Brains and brawn: Why I had to write about fiercely ambitious SAS Original Reg Seekings
Tony Rushmer's book SAS Duty Before Glory shines a light on the perhaps lesser-known extraordinary story of one of the Special Air Service Originals, Reg Seekings.
As Mr Rushmer explains here, the late squadron sergeant major, whose time in the SAS will be part of the new series of the BBC's SAS Rogue Heroes, had many more qualities than just his renowned brawn and iron will.
Reg Seekings had me intrigued from the very first time I encountered him. It occurred amid some restless channel-hopping during one of the lockdowns.
Landing on a BBC documentary about the Special Air Service's first years, I found myself engrossed by a fascinating story of which I knew nothing previously.
Adding an extra layer of interest to the tales of remarkable derring-do were clips from 1980s interviews with some of those SAS Originals who had been involved in the unit's wartime operations.
All the interviewees were impressive, but I found myself focusing most on Seekings.
Deep into his sixties by this stage, he still cut an impressive figure – well turned out, right down to his neatly clipped moustache.
With my limited knowledge, he looked and sounded sergeant majorly, which he was.
But it had not always been the case.
Seekings began as a private in the Cambridgeshire Regiment and found his fierce ambition thwarted in the early part of the war.
The frustration continued after he volunteered for the Commandos in 1940.
But the following summer, everything changed for him after he joined the SAS, founded in North Africa by Colonel David Stirling.
By the end of 1941, Seekings had played a major part in the unconventional new unit's first successful operation – a now fabled behind-the-lines assault on an airfield in Libya.
Led by legendary SAS figure Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Mayne, Seekings was one of a six-man patrol that had used the cloak of early-hours darkness to sneak into the heart of Tamet airbase.
There the raiders planted Lewes bombs all over enemy aircraft – 14 went up in flames and a further 10 suffered serious destruction.
Seekings saw Mayne rip out a dashboard with his bare hands.
The adrenaline surge from that night left Seekings wanting more of the same.
Discovering the story almost 80 years later had me similarly hooked.
And so I spent from 2021 to 2023 researching and writing about a man whose courage was obvious. His iron will and physical strength were also evident.
But in listening to reels of audio interviews and studying Reg's notebooks (written in the 1950s and generously shared with me by a private collector), the depth of his character began to reveal itself in some surprising ways.
For example, behind the brawn there was brain. So respected were his insights, that Seekings was consulted by Eighth Army Generals Harding and Freyberg on the lie of the land in Tripolitania.
Reg had just returned from there in early 1943 after a lengthy mission that contained extreme deprivations and bouts of fierce fighting.
Later that year, in a side street in the Italian town of Termoli, Seekings was at the back of a truck hit by a shell strike.
He escaped with barely a scratch, while the vast majority of those inside the vehicle were killed outright or suffered fatal injuries.
A lance corporal observed Seekings as "he collected all the arms, legs, heads etc and made sure they were all belonging to the right person" before the dead were laid to rest.
Evidence indeed, that for all his abrasive manner and renowned hardness, Reg offered unstinting loyalty and compassion towards his comrades.
Seekings was also blessed with more than his fair share of good fortune.
Aside from surviving the shell blast in Termoli, a shot to the back of the head only managed to down him temporarily in France in June 1944.
Within weeks he was back on operations, busy disrupting German lines of communication – despite the discomfort of a bullet lodged at the base of his skull.
Seekings seemed to possess resilience like no other.
There was one other thing about him – an accent that sounded incredibly familiar.
And it was possibly this, as much as anything else, that right at the outset persuaded me to do a bit of digging as I sat on my sofa watching him in the BBC's SAS documentary.
My impromptu research showed that he was born and raised just a couple of miles from where I sat. It felt like fate; this was a man I had to write a book about.
SAS Duty Before Glory: The True WWII Story of SAS Original Reg Seekings by Tony Rushmer is published by Michael O'Mara Books and is available here.
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