2SAS: Bill Stirling and the forgotten special forces unit of World War II

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On 28 May 2012, two teams: one from the SAS and another from DEVGRU carried out Operation Jubilee: the rescue of a British aid worker and three other hostages after they were captured by bandits and held in two separate caves in the Koh-e-Laram forest, Badakhshan Province. The assault force killed eleven gunmen and rescued all four hostages. [152] The events of the raid were portrayed in the movie They Who Dare in 1954 starring Dirk Bogarde [12] The SAS returned to Northern Ireland in force in 1976, operating throughout the province. In January 1977 Seamus Harvey, armed with a shotgun, was killed during a SAS ambush. [49] On 21 June, six men from G Squadron ambushed four IRA men planting a bomb at a government building; three IRA members were shot and killed but their driver managed to escape. [50] On 10 July 1978, John Boyle, a sixteen-year-old Catholic, was exploring an old graveyard near his family's farm in County Antrim when he discovered an arms cache. He told his father, who passed on the information to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The next morning Boyle decided to see if the guns had been removed and was shot dead by two SAS soldiers who had been waiting undercover. [51] In 1976 Newsweek also reported that eight SAS men had been arrested in the Republic of Ireland supposedly as a result of a navigational error. It was later revealed that they had been in pursuit of a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit. [45] Police probe after plaques stolen from SAS memorial". BBC News. 5 June 2014 . Retrieved 9 May 2018.

In 1994–95, Lieutenant-General Michael Rose, who had been the CO of 22 SAS and Director Special Forces (DSF) during the 1980s, commanded the United Nations Protection Force mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Needing a realistic appreciation of the situation in a number of UN-mandated "safe areas" that were surrounded by Bosnian-Serb forces, he requested and received elements from both A and D squadrons. The operators deployed with standard British Army uniforms, UN blue berets and SA80 assault rifles to "hide in plain sight" under the official cover as UK Liaison Officers. They established the "ground truth" in the besieged enclaves. As these men were trained as forward air controllers, they were also equipped with laser target designators to guide NATO aircraft should the decision be made to engage Bosnian-Serb forces. [117]De la Billière and the commander of UKSF for Operation Granby planned to convince Schwarzkopf of the need for special operations forces with the rescue of a large number of Western and Kuwaiti civilian workers being held by Iraqi forces as human shields, but in December 1990, Saddam Hussein released the majority of the hostages, however the situation brought the SAS to Schwarzkopf's attention. Having already allowed US Army Special Forces and Marine Force Recon to conduct long-range reconnaissance missions, he was eventually convinced to allow the SAS to also deploy a handful of reconnaissance teams to monitor the Main Supply Routes (MSRs). [106] Obituary – Major Alastair McGregor". The Daily Telegraph. London. 3 October 2002 . Retrieved 19 March 2010. He even added a couple of inches to his height, stating that he was 6ft 6in and thereby surpassing his brother Bill's 6ft 5in.

Stirling was appointed Commander, Royal Artillery for the 1st Infantry Division in Palestine during the Palestine Emergency between 1947 and 1948 going on to be Chief of Staff at Anti-Aircraft Command between 1950 and 1952. [3] He was appointed commander 27th Infantry Brigade in 1952 and then Principal Staff Officer to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff in 1956. [3] He became General Officer Commanding of the 2nd Division in 1958 and General Officer Commanding-in-Chief for Western Command in 1960. [3] Asher, Michael (2002). The Real Bravo Two Zero - The Truth Behind Bravo Two Zero. Cassell. ISBN 0-75284-247-1. Since the beginning of 2016, the SAS was deployed to Libya during Libyan Civil War (2014–present), along with other UK Special forces, they have been escorting teams of MI6 agents to meet with Libyan officials and organise the supplying weapons and training to the Libyan army and to militias fighting against ISIL. [186] [187] Libya (2011) [ edit ] The last recorded meeting between Mayne and Stirling was at an SAS reunion in December 1947 in London; a reporter from the Observer newspaper was present and wrote of Mayne that his ‘immense charm and cunning could only be compared to his mountainous physical proportions’. He described Stirling as ‘a sleepy imperturbable Scot’. Virginia Cowles. The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and the SAS Regiment (Collins, 1958) ISBN 1848843860 ISBN 978-1848843868It was Bill, however, who handed the document to Arthur Smith, and it was he who also recruited most of the first officers to the SAS once the Stirlings had been authorized to put their idea into practice.