Warrior SAS
Stirling's Men