Colonel David Stirling SAS .The Phantom Major

[The Aviator]

THE MOST UNDER DECORATED SOLDIER OF WW2

David Stirling was educated at Ampleforth College, and Cambridge University. Stirling joined up when WW11 started. Sterling served in Scots Guards, No. 8 Commando, Layforce. The unit was later disbanded. Sterling took up Parachuting, which was rare at this time.

In 1941, Stirling was bed ridden in Cario, Egypt, afer being injured in a parachute accident. During this time, he came up with the idea of a small unit to strike the enemy fast. He proposed the idea to senior officers.

Stirling called his new unit "L Detachment Special Air Service". The SAS was born working along side of the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group).

During WW 11, Stirling was captured in 1943. Stirling escaped four times, but was caught each time.
Hitler had ordered that all members of the SAS and other special forces should be executed but to his credit Field Marshall Rommel was the only German commander to ignore the order.

Stirling was subsequently sent to the famous Colditz Castle
from which he was released after the war.

It has been said by many, that Stirling was the "most under-decorated soldier of the war". David Sterling was knighted in 1990. He died a few months later at his home in Scotland. He was awarded the OBE and DSO for actions during WWII. He was nicknamed the "Phantom Major" by his peers.

WHO DARES WINS

[Kyt]

I used to be a big fan of Stirling who, like Wingate, was a complete maverick. Both had ideas about behind the lines disruptions that had as much or more psychological affect as actual destructive affect.

However, I then found out about his postwar activities and have since had a rethink. The guy was a proto-fascist, who was willing to organise and lead a coup d'état in Britain in the 1970s. If you want to know more google GB75:

Another, the former SAS leader David Stirling, set up an organisation called Greater Britain 1975 (GB75), whose members included a Jersey-based arms dealer. Stirling, who was described by his biographer as "well to the right of the Conservative Party", considered the left wing of the Labour Party as "a cancer". His fear, summed up in one of his papers for GB75, was expressed thus: "Why are so many of us blind to an already far advanced conspiracy by the broad Left to topple our democracy? It is now the broad Left which harbours the 'baddies' and which is devoted to creating a privileged class of rulers hell bent on demolishing our individual rights and on creating a totally socialistic and therefore totalitarian state. The near take-over of the Labour Party by its parliamentary left-wing activists in alliance with the trade union extremists poses the most menacing crisis our country has ever faced – more dangerous by far than the worst period of the last World War. This crisis cannot possibly be resolved within parliament alone."

The Airey Neave Files - Independent Online Edition > Profiles

[The Aviator]

Wow! I did not know this. This makes him the greatest hero to me than ever.
I believe Labor and the trade unions destroyed the Britain that so many gave their lives for.

I hope that kowtowing to this leftwing philosophy isn't the prerequisite for being a successful member here.

[Kyt]

Originally Posted by The Aviator

I hope that kowtowing to this leftwing philosophy isn't the prerequisite for being a successful member here.

No kowtowing required - as long as every member respects other members' views and beliefs, be they philosophical, political or religious, then we should all get along great.

But not extremism or offensiveness will allowed from any member.

[Adrian Roberts]

There is an unwarranted assumption that the war was about keeping the British Establishment going and that war heroes are always going to be right-wing reactionaries such as David Stirling or Ian Smith. If this is true, then all we were fighting the Nazis for was a clash between two different Empires.

What is worth fighting for in Britain is its very tolerance, even though that sometimes comes at a risk to our own safety, as when Karl Marx felt free to write in the British Library, or when today we build a multi-cultural society.

It was the British fighting men and women who booted out Churchill in 1945. And it wasn't only right-wing politicians who had served with distinction in the war. Examples of others include: Edward Heath, Denis Healey, Jim Callaghan, Clement Attlee (in WW1), Tony Benn (trained as a pilot but just too young to see action), Wing Cdr Ian Gleed (homosexual fighter ace) and my particular heroes, Leonard Cheshire VC (a pro-European Union Catholic), and (from WW1) the socialist "Mick" Mannock VC.

[morse1001]

Originally Posted by Kyt

No kowtowing required - as long as every member respects other members' views and beliefs, be they philosophical, political or religious, then we should all get along great.

But not extremism or offensiveness will allowed from any member.

I would agree with you there!

[Kyt]

Originally Posted by Adrian Roberts

There is an unwarranted assumption that the war was about keeping the British Establishment going and that war heroes are always going to be right-wing reactionaries such as David Stirling or Ian Smith. If this is true, then all we were fighting the Nazis for was a clash between two different Empires.

What is worth fighting for in Britain is its very tolerance, even though that sometimes comes at a risk to our own safety, as when Karl Marx felt free to write in the British Library, or when today we build a multi-cultural society.

It was the British fighting men and women who booted out Churchill in 1945. And it wasn't only right-wing politicians who had served with distinction in the war. Examples of others include: Edward Heath, Denis Healey, Jim Callaghan, Clement Attlee (in WW1), Tony Benn (trained as a pilot but just too young to see action), Wing Cdr Ian Gleed (homosexual fighter ace) and my particular heroes, Leonard Cheshire VC (a pro-European Union Catholic), and (from WW1) the socialist "Mick" Mannock VC.

I agree Adrian. Many many good men and women emerged from the war, who went on to make amazing contributions to society. More often than not it was their very experiences of the war that shaped their beliefs. And their belief that post-WW2 society had to be shaped better than post-WW1 society.

However, I think the Stirling case highlights the fact that no-matter how commendable a persons service during the war, it cannot be used as a excuse if they then end up being involved in questionable activities later in their life. And that goes for any and every famous person. Two men who I used to think were remarkable political dissidents in the 19th century have been tainted by certain revelations. Marx behaved terribly towards women, and his wife in particular. And Bakunin, who used to be one my political heroes, turned out to be an anti-semite of the worst sort.

[Kyt]

Originally Posted by Adrian Roberts

If this is true, then all we were fighting the Nazis for was a clash between two different Empires.

Isn't that what the communists said during the period between the signing of the Soviet-German pact, and Barbarossa?

[Adrian Roberts]

Isn't that what the communists said during the period between the signing of the Soviet-German pact, and Barbarossa?

You mean the communists in the UK? Extremists never seem to understand that there is a middle ground, in this case between Empire and Communism, and that this middle ground is itself worth fighting for.

[Kyt]

Fryer: Reviews - British CP and WW2

On 2 September 1939, the day before Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain issued a manifesto urging a “struggle on two fronts”: for a “military victory over Fascism” and for the removal of the Chamberlain government. [2] General Secretary Harry Pollitt was set to work to write a pamphlet, How to Win the War, which came out on 14 September and was hailed by Rajani Palme Dutt, before he knew better and before the pamphlet was withdrawn, as “being one of the finest things that [Pollitt] had produced, so clearly and simply presented”. It was William Gallacher, Communist MP for West Fife, who revealed this statement of Dutt’s to the CC, no doubt to Dutt’s embarrassment; and it is not the least juicy plum in this 50-year-old pudding of a book.

But on 14 September something else happened: the Daily Worker received a press telegram from the Soviet Union saying it was a robber war on both sides. Pollitt suppressed this telegram because it was against the line of the 2 September manifesto. However, at the next day’s meeting of the party’s Political Bureau, Dutt, ever responsive to his master’s voice, said the line would have to be revised. Indeed, Stalin had already given orders to that effect, in a private chat with Dimitrov on 7 September; Dimitrov had handed the word down to the Comintern Secretariat, which had approved his theses on 9 September, instructing the Communist Parties of France, Britain, Belgium and the USA in particular that they must immediately correct their political line.