John Steel "Jock" Lewes was a British Army officer prominent during World War II. He was the founding principal training officer of the Special Air Service. Its founding commander, David Stirling said later of Lewes: "Jock could far more genuinely claim to be founder of the SAS than I." Lewes also invented an explosive device for the purposes of the SAS, the eponymous Lewes bomb.
Early life, family & education
Lewes was born in Calcutta to a British father, chartered accountant Arthur Harold Lewes, and an Australian mother, Elsie Steel Lewes. The family moved to Australia and Lewes grew up at Bowral, New South Wales. As a teenager he attended The King's School, Parramatta. Lewes travelled to the UK to attend Christ Church, Oxford from September 1933. At Oxford he read philosophy, politics and economics. In 1936–37, Lewes was president of the Oxford University Boat Club; during 1937 he voluntarily gave up his place in the Oxford Blue boat crew, to assist it in winning that year's University Boat Race, and ending a 15-year winning streak by Cambridge. Lewes travelled to Berlin to work for the British Council, and, before the events of Kristallnacht, was briefly an admirer of Hitler and the Nazi state. A younger brother, David Steel Lewes was later prominent as a cardiologist in the UK and served as an RAF medical officer during the war. At the time of his death, Jock Lewes was engaged to marry Mirren Barford, an Oxford undergraduate.
Military career
Lewes was first commissioned to the British Army's General List as a university candidate on 5 July 1935, whilst a student at Oxford. At the outbreak of World War II he was briefly transferred to a Territorial Army unit, the 1st Battalion, Tower Hamlets Rifles, Rifle Brigade on 2 September 1939 before joining the Welsh Guards on 28 October 1939. In 1941, Lewes was in a group of volunteers assembled by Stirling to form a unit dedicated to raiding missions against the lines of communication of Axis forces in North Africa. For military deception and counterespionage purposes, this platoon-sized was at first officially known as "L" Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade. To destroy Axis vehicles, members of the SAS surreptitiously attached small explosive charges. Lewes noticed the respective weaknesses of conventional and incendiaries, as well as their failure to destroy vehicles in some cases. He improvised a new, combined charge out of plastic explosive, diesel and thermite. The Lewes bomb was used throughout World War II. In late December 1941, Lewes was involved in an SAS/LRDG raid on Axis airfields in Libya. As the raiders returned to Allied lines, their vehicles were repeatedly attacked by Italian and German aircraft. While returning fire on 30 December, near "Marble Arch", Lewes was reportedly hit in the thigh by a 20 mm cannon round and died within the space of about four minutes. He was buried near the site of the attack, but the whereabouts of his grave are now unknown. He is commemorated on the Alamein Memorial.
