Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 96 i History of War

By 1941 Britain had overcome the threat of imminent invasion and was setting about taking the fight back to the Axis powers. While the Special Operations Executive “set Europe ablaze”, as Churchill put it, in North Africa a young officer was formulating what would prove to be the world’s first modern special forces unit: the Special Air Service. This group of men were hand-picked for their skills and daring, and were trained to hit fast and hard while moving undetected in the harsh desert environment. They formed the blueprints and traditions upon which the modern SAS and many other elite forces around the world have been built. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE! Take advantage of our fantastic subscription offers and get History of War for less than half price! TURN TO PAGE…

“GLUBB PASHA EARNED THE TRUST OF HIS BEDOUIN THROUGH UNFAILING PROFESSIONALISM AND A GENUINE COMPASSION FOR THEIR WELFARE” The British Army’s prolonged excursion in the Middle East had a lasting effect on generations of officers. While TE Lawrence is best remembered for his role in the Arab Revolt and overall contributions to special operations, other men of similar calibre are less celebrated today. One of them is General Sir John Bagot Glubb, whose loyal subordinates ordained him Glubb Pasha, in the Turkish fashion – ‘Pasha’ being a prestigious moniker for someone of high stature. In what stands as a unique legacy of British decolonisation from the 1940s onward, the Arab Legion, along with its commander, were passed on to Transjordan before the British Army’s exit from Mandatory Palestine. This meant…

THE LIBERATION OF FRANCE 1944 In the build up to and aftermath of the Normandy landings, several SAS squadrons entered German territory and caused mayhem for the enemy, destroying weapons, supplies and communication and transport lines In March 1944, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) issued the SAS its operational instructions for D-Day. The brigade (now made up of 1SAS, 2SAS, two French regiments, 3 & 4, and a company of Belgian soldiers) would parachute into Normandy between the landing beaches and the German reserves 36 hours ahead of the main invasion. Their mission was to stop three Panzer divisions of reserves from reaching the beaches after the landings began. Recognising this was an impossible mission, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stirling demanded that the SAS should operate in occupied France similar…

The Franks were perennially short of troops in the Holy Land to hold the four crusader states established after the First Crusade. Because of this, they could ill afford a major defeat against their Muslim foes on the field of battle. Although the multinational Christian armies of the First and Second Crusades numbered tens of thousands of troops, the majority returned home after their respective Crusade came to a close. This left only a small number of Franks to hold a large swath of territory in the holy land. After the untimely death of the 10-year-old Shia Fatimid Caliph Al-Adid in 1171, his Sunni Kurdish vizier called Ayyubid Sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub – better known to history as Saladin – wrested control of Egypt. This changed the balance…

Director: Matt Pinder Narrated by: Richard Madden Harry Birrell frankly admitted that during his months of training “all the glamour of war was knocked out of me”. The soldier penned these words in one of several diaries he kept during World War II, and the reason he wrote was simple – to preserve something of his adventures in case he was killed in action. While the diaries are revealing in themselves, Birrell left another legacy that’s even more stunning and immediate. During his lifetime, he filmed more than 400 reels of camera footage depicting vistas of his youth, adventures from boyhood to adolescence, and the sometimes startling drama of military service in India, Burma and Nepal. Birrell died in 1993 at the age of 75 and his diaries and copious…

Author: Leah Garrett Publisher: Chatto & Windus Price: £20 Among the most chilling images of Nazi wartime atrocities are those of the lines of Jewish captives awaiting execution by roadside ditches, usually dug by the condemned prisoners themselves. How could they resign themselves to such an ignominious fate, even in the face of certain death, and not fight back? The answer is, of course, many did. The month-long Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 was a heroic saga of people who preferred to fight than be deported to death camps. Those who fought knew their uprising was doomed and their chances of survival were nil. When the revolt was finally crushed, 13,000 Jews had lost their lives, men and women who chose to pick the time and place of their death.…

DAMIEN LEWIS Damien is a former foreign correspondent and now a bestselling author, with several books on the history of the SAS. Over on page 32 he shares two incredible WWII stories of escape and survival behind enemy lines in France and Italy. WILLIAM WELSH The Battle of Jaffa (1192) was the final clash of the Third Crusade, in which a Crusader army under Richard I ‘The Lionheart’ marched to seize Jerusalem from Saladin’s forces. On page 42 William recounts the battle blow-by-blow. CAPTAIN KAILASH LIMBU An Afghanistan veteran with the Royal Gurkha Rifles, Captain Limbu spoke with History of War about his journey from Nepal to the UK, his training, and his experience fighting the Taliban in Helmand (p.52).…

The euphoria surrounding Israel’s declaration of independence from Mandatory Palestine on 14 May 1948 was short-lived and anti-climatic. It seemed as if after decades of toil, the dream was fulfilled in the most perilous circumstances; no less than five Arab armies were ready to march over the holy land and trample on newly formed Israel. The ensuing ‘War of Independence’ that lasted until February 1949 pitted Israel’s fledgling army against numerically superior Arab forces. What the Arabs did not count on was an entire generation of young men and women born and raised in the Yishuv, a term that applies to the settled Jewish population. These volunteer soldiers were steeped in nationalism and trained to fight by the Haganah and other local militias, such as the extremist Irgun. Among their…

After the fall of France, Churchill announced that Britain would raise its own commandos to hit back at the Germans. Among the many suggestions put forward by Britain’s brightest military minds was the idea of a small unit of seaborne raiders. These men would approach enemy targets using special folding canoes made of wood and canvas. The man with the plan was Roger Courtney, who before the war had been an adventurer and explorer, and had experience using foldable canoes during his own expeditions. After proving the effectiveness of his idea, Courtney was asked to create a Folboat Section in July 1940 – six months later they were deployed to North Africa. On 21 June 1941, the Section achieved its first successful operation when two commandos landed by canoe on…

During the Second World War the SAS brought an unorthodox approach to fighting the enemy using audacious bluff and nerve. They also became pioneers in the art of escape and evasion. Here are two stories of the enduring qualities of the ‘SAS great escapers’, from the early stages and latter chapters of the Second World War. Each embodies the spirit of never giving up and the desire to escape, evade and survive come what may. They epitomise the founding principles of the SAS regiment. While the weaponry, vehicles, insertion techniques and escape and evasion kit might have changed greatly, the basic tenets of the SAS remain the same today as they were in WWII – proving absolutely that who dares wins. Italy, 1941 On 10 February 1941, 36 British raiders…

VICTORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST By early July the Syrian-Lebanon Campaign was drawing to a conclusion, with Vichy forces defeated at Palmyra on 1 July, before the garrison of Beirut surrendered on 12 July. The campaign involved a large contingent from the Australian 7th Division, as well as Indian, Free French and British troops. It’s estimated that Australian casualties numbered 416 killed and 1,136 wounded, while approximately 1,000 Vichy French troops were killed during the campaign. ANGLO-SOVIET AGREEMENT Soviet factory workers read the news of Britain and the USSR’s agreement to cooperate in the war against Germany, signed 12 July. In response to Hitler’s invasion, Winston Churchill had exclaimed: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The…

Author: Kate Morgan Publisher: Mudlark Price: £16.99 Murder: The Biography is perhaps the most comprehensive history of murder that readers will have ever seen – it’s hard to imagine how this remarkable book could be bettered in the future. Never salacious and far from sensationalist, Murder: The Biography is instead a gripping journey through the legal history of murder. The book is filled with chilling tales, from the starving crewmates who murdered and ate their ship’s cabin boy under the now-outlawed defence of necessity to murder, to the still-controversial case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England, up to the recent tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. Kate Morgan takes readers back through the centuries to discover exactly how and why the murder laws in the United…

Respected and feared around the world, the Special Air Service (SAS) has fought in the shadows of Britain’s major conflicts and operations for decades. Highly trained, heavily armed and the epitome of professionalism, the men of the Regiment, as it is known, are considered almost without equal, and for over 80 years have been called upon to undertake some of the most challenging and dangerous missions in military history. Only on rare occasions have they appeared in the public eye – most notably during the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London – and for the most part they work in complete secrecy and without report. The training, tactics and traditions of the Regiment formed the blueprint for special forces units around the globe, including the Australian SASR and New Zealand…

The pair of Nazi tanks rumbled forward and lurched to a halt. Cautiously opening his hatch, the commander of the nearest armoured vehicle emerged and shouted in perfect English, “Do you guys want to give up?” A scant 50 feet away, Technical Sergeant Charles H. Coolidge, a hardened combat veteran at the age of 23, replied without hesitation, “I’m sorry, Mac. You’ve got to come and get me.” The response was borne much more of grim determination than bravado. This was the fourth day that a small, beleaguered contingent of American soldiers had held onto precious high ground in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France amid miserable rain and cold and repeated German attempts to dislodge them from the position that guarded the extreme right flank of the 3rd Battalion,…

The War in Afghanistan was one of the most testing deployments for the British Army in recent years. First sent as part of a NATO-led coalition in 2001 to find the leaders of al-Qaeda after 9/11, the British were part of an intervention that toppled the ruling Taliban regime. Afghanistan next required redevelopment, with security being provided by the British in the southern province of Helmand from 2006. Helmand eventually became a byword for the British struggle against the resurgent Taliban. In a mission that turned increasingly violent, a total of 454 British personnel were killed in Afghanistan during 2001-14. Among the British troops fighting in Helmand were among the most professional soldiers in the world: the Gurkhas. Nepal’s fearsome warriors have fought for Britain for over 200 years and…

Author: Damien Lewis Publisher: Quercus Price: £20 The foundation story of Britain’s Special Air Service Regiment by David Stirling in the Second World War’s North African campaign is well-known. Breaking with tradition, Stirling set out to recruit officers and men who didn’t fit into the rigid structure of the British Army – men who were often viewed by their superiors as oddballs, basket cases and troublemakers. Then, under the guiding hand of Stirling’s right-hand man and chief instructor, John Steel ‘Jock’ Lewes, the selected personnel were trained in everything from explosives to unarmed combat, but most of all how to survive under all conditions and think for themselves. The result was a body of men with an ethos like no other unit at the time, who went on to create…

Author: Evert Kleynhans Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers Price: £10.99 Books that take you into a neglected field of history are always welcome, and this work from Evert Kleynhans does just that. When people think of Africa in the Second World War, they think of North Africa, with Tobruk and El Alamein claiming top billing. But South Africa had a role to play as well, even if it was on a smaller scale. Kleynhans details the formation and exploitation of German spy networks in the Union of South Africa. With anti-British sentiment strong in certain sections of South African society, there was plenty of sympathy for the Third Reich. The loss of their colonies in Africa in the First World War was still painful for the Germans, who saw a chance…