How the elite unit emerged from chaotic beginnings to spearhead the Allies’ 1943 invasion of the Mediterranean island fortress
On 28 January 1943 a message was sent to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the Afrika Korps in North Africa. It was a short, handwritten note and it contained two glaring mistakes. It was Lieutenant Colonel Stirling who had been captured, not ‘Stierling’, as the message indicated, and he did not lead the Long Range Desert Group.
David Stirling had raised L Detachment, Special Air Service in the summer of 1941, with the help of his elder brother, Bill, when the pair had been stationed in Cairo. The inaugural raid, Operation Squatter, on the night of 16/17 November 1941 had been a costly failure, with 34 of the 55 men who had parachuted into Libya to attack enemy airfields killed or captured.
But the SAS had flourished since then, thanks in no small part to the instinctive pugnacity of Paddy Mayne, one of the original six officers recruited in August 1941. In December that year he had led two daring raids on Tamet airfield, destroying 51 aircraft and killing a significant number of aircrew.
David Stirling and Mayne didn’t much care for each other, but they complemented one another well. The latter, an international rugby forward before the war, was a physical force of nature with courage, self-control and, most crucially, a brain that reacted a split second faster than his enemy’s. In contrast, Stirling was not an athlete and while he had Mayne’s physical courage he lacked his alacrity and audacity. But Stirling had imagination, social contacts and a charm that to many was irresistible. It was this last quality that had enabled the SAS to overcome its early setback and rise from a small unit of 66 officers and men to, in September 1942, a regiment.
In the space of 12 months Stirling had risen from lieutenant to lieutenant colonel, and recipient of the Distinguished Service Order. Mayne was a major with a similar decoration but considered Stirling’s superior in the art of guerrilla warfare.
It was rivalry that spurred Stirling to embark on his final, fateful patrol in January 1943. His plan was to lead a small raiding party from Libya into Tunisia, attacking enemy lines of communication as well as reconnoitring the terrain for the Eighth Army. Then they would drive north through Tunisia to become the first members of the Eighth Army to link with the British First Army as it advanced east from Algeria.
But Stirling’s desire to get one over Mayne ha
