SBS – Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History

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This is the story of the Special Boat Service in World War II. It spans 5 years from 1941 to 1945 and ranges across the Mediterranean to Normandy to South East Asia. This is a terrific book, written with all the gusto, thrills and heady excitement these SBS operations richly deserve. It really is one of the most enjoyable histories I’ve read in many a year. Ashdown, a former SBS man himself, would be proud. Although separate from the better known Special Air Service based in Hereford, the SBS is closely aligned to it as part of the UK’s special forces. SBS and SAS troops are trained to a common standard after a notoriously exacting selection programme to which only members of the armed forces and reservists can apply.

The SBS traces its roots to WWII, just as the SAS do, but their ancestors are the Canoe borne and submarine launched raiders drawn originally from the Commandos. Impressed by Italian Frogmen/MiniSub raiding, Churchill supported several small groups trying those methods. Then the allied liberation of Europe and the Far East required a group to do beach reconnaissances. By the end of the war all these groups were amalgamated into one group. The skills were going to die there, when the Cold War made their retention a priority. The parallels with the US SEAL program are there to see. The book ends with the Falklands and Gulf War II deployments, showing how those skills were essential to those Victories. Just after midnight on April 12 1942, a single canoe, made of wood and canvas and known as a “folbot”, was lowered into the English Channel from a Royal Navy motor launch three miles from Boulogne. The two-man crew, Captain Gerald Montanaro and his paddler, Sergeant Freddie Preece, were equipped with their wits and eight limpet mines, each with a four-hour delay fuse. Their target: a 4,000-ton German tanker full of copper ore moored in Boulogne’s outer harbour. The book is told through the eyes of an SBS veteran with the moniker, 'Grey', who commands a Pinkie driven by 'Moth' and its HMG manned a U.S. SOF embed known as 'the dude'. Basically, we're (mostly) talking about recon, demolition, and limpet mine planting against Axis hulls - mostly done in two man folbots (think of a collapsible kayak) in the dead of night. Very one-on-one type of warfare.They eventually placed seven limpets on the tanker's stern before making their getaway, arriving at their rendezvous more than an hour late, and with the canoe so filled with water that it would have sunk within 15 minutes. This is the story of a unit that seems very difficult to tell. Part of the problem may be the missions of the unit itself. The other part may be the secrecy that the unit maintains; but telling the story of the Special Boat Service seems to be quite problematic. I was dimly aware of some of the operations described in the book and not aware at all of others. As readers, we have the good fortune to have first hand accounts of survivors to make the operations quite gripping. An excellent read and a must for anyone interested in an in-depth look at the Special Air Service operation on Pebble Island.

The training regime in Courtney's SBS was brutal and relentless. One punishing exercise lasted three days and nights, remembered recruit Stan Weatherall, as they paddled the more than 80 miles across the Firth of Clyde where they "effected a landing at Craignish Point". Wilson's reign of terror was finally brought to an end the following September when he and a new partner, Bombardier John Brittlebank, were captured after trying to sink a ship in Crotone harbour, southern Italy, with mini hand-operated torpedoes. When I tell him this he grins: "Lots of people say I sound just like my books, I take it as a compliment," revealing the immaculate false teeth that were installed after his Iraqi torturers extracted several of his real ones. Its members launched in flimsy canoes from submarines and operating at night, though a small force the SBS and its forerunners played a key role in landings in the Mediterranean and of course D-day.What a really enjoyable book! This is the history of the SBS, the Special BOAT Service, the Royal Marines' Special Forces. Whilst the Army's SAS, or Special Air Service, with their motto "Who Dares Wins" are the subject of a lot of press interest, and a slew of books, the SBS show their approach with their motto "Not By Strength, by Guile". This book helps to show how different roots led to the SBS, and their preference for stealth. And in the end one understands why Britain maintains two such distinct forces at such a high pitch. In March 1941, the two men were transported by submarine from Alexandria in Egypt to a point off the coast of the Italian-held Rhodes where they paddled in by canoe and took it in turns to swim ashore and carry out a clandestine survey of the closely guarded shore as preparation for an amphibious assault. Killing Rommel is a fictionalized story, based on real events of World War 2. Told in the style of a first person memoir, the story features a mission by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) to assassinate the German general before his Panzer divisions could sweep into the Middle East oil fields. Falconer continues to write books and screenplays. In 2017 the film Stratton, [4] based on the main character of his books, was released. It stars Dominic Cooper as Stratton as well as Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacobi and Thomas Kretschmann.