Saturday, February 18, 2023

First Paragraph

On a November evening in 1941, five elderly Bristol Bombay transport aircraft lumbered along the runway of Bagush airfield on the Egyptian coast, and then wheeled into the darkening Mediterranean haze. Each aircraft carried a "stick" of eleven British parachutists, some fifty-five soldiers in all, almost the entire strength of a new, experimental, and intensely secret combat unit: "L Detachment" of the Special Air Service. The SAS.

- From Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War by Ben Macintyre

3 comments:

MI6 said...

SAS Rogue Heroes is a must read whether or not you have seen it on TV. Another must read can be found in TheBurlingtonFiles website in the form of an intriguing News Article dated 31 October 2022 … Pemberton’s People, Ungentlemanly Officers & Rogue Heroes.

You should love that article if you are interested in John le CarrĂ©’s family's secrets, Field Marshal Montgomery's links to Kim Philby, SAS Rogue Heroes, Dead Lions, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and how 22 SAS Regiment was formed in Malaya (1952).

Once you see how all that fits into the history of TheBurlingtonFiles nothing should stop you reading the fact based stand-alone spy thriller Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series. It is about some real scoundrels in MI6 aka Pemberton's People and there are even photos provided of the main protagonists.

Michael Wade said...

MI6,

Thanks for the citation. Will check it out.

Michael

MI6 said...

The article + others there is intriguing and if you don’t expect John le CarrĂ©’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots the book is really so different it's well worth a look.