The Founding of the SAS
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2021
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's a special forces unit known largely for its secrecy, but Damien Lewis is on a mission of his own, to uncover everything about its beginnings. In this episode from the Dan Snow's History Hit archive, he tells us more about the formation of the SAS, starting in autumn 1940, two days after Dunkirk, with Colonel Dudley Clarke.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast now we had |
| 0:04.4 | Sol David on earlier in the year talking about the origins of the SBS the special |
| 0:09.7 | boat service and now we're going to have to rectify this historical imbalance on the |
| 0:15.1 | podcast by getting an episode back on with Damian Lewis to tell us about the |
| 0:19.2 | formation of the SAS and an ultra-secret mission that changed the course of the Second World War. |
| 0:26.3 | This is an episode from the History Hit Archive. |
| 0:28.8 | As you know, once a week I like to pull out an episode that I think deserves a bit more attention, but here on the warfare |
| 0:34.1 | podcast with me, your presenter James Rogers, I bring you two original episodes every single |
| 0:39.2 | week. We truly are on the front line of military history, and we bring you histories from all around the world, |
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| 1:08.8 | It only takes a second on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast as it really helps us to get out there to everyone who loves history |
| 1:16.5 | But here now is the brilliant Damien Lewis on the formation of the SAS smash hit. I mean, they were all over the page in the Second World War. |
| 1:43.0 | Absolutely they were and the really interesting thing about this story is that it |
| 1:47.6 | uncovers the untold origin story of the S.S that's what I'm really excited about. So, I mean I didn't realize, but I think very few people do realize that before the S.S. were officially formed in North Africa by David Sterling, there was an S. S. Unit which existed and it was formed in |
| 2:05.5 | autumn of 1940. So how it came about was that two days after Dunckeuk, Colonel Dudley Clark, who was a maverick, little |
| 2:16.8 | appreciated figure of the Second World War actually, he went to Churchill with a proposal. |
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