How Special Forces Grew Up

We’ve all read plenty of WWII history.   I’m a history buff.  My dad, more so than me.  We’ve studied WWII, read many books, and when I was younger we built models.  We built the P-51 Mustang…the greatest ever!!  And instead of playing army men, with little plastic features, we recreated battle scenes.  Anzio beach was my favorite.  A definitive battle as the Allies landed in Italy to begin the invasion of Europe from the south.  Yes army men, but also clay, and whatever else we could throw into the diorama.

Of course commandos were also a common topic.  But most of the commando raids we knew about were left to Hollywood and that interpretation, “The Dirty Dozen”, with Telly Savalas playing the mad man, he was a crazy MF’er.  As if all the prisoners they recruited for that mission somehow didn’t have a screw loose.    But now, Ben Macintyre brings us the facts. In his great book “Rogue Heroes”, he tells us the true story of the real men who started the British SAS.  Arguably the definitive unit that brought special ops into modern times.

The men who started the SAS were not criminals on a suicide mission.  Perhaps they thought a little differently. For instance, they hated authority and they hated rules.   Huh, that sounds familiar.  But also that’s what it took to be in a special unit that by design was not going to play by the rules.  All’s fair in love and war, right?  Thus they were unified by both a common ethos and a common goal.  They hated the enemy and knew they must win.  An unconventional tactic could be a game changer.  A strategic offset in today’s Pentagon parlance.  Sure the British SAS did not invent Guerrilla warfare… It's been around since the American Revolution.  Practiced worldwide,  guerrilla warfare gathered plenty of acclaim during the Boer Wars.   But by creating a unit, devoted to a few principles and a few of the right men, they  could institutionalize the war fighting construct.  And they did, led by the genius and insight of David Sterling.  Macintyre brings us their story.

The book is solid gold, at least the first half, and well worth the read.  The founding of the British SAS is a chapter in history that has defined special ops ever since.  And now the history of these rogue heroes has been given to us in spectacular detail.

Hero’s who would jump from an airplane without so much of a care that the art of skydiving really had not been invented yet.  Particular at night.  David Sterling learned that fact on his first jump, as he ended up paralyzed from the waist down…a condition, from which he mostly recovered (don’t worry, not a spoiler, it’s the first page of the book). He had to, he went on to lead the SAS.  

But later, the definitive, jeep.  With aircraft guns mounted.  That could roll rapidly through an unforgiving desert in north africa, inflict carnage, and retreat.  Never to be followed, because who would be stupid enough to try to live in the Sahara desert?

They also created, out of necessity, several other weapons and tactics, still alive today, whose lineage is owed to the British SAS.  Before tactics, and GPS, they had to learn to navigate in the desert.  Celestial navigation was key.  

They had to be men of great resilience and no complaint.  Living in tremendously uncomfortable conditions, rather than Shackleton's men of the ice, freezing cold and continuously wet, they were bone dry, without water, ridiculously hot and covered in sand.  Lost in this sand, some of them walking across an unforgiving desert a hundred miles drinking only what remained in their bodies.  Only to recover, and sent back again into the parched landscape, to strike again. These unconventional tactics, looked down upon by the regular military, had to prove their worth to leadership in order to earn their place.

The first half of this book, while in the desert of North Africa, Macintyre tells the story in great fashion.  I give the first half of this book five stars.  The second half of the book, Macintyre doesn’t really tell a story, rather he just records mission after mission as the remains of the original teams, take leading roles in multiple units, and mercilessly kill enemy soldiers, behind the lines, sometimes as they slept (preferably).   These men.  With a vision of how they could change the course of the war…could bring it to and end quicker.  There was much work to do…many would pay the ultimate price.  And eventually, after winning in Africa, then Italy, and then France, rolling into Germany to find the real reason, and the horror behind why not winning, was not an option.  It was dirty work, but the threat they faced, the evils of the Third Riech cannot be underplayed.  Four stars for this book for the much richer understanding of how special forces grew up.