Heroes Of The SAS: True Stories Of The British Army's Elite Special Forces Regiment

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A current neighbour, Chris (another kid destined for Borstal), was rescued by an Army recruitment officer in south London. Well, it’s typical SAS – let’s get down the pub and get pissed. Once you are on the booze you can tell us the story down there! So that is basically what happens. A history of the Special Air Service by ex-23 SAS member, Michael Asher which covers the unit's first 50 years, including World War 2, campaigns in the Middle and Far East, The Falklands War and Operation Desert Storm. Just as diverse as the soldiers were the many campaigns they engaged in. Essentially, each chapter of the book is a concise narrative of a major operation undertaken by the SAS. As these were generally carried out by small groups, there are brief synopses of the key figures involved, followed by a dramatic recounting of the action. Although this renders the structure of the book episodic, it is engrossing nontheless, particularly as the accounts are laced with flashes of humor and genuine drama. In fact, I found myself wondering how many of these exploits had already been mined (or will be mined) by Hollywood scripwriters. Overall, The SAS ‘Deniables’ offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the covert world of intelligence and special operations, and is a must-read for anyone interested in military history or international relations.

The pilots indicated that the parachutists should prepare to jump—although, in truth, they were now flying blind, navigating by guesswork. The parachute-canisters were tossed out first containing explosives, tommy guns, ammunition, food, water, maps, blankets and medical supplies. At any time proposing and implementing a new system of warfare has the potential to be a dangerous course of action but in the middle of a war the incredibly high stakes amplifies everything. Something new and untested is being attempted and it’s failure or success will have a huge bearing on both the direction of the war and the future existence of the Unit. Rogue Heroes is a powerful and unforgettable reading experience. Ben Macintyre does a superb job capturing the sense of adventure that inspired these men to fight a different way and the intensity and commitment with which they did so.Peter Davis was a young officer who joined the SAS at the end of 1942 and served with the regiment throughout the rest of the war. Shortly after the end of the war he wrote an account of operations in Sicily and Italy based on his diaries but for decades his memoir remained unpublished. In 2015, twenty years after Davis’s death, his son published his father’s memoir, providing readers with a vivid picture of operations in the Mediterranean, although contrary to the subtitle, Davis was not an SAS ‘Original’, the collective name given to the first 66 recruits of the regiment in the summer of 1941. Davis was particularly strong in conveying the physical and temperamental characteristics of his fellow soldiers. Of the great and fearsome Paddy Mayne, he wrote: ” Under great jutting eyebrows, his piercing blue eyes looked discomfortingly at me, betraying his remarkable talent of being able to sum a person up within a minute of meeting him.” As a veteran of “rat patrol” dramatizations, I was glad to note how fair and balanced Macintyre makes his book. There is no attempt to make the S.A.S. more than it was – a very limited number of action-oriented soldiers who were willing to go into high-risk situations and create havoc. Many of them were captured and not treated well. Many of them had narrow escapes. This was an informative book about the SAS, the British Special Air Service, formed in WWII, in North Africa. It was the brainchild of David Stirling, an eccentric Scottish aristocrat who was not a very good soldier in the traditional sense. But his offbeat, unusual mind came up with the idea of a small mobile force that go behind German lines and wreak havoc on the unprepared Afrika Corps.

I know that many of you from the SAS say that it is really impossible for civilians to understand the type of situations you go through, but can you try and describe what it is like. This is an excellent book all about survival. That is the survival of the human spirit against adversity. When the chips were down Andy and the other men with him had to escape and evade detection across hundreds of miles of open desert in the extreme cold before they could get to safety. And they weren’t really equipped for that kind of harsh weather. First and foremost was Lieutenant David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, an unfailingly polite but unconventional man. Stirling, scion of a famous Scottish family with deep connections in both the aristocracy and the upper echelons of the military, was initially regarded as “impertinent, incompetent, and profoundly irritating” by both his fellow officers and his superiors, yet he was endowed at the same time with phenomenal powers of concentration and great ingenuity.If you work with big data, then you probably work with a lot of text. The third book on our list is for anyone who handles unstructured data. This book focuses on practical solutions to real-life problems. You’ll learn how to collect, cleanse, organize, categorize, explore, analyze, and interpret your data.