SAS Rogue Heroes: Gentleman Jim was ‘quiet but deadly’

On 14 December 1941, Almonds and another SAS soldier, Jock Lewes, who would be killed on a later mission, attacked an Italian roadhouse and a fort at Mersa Brega in Libya.

The pair parked their lorry, captured from the Italians, next to a row of enemy vehicles.

“They worked fast, on foot, planting bombs on all the vehicles,” says Ms Almonds-Windmill. “All the time, German and Italian transport pulled in and out of the car park.

“They [Almonds and Lewes] took cover as the bombs went off while the enemy fled into the fort, clearly thinking that a large force was attacking them.”

Just a few weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, Almonds played a key role in the attack on Nofelia airfield in the Western Desert, which helped earn him his Military Medal.

In that raid, Lewes, who was also portrayed in the TV series, was killed when their vehicle was attacked by a Messerschmitt 110 (Me 110) fighter bomber.

“They scattered from the truck but Lewes lingered,” says Ms Amonds-Windmill, who devotes a chapter to the incident in her book Gentleman Jim: The Wartime Story of a Founder of the SAS and Special Forces.

“Almonds grabbed a Bren gun, ammo and water and he and two men raced for a head-height rock,” she says. “Almonds fired at the Me 110, revealing their presence and they played a deadly ‘ring a ring of roses’ around the rock, being shot at by the enemy.

“But Almonds got the aircraft’s gunner and it flew off. He then found more men, cannibalised [damaged vehicles] to make one roadworthy vehicle and got all the survivors back to base.”