David Stirling



Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, OBE (15 November 1915 – 4 November 1990) was a Scottish laird, 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. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge. A tall and athletic figure (he was 6 ft tall), he was training to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother, he attended the Benedictine Ampleforth College.

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 but spotted by guards) in an effort to see Commander-in-Chief General Claude Auchinleck. 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, Stirling 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 at the outset when they set up base at Kibrit Air Base, particularly tents and related gear, 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 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. 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. Montgomery of Alamein 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.

Mercenary work
Worried that Britain was losing its power after the War, Stirling organised deals to sell 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, formally with offices in Sloane Street (where the Chelsea Hotel now stands) 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 overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 1970 or 1971. Stirling was the founder of private military company KAS International (aka KAS Enterprises).

Watchguard International Ltd was a private military compan,y 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 did operate in Zambia and in Sierra Leone, providing training teams and advising on security matters, but its founder's maverick ways of doing business caused its eventual downfall. Woodhouse resigned as Director of Operations after a series of disagreements and Stirling himself ceased to take an active part in 1972

Great Britain 75
In mid-1970s Great Britain, David 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 present in Adam Curtis's documentary "The Mayfair Set", episode 1: "Who Pays Wins".

Undermining Trade Unionism
During the mid to late 1970s David Stirling created a secret organisation designed to undermine trade unionism from within. He recruited like minded individuals from within the trade union movement, the express intention that they should cause as much trouble during conferences as permissible. One such member was Kathleen Mary "Kate" Losinska (OBE; died 16 October 2013), 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, Africans opposed it. Conversely white settlers believed it to be too liberal. Consequently the society was ineffective, although surprisingly 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.

Stirling was concerned about the political power of trade unions in Britain, and planned to establish an organisation GB75, which he described as "an organisation of apprehensive patriots" which would "help" the country in the event of country-wide strikes - by taking over governmental operations.

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.

Honours
He 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. The current Laird of the Keir estate is his nephew Archie Stirling, a millionaire businessman and former Scots Guards officer.

Additional reading
ISBN section
 * Significant Scots: biography of Sir David Stirling
 * Virgina Cowles. The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and the SAS Regiment (Collins, 1958)
 * Gavin Mortimer.Stirling's Men: the inside history of the SAS in World War Two (Cassell, 2004)