David Stirling, sacred cows & being crushed by falling statues

The Phoney Major

I’ve been having a fascinating conversation over the last few days with a friend about whether the killing of sacred cows should be encouraged, or even allowed (were it to be possible to prevent their deaths). Should not sleeping dogs (to mix my metaphors) be allowed to lie? The question was prompted by my enthusiasm for Gavin Mortimer’s soon-to-be-published expose of David Stirling, one of the original heroes of the Special Air Service in North Africa. Mortimer’s new book examines the extent the late David Stirling went to ‘creatively reimagine’ his past, especially in the ‘bigging-up’ of his role in the achievements of the SAS in action.

My view, of course, is that all historians true to their salt should be in the business of killing sacred cows when they find them, even if it does earn the ire, for example, of the SAS Association. For the truth, to coin a phrase, must out. This is one of the most exciting things about our job: looking at the past through unblinkered (or at least objective) spectacles and offering a different interpretation to what might over time have become received wisdom.

Mortimer’s book does this in spades. It will only annoy the SAS Association if they wish to continue to hold on to a myth about their founder that is only partly true and ignores the achievements of others. The book is a comprehensive and compelling demolition of the fabric of lies and falsehoods built by David Stirling about his role in creating and sustaining the Special Air Service in the Second World War. It is a book that topples the metaphorical statue of one of Britain’s greatest (but partly self-appointed) military heroes. Stirling is exposed as a liar and a fabricator, a man who, though not without some ability as a persuader and communicator, built a story around himself based on the achievements of other, greater men. One of those was his brother Bill Stirling to whom most of the grandeur of the Stirling name needs to be reflected. Another was the legendary soldier Paddy Mayne, DSO and four bars of whose many talents and achievements Stirling was jealous.

Born in 1915, the fourth of six children, David Stirling was a confused child who struggled to fit in with either family or school. Dazzled by his brilliant mother and outshone by his more talented brothers, he lead a listless early life, unsure of who he was and where he would go in the world. Lazy and directionless he would have almost certainly been lost to history’s attention were it not for the Second World War. It was the paternalistic protection of his older brother, Bill, who recognised his weaknesses and insecurities (not least his shocking disregard for important detail) that he managed to survive early encounters both with the British Army and the enemy in the war.

Mortimer has delivered a commendable service not merely to history but also to our understanding of how heroes are made. It’s a sad story, one of a lifetime of half-truths and distortions built on the apparent recognition by David Stirling that he was a pygmy living in a land of giants. He wanted to be a giant but, realising the poverty of his own character, realised he could only attain greatness by assuming the mantle of others by subterfuge.

It is something of a shock to discuss how elaborately Stirling built up this corpus of half-truths and downright lies and fabrications, and how assiduously we – his willing dupes – have swallowed them. I was conned early, reading Virginia Cowles’ The Phantom Major in 1974 as an eleven-year old (I still have the book) and willingly accepting the lot. I now feel sullied. The book is certainly a salutary lesson for historians and biographers, warning us (again) to step away from our subjects, and to test, evaluate and corroborate our sources. If we think we knew everything about Stirling, the establishment of the SAS and the author of the organisation’s achievements we have, until now, been sadly mistaken.

It has taken Mortimer nearly thirty years of research, conversations with veterans and assiduous unpicking of every story of supposed derring-do to realise that Stirling wasn’t who he purported to be. Mortimer admits to being at one time himself a deluded member of the David Stirling cult. The book he has produced is a carefully constructed demolition of the Stirling myth. Its well written, well argued and entirely convincing. It’s a story of a weak and conflicted man, who seems to have come to believe his own lies. It’s a valuable story for all of us: be careful whom we place on pedestals. We might be crushed when they fall.

The Phoney Major