SAS Ultimate Guide to Combat: How to Fight and Survive in Modern Warfare

by Robert Stirling

'I'm not going to teach you how to survive in snowy mountains with only a tea bag; this book will teach you how to fight and survive war in the 21st century.'--Robert Stirling, from the Introduction

In the tradition of John 'Lofty' Wiseman's SAS Survival Handbook comes a new combat handbook from a seasoned speical forces soldier. Whereas Wiseman initiated hundreds of thousands of readers to the survival techniques developed by the SAS in far-flung covert ops in Burma, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere, Stirling's focus is on fighting techniques for the contemporary soldier.

Stirling, a combat veteran of Northern Ireland, the Bush Wars in Africa, and Afghanistan, provides a fully-illustrated training-manual for combat readiness. This is the stuff they don't teach you in boot camp, but they damn well should. Stirling writes in a aggressive style that will appeal to the warrior in every reader. He also serves up first-hand anecdotes and advice drawn from operations that went well--and those that went wrong.

Table of Contents: Why Do You Need This Book - Tools of the Soldier's Trade - Food, Shelter & Dealing with Weather - Medical Aid - How to Avoid Getting Shot - How to Avoid Blast Injury - How to Deal with Suicide Bombers - How to Deal with Bombs Under the Road - How to Survive an Interrogation - Defending a Position - Attacking the Enemy

E-book information forthcoming

Genres: Military Fiction, Nonfiction, How To

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Robert Stirling has spent most of his life in Nova Scotia. He attended the Nova Scotia College of Art in Halifax, and has published poems in the Bristol Banner Anthologies as well as anthologies by the American Institute of Poetry in Maryland.

Reviews

[Wilson Lanue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sort of title that always makes me suspicious. There are so many books peddling guff to couch commandos and would-be self-defense experts as to be laughable. This is not one of those books.

That's what I discovered when I opened it in a bookstore, expecting a smirk at its expense, and found **exaggerated gasp** that the randomly selected page actually included tried-and-true methods for deploying machine guns. I've now read it cover-to-cover and can confirm that it's as good as I gathered from that.

The information covered is pretty basic, but it's not stuff many civilians are going to have picked up. Heck, it's stuff some military officers sorely need to brush up on. It'll pretty much all be there in the military manual section of a well-stocked surplus shack, but here it is presented engagingly enough and with plain enough language for "the rest of us" to follow and understand how it's supposed to be put to use.

Add to that the numerous topics covered in this one volume (from choosing footgear that won't let you down, to setting up proper checkpoints in suicide-bomber country, to ambush and counter-ambush tactics) and this is a steal.

Heartily recommended to:
Anyone considering a career in infantry.
Anyone who wants to write military fiction.
Anyone looking at being a civilian embed.

Edited to include:
It should be mentioned that it seems, while the author did serve in Rhodesia (and possibly elsewhere? I'm fuzzy on this), he has probably exaggerated his resumé considerably for the purpose of selling his books. It seems the consensus of those in the special-operations community (well, those who have bothered to look at the book) might be summed up as "Pretty accurate, considering he wasn't involved in most of what he talks about."

If this is the case, it puts me in the awkward position of recommending a book that is in part a fraud. But the author's research skills are impressive, if his life story is less so. Perhaps he should embark on military fiction himself.