Even the SAS's first raid proved to be disaster, with the men failing to achieve a single hit on the enemy. Instead, 34 of those who took part were killed, injured or missing, with only 21 returning to base. Tim Jones. SAS Zero Hour: The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service. Barnsley, S. Yorks.: Pen & Sword Books. p.204. Still, SAS Rogue Heroes has been well received by people who know their stuff, such as the historian Antony Beevor, often grumpy about historical accuracy in war films. “Knight has of course taken liberties with the precise record,” he wrote in The Guardian, “but they are mainly additions, fleshing out characters and context, not distortions.” But Mr Macintyre's book does also reveal how the SAS's contribution to Britain's victory in the war was actually not that significant.

I have been struggling to believe or rather retain my belief in German sincerity but only a fanatic faith could withstand the evidence they choose of their own free will to put before us,' he wrote to his parents. 'I have great faith in Britain and I swear I will not live to see the day when Britain hauls down the colours of her beliefs before totalitarian aggression.' For Gavin Mortimer, the competitive streak before Stirling and Mayne is one of the best elements of the series. “I don’t think they really had a scoreboard,” he says, “but there was a competitive element. Stirling was intimidated by Paddy Mayne. Mayne was a qualified solicitor, an international rugby player, and idolised by the men. And there’s Stirling, who in the Thirties had acquired a rep as a quitter and a loafer. In some ways this is a similar trajectory to Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth and the letters in Letters from a Lost Generation, with some of the same feelings of almost arrogant innocence at the start mellowing into something much harsher as the war progresses. However the morality of the second world war rather than the first intervenes in very different ways, and this is far more an individual story that Brittain's which also charts the loss of an entire generation. My uncle fell for the grandeur, the permanency and respectability of the new regime and failed to notice or criticise the encroaching anti-Semitic tendencies of the era,' said his nephew. A younger brother, David Steel Lewes, was later prominent as a cardiologist in the United Kingdom and was a Royal Air Force medical officer during the war. [8]Lewes was a Flying Officer in the RAF Volunteer Reserve (VRT) and is an Honorary Member of the Welsh Guards Association. SAS Rogue Heroes, the first episode of which airs on Sunday, depicts the real-life events that were revealed at great length by historian Ben Macintyre in his 2016 book of the same name.

He then agreed to work with Stirling if he would adopt the name Special Air Service for the regiment. Stirling got the idea for the new elite regiment after witnessing the British Army's drubbing against German military chief Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in Egypt. KATIE HIND: How Bobby Brazier's dance for his 'superhero' mum Jade Goody moved judge Shirley Ballas to tears on Strictly

SAS recruitment

The Jewish man who shot up the explosives was Peter Haas. His act of heroism enabled Augustin Jordan to escape. “He decided to try and save us by sacrificing himself,” Jordan later said. Did Germans soldiers hunt down and capture David Stirling? Like his comrade and SAS co-founder David Stirling, Lewes found his time in the Commandos frustrating. Many operations were cancelled and others ended in failure. Learning from this, Lewes sought to refine the commando concept and develop a more effective way of using these highly trained soldiers.

Big Dave' successfully argued the case that Britain needed to send guerilla fighters behind German lines to create chaos. Lord Jellicoe's Foreword fully endorses this biography: "It is described with skill and authority". Also in the first episode, Stirling and Lewes take the plunge with their daring, first-of-its-kind parachute jump in the desert. Stirling’s parachute tears, causing him to plummet towards the ground and temporarily paralyse himself. That’s all true. Stirling was burdened with health problems for the rest of his life from the spinal injury he suffered in that drop. We revealed Banksy's name 15 years ago - so why was the arty set still insisting last week that it's a mystery? Is it because it would be harder for a privately educated chap called Robin Gunningham to flog his graffiti for millions?Once Stirling and Randolph got into Benghazi, the unit couldn’t get their dinghies to inflate. And at one point, some Italian soldiers tagged along with them, believing Stirling’s men to be Germans on a drill (which is depicted in the episode). Thanks very much to Pen & Sword for our review copy; highly recommended! Military Modelling Facebook, reviewed by Martyn Chorlton