Sublime

Bagnold located old companions from pre-war desert explorations, plucking Pat Clayton from Tanganyika and Bill Kennedy Shaw from Palestine, and put them in charge of young men from the backcountry of New Zealand who had lost all their guns and kit in a torpedo attack at sea. Their commander, Major General Bernard Freyberg, VC (the man who swam asho

Jacobus Hercules “Koos” de la Rey,

It was at the bar of White’s, one of the most exclusive gentleman’s clubs in London, that Stirling first learned about a form of soldiering that seemed much closer to the adventure and excitement he had in mind: a crack new commando unit intended to hit important enemy targets with maximum impact. Stirling’s cousin Lord Lovat had been among the fir

To Clarke, they were the antithesis of modern European armies, and the stories of their thrilling exploits were burned into his mind. As Clarke reflected upon such memories, it occurred to him that the Boer Commandos could be ‘reborn’ in Britain, to aim ‘mosquito stings upon the ponderous bulk of a German Army’. Hurriedly, he noted down the main co

In this testing environment, Major General Archibald Wavell, the soldier who lost an eye near Ypres and walked through the Jaffa Gate into Jerusalem with Lawrence in 1917, had been reviving Lawrence’s guerrilla tactics, using cunning, deception, mobility and tiny ‘mosquito columns’ against elephantine Italian forces. Wavell had been appointed Briti