Who Dares Wins
By streiff Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I'm posting this, not because of any great political significance but because our national heroes deserve to be remembered.
Most people who knew Sir David Stirling, the maverick aristocrat who founded the SAS, would agree that he was slightly mad.
But as Field Marshal Montgomery, his superior, pointed out: "In war there is a place for mad people."
Now the extraordinary life of the man who coined and lived by the phrase "Who dares wins" is to be made into a film.
Stirling, who had been thrown out of Cambridge for gambling and drinking, was 26 when he came up with the idea of "special forces" as he served with the Commandos in the Second World War.
The SAS is an exceptional regiment composed of exceptional men. Like many successful military units in the West it has been attacked for its operations by people hardly fit to do their laundry. For very good reasons it maintains a low public profile.
The treatment afforded David Stirling still escapes me. He wasn't knighted until 1990, the year of his death. The movie is long overdue.
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has changed the SAS, if at all. When terrorists took over a London building the SAS broke in and machine gunned most or all of them, but that was years ago. One terrorist had fifty to seventy bullet holes in him. Today in the same circumstances would they hand him a koran and request permission to discuss a few things?
The movie is one I would like to see, allowing myself at least one every two years or so.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
...all I'll say is this: they're still awesome, and a Brit (or Aussie) SAS operator can guard my 6 any day.
I had the pleasure of training several of those young men at RAF Upper Heyford in some communications equipment when I was in the USAF. Awesome and amazing bunch of heroes.
Managing Editor
As a pre-teen, I found two books at my local library. One was about David Sterling and the Special Air Services operations in North Africa. The other was a bout Popski and Popski's Private Army in North Africa and Italy. Anyone who had read either book and understood their stories would be prime material for special operations. I particularly enjoyed the way the PPA got out of a situation in which, while hidden in a gully, they found German armored units going in lager one each side. Strieff, do you know the story?
"Who Dares Wins."
What a unique motto. So I suppose the converse is true, those who do not dare, lose.
What does that make our esteemed Congress. Losers? Guess so.
"The pain inflicted by your country's indifference is tenfold that inflicted by your ruthless captors."
Rep Sam Johnson on the House floor commenting on his experience as a Vietnam POW