Jock Lewes

Though he died before World War II ended, Jock Lewes is often overshadowed in accounts of how the SAS came to be. This biography restores his place in that story, drawing on his own papers to show how much he shaped the force in its early days.

At Oxford, Lewes distinguished himself as both a scholar and an athlete. He then moved to Berlin in the 1930s to prepare for a career with the Foreign Office. For a time he was drawn to the promises of the emerging National Socialist movement, and that firsthand exposure to the German mindset proved useful once the war began.

Commissioned into the Welsh Guards at the outbreak of hostilities, he was sent to North Africa. Frustrated by the stalemate of conventional fighting there, he teamed up with fellow officer David Stirling to form a small band of desert raiders. Stirling went on to wide fame after the war, but the book shows that Lewes gave the SAS many of its defining methods and tactics.

Written by his nephew John Lewes, who had full access to Jock's detailed diaries and letters, the book offers a rarely told account of the unit's first years. It will appeal to readers of military history and anyone curious about the origins of the SAS.