Gentleman Jim: The Wartime Story of a Founder of the SAS and Special Services

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The hand-picked men were drilled in Stirling’s guerrilla tactics based around the actions of Blakeny and the Tobruk Four.

Meet the Lincolnshire man who lived possibly one of the most extraordinary and unusual lives of anybody from our county in the last 100 years. Honest Dave' had fought in Spain against Franco on the Republican side as a member of the International Brigade. Off duty, often alone, Almonds explored the highlands of Ethiopia, navigated its crocodile-infested rivers by canoe and scoured the bush of Eritrea, West Africa and later the coasts and jungles of Asia. Many military men over the years have displayed one trait or the other but to achieve both is anything but easy. Stirling later brought the “Tobruk Four” into L Detachment of the SAS Brigade, formed in the summer of 1941.

When he was told by an Italian the Germans had taken over the camp, he escaped and set out westwards. One or two were even taken while still fully erected by grabbing each corner and lifting them noiselessly from around their sleeping occupants. Almonds had twice gone to sea without knowing where he was going: first from Britain with 8 Guards Commando to the Middle East in early 1941, then on an Italian warship through the Corinth Canal to Taranto. It was designed to be kept working from the 'bleed' of an aero engine and the exhaust of an SAS jeep cannot compare with that from an aircraft engine so the adaption couldn't be done. There was about it all, Almonds said later, an air of the faintly comical: "not a million miles away from 'Allo 'Allo".

The camp commandant gave Almonds a set of civilian clothes and asked if he could go out to report where the Germans were in the area.

The two men, at first stupefied, were quickly all smiles and responded with salutes… It was a small gesture, but something about it brought tears to Bateman’s eyes. The moon had not risen and the stars of the immense desert night gave little light, cloaking their clandestine mission.