The Daring Dozen (9 page)

Like so many young men who make their mark in war, the years that followed proved anti-climactic for David Stirling. At the start of 1946, just a few months after the SAS had been disbanded, Stirling emigrated to Rhodesia. He went to seek his fortune in business but in 1948 formed the Capricorn Society, the aim of which was to establish a ‘modus Vivendi by which all races, colours and creeds in Africa can live in harmony’. A little over ten years later, with the Society making little headway in an Africa in the throes of decolonization, Stirling resigned as president. By the early 1960s Stirling’s health was deteriorating and he was in debt because of the money he had poured into the Capricorn Society. He went back into business, founding Television International Enterprises, and in 1967 formed Watchguard International Ltd, a company whose services were aimed at ‘preventing the violent overthrow of a government’ – in other words offering mercenaries to beleaguered governments in Africa and the Middle East.

Stirling continued to suffer from a bad back as a result of his parachute accident in the summer of 1941, and in 1970 he was involved in a serious car crash that exacerbated his health problems. In 1972 he ceased all involvement with Watchguard International Ltd.

In 1990 Stirling received a knighthood to go with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) he had been awarded for his leadership of L Detachment in North Africa nearly 50 years earlier. But the accolade that pleased Stirling most was when he was the guest of honour at the unveiling of Stirling Lines, the refurbished SAS base in Hereford, in June 1984. In front of hundreds of past and present members of the regiment, Stirling gave an address which holds even more resonance now – nearly 30 years on – than it did at the time: ‘The very survival of the regiment, in a society wary of elitism, depends on the calibre of each individual recruited,’ said Stirling. ‘This was, is and must remain the cornerstone … [but] the regiment must never regard itself as a corps d’elite, because down that road would lie the corruption of all our values. A substantial dash of humility along with an ever-active sense of humour must continue to save us from succumbing to this danger.’
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Stirling died on 4 November 1990, 11 days before his 75th birthday. In February the following year a memorial service was held in the Guards Chapel in London, on the same day that the Irish Republican Army – who had suffered two costly attacks by the SAS in the preceding three years – launched an audacious mortar attack on Downing Street. A coincidence? Who knows.

Stirling was without doubt one of the founding fathers of Special Forces warfare. Like many great men in their chosen field, Stirling glimpsed the future while the rest were stuck in the present, or in the case of the British Army in 1940, the past. Stirling had grasped that the advances in weaponry and technology that had taken place since World War I could change the very nature of warfare. No longer would vast opposing armies confront each other on battlefields with the spoils going to the biggest, or the bravest, side. Now small units of highly trained soldiers with the right weapons could be just as destructive as an entire division.

Allied to this vision was Stirling’s character, his determination, defiance, humour and his unshakeable belief in his conviction. As Sir Fitzroy Maclean – who served with the SAS in 1942 – said in Stirling’s eulogy: ‘There was about him, as about many great men, an element of mystery, an intangible quality, akin perhaps to what [T.E.] Lawrence called “the irrational tenth, like the kingfisher flashing across the pool”.’
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*
Davies was one of the original members of the SAS and was killed in Germany in April 1945

*
Note that it was not until September 1942 that L Detachment was expanded into the 1st Special Air Service Regiment, abbreviated to 1SAS.

To his men Edson Duncan Raff was known as ‘Little Caesar’ and to the rest of the US Army his men were known as ‘Raff’s Ruffians’. Both monikers were uttered with respect, and not a little affection, for in World War II Colonel Edson Raff proved himself an outstanding leader of men, and the soldiers who served under him fought with courage from North Africa to Normandy and on into Germany. As the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, Raff led the first American airborne operation of the war as part of Operation
Torch
in November 1942. Later he saw action in North-West Europe where he combined great personal courage with astute military thinking, and in the years after World War II Raff was at the forefront of the development of American Special Forces.

Edson Raff was born in New York City in November 1907 to Edson and Abell Raff, one of four children. Little is known of his formative years, other than that he attended a small preparatory school in Winchester, Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley Academy, where he excelled at sport and was captain of the cadet force. The academy’s superintendent was a reserve colonel. ‘From that tough old guy I learned three things,’ recalled Raff years later. ‘One, I don’t give a damn for any man who doesn’t give a damn for me; two, be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell; three, Stonewall Jackson’s battles in the Shenandoah Valley [during the American Civil War], which I remembered in Tunisia later on.’
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In 1928 Raff enrolled in the Military Academy at West Point and five years later he graduated, one of 347 graduates whose passing-out parade was attended by Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the US Army. For the next few years Raff’s military career meandered slowly along, and when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the act that triggered the outbreak of World War II, he was a junior infantry officer and stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

Raff subsequently claimed in his wartime memoirs,
We Jumped to Fight
, that in August the following year he noticed an article in the
New York Times
about the raising of a test platoon of American parachutists at Fort Benning, Georgia. The one officer and 48 men had been assigned to the Infantry Board from the 29th Infantry Regiment following the War Department’s decision the previous January to explore the possibility of American airborne troops.

‘Not being sure if a first lieutenant of infantry having a C.A.A [Civil Aviation Authority] commercial pilot’s license and a yen for adventure possessed the necessary qualifications I nevertheless decided then and there to be a parachutist,’ wrote Raff in his memoirs.
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Raff fired off letters, the first to the Adjutant General in Washington requesting his ‘six month extension in the Hawaiian Department be curtailed immediately’, the second to the Chief of Infantry asking for permission to join any putative paratroop unit. The Adjutant General denied his request and the Chief of Infantry, Major General Stephen Odgen Fuqua, prevaricated and said he’d be in touch.

Six months later Raff did receive a new posting, but it was to the 23rd Infantry at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and not to the airborne unit he so craved. For two miserable months Raff undertook ‘field manoeuvres in the Texas rattlesnake country’ until one day an order arrived, stating simply: ‘Detailed to report not later than June 1st [1941] to the 501st Parachute Battalion at Fort Benning, Georgia.’

Raff arrived in Georgia in a state of high excitement and was cordially welcomed by his commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel William Miley, and Lieutenant Colonel William Lee, head of the Provisional Parachute Group, who had taught Raff tank tactics at the Infantry School in 1937.

On 4 June Raff began training to become a paratrooper. He and his fellow recruits began with physical training, such as long runs and calisthenics ‘to harden the muscles’ as well as learning the parachute roll on landing. ‘Our class started like all the others before us, full of vim and raring to jump’ wrote Raff in a letter to an aunt on 26 June 1941. ‘It wasn’t long before most of us realized the course was downright hard labor … in the rest period we’d make a rush for the water spigot to drink until all the perspiration just lost could be replaced and the vicious circle would start once more – sweat and drink, sweat and drink.’
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From rolling around on mats, the aspirant paratroopers progressed to leaping off raised platforms, first 3ft and then 5ft in height. The next jumps were from a dummy fuselage, from where the troops learned not just how to land but also how to leap into space, individually and en masse. After the fuselage the instructors had the recruits use a ‘Lulu’, a contraption that Raff explained to his aunt: ‘It’s a trolley affair on an inclined rail down which rolls the would-be parachutist hanging in a suspension harness. At some uncertain moments during the downward roll the instructor gives a jerk on a control in his hand releasing the student. No one ever knows when he’ll be released so all during the roll he has to be prepared to land feet apart, then make the somersault. Most of the time we were eating sawdust from the pit into which we drop.’

If there was sufficient wind at Fort Benning, the recruits would don parachutes and allow themselves to be dragged across the grass so they could learn how to arrest the chute in a heavy breeze. They were also given endless lessons in folding and packing the ‘silk’, with their instructors telling the volunteers that his parachute was as important to an airborne trooper as a rifle was to an infantryman.

Having learned how to leap from a 90ft tower, the day arrived when Raff and his fellow recruits were given the chance to make their first jump proper. Raff, who was known by his middle name of ‘Duncan’ to family members, described the experience to his aunt:

Our novice jump took place on a day which was clear and still. The engines of two C-39 transport planes warmed up as we lined up for inspection … when we passed over a certain spot on the ground, lieutenant Walters, the jumpmaster said, ‘Number One, stand up!’ The first man stood on his feet. Walters looked him over, then gave the command, ‘Hook up!’

Number One snapped the static line attached to his parachute on the steel anchor cable running down the centre of the transport. Next came the command, ‘stand in the door!’ The student obeyed; for a few tense seconds he stood there ready for the leap into space. Then lieutenant Walters said ‘Go!’ Out went the tyro on his first trip to mother earth. The rest of us watched him gradually lose altitude and disappear far to the rear of the plane … then came number Seven. ‘captain Raff, stand up!’ yelled lieutenant Walters.

‘Hook up!’

I hooked up.

‘Stand in the door!’

There I stood, looking out at the earth moving slowly by 1,500 feet below. My hands lightly touched the metal fuselage, ready to make the push off. The propeller wash (we call it the ‘prop blast’) came through the door in intermittent gusts. Thus, on the threshold of a new world, I waited for the fatal ‘go’.

I felt a tap on my right leg. Walters was saying ‘Go! Go!’ and out I went.

Deep down a submerged voice seemed to be counting ‘one thousand, two thousand, thr-’ but before I could finish ‘three thousand’ there was a jerking on my shoulders and I knew the chute had opened. It was a peculiar pain, strangely exhilarating. In spite of the frequent shoulder bruises from the opening jar the real joy of having that ’chute open knows no bounds. There was plenty of time to gaze around as a slight breeze drifted the chute and me to the south. After looking up at the canopy to see that it was completely open, I tried some turns and slips. Then I gazed around some more … I noticed as I looked down that the earth seemed to be coming up toward me. The speed of its approach increased and, for the first time, I realized my drift was rearward. Working the risers (they run from the shoulders to the lines running down from the chute) I prepared to land. Both feet hit the ground at once, then a backward somersault, and the jump was over. The grassy field underfoot felt solid and good.
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Having qualified as a parachutist, Raff was appointed executive officer of the 504th Parachute Battalion on 6 December 1941. The following day the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbor on what President Franklin Roosevelt declared to be a ‘day of infamy’. On 8 December the United States of America declared war on Japan and three days later a similar announcement was made concerning Germany.