Sas Rogue Heroes Quotes

To overcome frailty is one definition of courage; to acknowledge it with honesty is another.

Never run away,” Jock Lewes instructed them. “Because once you start running, you’ve stopped thinking.

One night, around the campfire after a dinner of bully-beef stew, someone opened an extra bottle of rum. ‘As it grew darker, the men began to sing, at first slightly self-conscious and shy, but picking up confidence as the song spread.’ Their songs were not the martial chants of warriors, but the schmaltzy romantic popular tunes of the time: ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’, ‘My Melancholy Baby’, ‘I’m Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’. The bigger and burlier the singer, Pleydell noted, the more passionate and heartfelt the singing. Now the French contingent struck up, with a warbling rendition of ‘Madeleine’, the bittersweet song of a man whose lilacs for his lover have been left to wilt in the rain. Then it was the turn of the German prisoners who, after some debate, belted out ‘Lili Marleen’, the unofficial anthem of the Afrika Korps, complete with harmonies: ‘Vor der Kaserne / Vor dem grossen Tor / Stand eine Laterne / Und steht sie noch davor …’ (Usually rendered in English as: Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate, darling I remember, how you used to wait.) As the last verse died away, the audience broke into loud whistles and applause. To his own astonishment, Pleydell was profoundly moved. ‘There was something special about that night,’ he wrote years later. ‘We had formed a small solitary island of voices; voices which faded and were caught up in the wilderness. A little cluster of men singing in the desert. An expression of feeling that defied the vastness of its surroundings … a strange body of men thrown together for a few days by the fortunes of war.’ The doctor from Lewisham had come in search of authenticity, and he had found it deep in the desert, among hard soldiers singing sentimental songs to imaginary sweethearts in three languages.

Mayne never told anyone else about his secret attempt to find the remains of his beloved friend, for that would have revealed the other, gentler side to Paddy Mayne, and a hidden broken heart.

Above all, [Jock Lewes] sought to instill supreme physical stamina and self-confidence, to make the men so inured to hardship that the reality, when it came, would feel almost easy. “The confident man will win,” Lewes insisted.

Above all, the stalker should never take a shot unless certain of a kill, for anything else was unsporting.

the trio prepared to retreat, Stirling spotted a small guardhouse set apart from the hangars, with a faint light gleaming under the door. Perhaps it was the memory of Mayne’s actions at Tamet, or perhaps it was simply a rush of battle blood, but Stirling now did something that, he later admitted, was “out of character.” Turning to the other two, he suggested they give the Germans “something to remember us by.

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