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Major 'Jim' Almonds August 6, 1914 - August 20, 2005

Major 'Jim' Almonds - Obituaries - Times Online

Founder member of the SAS who blew up enemy aircraft in North Africa and sabotaged supply lines after D-Day

AS A sergeant with a troop of No 8 Commando in besieged Tobruk in 1941 “Gentleman Jim” Almonds was recruited by David Stirling with three companions to join “L” Detachment of the Special Air Service Brigade. Thus they became part of that elite group “the originals” of the SAS, as the brigade to which they supposedly belonged existed on paper only — a phantom to deceive Rommel about the 8th Army’s strength. L Detachment was to experiment with a new form of attack on his airfields and lines of communication — from the rear.

Stirling’s first operation against enemy airfields, by parachute, was a total failure, chiefly because atrocious weather resulted in the would-be saboteurs being dropped wide of their targets. Almonds did not take part as he was ordered by Stirling to remain at Kabrit, the SAS base near the Suez Canal, to complete construction of the parachute training towers. But when Stirling met the Long Range Desert Group on the way back from the failed operation he became convinced that parachuting into the desert was an inaccurate procedure and wasteful of his precious resources. He therefore joined up with the LRDG at Jalo, off the northwestern tip of the desert’s Great Sand Sea, for his next operation.

Almonds was accompanied by Captain Jock Lewes, formerly his troop leader in No 8 Commando, on the first operation the SAS undertook with the LRDG. The aim was to attack the enemy airfield at El Agheila, some 200 miles from Jalo on the Mediterranean coast. They found the airfield deserted but blew up a concentration of enemy ammunition vehicles at Mersa Brega, further west.

On Christmas Day 1941, Almonds again accompanied Lewes, this time in an attack on Nofilia airfield on the border between Libya and Tripolitania. The Luftwaffe foiled them again by flying all but two of a squadron of Ju87 Stukas off the strip before dark. The two Stukas were destroyed, but Lewes was killed in an enemy air attack as they set out for Jalo. Four of their five vehicles were burnt out and the fifth damaged.

Almonds took command, picked up two LRDG survivors who had become separated and set out for Jalo in the remaining truck. They covered most of the 200 miles by night, aided by a good moon and the vehicle headlights when negotiating the innumerable gullies. After an exhausting 48-hour drive they reached Jalo on New Year’s Day 1942.

Almonds received an immediate Military Medal for his part in the raid on Nofilia airfield and for his resourcefulness in getting his group of survivors back to Jalo. The citation had “Not to be published” scrawled across it to preserve the secrecy of the SAS operations. It was undated but the note “missing” below Almonds’s name indicates that Stirling submitted it after the subsequent successful attack on Sidi Haneish and the failed operation against Benghazi harbour.

In the Sidi Haneish raid 40 Ju52 transport aircraft were destroyed on the ground at the cost of only one SAS man killed, and the loss of two Jeeps.

In September Almonds was captured on the outskirts of Benghazi when his Jeep was hit in the petrol tank and burnt out at a roadblock on the approach to the town. As Rommel was shipping supplies through the port it was a key target, but Stirling had argued strongly against the SAS being used for such a large-scale operation.

After being driven round Benghazi in the back of a truck by his captors for the entertainment of the populace, Almonds was shipped to Italy and put in a camp near Taranto.

In a carefully rehearsed plan, he and three other prisoners working in the Red Cross food parcels store overcame, bound and gagged their three Italian guards and escaped from the camp through an upper window of the store. They remained free for two weeks but felt compelled to give themselves up when one of the group became so ill with pneumonia that they feared he would die. Sent back to the camp from which they had escaped, the four were informed that they would be tried by court martial for assaulting an Italian officer — for which the sentence was death.

Almonds was sent to a separate camp and held in solitary confinement for several months, during which time he occupied himself by designing and building a boat entirely in his mind. Allied landings on the toe of Italy in July 1943 brought an end to talk of a court martial, when all the prisoners were sent by train to a camp 300 miles north at Monturano.

On September 8 the Italian camp commander, who had also travelled north, informed Almonds that Italy was about to change to the Allied side and asked him to make a reconnaissance in civilian clothes of German positions around the nearby harbour. Almonds did so but, after reporting to the commandant by telephone, decided not to return.

He walked inland to the foothills of the Apennines before turning south towards the slowly advancing Allied forces. Having walked 300km, scavenging food as he went, he reached a US army forward patrol on October 14. In January 1944 he joined 1st SAS in Scotland, preparing for the invasion of Normandy. He was awarded a bar to his MM in recognition of his escape.

He went to Normandy as squadron sergeant-major of D Squadron 1st SAS to co-operate with the French resistance in sabotaging the German supply lines. After receiving their Jeeps and heavy weapons by airdrop, D Squadron wreaked havoc on enemy lines of communication through the Forest of Orleans. Almonds was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his part in this and was commissioned in September 1944. His final contribution to the Allied cause was to go with 1st SAS to Norway to assist in the apprehension of Quisling collaborators.

John Edward Almonds was born in Stixwould, Lincolnshire, the son of George Almonds, a smallholder. He became “Jim” after joining the Coldstream Guards, as there were too many Johns in his squad at Pirbright. The nickname “Gentleman Jim” originated at Tobruk because he never swore and his dugout was always immaculate — he liked to cite the old military maxim: “Any fool can be uncomfortable.”

His life after 1945 included secondment to the British Military Mission to Ethiopia, 1949-51, service with the Eritrean Police Field Force and a return to the SAS when it was reformed from the Malayan Scouts in 1952. He completed his military service in West Africa where he built the ketch he had half-designed in solitary confinement and sailed it home with two companions. He retired to the house where he was born in Stixwould.

His wife Iris May Lock, whom he married in 1939, predeceased him. He is survived by a son, who followed him into the SAS, and twin daughters who both served in the Army.

Major J. E. Almonds, MM and Bar, SAS officer, was born on August 6, 1914. He died on August 20, 2005, aged 91.

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Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

September 4, 2005 at 11:59 AM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home