The incredible untold story of WWII’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II’s African theater and saw a … theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel’s desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS’s remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow.
Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story, but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the most.
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How audacity can have a massive impact. Macintyre tells a great story about men that the rest of the world might consider nuts.
Researching for Salomé and its following two books in the London to Cairo trilogy, I have searched high and low for letters, diaries, and personal content of doctors, nurses/matrons, soldiers serving at el Alamein or Tobruk during WWII. The treasure trove of information that I found does not even scratch the surface of what Ben Macintyre had available to him in his research for Rogue Heroes. And such wealth could not have fallen into more capable hands (or should I say pen?)
Macintyre created a magnificent volume of information that reads almost like fiction, enthralling and suspenseful, at times funny, and other times rather sad, shocking, horrific.
Best of all, Macintyre skillfully avoided reciting Dr. Playdel Malcom’s book about the SAS, an admirable feat since two other authors failed to do so. Macintyre added so much more information to the bit already in print through Born of the Desert by Playdel and he did an ethical, wonderful job. Thank you, Macintyre, for shedding light and letting us into the tunnel of the early years of the SAS, breathing life into the history of heroes, some left unsung.
I’d always heard about the Special Air Service, or SAS, regiment in WWII. I didn’t know anything about them other than the majority of the soldiers were British. Author Ben Macintyre tells the unit’s history, from inspired idea to the end of the war. He tells of the recruitment of members, tells of the astounding training they went through in the desert, how they learned to parachute, etc. He follows several of the regiment’s members, giving personalities and faces to the unit. Through reading, I came to know, however minimally, these men. I could identify with them and was pulled into their triumphs and disasters as they fought.
The SAS was originally designed as a sort of commando unit, the men parachuting into the North African desert behind enemy lines. This was something original and daring during the 1940s, for both German and Italian defenses were trained on invasion from the Mediterranean Sea, leaving the desert open for the SAS to launch their small attacks. During their desert campaign, they destroyed aircraft, trucks, ammo depots, camps and people. When the North African campaign was ended, the unit moved to Italy and fought in a different mode, but they always harassed the enemy, drawing their attention to the SAS groups, thereby distracting them from the larger Allied battles or encampments.
Ben Macintyre is a superb writer. He doesn’t only showcase the successes of the unit; he details their disasters too. By doing this, the reader gets a full knowledge of this incredible group of men, some of whom were withdrawn and quiet, some of whom had hair-trigger, violent tempers and enjoyed battle. It’s heartbreaking reading at times, for Macintyre also tells of SAS deaths. That was difficult for me to read, for I’d grown to like many of these men. I felt their deaths almost as if I’d lost a friend. Macintyre also details the unit coming upon a concentration camp, and notes some of the horrible things going on within it.
I read this book twice. There is so much to learn, so many incredible people that stood before me as I read, that after the first go-through I wanted to read it again to cement some of this history and most of these men in my mind. A stupendous read and a real page-turner if you like WWII history on a very personal basis. This unit was amazing.
Macintyre tells us the story of the famed SAS regiment of British special forces that fought so heroically in World War II, primarily in the Mediterranean theater. David Stirling, the founder of the unit, looked for intelligent, bold risk takers to fill out the ranks (some with histories of violence, including boxers and rugby players). Hence the title of the book, “Rogue Warriors.” The SAS became famous the world over for their daring raids in North Africa behind enemy lines. (See my review of “Eastern Approaches” for Fitzroy Maclean’s personal memoirs of his time serving in the SAS.) They would go on to fight behind enemy lines in Italy (after the invasion of Sicily) and France prior to and after the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. The work was stressful, utterly dangerous, and the casualties were high as a proportion of the overall numbers. Macintyre, who was accorded access to long classified sources, writes of the men who suffered serious psychological aftereffects after having served under such intense conditions. David Stirling was himself captured an interred in a German POW camp for the last two years of the war. I give this book the highest recommendation for those interested in WWII history.
It was almost a shame I read this after CODE GIRLS which was SO mind-blowing. I like Ben MacIntyre’s books (Operation Meatball, a Spy Among Friends) and this one was probably one of my faves of his so far. The story of the British SAS from its origins in the North African desert to their modernization after WWII is quirky, full of real life characters and fantastic tales. Still, the untold story of the women codebreakers, so uncelebrated yet incredible, touched me more.
If you like history with details, this is it.