Dale speaks to heritage correspondent Alison Campsie about her article on Sir David Stirling and the BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Wednesday. My name's
00:05Dale Miller. I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined by our Heritage Correspondent Alison
00:10Campsey. Alison, good morning. Things are looking bright at both our ends. I am looking
00:18out the window seeing sunshine and it is good if you can get out, walk the dog, get out
00:27I've been out already, Dale. I was down the beach at five to eight this morning and it was just beautiful.
00:31So glad that it's a bit milder. It still was pitch black though. I had my torch with me
00:36but it was nice to be out nonetheless. Yes, yeah. I need to get out myself so rather than
00:42just talking about it. While we're talking about things, Scotsman's front page of today's
00:48paper. Great photos of the Princess of Wales who visited the cancer unit where she received
00:55treatment yesterday and confirmed that she's in remission. So positive news there and that
01:00led pictorially the front of the Scotsman today. Also, we had an exclusive interview
01:06with Deputy First Minister and former Finance Secretary Kate Forbes. Our political correspondent
01:12Rachel Armory spoke to her and she was expanding on what she thought about the prospects of
01:17the UK and likewise the Scottish economy and the fate of Rachel Reeves. We do have some
01:23news this morning on the economy where it's a better than expected outcome for the inflation rate
01:29which has dipped back to 2.5%. Is that the start of better news for the Chancellor?
01:35We'll wait and see whether the dialogue around that will change over the coming days and weeks.
01:40But Alison, we're going to get to something no less important but maybe a bit lighter
01:47than the economy and it is SAS Rogue Hero. Well, the real SAS Rogue Hero. It's a program
01:55that's out but also something you've written about in a fair bit of detail today.
01:59Hi. I don't think I can be the only one who's been enjoying SAS Rogue Heroes on BBC
02:05during these long, never-ending January nights. It's a story basically about the North Africa
02:14campaign during the Second World War and the very, very strong characters who led
02:21part of that campaign. One of the lead characters is David Stirling, who's credited with
02:29founding the SAS and going deep behind German lines in the North African desert.
02:36So, you know, people often ask me, oh, how do you decide what stories you're going to write?
02:41I was sitting watching SAS Rogue Heroes with my mum and she's like, oh, that's David Stirling
02:46from Keir House near Doon in Stirlingshire, which is my mum's part of the world.
02:51And I was like, oh, I'll probably write a feature about that. That's great.
02:54So here we are. We did a nice feature on it for today's paper and it's really looking at
03:00David Stirling in particular and the kind of the real man behind the SAS Rogue Hero.
03:08And he really is a fascinating character. It does make for great telly.
03:13But when you look into who he was as a person and a personality, you know, just endlessly
03:20fascinating guy, a guy of incredible bravery, real sort of ruthlessness and just a complete
03:29belief in himself and his abilities, both at war and I suppose, yeah, belief in himself, I guess.
03:38So really interesting chap. Now, I'll talk a bit more about David Stirling in a second,
03:47but it's really, really important to note that he wasn't acting alone in the SAS.
03:53He is widely credited as founding it. Some dispute this, actually, and dispute his kind of influence
04:00in the formation of the special force. But there's other chaps who are depicted heavily in the programme
04:07as well, notably Paddy Main and Jock Lewis, who, you know, if it wasn't for them,
04:15their achievements out in the desert may not have been quite the same.
04:20Some folk believe that David Stirling was really kind of like the front man.
04:23He didn't have the best brain in the world, but he made up for it in brawn and just guts, really, and bravery.
04:29So I was kind of like checking out a few sort of cuttings and profiles which had been written
04:36about David Stirling ahead of writing the article. And there was one from the National Army Museum,
04:44which I kind of thought really summed it up very boldly. And I read it and you could see how the character
04:52was developed for television, you know, along this kind of assessment of who Colonel Stirling was.
04:59So the National Army Museum say he exhibited both a spirit of adventure and rebellious waywardness
05:05as a young man during the 1930s. In fact, when the war broke out,
05:11he was over in Montana working as a cowboy. And during that period,
05:17he had designs on becoming the first man to climb Everest. But he was over in Montana.
05:22Heard war broke out and returned very promptly to Britain.
05:26And he'd previously been a reservist with the Scots Guards, so he rejoined the regiment.
05:33But he, in the spirit of David Stirling, got bored very quickly with that regimental sort of discipline,
05:40went on to join the commandos. And that still wasn't enough. He kind of wanted to take it higher.
05:47And along with Jock Lews, started talking about the potential of using parachutes in the desert.
05:56And this is part of David Stirling's character as well. He just had this kind of like charm,
06:01this sort of suaveness. You know, like I say, he was born at Kier House. It's a massive, massive property.
06:08He was born into aristocratic lines. His father was a brigadier.
06:13His mother was descended from the Frasers of Lovett. I didn't actually get that into the piece,
06:18but the Frasers of Lovett's very kind of like notable kind of highland family, again,
06:23with this rich sort of military history. In fact, David Stirling's first cousin was Lord Lovett,
06:30who led special forces onto the beach during D-Day and, you know, really revered kind of fighter.
06:37So he's kind of from this officer class background and had all these social connections.
06:42And he had connections within GHQ at Cairo. And this is sort of depicted in the show.
06:49And he was able to convince kind of like Top Brass that there was this need for an army within an army
06:56to go deep behind these enemy lines, to run in very small units and to kind of carry out these sort of hit
07:03and run missions on German airfields, for example. And this, again, is depicted in the show really well.
07:10They would move in kind of like small groups and effectively would just kind of like walk into these airstrips
07:16under the cover of darkness and leave these kind of like delayed response incendiary bombs
07:23and go in with their machine guns and wipe the place out. And, you know, would really, you know,
07:28do this hit and run mission and then would sort of extract very quickly and disappear.
07:33Now, it is important to note that, and I must get the name of this group right,
07:41that they were at the start of the SS when David Stirling's first mission was a disaster.
07:47They sent loads of guys, I think it was into the Libyan desert by parachute in a really horrendous storm.
07:53But a third of the guys didn't come back. So the next operation they twinned with,
08:01now I really want to get this right because they are so key to the early success of the SAS,
08:09the Long Range Desert Group, thank God I got the name there.
08:12I mean, we are judging you if you got that wrong, by the way.
08:15I'd be judging myself, I'd be cross. The Long Range Desert Group, you know,
08:21were working in the desert long before David Stirling and the SAS turned up.
08:25And they had this amazing ability to read conditions, weather, shifting of sands.
08:31I mean, they just knew the geography in such detail and just could almost predict the way that the sand was going to shift
08:39and different routes that people would be taking given particular conditions on a particular day.
08:46Amazing set of fighters. So the SAS, with David Stirling, twinned up with them after the first disastrous mission
08:54and really kind of took off. And as I say, the kind of the work was sort of defined by these hit and run missions
09:03on airfields in particular, and then would withdraw with the help of the Long Range Desert Group and just sort of vanish.
09:09And it led to David Stirling being called the Phantom Major by Rommel.
09:14Just, you know, this massive shock tactic, come in, destroy, extract.
09:19And, you know, it would seem that for some time, you know, they managed to cause incredible destruction
09:27and nobody knew who they were. And apparently Adolf Hitler, you know,
09:31gave direct orders to sort of hunt these guys down and destroy them because they were such a threat.
09:38So, aye, David Stirling over time has been incredibly lauded and he is just, he's just got that kind of profile,
09:48sort of like aristocratic, officer class, slightly nuts, you know, incredible bravery and just sort of self-belief
09:57and, you know, just a really high threshold for danger.
10:05He didn't really seem to feel danger whatsoever. It is important to say as well, over time,
10:15you know, people have started to critique David Stirling a little more.
10:18And I think with SAS Rogue Heroes, people started coming in and saying, ah, David Stirling, aye, brave guy.
10:26But actually, he was a bit reckless. Actually, he couldn't really take orders.
10:31Actually, he was very impetuous. Now, a lot of folk would say, aye, but that's what made him just so good and bold and brave.
10:39But others were like, actually, you know, there was other people really instrumental in these early successes of the SAS.
10:48David Stirling, aye, brave guy, but there was other people whose contribution was as great and perhaps a little less noted.
10:59There was actually a book written by a chap called Gavin Mortimer a couple of years ago called The Phony Major.
11:07So, whereby Rommel described Stirling as the phantom major. This book calls him the phony major.
11:12And I haven't read it, you know, I have to be honest. But, you know, from what I've read of the book,
11:20the arguments are very much that people like Bill Stirling, who was the brother of David Stirling,
11:26really was kind of unsung in the formation of the SAS and who really, out of the two brothers, had the brains and not the brawn.
11:38So really interesting to learn about that and the Scottish connection in particular, which I always love, obviously.
11:45And, you know, just means go back and watch the show and maybe understand a bit of a fuller picture of what's been told.
11:51But a good show and definitely a very, very interesting period of the war,
11:57which has kind of been brought to life in great luster for entertainment purposes
12:03and also gave me a feature for the heritage pages, which is always good.
12:08I love that quote, describing him as very, very mad from your piece.
12:13Yeah, that's right. So that was right up at the top of the piece. And that came from Montgomery.
12:19And, you know, Montgomery said in a war there's often a place for mad people.
12:24And then he went on to say the boy Stirling is quite mad, quite, quite mad.
12:29But again, you know, a man of great achievement on the field.
12:35Actually, interestingly, he was taken prisoner of war in Tunisia in 1943.
12:43And then after that, sort of retired from the army and went on to get involved in some very unusual projects.
12:54And he really courted a lot of controversy when he set up something called the GB75 group.
13:02And that was following Harold Wilson's election as prime minister.
13:05So there was this big fear that, you know, it's going to be like basically a communist government.
13:10So there's kind of David Stirling, who'd been involved in quite a few strange projects after army life.
13:17But with the GB75 group, it was a private force which included ex-soldiers and spies amongst its ranks.
13:23And it was basically going to protect Britain from communism. That was the idea.
13:27So, I mean, that was hugely controversial at the time.
13:33And just reading the cuttings yesterday surrounding that, I mean, he took a lot of pelters for that.
13:38But he was still knighted in 1990. And that was actually the year that he died, aged 74.
13:47And there is, and I would really like to go and see this, there's a memorial to David Stirling and the SAS more broadly,
13:54at a care house near Doon in Stirlingshire. So, yeah, I'll go and check that out one weekend soon.
14:00If you're fascinated by this story, you can read it at scotsman.com.
14:05Look for the heritage tab in the navigation bar and you'll be able to find this story and all the other stories
14:12across Scottish history and beyond that Alison Kempsey has written.
14:17Thank you very much for joining us. Have a great day.
14:21Thanks.
14:24.