Gentleman Jim: The Wartime Story of a Founder of the SAS and Special Services

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Field Force (EPFF) did not carry out police duties, but instead hunted outlaws – the shifta bandits of the region. Almonds and three other Special Forces men comprised the famous “Tobruk Four” who used tactics that would later be carried into the SAS. In between intensive training in Scotland, Almonds shot a couple of stags, for which he was to be court-martialled, but this was quashed as he sailed with his unit as part of the newly created "Layforce", under the command of Colonel Robert Laycock.

He was one of the first twelve men who joined David Stirling when he founded the SAS at Kabrit in early September 1941.

Leaving three soldiers with their mules and provisions, the remaining dozen Field Force men ran the last ten miles to their target. He and a comrade lay low to avoid being caught in crossfire between the Italians and the retreating SAS. And he knew Kumasi would always right herself and would not ship much water because no hatches were allowed open. At the time of the Armistice, Almonds was in POW Campo 70 (Monturano) and was sent to watch the coast road. The son of a smallholder, John Edward Almonds was born in Stixwould, Lincolnshire, on 6 August 1914.

His daughter Lorna Almonds-Windmill chronicled his wartime escapades in her book Gentleman Jim: The Wartime Story of a Founder of the SAS and Special Forces. The instrument and how Mayne acquired it became the stuff of SAS legend - and it will be seen in public for the first time at the exhibition after it was loaned by the Almonds family. This,’ he said to them, ‘is for you, because the Italian people were very kind to me and looked after me when I was an escaping prisoner of war in Italy. Almonds, who rose to the rank of major, continued to serve with distinction in the SAS for the remainder of the war – and after it. Almonds, who was in the leading Jeep, drove straight through it, but was then confronted by a heavy chain stretched across the road.There were just the two of them but they pulled in and parked their captured lorry among the Italian and German trucks. The only way to hunt them down was to chase and catch up with them, then mount an early morning raid before they could move off at daybreak. He said that he had heard from Mr Lewes, who had introduced the idea of parachuting to Stirling, that Sergeant Almonds was 'a dab hand at making things'. He said: "What is remarkable about the compass is that this is a legendary act and this is the first physical proof of it and it's going on display.

Dawn was breaking when the convoy of some 200 men and 40 Jeeps came to a halt in front of a pole barrier on the outskirts of the town. This book recounts post-war unreported military and police operations in those theatres - through the story of one man. After a raid on Nofilia aerodrome [Libya], he took command of his party after his officer had been killed. Almonds didn’t talk about himself so I am delighted that his daughter has now written the story of his post-war adventuring.

He was a sergeant at the time and the idea was they were to blow up a ship to stop Rommel bringing in supplies. He became a military advisor to the famed Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia and then hunted rebel bandits as second-in-command of the Eritrea Police Field Force.