David Stirling: The rogue soldier who created the SAS

Colonel David Stirling with a patrol of Special Air Service (SAS) men

David Stirling, the Scot known as the founder of the SAS, was not what you would expect of a military hero.

When he arrived in Cairo in 1941, the 25-year-old lacked the most basic discipline, had never seen any actual fighting and could not even march straight.

He was so tall and lazy his comrades nicknamed him The Giant Sloth.

One report from his senior officers described him as "irresponsible and unremarkable".

Yet within a year Stirling, along with fellow Commando Jock Lewes, had developed a brand new way of taking on the German and Italian forces who were dominating North Africa.

A six-part drama series recounting the exploits of Stirling and Lewes - SAS Rogue Heroes - is currently being shown on BBC One and the iPlayer.

Jock Lewes (Alfie Allen), David Stirling (Connor Swindells) and Paddy Mayne (Jack O'Connell) in a scene from SAS Rogue Heroes

Connor Swindells, star of Netflix hit Sex Education, plays Stirling and Game Of Thrones actor Alfie Allen stars as Lewes.

Actor Jack O'Connell plays one of the original volunteers, Paddy Mayne, an Irish rugby international who Stirling claimed he had found in prison awaiting court martial for knocking out his commanding officer.

The TV series was created by Steven Knight and is based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, who also narrated a BBC TV documentary on the subject in 2017.

Mr Macintyre tells how Stirling was born into one of Scotland's grandest families at Keir House, close to Bridge of Allan, near Stirling.

He went to a private boarding school near York before studying at the University of Cambridge, where he did not settle.

Stirling was an eccentric dreamer who had gone to Paris to become an artist while also hoping to be the first man to climb Mount Everest.

He joined the Scots Guards at the outbreak of World War Two before being transferred to a newly-formed strike force, the Commandos.

He was posted to Cairo but was frustrated when one combat mission after another was cancelled.

In Egypt he met Lewes, another wealthy soldier in search of adventure. One of their first acts was to strap parachutes to their backs and jump out of a plane, despite neither of them having had any training.

"I was a bit unlucky because my parachute when it opened was attached to the tail plane," Stirling said decades later.

"Before it broke lose it took off a panel or two of the parachute.

"I descended a good deal faster than my companion."

It looked like he might not walk again due to the injuries he sustained, and he spent weeks in hospital - but remarkably made a full recovery.

Along with Lewes, he dreamt up a scheme for a new army unit that was imaginative, radical and entirely against the rules.

"It had to be regarded as a new type of force, to extract the very maximum out of surprise and guile," he told the BBC in 1987.

Their idea was to destroy aircraft on the ground by using small raiding parties who would be able to penetrate behind enemy lines without warning.

Somehow the lowly lieutenant's plans were taken seriously as a way to help the British counter-attack against Rommel in North Africa.

It is possible his superiors thought it was worth trying as if it failed all that would be lost would be a handful of adventurers.

Stirling was promoted to captain and authorised to raise a force of six officers and 60 men - and the Special Air Service (SAS) was born.

When interviewed by the BBC years later, Stirling said he deliberately recruited brave and unconventional rogues.

He said they were a "band of vagabonds" who were trying to escape from conventional regimental discipline.

"They weren't really controllable, they all had this individuality," he said.

"The object was to give them the same purpose."

After Lewes took them through a course of basic training unlike anything the Army had seen before, the SAS's first mission was to parachute into the desert and plant bombs on enemy aircraft.

The weather was atrocious, with heavy rain and winds of at least 30 knots, twice the maximum speed for parachuting.

High command sent Stirling a message allowing him to cancel the mission.

"We refused absolutely," he said.

So five ancient RAF planes struggled through a ferocious storm with 55 paratroopers ready to jump over the target.

One by one they hurled themselves into the gale, with most landing miles from the drop zone.

The mission was a total disaster and only 21 returned.

"It was tragic because there was so much talent in those we lost," Stirling said.

In 2002, an SAS memorial was erected at Doune near the Stirling family's estate

Despite this calamity, Stirling was allowed to try again - this time with the vehicles from the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group) driving them for days across the desert to strike under cover of darkness.

By early morning, Stirling and the LRDG had disappeared back into the Great Sand Sea, leaving behind them an epic trail of destruction and a bewildered enemy.

It was the first of a series of raids that terrorised and demoralised the German and Italian forces.

The death of Lewes at the end of December 1941 was a major setback for the SAS detachment, but by then they had destroyed 90 planes and left almost as many enemy dead.

Over the next year, their tactics evolved to include raids from heavily-armed Jeeps.

German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was said to have dubbed Stirling "The Phantom Major" after these devastating hit-and-run operations.

And Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill was dazzled when he met Stirling in Cairo in August 1942.

David Stirling was behind a private armed force in the 1970s

Soon after that the SAS was upgraded from a detachment to a regiment and Stirling was made Lieutenant Colonel.

But in January 1943, he was finally captured by the enemy and spent most of the rest of the war in Italian or German prisoner-of-war camps, including Colditz.

After the war, Stirling was appointed an OBE - but he was still a rebel and someone who did not play by the rules.

His many post-war adventures included a company that handled arms deals between Britain and the Gulf states, as well as a private military company.

Stirling was also behind GB75, a private armed force, which said it was ready to take over if the UK lurched leftwards in the mid-1970s.

Despite his chequered post-war record he was knighted in 1990, the year he died at the age of 74.

In 2002, an SAS memorial was erected at Doune near the family's Stirlingshire estate.

All six episodes of the BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes are on the iPlayer.