Showing results by author "Damien Lewis" in All Categories

Summer 1944: the SAS were charged with the most crucial D-Day missions, taking on the might of the Nazi Reich deep behind enemy lines. Facing Hitler's fearsome Panzer divisions with little more than raw courage and their nimble Willys jeeps, it would take maverick thinking and unconventional warfare to survive and overcome. Hunted at every turn, Blair 'Paddy' Mayne's SAS would face a bitter and bloody struggle to topple the enemy.

The finest fighting force in the world. Escape. Evade. Survive. Repeat. Seven gripping tales of overcoming the impossible. Arguably the finest special forces troops of the Second World War, the SAS was the jewel in the British military crown. But the near-impossible nature of their heroic missions sometimes left them trapped behind enemy lines, the enemy closing and forced to endure the unendurable. But the unendurable is all in a day’s work for these magnificent seven. Incredible odds. Outstanding bravery. Real adventure.

In the summer of 1943, the largest invasion fleet ever assembled sailed for fortress Europe, aiming to bulldoze its way onto Nazi shores. At its vanguard went a few hundred elite forces soldiers, the Royal Navy warship carrying them bearing the iconic winged dagger emblem on its prow, plus the motto 'Who Dares Wins'. Led by the legendary SAS commander Blair 'Paddy' Mayne, these war-bitten, piratical raiders were tasked to do the impossible - to bludgeon their way through the most heavily defended enemy shoreline, so enabling the ensuing forces to follow on.

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

The No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling modern classic: A Bravo Two Zero for the Second Gulf War. They were branded as cowards and accused of being the British Special Forces Squadron that ran away from the Iraqis. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ten years on, the story of these sixty men can finally be told. In March 2003 M Squadron - an SBS unit with SAS embeds - was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps.

Operation Certain Death chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed.

Lieutenant Bill Fraser and the six SAS men he led were listed as Missing in Action (MIA) after their failure to return from a raid. Nine weeks later they emerged from a death-defying sojourn across the Sahara Desert, after evading and confounding the enemy.

In the summer of 2007 the British Army's 662 Squadron deployed its most potent weapons system in combat for the very first time - the iconic Apache attack helicopter. This is the definitive story of the aircraft and of the crew who fly her, and of their baptism of fire in the battle for Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Under the call-sign Ugly, four of the Army Air Corps' finest pilots flew a relentless series of missions during their 100-day deployment, stretching the aircraft, and themselves, to the limit. Apache Dawn recounts these operations.

In the winter of 1941 an alien-seeming object was captured in a death-defying dash by an RAF reconnaissance pilot flying a lone unarmed Spitfire across the French coast. Balanced upon the cliffs near Le Havre was what appeared to be a giant convex dish, directed across the Channel at the war-torn British coastline. With Britain's cities being pounded by fearsome bombing raids, teams of experts studied the photograph worriedly.

In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death.

There were three patrols that fateful January 1991 morning: Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero and Bravo Three Zero. It was the opening hours of the Gulf War, and the SAS were flown deep behind enemy lines to hunt down Saddam's Scud missiles. The men of Bravo One Zero stepped off the chopper, took one look at the flat desert devoid of any cover and decided no way were they deploying into all of that. But Andy NcNab's famed Bravo Two Zero patrol did deploy, with fatal results—all bar one being captured or killed. And then there was Bravo Three Zero. These men were different.

SAS Great Escapes Four recounts how soldiers of the world's most famous fighting force, the SAS, carried out some of the most daring escapes of World War Two. Ranging from the infamous desert campaign of 1944 to the unforgiving terrain of the Vosges Mountains, these inspirational narratives include the tale of three Captains escaping an Italian Prisoner of War Camp in 1943; a perilous escape across Europe aided by the Resistance networks of Holland, Belgium; and a death-defying return to Britain via boat, tunnel and train.

In the Spring of 1940, as Britain reeled from defeats on all fronts and America seemed frozen in isolation, one fear united the British and American leaders like no other: the Nazis had stolen a march on the Allies towards building the atomic bomb. So began the hunt for Hitler's nuclear weapons - nothing else came close in terms of priorities. It was to be the most secret war of those wars fought amongst the shadows. The highest stakes. The greatest odds.

We share the triumphs and tragedies of a group of elite soldier trailblazers as they commit daring raids behind enemy lines in 1944, manage an against-the-odds escape to victory and then seek post-war retribution for the terrible murder of their captured comrades. SAS Band of Brothers is replete with action, peppered with great characters and features two of the most daring escapes of WWII. It ends with the hunted becoming the hunters - a group of men intent on seeking out the Nazis responsible for their brethren's deaths, on an ultra-deniable SAS mission to avenge a war crime.

1976, war-torn Beirut. Under the cover of a massive firefight, an unknown band of armed men blast their way into the Imperial Bank of Beirut. Over the next 48 hours they load up three trucks with gold bullion, and the raiders and the loot disappear forever. Two weeks earlier, a young SAS Major newly arrived in The Regiment had tasked his men with scoping out just such a Beirut bank robbery - strictly as an exercise only.

Airlifted into the heart of the Sierra Leone jungle in the midst of the bloody civil war in 2000, 26 elite operators from the secret British elite unit X Platoon were sent into combat against thousands of Sierra Leonean rebels. Notorious for their brutality, the rebels were manned with captured UN armour, machine-guns and grenade-launchers, while the men of X Platoon were kitted with pitiful supplies of ammunition, malfunctioning rifles, and no body armour, grenades or heavy weapons. Intended to last only 48 hours, the mission mutated into a 16-day siege against the rebels.

Judy, a beautiful liver and white English pointer, and the only animal POW of WWII, truly was a dog in a million. Whether she was dragging men to safety from the wreckage of a torpedoed ship, scavenging food to help feed the starving inmates of a hellish Japanese POW camp, or by her presence alone bringing inspiration and hope to men living through the 20th century's darkest days, she was cherished and adored by the British, Australian, American and other Allied servicemen who fought to survive alongside her.

In the hard-fought winter of 1944, the Allies advanced northwards through Italy but stalled on the fearsome mountainous defences of the Gothic Line. Two men were parachuted in, in an effort to break the deadlock. Their mission: to penetrate deep into enemy territory and lay waste to the Germans' impregnable headquarters. At the 11th hour, mission commanders radioed for David 'The Mad Piper' Kilpatrick to be flown in, resplendent in his tartan kilt. They wanted this fearless war hero to lead the assault, piping 'Highland Laddie' as he went - so leaving an indelible British signature to deter Nazi reprisals.

The new best-seller from the author of Zero Six Bravo. By 2007 Viktor Bout had become the world's foremost arms dealer. Known as the Merchant of Death, he was both public enemy number one to the global intelligence agencies and a ruthless criminal worth around $6 billion. For years Bout had eluded capture, meanwhile building up a labyrinthine network of airlines selling weapons to order to dictators, rebels, despots and terror groups worldwide.

For three decades one of the most secretive units in the British military has been a mystery force known as X Platoon. Officially there was no X Platoon. The forty men in its elite number were specially selected from across the Armed Forces, at which point they simply ceased to exist. X Platoon had no budget, no weaponry, no vehicles and no kit - apart from what its men could beg, borrow or steal from other military units. For the first time a highly decorated veteran of this specialised force - otherwise known as the Pathfinders - reveals its unique story.