Jock Lewes
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Lieutenant Jock Lewes (December 21, 1913 - December 31, 1941) was an Australian serving as a British officer of the Welsh Guards Regiment in World War II. He is the eponym of the Lewes bomb and was a founder member and principal training officer of the Special Air Service.
In 1941 Lieutenant David Stirling gathered a small unit of 66 volunteers, among whom was Lewes. This unit was named the L Detachment of the Special Air Service Brigade. The main objective of this group was to conduct raids against the lines of communication of Axis forces in the Western Desert.
David Stirling said of Lewes: "Jock could far more genuinely claim to be founder of the SAS than I."
Jock Lewes was killed in action in December 1941. He was returning from a raid on German airfields when the truck he was travelling in was attacked by a lone Messerschmitt 110 fighter. Lewes was fatally wounded in the back.
Lewes was engaged to marry Mirren Barford, an Oxford undergraduate, at the time of his death.
[edit] References
- Wolf, Virginia. The Phantom Major.
- Lewes, John. "Jock Lewes: co-founder of the SAS"
- Wise, Michael, ed. Joy Street: A Wartime Romance in Letters
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