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as long as it doesn’t jeopardize the life of someone else, you bring the body back.”
    â€œSir, if you’ve gone over my record, you know I’m that kind of man.”

ONE
    IT WAS JUNE of 1962. My wife, two daughters, and I arrived in Southampton, England. The instructions I had received in Fort Bragg requested that my family and I take a bus to London and, after checking into a hotel, to call the headquarters of the Special Air Service (SAS) and receive further information about where and when to report to the unit.
    The dock was full of activity; but somehow, amongst the press of debarking passengers and the waiting crowd of homecoming well-wishers, I was found and greeted by an American major. He introduced himself as Bob Kingston and told me he had just completed a year attachment to the British Parachute Regiment. He’d come down to the pier to tell me how useful he thought I’d find my tour with the SAS. I tried to be polite and hear everything he had to say, but my mind was on collecting my luggage, clearing customs, and getting Katherine and the girls London-bound.
    Settled into the bus, somewhere beyond the cathedral town of Winchester, I had a chance to think about what Major Kingston had told me. He’d been the second person to rave about the Special Air Service. The first had been Col. I. A. “Boppy” Edwards, the CO of the 7th Special Forces Group.
    A few years earlier. Colonel Edwards had gotten together with an SAS officer, Lt. Col. John Woodhouse, and between them they had shaped an exchange program between the two elite units. The Brits would send the U.S. Army Special Forces an officer and a noncommissioned officer; and our Green Beretswould reciprocate. A Sergeant Rozniak and I got into the program in 1962. We were selected to spend a year training with the 22 Special Air Service Regiment.
    I knew a little about the SAS. I knew that it shared with the Brigade of Guards a deep respect for quality and battle discipline, but unlike the Guards it had little respect for drill and uniform, in part because it approached warfare in an entirely unorthodox manner. During World War II, in collaboration with the Long Range Desert Group, the First SAS Regiment had conducted raids behind Rommel’s lines in the Western Desert on Benghazi, Tobruk, and Jalo. Then after the war, throughout the fifties, the unit had fought with distinction in Malaya. Working in small unit formations, some as small as 4-man patrols, the SAS had penetrated deeply into the Malayan jungle and there had hunted down, fought, and helped defeat a large, well-armed Communist guerrilla force. From this long campaign the Special Air Service had emerged with a reputation as perhaps the free world’s finest counterterrorist unit.
    This thumbnail historical sketch was all I knew. I had no idea how they assessed, selected, and trained their soldiers. Overflowing with the cockiness of youth, I was a hotshot Green Beret captain with Special Operations experience. I’d served a tour two years earlier in Laos. Our people in Fort Bragg had led me to believe I would lend to the Brits special skills and training methods we Yanks had learned. At the same time, I expected to pass along to our community information from the SAS. It didn’t always work out that way—certainly not in my case.
    In London, the adjutant of headquarters SAS, Maj. C. E. “Dare” Newell, told me he would drive us Monday to the Herefordshire home of the 22 Special Air Service Regiment, Bradbury Lines. Early Monday morning, Major Newell came by and picked us up. It was a hot summer’s day, and the green English countryside, especially west of Oxford, looked lush. Toward midafternoon we drove into Bradbury Lines.
    It was obvious the regiment had gone to a lot of trouble in making preparations to receive us. Several of the officers andtheir wives were waiting for us at our new quarters, which were situated directly across the