The Raiders

Newton Abbot, Devon, UK: David & Charles (Publishers) Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1980. First Edition. Hard Cloth Cover. 4to 071537835X Dust jacket complete. Black cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. 224 pages clean and tight. During World War II the British Commandos and the United States Rangers brought the art of combined operations and of the sudden, lightning strike upon the enemy to a level of organisation never reached any previous war. But the Commandos and the Rangers were the inheritors of a long tradition; the history of strike forces made up of highly trained, highly professional crack troops is as old as that of war itself. In The Raiders Richard Garrett tells the stories of some of the most exciting of the raids carried out by these more-or-less irregular strike forces -- raids which have often had an effect upon the course of war out of all proportion to the numbers of men involved - and provides linking commentaries that put each raid in perspective and add up to a concise history of this little-studied branch of warfare. The stories range in time from the Peninsular War, and the remarkable exploits of a frigate's crew that held up the advance of an entire French army, to the 1970s and a special operation that used the most modern techniques and weaponry - the Israeli raid on Entebbe airport. In between we march with British troops who burned the White House in 1814, follow Canadian and British Commandos into the hell of Dieppe, take part in the D-day landings with the Rangers, and, in Vietnam, drop into a prisoner-of-war camp to rescue prisoners who were no longer there. This is a book that reveals the drama, horror and excitement of war at its moot personal as it traces the development of the military strategy that Winston Churchill memorably called `the butcher and bolt policy'. .