in his days, it was nazis, in my day, it was marxists, and they — harold wilson had chucked the britsen — yemen, as it now is. and they were coming in, having trained the muslims in odessa in the soviet union, to become marxists instead of muslims. and we were there, thanks to harold wilson sending us, to protect the muslims from the marxists, and so i was able to actuallyjoin an elite force, having been trained by the sas without fighting, i now had a command over an elite force, like what the book's all about, 60 of them, and could change their operations procedure by what i learned in the sas, mainly to move only by night, do nothing by day, and by shouting in the dark when we were under attack from machine—guns, " retreat, retreat! " — but advance. you were a tough guy in that sense and, as you said, you led men in very difficult circumstances, but you've also written very honestly about the way in which you didn't always find it easy to be that tough guy. you've written about school, how you hated being bullied, how you felt you had to keep your mouth shut when you were being bea