UFO Info Week-End

Under heavy fire Almonds broke through to reach their objective enabling Stirling to withdraw

Under heavy fire, Almonds broke through to reach their objective, enabling Stirling to withdraw. The following day, Almonds was captured and, manacled and with a rifle to his head, was paraded around the town in an open truck, before ending up in an Italian POW camp in Puglia.From there he masterminded a successful escape with four others, but, when one of them developed pneumonia, they decided to give themselves up. I thought of Jock, one of the bravest men I ever met, an officer and a gentleman, lying out in the desert barely covered with sand. No one will ever stop by his grave or pay homage to a brave heart that ceased to beat. Not even a stone marks the spot.Now stronger in numbers and better equipped, with well-armed jeeps, the SAS undertook a number of raids behind enemy lines. Almonds immediately received a Military Medal for his courage and resourcefulness.The death of Lewis had deeply disturbed Almonds, who recorded in his diary:Yes, in many homes the Old Year is being watched die and new hopes rise with the prospect of the New Year. The doctors said he would “always be a weakling” but at home the boy quickly recovered and later went on to command an SAS squadron at Hereford.David Stirling abandoned any further parachute operations and for the remainder of the SAS’s time in the desert worked with the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) which had brought many of the survivors back from the first raid.Almonds and 40 others accompanied Jock Lewis on a daring attack on Nofilia airfield on Christmas Eve 1941 where they destroyed two aircraft.

The LRDG came in to pick them up but they were strafed by an Me110 In the attack Lewis was killed. Almonds took over command and, in the one remaining truck, he and his men covered the arduous 200-mile journey back to their camp, sheltering by day and travelling by night Exhausted, they reached Jalo on New Year’s Day 1942. But from their appearance, the last 10 days in the desert must have been hell.Not long afterwards, Almonds learned that his 20-year-old wife had discharged their son from the hospital where he was receiving no treatment and was expected to die. Films and books of daring and adventure fall short of this, the real thing. .When his comrades returned, he noted:It is difficult to get a story out of these people They are a tight-lipped lot and never go into detail.

Parachuting began from an ancient Bristol Bombay prior to the first raid on 17 November.Stirling stood Almonds down from the raid at the last minute so that he could write a letter home because his baby son was dying – the raid was a disaster and only 21 out of the 64 returned. As Almonds waited for their return, he confided to his diary:I am not there. I sit back here in the safety of the camp and wish I was with them One more would make the load lighter Reality beats fiction for sheer, cold calculating courage Some of these lads cannot be beaten. Short of parachutes, the recruits, facing backwards, would jump off the back of a truck moving at 30mph to practise their landings. As Almonds was to recall: “If you have the option of beg, borrow, buy or steal, invariably the most interesting one was stealing.” At Kabrit he was given the task of building up the camp, which included three towers for parachute jumping. Shortly after that, in July 1941 the charismatic Captain David Stirling began recruiting for the newly established L Detachment Special Air Service Brigade to create a raiding force in order to reach behind enemy lines, to blow up vital installations and aircraft on the runway. Almonds jumped at the idea and along with Jock Lewis became one of the 65 originals to begin SAS training at Kabrit, which was then little more than a patch of sand near the Suez Canal.Stirling told his new brigade to steal whatever they wanted to construct the camp, which they did from a nearby New Zealand camp.

A born adventurer and an outstanding soldier, he re-enlisted when the SAS was reformed in Malaya in 1951.
John Edward Almonds was the son of a Lincolnshire smallholder who lost his farm to foot-and-mouth disease – John was later nicknamed “Gentleman Jim”, because he never swore and his dugouts in North Africa were always immaculate. In 1932, aged 18, he joined the Coldstream Guards and soldiered at the Tower of London. He then joined the Bristol Police in 1936 and served with them until the outbreak of the Second World War when he reported back to the Coldstream Guards at Pirbright. Determined to get into action, he volunteered to be a gunner on a trawler and a rear gunner on a bomber.Eventually, the ideal situation came along when the Guards created their own commando unit.