David Stirling

This article is about the Scottish mountaineer, and army officer. For the Scottish-Canadian architect, see David Stirling (architect).

Sir David Stirling
Nickname(s)	Phantom Major
Born	15 November 1915 (1915-11-15) Lecropt, Perthshire, Scotland
Died	4 November 1990 (1990-11-05) (aged 74) United Kingdom
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1937-45
Rank	Colonel
Commands held	Special Air Service
Battles/wars	World War II North African Campaign
Awards	Knight Bachelor Distinguished Service Order Officer of the Order of the British Empire Mention in Despatches (2)

File:Wfm david stirling statue.jpg

Statue of David Stirling by Angela Conner near Doune, Scotland

Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, OBE, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , (15 November 1915 – 4 November 1990) was a British mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.

Life before the war

Stirling was born at his family's ancestral home, Keir House in the parish of Lecropt, Perthshire. 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, King of Scots). His cousin was Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, and his grandparents were Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet and Lady Anna Maria Leslie-Melville. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother, he was educated at the Benedictine Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge. A tall and athletic figure (he was 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) tall). He was training to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out.

World War II and the founding of the SAS

Stirling was commissioned into the Scots Guards from Ampleforth College Contingent Officer Training Corps on 24 July 1937. In June 1940 he volunteered for the new No. 8 Commando under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock which became part of Force Z (later named "Layforce"). After Layforce (and No.8 Commando) were disbanded on 1 August 1941, Stirling remained convinced that due to the mechanised nature of war a small team of highly trained soldiers with the advantage of surprise could exact greater damage to the enemy's ability to fight than an entire platoon.

Aware that taking his idea up through the chain of command was unlikely to work, Stirling decided to go straight to the top. 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 General Claude Auchinleck. Spotted by guards he ran into one office, only to come face-to-face with an officer he had previously fallen out with. Retreating rapidly to shouts of "Guards, Guards", he dodged into another office and came face to face with Deputy Commander Middle East General Ritchie. Stirling explained his plan to Ritchie, the latter immediately convincing Auchinleck (in the office next door) to allow Stirling to form a new Special Forces unit. The unit was given the deliberately misleading name "L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade" to reinforce an existing deception of a parachute brigade existing in North Africa.

Short of equipment, particularly tents and related gear, at the outset when they set up base at Kibrit Air Base, the first operation of the new SAS was to relieve a well-equipped New Zealand unit of small tents, a large tent and contents including a bar and a piano. A truck and a series of bluffs managed to convince curious onlookers and the New Zealand unit that all was well.

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 was disastrous. 42 of his 61 officers and men 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 for thirty years. Escaping only with the help of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) who were designated to pick up the unit after the attack, Stirling agreed that approaching by land under the cover of night would be safer and more effective than parachuting. As quickly as possible he organised raids on ports using this simple method, often bluffing through check posts at night using the language skills of some of his soldiers.

Under his leadership, the Lewes bomb was invented by Jock Lewes, the first hand-held dual explosive and incendiary device. American jeeps, which were able to deal with the harsh desert terrain better than other transport, were cut down, adapted and fitted with obsolete RAF machine guns. He also pioneered the use of small groups to escape detection. Stirling often led from the front, his SAS units driving through enemy airfields to shoot up aircraft and crew, replacing the early operational strategy of attaching bombs to enemy aircraft on foot. The first jeep-borne airfield raid occurred on the night of 7–8 July 1942 when Stirling's SAS group attacked Bagush airfield along with five other Axis airfields all in the same night. After returning to Cairo on 16 July, Stirling collected a consignment of more Willys Bantam Jeeps for further airfield raids. His biggest success was on the night of 26–27 July 1942 when his SAS squadron with 18 jeeps raided the Sidi Haneish landing strip and destroyed over 20 German aircraft for the loss of one man killed. After a drive through the desert and evading enemy patrols and aircraft, Stirling and his men reached the safety of friendly lines on 29 July.

These hit-and-run operations eventually proved Stirling's undoing; he was captured by the Germans in January 1943. Although he escaped, he was subsequently re-captured by the Italians, who took great delight in the embarrassment this caused to their German allies. A further four escape attempts were made, before Stirling was finally sent to Colditz Castle, where he remained for the rest of the war. After his capture, his own brother Bill Stirling along with Paddy Mayne took command of the SAS.

In North Africa, in the fifteen months before Stirling's capture, the SAS had destroyed over 250 aircraft on the ground, dozens of supply dumps, wrecked railways and telecommunications, and had put hundreds of enemy vehicles out of action. Field Marshal Montgomery described Stirling as "mad, quite mad" but admitted that men like Stirling were needed in time of war. According to John Aspinal, Stirling reputedly personally strangled 41 men.

Private military company

Worried that Britain was losing its power after the war, Stirling organised deals to provide British weapons and military personnel to other countries, like Saudi Arabia, for various privatised foreign policy operations. Along with several associates, Stirling formed Watchguard International Ltd, formerly with offices in Sloane Street (where the Chelsea Hotel later opened) before moving to South Audley Street in Mayfair.

Business was chiefly with the Gulf States. He was linked, along with Denys Rowley, to a failed attempt to the overthrow Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 1970 or 1971. Stirling was the founder of private military company KAS International, also known as KAS Enterprises.

Watchguard International Ltd was a private military company, registered in Jersey in 1965 by Stirling and John Woodhouse. Woodhouse's first assignment was to go to Yemen to report on the state of the royalist forces when a cease-fire was declared. At the same time Stirling was cultivating his contacts in the Iranian government and exploring the chances of obtaining work in Africa. The company operated in Zambia and in Sierra Leone, providing training teams and advising on security matters, but its founders' maverick ways of doing business caused its eventual downfall. Woodhouse resigned as Director of Operations after a series of disagreements and Stirling ceased to take an active part in 1972.

Great Britain 75

In mid-1970s Great Britain, Stirling became increasingly worried that an "undemocratic event" would occur and decided to take action. He created an organisation called Great Britain 75 and recruited members from the aristocratic clubs in Mayfair; mainly ex-military men (often former SAS members). The plan was simple. Should civil unrest result in the breakdown of normal Government operations, they would take over its running. He describes this in detail in an interview from 1974, part of which is featured in Adam Curtis's documentary The Mayfair Set, episode 1: "Who Pays Wins".

In August 1974, before Stirling was ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained and published his plans, and eventually Stirling – dismayed by the right-wing character of many of those seeking to join GB75 – abandoned the scheme.

Undermining trade unionism

During the mid to late 1970s, Stirling created a secret organisation designed to undermine trade unionism from within. He recruited like minded individuals from within the trade union movement, with the express intention that they should cause as much trouble during conferences as permissible. One such member was Kate Losinska, who was Head of the Civil and Public Services Association. Funding for this "operation" came primarily from his friend Sir James Goldsmith.

Later life

Stirling was the founder of the Capricorn Africa Society – a society for promoting an Africa free from racial discrimination. Founded in 1949, while Africa was still under colonial rule, it had its high point at the 1956 Salima Conference. However, because of his emphasis on a qualified and highly elitist voting franchise, similar to Disraeli's "fancy franchises", educated Africans were divided on it. Conversely, many white settlers believed it to be too liberal. Consequently, the society's attempt to deal with the problem of different levels of social development in a non-racial way was ineffective, although it received a surprising validation when the South African Communist Party used Stirling's multi-racial elitist model for its 1955 "Congress Alliance" when taking over the African National Congress of South Africa. Stirling resigned as Chairman of the Society in 1959. That year, following gambling losses he was obliged to note John Aspinall - I owe you £173,500 in the accountant's ledger. One night in 1967 he lost a further £150,000. In 1968 he won substantial damages in libel against Len Deighton, among others.

Honours

Stirling was knighted in 1990, and died later that year, 11 days before his 75th birthday. In 2002 the SAS memorial, a statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was opened on the Hill of Row near his family's estate at Park of Keir. Two bronze plaques were stolen from the statue sometime around the end of May 2014. The current Laird of the Keir estate is his nephew Archie Stirling, a millionaire businessman and former Scots Guards officer.

See also

• List of French paratrooper units

Additional reading

• Significant Scots: biography of Sir David Stirling
• Virginia Cowles. The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and the SAS Regiment (Collins, 1958) ISBN 1848843860 ISBN 978-1848843868
• Gavin Mortimer. Stirling's Men: The inside history of the SAS in World War Two (Cassell, 2004) ISBN 0304367060 ISBN 978-0304367061
• Gavin Mortimer. Stirling's Desert Triumph: The SAS Egyptian Airfield Raids 1942; Osprey Raid Series #49 (Osprey Publishing, 2015) ISBN 9781472807632