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Commando Pocket Manual

The document discusses a book called The Commando Pocket Manual: 1940-45 which details the training and methods of British special forces soldiers during World War 2. It describes chapters on assaulting cliffs, unarmed combat, hunting, and making explosives from household items. Later chapters examine top secret documents about successful Commando operations.

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Gervė Tomas
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266 views1 page

Commando Pocket Manual

The document discusses a book called The Commando Pocket Manual: 1940-45 which details the training and methods of British special forces soldiers during World War 2. It describes chapters on assaulting cliffs, unarmed combat, hunting, and making explosives from household items. Later chapters examine top secret documents about successful Commando operations.

Uploaded by

Gervė Tomas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Commando Pocket Manual: 1940-45

Author: Christopher Westhorpe


Genre: History
Publisher: London: Anova Books, 2012
ISBN: 8-7337-976-2
RRP: £5.99 (+£2.80 p&p)

The idea of the Commandos the elite special forces that would give birth to the SAS and all
others came to Winston Churchill at the outbreak of war... and they were lethal.

In 1942, a unit of British Special Forces successfully attacked and destroyed a battery 6
German artillery pieces. The German defenders held numerical parity with their attackers,
were well dug in, and far better armed; yet they were soundly beaten, with the guns being
destroyed and around 60% of their forced being killed on the field. The difference was in
the training, details of which are included here.
From assaulting a cliff face, to unarmed combat, to hunting in the wild to
making explosives from household items everything one might want to know about the
training and methods of a WW2 special forces solider is here. Whilst the first 7 chapters
discuss all this and more, the latter section examines (formerly) top secret documents
recounting some of the successful operations undertaken by the Commando force, who of
course used the information in this book as their modus operandi. As a martial artist, I
must say that I found chapter 4, ‘All-In Fighting’ as my favourite. It contains many
practical moves and techniques designed to ‘deal’ with one or several assailants, both
armed and unarmed, many of which can be found in modern martial arts manuals; after
all, there are only so many ways to skin a cat. Other high points are how to load and fire a
gun with only one hand and details on how to correctly use plastic explosives.

Now, it’s highly unlikely that the vast, vast majority of the people who will read this will
ever need to put into even a tiny fraction of the stuff contained within this book, into
action, if any, so really it falls into that category of things that are cool yet pointless at the
same time, and that’s why it’s so darned fun! Any historian or just somebody with a boyish
heart deep down will enjoy this; I did on both counts. Just a word of warning, though...
keep it out of the reach of kids!

8 sausages out of 10

RW Oct 2014

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