SAS secrets revealed in riveting read

Oliver Riddell reviews NZSAS: The first fifty years.

NZSAS: THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS
Ron Crosby
Penguin Viking, $65, hbk

The recent redeployment of New Zealand's elite defence unit to Afghanistan - it is almost certainly already there, although its movements are always kept secret - makes this publication of an official SAS history very topical and timely.

It covers actions in Malaya, Thailand, Borneo, Vietnam, Bougainville, East Timor and Afghanistan, since 1955.

Because many of those who served in East Timor and Afghanistan are still active in the unit, their identities are not revealed.

But otherwise it is all pretty frank and revealing. With so few individuals involved, if it were not frank it would be fairly meaningless.

The young men who serve in the SAS are supremely fit and need to be strongly motivated.

This book is based on interviews with many of them.

Their motivation shines through, as does their pride in their achievements.

The author ensures that this does not lead to seeing everything through the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia, although "failures" do tend to be seen as "mistakes".

Fair enough, as he does warn the reader of this.

Troopers, NCOs and officers see themselves as an elite unit.

They seem to have understood the possibilities and realities of their role far better than the army hierarchy and penny-pinching politicians, which at times have wanted to subsume them within the wider army force.

That was avoided but it was touch and go, especially in the lead-up to and during the Vietnam conflict.

The role of politics cannot be divorced from armed deployment.

The SAS was shut down after Malaya, only to be reconstituted in a hurry.

The classic illustration of political involvement for the SAS was during Vietnam.

The then National Party government was under great pressure from the United States to front up in Vietnam as an ally.

Many in the Government - notably Prime Minister Keith Holyoake - did not want to because they could see the potential political damage to themselves.

The SAS deployment in Vietnam was by subterfuge.

The result of this attempted but unsuccessful subterfuge was that deployment was done on the cheap, with long-term consequences (particularly healthwise) for those serving when they returned.

To serve your country overseas and then be booed in the streets on your return was also devastating psychologically.

Generally, the book shies away from politics.

It focuses on who did what, where they did it, who they did it with, and how successfully they did it.

The accounts of deep penetration into enemy territory (especially into thick tropical jungle) make riveting reading.

Anyone with an interest in elite defence units will enjoy the book.

It is probably true of all elite units that they think of themselves as the genuine creme de la creme.

But the NZSAS was quite open about feeling superior to United States, British and Australian units, while cadging from them what they were not being provided with themselves.

It may seem to the reader that supply difficulties were often due to communication failures within the New Zealand Army, or even incompetence, and not someone else's shortcomings.

But there were genuine reasons for feeling superior.

Refusal to wash or clean teeth, rather than alert an enemy with a ludicrous soapy smell in the jungle, is a mark of professionalism.

Members of an elite unit long for responsibility, so they can show their quality, and the SAS's troopers met that definition.

It was also a mark of how rigorously they trained to meet the standards they were being set; of the 11 members of the SAS who have died in service, eight were killed in training and only three in action.

- Oliver Riddell is a Wellington writer.