ABSTRACT
The British Commandos owed their formation to Sir Winston Churchill and Colonel Dudley Clarke. Colonel Clarke had been a Staff Officer in Palestine in 1936 and he had seen how a handful of rebels could harass a British regular force of two divisions. He therefore conceived the Commandos as uniformed guerrillas on amphibious raiding operations in occupied Europe. The Commandos and Rangers were not the only British and American Special Forces. There was, on the British side, Phantom, the first of the private armies, which collected and transmitted information in most theatres of war. There were Popski’s Private Army, for obtaining intelligence and raiding in the enemy’s rear, and F Squadron, a small force of Italians who fought after the armistice with the Allies and reconnoitred and ambushed small German parties behind the lines. In the last war, Special Forces sometimes co-operated in the field with partisan units.
