Stirling's Men

Stirling’s Men
Gavin Mortimer, 376pp,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson $49.95

Don’t expect a sweeping analysis of the British Army’s most hyped and famous Special Forces when you read Gavin Mortimer’s inside story of the original SAS in World War II.

This is very much a collection of war stories and anecdotes, based on more than 60 interviews with members of the SAS who served in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany.

The focus is not just on the SAS’s founder, David Stirling, and his successor, the legendary Paddy Mayne, but on the troopers who did the hard yards.

Although the publisher’s dust jacket notes says there is not a story of derringdo, that’s exactly what the author has produced in prose which lurches from Boys’ Own Annual clichés of killing the nasty Nazis to workman-like sentences that just tell the story.

There is no doubt that the soldiers who joined the SAS were not your run-of-the mill infantry – being able to operate independently, not be afraid of rank structures and more than average capabilities with weapons were crucial.

Stirling’s Men does show that what began as a typical school-boyish exercise gradually evolved into a regular Army unit that practised asymmetrical warfare long before some clever chap put an academic title on it.

Such was the German perception of the SAS that Hitler ordered any SAS trooper captured to be shot in cold blood.

For those who like stories of brave lads surviving training then doing their bit blowing up bridges, knifing the Hun and drinking themselves insensible while on leave, then this is for you.

– David Sibley

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