SAS: Rogue Heroes – the Authorized Wartime History

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Given Britain's plight on the battlefield in North Africa at the time, permission was given to Stirling for him to assemble his unit, which was made up of soldiers who had proven themselves to be fearless. Boutella, Sofia (31 October 2022). "SAS Rogue Heroes | Interview with Sofia Boutella (Eve Mansour)". Bradford Zone (Interview). 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 is a book for readers of second world war history who like the Boy’s Own version of the conflict. The cast of characters could have stepped straight from a comic strip story. Yet the men of the SAS were real flesh and blood, “rogue heroes” as the title suggests. The organisation now famous for its derring-do, and as famously secretive, has opened its archive to the historian and journalist Ben Macintyre, so that he can produce the first authorised history of what the SAS did in the war. Thorough and highly entertaining. It would be nigh on impossible to praise it too highly ( Daily Express)

SAS: Rogue Heroes was the sixth most-watched UK drama series of 2022, and the fourth most popular of the year on the BBC. [15] Historical accuracy [ edit ] Members of the ' French Squadron SAS' ( 1ere Compagnie de Chasseurs Parachutistes) in Tunisia. Previously a company of Free French paratroopers, the French SAS squadron were the first of a range of units "acquired" by Major Stirling as the SAS expanded. Told with deceptive brilliance . . . one the finest books of its kind' Evening Standard Read more Details

We revealed Banksy's name 15 years ago - so why was the arty set still insisting last week that it's a mystery? Is it because it would be harder for a privately educated chap called Robin Gunningham to flog his graffiti for millions? Such is the secrecy surrounding the SAS and all its doings, even very recently, that I was fascinated by the information in this book. That it had been briefly disbanded, but secretly kept alive as part of the War Crimes enquiries, and then reformed purely as a TA regiment, was new to me. I have only known a couple of people who were in the SAS, and that was not bruited about willy nilly. The Army is keen that those it recruits are not discernibly mad, and one of my acquaintance was initially turned down several times for being too gung-ho (he made it eventually and after retirement ended up in the entertainment wing of the SAS - doing adventure programmes on TV - not Bear Grylls!!)Mortimer says that Bill and David Stirling collaborated on the proposal. “Bill had experience with sabotage and he was a military intellectual,” he says.

There was a lot of 'off-the-cuffery', by which I mean everything really was do-it-yourself. They really did go out and raid the New Zealanders, who had everything under the sun including a piano and easy chairs and all that kind of thing while our guys were sleeping on the floor on kit bags. They fight to keep Paddy’s legacy alive, and are keen to point out that the ‘muscle for hire’ image many people remember him for doesn’t tell the full story. For instance, they reveal he carried a poetry book called Other Men’s Flowers into battle – and SAS: Rogue Heroes does show this side of him, as we see Mayne reciting poetry in prison during the first episode. They also tell the story of how – when his best friend Eoin McGonigal (played by Donal Finn in SAS: Rogue Heroes) was killed in action, Paddy gave up his leave to go and search for Eoin’s grave, putting himself in considerable danger, and wrote a heartfelt letter to Eoin’s mother sending his condolences. Steven Knight’s critically-acclaimed, smash-hit BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes will return for a second series.

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Child dies in horror Surrey car crash between Tesla and Vauxhall Astra - as cops arrest 'uninsured and unlicenced' man, 20, for 'dangerous driving' The best parts of the book are the anecdotes about Stirling and interesting people he attracted to SAS like Fitzroy Maclean (a sitting member of Parliament), Lord George Jellicoe, Randolph Churchill, and others, including a whole squadron of Free French troops. At one point, Stirling's squadron captured an aristocratic German doctor, Markus Lutterotti, (Rommel's personal physician) and the doctor, on meeting George Jellicoe, said, "Say, aren't you Lord Jellicoe? I believe you may know my wife." Hauptman Lutterotti's wife was of the Austrian nobility and had spent a good deal of time in London where she met Jellicoe. Another time, Stirling met with Churchill in Cairo and convinced the PM to give full support to the build-up of the SAS in North Africa. Stirling also took Churchill's son into the unit on an ad hoc basis, mostly to garner support from his father, but Randolph Churchill ended up, quite by chance, participating in one of the more dangerous SAS missions undertaken in Africa. One of the funniest bits is the greeting given to the SAS' first medical officer by David Stirling, quoted verbatim by the doctor in a book he published later about his experiences in the desert. The SAS came of age in the campaign in Italy, where it was used as a more conventional raiding party, the Special Raiding Service, under the command of Paddy Mayne following Stirling’s capture in Tunisia in late 1942. The Italian campaign was a particularly grisly one, and the SRS (with its core of SAS men) found collaboration with the partisans and rivalry with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) a challenge (unlike the SAS, the SOE always linked up with local resistance). Macintyre spares none of the details; the SAS fought a dirty war against an enemy they regarded as every bit as dirty. Prisoners were rare, but in return Hitler condemned irregular commando units to death if they were caught. Not all were killed by any means, but many were, just as the Germans killed all the other irregular, partisan forces ranged against them.