Stirling’s Desert Raiders – Virginia Cowles, 1958 ★½

A Puzzling Legend

Can a single individual change the outcome of something as epic as World War II? This account of a pioneering British commando taking on the Afrika Korps in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt would have you believe it not only possible, but true. If only it were more convincing.

David Stirling was the son of a Scottish laird who found himself early in the conflict looking for something more stimulating than regular military duty. The result: inventing the Special Air Service, a commando unit still active today, known for their elite professionalism.

In Stirling’s case, however, it reads more like adventurism. As described in Stirling’s Desert Raiders, there was no risk too great, no chance not worth taking. A raid was something he looked upon as “pure relaxation.” While men under his command died following orders that were highly reckless, he kept on his path.

Stirling’s formula for success, author Virginia Cowles writes, was simple: The fewer men sent out on a mission, the better. “Surprise, he was certain, was the key to success,” she writes. “Much better to drop half a dozen men, use every one of them, and to retain surprise until the demolition fuses went off.”

A typical battlefield in North Africa was dry, featureless, and flat. Large units kept pushing each other back and forth. In such a wide-open environment was room for small forces to harass and damage the enemy, which was the concept David Stirling pushed with the Special Air Service.
Image from https://www.lensculture.com/articles/matthew-arnold-topography-is-fate-north-african-battlefields-of-world-war-ii

Cowles’s narrative is as much concerned with the battles Stirling fought internally while pushing the idea of an independent commando team operating in the desert. This was seen with skepticism by many senior brass who saw his operation as “a waste of time and effort.”

They had a point. Even Cowles, who touts the man relentlessly through her book, admits Stirling’s first operation in November 1941 was a complete failure. A parachute assault on German airfields near Gazala, Libya led to the loss of more than two-thirds of Stirling’s force, with nothing to show for it. “A debacle,” she writes. 

In this instance Stirling made the decision to launch his airdrop into a gale, rather than miss a chance to be part of Operation Crusader. Most of his troops were literally gone with the wind. Just 20 pages later, she continues pushing his greatness as if nothing happened: “He was nearly always right. The only mistakes he made were due to faulty maps.”

Time and again, even after forsaking parachute jumps in favor of jeep assaults on enemy sites, we see a headlong leadership style. Even while racking up dozens of destroyed planes at a time, one wonders why he was so eager to get himself and his men killed.

A jeep of the kind used by Stirling, provided by the Long Range Desert Group. Outfitted with Vickers machine guns, they sped into enemy airfields blazing away. "Remember to shoot low and aim for the petrol tanks," Cowles reports Stirling ordering.
Image from https://picryl.com/topics/long+range+desert+group

Throughout the book, it becomes harder to shake the idea of thrill-seeking being the heart and goal of Stirling’s war activities:

He seldom gave an order. He just suggested that something might be “fun.” And viewed in this light no one could refuse; they said yes, of course, as though it were perfectly natural to come in from a harrowing adventure one day and start off on another the next. After all, why else had they joined the S. A. S.?

There were accomplishments. During his time in charge of the S. A. S., as it fought along the North African coast, it was credited with destroying over 250 enemy aircraft, destroying dozens of supply dumps, and playing havoc with German supply lines. Yet other accounts of the origins of the S. A. S. and Stirling’s part in it leave a different picture.

The core argument against him was that he was a poor manager of details, incompetent in battle, heedlessly chasing glory.

Steep, sandy rises played havoc with vehicles on both sides of the battle for North Africa. Cowles records the frequent mishap of jeeps flipping upside down while trying to get over a steep rise. "Even the most experienced drivers made fatal errors," she writes.
Image from https://andreasmoser.blog/2020/07/28/qattara/

One can see plenty of this in Cowles’s account, too. She notes time and again how glibly he nettled his superiors, including General Bernard Montgomery at their first meeting, as if the goal were cleverly scoring points off them rather than building a case for his unit.

Stirling did lead his forces into many successful raids, destroying valuable German and Italian equipment at a time when Hitler was still threatening Egypt. More than that, Stirling was singularly brave. Cowles describes him directing his jeep driver to take him into what appeared an enemy camp he planned to shoot up, with no obvious avenue of escape. Only the fact it was an Arab civilian camp protected him from the consequences of being trapped amid armed hostiles.

All this is to the good, Cowles writes:

Stirling became almost a legend to the men who served him. They felt he led a charmed life; that there was no trap from which he could not fight his way, no occasion on which he could not outwit the enemy.

David Stirling (at right) stands with members of the S. A. S. sometime in 1942. On raids they drove their jeeps in staggered formation so they could simultaneously fire in both directions. Uniforms tended to reflect the Arab and Berber tribesmen they met.
Image from https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/david-stirling

Originally titled The Phantom Major when published in 1958, Stirling’s Desert Raiders is written as a Boy’s Own Adventure tale emphasizing harrowing escapes and strokes of fortune. Much dialogue is included, of a kind that seems invented to give the narrative more vivacity.

At one point a group of Desert Raiders find themselves surrounded by Germans, unaware of who they are in their turbans and beards. Cowles quotes a soldier named Timmons (no first name given) recalling how the Germans launched into an impromptu sing-song:

“The repertoire of songs included chiefly somewhat out-dated American jazz numbers, but such music held little charm for us. Nor did it seem the moment to raise our own spirits with a duet in ‘Land Of Hope And Glory,’ let alone ‘Rule Britannia.’ Levity in retrospect of such incidents is easy, but things were earnest enough at the time.”

It is clear Cowles is not interested in the people around Stirling, just the man himself. Stirling’s first second-in-command, an early KIA, is continually referred to as “Jock Lewis.” His surname was actually Lewes, pretty well known for inventing a bomb of the same name.

The last surviving member of Stirling's S. A. S. command, Mike Sadler passed away in 2024. He was an experienced veteran from the Long Range Desert Group who was recruited to join the S. A. S. in 1942, valued for his skill as a desert navigator.
Image from https://www.facebook.com/veteransfoundation/posts/major-mike-sadler-was-the-last-original-member-of-the-special-air-service-and-on/1084662463691722/

Late in the book, Stirling’s brother Bill is mentioned in a handful of places. You have to look elsewhere to find that Bill was more central to the creation of the S. A. S. than Cowles allows. Cowles also throws some shade on Paddy Mayne, another key figure in the S. A. S.’s early days, as a stereotypical Irish meathead who goes to pieces back at base while Stirling is on a mission. He can’t bear to be left out of the fun.

Mayne actually led the S. A. S. after Stirling was captured in Tunisia, In Cowles’s telling, Stirling was caught sleeping after a failed raid in early 1943, after losing many men. What angered him most, Cowles writes, is that he was captured by a dentist.

Whatever the truth to criticisms leveled at Stirling by modern critics with 20/20 hindsight, Cowles hardly burnishes his legacy.

The battle for North Africa was fought largely around the shoreline. The often-desolate interior was left for planes to watch over. Here Stirling found an opportunity to strike at the German and Italian armies from the south, then melt away in the sand.
Image from https://worldwar2innorthafrica.yolasite.com/

The book does offer lovely atmospheric interludes of Stirling wandering through a moonlit Benghazi, gathering intelligence for a raid:

The men strode along, their ears strained to every sound. A howl rent the air. A cat, its eyes gleaming like torches, leapt across their path. Then came a sudden clatter as someone banged a window over their heads. At the water’s edge the wind seemed almost a gale. The water crashed noisily against the side of the jetty, and the men could see whitecaps dancing out to sea.

Yet this raid doesn’t come off; it winds up as abortive as several other missions described here. Time and again, Cowles offers little evidence Stirling’s raids served any real strategic value, relieving pressure on other parts of the Allied battle line. They just pop in and out.

The S. A. S. was doing something right at this point of the war; Cowles points out how German commander Erwin Rommel complained about in his journals. But the overall feeling one gets from reading this disappointing book is a lot of derring-do accomplishing surprisingly little, led by a man who could face bullets easier than sweat details.