He dared and lost. Now, after 60 years, this SAS hero's tale can be

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jan 6, 2002 | by Juliette Garside

Jimmy Storie is thought to be one of only five surviving founding members of the SAS, whose first raid involved stealing a set of easy chairs. Below left: in his early commando days in the desert Storie was famous for adopting elements of local dress, even the fez Main photograph: Karen Murray/ Newsline Scotland Jimmy Storie is thought to be one of only five surviving commandos of the 50 who made up the founding members of the SAS. His career with the Special Air Service was brief - he spent just two years of the second world war in the North African desert blowing up German aeroplanes before being taken prisoner - but those heady days marked the rest of his life.

After being released from a Czechoslovakian prison camp at the end of the war, Storie returned to Scotland and tried twice to rejoin the SAS. The first time the army refused and sent him back to prison camp - this time as a warder in the military jail at Barlinnie. He left after nine months and returned to his trade as a tile-fixer and fireplace builder. Work was scarce, however, so Storie went to Aberdeen to apply once again to join the SAS.

The army overrode a request for his return by the then SAS chief, Paddy Mayne, and he was told he would only be taken back as a warden. He walked out of the recruitment office without signing the papers. Two days later, policemen called at his home to arrest him for desertion. As he had not completed the paperwork, he escaped imprisonment.

Storie, who is now 82, went back to civilian life and settled in the seaside town of Muchalls, near Aberdeen. Since the war he has had to content himself with reunions, trips to new SAS camps or the unveiling of statues. Paddy Mayne's went up in his Ulster home town some years ago, and a monument to the founder of Storie's regiment, Sir David Stirling, will be unveiled in June at his Perthshire childhood home, Keir House.

But now, in a four-part series starting on Channel 4 next week, Storie and his fellow veteran commandos will be given a chance to retell, and in some cases re-enact, their extraordinary experiences.

The SAS was preceded by the first regiments of British commandos - who were Winston Churchill's idea. As it became clear that the second world war would not be over any quicker than the first, the then Prime Minister decided that a crack force of soldiers who could sneak behind enemy lines to cause havoc would be an important morale- booster. As a young journalist covering the Boer war in South Africa he had come across a new breed of soldier, called kommandos by the Afrikaaners, who could do just that. He imported the idea, and the first elite forces were born.

Many of the first commandos trained in Scotland. Storie was one, as was David Stirling, and both trained on Arran. Storie, having joined the Seaforth Highlanders at the age of 19 when the war broke out, volunteered because the pay was better and the sartorial regime a little more lax. Later, in the desert, he and his fellow commandos were notorious for not shaving and for adopting elements of local dress - they sported sandals, Arab headdresses and even fezes.

Storie's first mission, in Syria in 1941, was disastrous. He and the surviving remnants of other divisions involved in the exercise were sent to Egypt to await their next orders.

When Stirling was given permission to found L Detachment, a force whose speciality would be parachuting behind enemy lines into desert airbases to destroy German and Italian planes, he went to Storie's camp looking for volunteers. Stirling and his 50 chosen soldiers were ushered to a signal station on the Suez canal and told to set up camp. They did not have even the most basic of supplies.

"There was nothing there" recalls Storie. "So we stole a three- ton truck, and at night we went down to this New Zealand camp. They were asleep in their tents when we took them down and put them on the truck. They'd just come back from the front and I suppose they were that tired they couldn't have cared less. Then we went to the local picture house, where there were easy chairs for the officers, and we stole them. That was L Detachment's first raid."

The second raid was an internal PR stunt. Stirling took his men on a 100-mile march to the north to invade a British airbase. "We cut through the barbed wire," says Storie, "went over planes, we stuck stickers on saying 'blown up' ... and even [went] to the canteen, stuck them on the doors of the canteen and the officers' mess." The stunt impressed those in charge, and Stirling was sent on his first mission behind enemy lines.

L Detachment soon became known as the SAS. According to army lore, Stirling and his brother carved their initials, S and S, on a tree at Keir House as boys. Whatever its genesis, the name stuck.

Commando, a four-part series, will be broadcast on Tuesdays on Channel 4 at 9pm from January 15