resources. An absurd decision came down from on high that the romantic South African name ‘Commando’ should go, to be replaced by ‘Special Service Battalions’ in a ‘Special Service Brigade’. But top brass had a tin ear: for most people, the lightning-flash letters ‘SS’ stood for Hitler’s stormtroopers. The units used their famous initiative and

1 30 Assault Unit’s area of operations in north-west France. First blooded at Dieppe in August 1942, they took part in the Operation NEPTUNE landings in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, where their targets included naval bases, midget submarines, radar stations and rocket-launching sites. 30AU was at the spearhead in Brittany and helped to liberate

Sunday Times reporter Virginia Cowles, who listed

Nicholas Rankin

The inaugural parade of 30 Commando Information Exploitation Group Royal Marines took place on a very cold, bright morning, 13 December 2010, at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth. The name 30 Commando was chosen in tribute to the forgotten men of Fleming’s 30 Commando/30 Assault Unit, and the secretary of the 30AU old comrades’ association, Mrs

The Abwehr intelligence service employed two kinds of cipher. German secret agents in the field were given simple systems you could work out with pencil and paper (sometimes called manual or hand ciphers) to scramble the messages they sent by wireless to their controllers. These were the twigs and branches of secret communications. The ‘ham radio’

Ian Fleming’s Commandos THE STORY OF THE LEGENDARY 30 ASSAULT UNIT

Three years of fighting across arid parts of Egypt and Libya was now entering its final bloody phase among towns and fields. General Rommel had called the war in the desert Krieg ohne Hass – war without hate. Though dust and sand grimed and gritted everything, some people had still talked romantically of a ‘clean’ war, perhaps because civilians

As any reader of the James Bond books will know, Ian Fleming loved gadgetry and technical know-how. In the mid 1930s, having done well on a Stock Exchange deal, he had given a Marxist book dealer called Percy Muir an initial payment of £250 to search out and acquire a most unusual collection of books. He wanted anything that marked milestones of