ORIGINS

The Commandos in the Middle East

On 1 February 1941 a large force of British Commandos had sailed for the Middle East aboard three troopships. The commandos had been formed the previous summer, at the behest of Winston Churchill, and the three units en route to Egypt were 7, 8 and 11 Commando. Hitherto 8 Commando had been known as the Guards Commando and among its ranks was Lt David Stirling, a tall, languid young officer known as the ‘Giant Sloth’ to his peers. Sailing towards the Middle East, Stirling idled away much of his time playing cards with two fellow officers – Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, and the writer Evelyn Waugh.

The commandos arrived at Geneifa, on the edge of the Suez Canal, on 11 March, where they were informed by Gen Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Forces, that two further troops of commandos (50 and 52) had been raised in the Middle East and would be added to 7, 8 and 11 Commando to form ‘Layforce’ under the command of Col Robert Laycock.

When the commandos had sailed from Scotland six weeks earlier the British Army was master of all it surveyed in North Africa. One British officer, Brigadier Desmond Young, wrote that in Egypt ‘fat pashas invited senior British officers to the Mahomed Ali Club. There were garden-parties in the gardens of the rich around Gezireh. Cairo society ceased to practise its Italian.’

It was the crushing defeat of Italy in North Africa in only eight months that gave the British (and their Allies) their swagger, the army of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani routed by that of Wavell’s. As Young noted, the Western Desert Force, later expanded to form the Eighth Army, had advanced 500 miles in two months and ‘beaten and destroyed an Italian army of four corps, comprising nine divisions and part of a tenth. It had captured 13,000 prisoners, 400 tanks and 1,290 guns, beside vast quantities of other material’.

DAVID STIRLING – THE FAILED ARTIST

Born in 1915 in central Scotland, Stirling was one of six children of Gen Archibald Stirling, a veteran of the First World War, and the Honourable Margaret Fraser, fourth daughter of the 13th Baron Lovat. The Stirlings are an ancient, aristocratic family and David enjoyed a privileged upbringing even if it did entail boarding at the austere Ampleforth College. It was there, deep in the North Yorkshire countryside, that Stirling indulged his love of the outdoors as in his vivid imagination ‘he tracked wild beasts through the fields and hedgerows’. When he went up to Cambridge in the mid-1930s, Stirling was a gangly young man of 6ft 6in intent on enjoying life to its utmost. He lasted a year at Cambridge before deciding university wasn’t for him, so he settled in Paris with the aim of becoming a painter. But Stirling lacked artistic talent, and when told by his tutor to look for another outlet for his creative energies, ‘[I] was quite shattered as I had honestly believed it was only a matter of time before I smashed the barrier’. Depressed by his failure, Stirling set his sights on scaling Mount Everest, announcing his intention to climb the Himalayan peak. He trained first in the Swiss Alps and then in the Rocky Mountains in the United States. Moving south through Colorado, tackling the ranges in Park Gore and Sawatch, 23-year-old David Stirling interrupted his horse ride south to pay a visit to Las Vegas to win some money at the gaming tables. That done, he continued on towards the Rio Grande, arriving in early September 1939, where he heard the news that Britain and Germany were once more at war.

David Stirling faces the camera. The founder of the SAS rarely sported a moustache.

Stirling, a member of the Scots Guards Supplementary Reserve, returned to Britain and presented himself at the regimental depot in Pirbright. Stirling and the Guards were not a natural fit. The Bohemian side to his character did not sit well with the drill sergeants at Pirbright and on one occasion Stirling was reprimanded for his unclean rifle. ‘Stirling, it’s bloody filthy. There must be a bloody clown on the end of this rifle,’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘Yes, sergeant,’ agreed Stirling, ‘but not at my end.’

Neither did Stirling endear himself to those senior officers whose job it was to lecture their young protégés on the art of war. Most of them, in Stirling’s view, held opinions that had altered little since the First World War, so the young officer spent increasing amounts of his time – and his money – drinking and gambling in London’s clubs. When he eventually left Pirbright he was described by his instructors as an ‘irresponsible and unremarkable soldier’.

Despite his lack of aptitude for regular soldiering, Stirling wasn’t short of belligerence and more than anything he wanted to fight the enemy. In January 1940 the 5th Battalion, the Scots Guards, were sent on a mountain warfare course in the French Alps and rumours abounded that they were going to be sent to help Finland fight the Russians. That mission never materialised and Stirling grew ever more frustrated with what had by now been dubbed ‘The Phoney War’. Then one day in the early summer of 1940 Stirling learned that volunteers were wanted for a special service force. He was accepted for the new force and posted to 8 Commando under the command of Robert Laycock. For the first time in his military career Stirling found himself among like-minded soldiers all desperate to have a crack at the Germans.

Enter the Afrika Korps

When news reached Adolf Hitler in Berlin of Italy’s capitulation in the Libyan Desert, the Nazi leader was initially indifferent. North Africa was a sideshow, inconsequential in comparison to his ambitions in eastern Europe. It was Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the German Navy, who did most to turn Hitler’s attention towards events in North Africa. What, Raeder asked of his Führer, would happen to Germany if the British had an unshakeable grip on the Mediterranean? It would seriously jeopardise Hitler’s plans for conquest in the Balkans and the Soviet Union. So it was with reluctance that on 11 January 1941, Hitler issued Directive 22, which Ronald Lewin, British military historian and veteran of the North African campaign, described as ‘the birth certificate of the Afrika Korps’.

Directive 22 authorised the raising of a force to be sent to North Africa to support Germany’s Italian allies. Codenamed Operation Sunflower, the force was designated 5 Light Division. However, it wasn’t until 6 February that Hitler gave Gen Erwin Rommel command of the unit. A fortnight later the force was formally reconstituted as the Deutsches Afrika Korps, by which time its vanguard had already reached Tripoli in Libya.

Within two months of the arrival of the advance elements, the Afrika Korps achieved spectacular successes in the desert war, what Lewin called ‘a true blitz, during which it would overrun Cyrenaica [eastern Libya], capture three generals, and so savage an armoured division [2nd] that it would be instantly deleted from the British Order of Battle.’ Msus, Mechili, Derna, Sollum, Tmimi and, most significantly of all, the port of Benghazi all fell to the Afrika Korps as the British retreated 30 miles inside the frontier of Egypt. The only prize that eluded Rommel was the coastal city of Tobruk, which held firm despite repeated German attacks.

The Afrika Korps was comprised of excellent soldiers, but it lacked the initiative and imagination to form a comparable special forces unit to rival the SAS.

The consequences of Rommel’s gains had grave repercussions for Layforce. The commandos had been despatched to the Middle East as a flank attack force, to launch raids on enemy targets in Italy, the Balkans and any remaining Italian resistance in North Africa. However, by the time they had finished their training in Egypt they were tasked with attacking important strategic ports now in enemy possession. A Battalion of Layforce, originally 7 Commando, raided the seaport of Bardia on 19 April ‘to harass the enemy’s L. of C. [lines of communication] and inflict as much damage as possible on supplies and material’ (Operation Order, April 19 1941). What unfolded was a fiasco. Some detachments were landed on the wrong beach, while others came ashore behind schedule and aborted their mission.

B Battalion (8 Commando) fared little better in the Middle East. The force was split up and sent either to help in the evacuation of Crete or to reinforce the besieged garrison at Tobruk. The 33 officers and 513 men of C Battalion (11 Scottish Commando), meanwhile, were sent to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus at the end of April in anticipation of a German invasion. A month later they had seen no sight of the enemy and the men were growing disillusioned.

In May 1941 Col Laycock wrote to Arthur Smith, Chief of the General Staff, warning him that ‘Our situation is now becoming desperate. When we formed in England we got together a fine body of men who volunteered for daring action which has been continually promised us since last August … [but] unless we are actively employed soon I anticipate a serious falling off in morale which was at one time second to none.’

Despite 11 (Scottish) Commando being sent to Syria in June 1941, where it participated in the offensive against Vichy France forces menacing British interests in the Middle East, that same month it was decided by MEHQ to disband Layforce; its men would either return to their original units or be used as replacements for undermanned regiments in North Africa in readiness for an imminent offensive against Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

On learning of Layforce’s demise, Stirling wrote to his family in Scotland, informing them: ‘The Commandos are no more. I am not sure what I shall do now but I am attempting and may succeed in establishing a permanent parachute unit. It would be on a small scale but would be more amusing than any other form of soldiering.’