
Long reads shortened
The madman who founded the SAS
David Stirling, founder of the SAS, was “quite, quite mad”, says Tom Fordy in The Daily Telegraph. At least, that was the assessment of his military nemesis Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. Bored in Cairo during the Second World War, Stirling jumped out of a plane without proper training, tore his parachute on the tail, and hit the ground so hard he was “temporarily blinded and paralysed”. Shortly after, while still recovering, he broke into the British Middle East HQ using his crutches “as a kind of ladder to get over the wire while the guards weren’t looking”. His purpose? Putting his proposal for a new regiment directly into the hands of the generals.