Word: commandomen
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...make this recording, NBC men brought four Commandomen to their Manhattan studios and recorded ad lib interviews on their experiences. Then NBC arranged for a speech by Commando Commander Lord Louis Mountbatten. The records were skillfully woven into a composite half-hour interview...
...Highlands, officers and men get the same, tough training. All are volunteers, with at least 18 months' service in regular units behind them. Most of them are from British regiments, a few are Royal Marines, Canadians, Australians. So far as is known, no U.S. volunteers have been accepted. Commandomen have a friendly, free-&-easy comradeship unique in the British Army. To encourage independence, they are made to buy their own food, find their own lodging...
Above all, Commandomen must learn to kill. They prefer to kill quietly. A favorite Commando weapon is a long, straight knife, both edges sharpened razor-keen, carried in a trouser sheath. Some have metal kneecaps, fitted with metal spikes, to be driven into enemy crotches and spines. They can devise their own daggers, clubs, knives. They know the uses of spiked brass knuckles. All must know a Commando equivalent of jiujitsu. Fiercely, without quarter, they battle each other in practice combat, often break each other's bones: a few nights before the St. Nazaire raid one officer...
Constantly, the Commandomen in their home stations champ for more and bigger action. Often they grow impatient while their superiors at Lord Louis' headquarters master the details which must precede a raid. New recruits constantly arrive at the highland camps; replacements must be continuous, because the Commandos' losses are inevitably high. But the veterans of the Lofotens and Boulogne, the few who returned from St. Nazaire, the new men waiting for their first raid-all have a constant refrain between jobs. "Why," they ask, "are we waiting...
...French people were sick of collaboration with Germany. They had had both provocation and inspiration. There had been the ascendancy of the hated Pierre Laval in Vichy and the flashing British Commando raid on St.-Nazaire. The Times confirmed London reports that Frenchmen had not only received the Commandomen as deliverers but had also aided them with arms. The rising rate of Nazi executions fanned the fires. And, as if the demanding voices of the unspeakable Hitler and the porcine Laval were not enough, the buffoon Mussolini joined the chorus, asking, as Italy had asked in the past, for Nice...