First into Action - Duncan Falconer

“I was in my first ambush, waiting to kill 2 men that I had never met before”
And so begins the first of many first hand accounts of unbearable tension that litter Duncan Falconer's personal memoir.
Special Forces are a tricky subject at the best of times, always anxious to remain out of the public eye as much as possible and yet the Special Air Service, for all it's mystique, has never quite managed to pull it off thanks to a slew of books, TV documentaries and even live footage of them. The Special Boat Service, however, is a different matter.

Their ethos is in almost complete contrast to their more widely known peers and is summed up by their respective motto - "Who Dares Wins" is indicative of derring-do and perhaps the merest touch of swaggering flamboyance, certainly every man is a remarkable example of a soldier.
"By Strength and Guile" is completely opposite; the troopers are just as good (if not actually better in some cases) but there is more than a hint of stealth and secrecy - born out by the simple fact that the books about them are not even the square of those published about their sister force.
There are other diferences as well, chief amongst them being that although the SAS has the enitre army to draw upon for recruits (which must all then be trained to the same standards), the SBS do it solely from the ranks of the Royal Marines (so harmonization of newcomers is a lot easier). This differing ethos is partly because of their specialisation for water-borne environments but, in the Gulf, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and half a hundred other places they've proven that they're not exactly fishes out of water. The Marines have more battle honours than any other unit in the British military.

First into Action is the first Special Boat Services memoir written from the inside. It tells how Duncan Falconer trained with the Royal Marines in Deal before being recruited into the SBS at Poole in Dorset. The regimen of ruthless training is graphically described and the book also includes revelatory accounts of SBS operations in Ulster, Bosnia and the Gulf War, and of the intense rivalry between the SAS's individualist mentality and the more team-based, marine ethos of the SBS. Duncan Falconer's grippingly detailed memoir is sure to command the attention of anyone interested in the Special Forces and how they operate.

It's not solely bullets and grenades though, as with any military autobiography there are moments of the humour unique to men under arms and there are more whimsical moments as well, all culminating in a simple yet complex problem; what do you do with a supremely trained fighting man when you get rid of him? One moment RSM with all the status that that implies, the next moment faceless civilian with no job.

7 out of 10