David Stirling Before World War Two, David Stirling trained to climb Mount Everest. He was a tall man, at some six feet, five inches in height. In 1940 he joined the Scots Guards as a subaltern but soon volunteered for 8 Commando, named 'Layforce' after its founder, Captain Robert Laycock. Believing a small band of dedicated men could operate successfully behind enemy lines, Stirling managed to present his plan to General Ritchie, who at the time was Deputy Chief Of Staff. Stirling's memorandum in which he set out the idea finally reached the Commander-In-Chief of British Forces in the Middle East, General, later Field Marshall Auchinleck, and the SAS was born. While navigating through the Gabes Gap, having completing a recce, when his party of five jeeps was spotted by a German reconnaissance aircraft. Thinking that the pilot would radio for ground support his patrol hid in a shallow bush-covered wadi just of the Gasfa road. Stirling and several of his fourteen men were taken prisoner, but their German captors were inexperienced and Stirling managed to escape. Unfortunately he was betrayed by an arab and recaptured by an Italian unit. He was sent to an Italian prison at Gavi which he escaped from at least four times. This resulted to his transfer into the notorious German prison Colditz where he spent the rest of the war.