What People Are Saying
“I have now finished reading your book, and I’d like to congratulate you on a stunning achievement. It’s no exaggeration to say that what you have achieved is breath-taking in its scale and attention to detail. I am in awe.”
— LT COLONEL ALAN ABBOTT
“What a great book! It is a magnificent production, and a tribute to your extraordinary and tireless attention to detail.
Sadly, some of us are now dying off, but the splendid history you have written will outlive us. It will stand as a lasting testimony to the events in which we participated half a century ago.
Thank you so much for your fantastic work in putting it all together. It is superb.”
— DAVID MASON
“I have now finished your really masterly account of life – and sometimes death – in the Frontier Force. Yours is a terrific tale, underpinned by exhaustive research and diligent scholarship.
Your book is of course about much more than just the growing pains of FF, and the wide context you provide on many ops and actions is actually the clearest and most detailed historical set of Dhofar accounts I have seen.”
— MAJOR GENERAL ANGUS RAMSAY
“Brilliant.
Going through it line by line I have enormously enjoyed both the style that you have employed and the content.”
— BILL DE BASS
“I write to congratulate you on your magnificent book. I think it really is outstanding, and I believe it is, and will remain, the definitive account of how SAF won the war in Dhofar. The campaign maps and diagrams in your book make it very easy to follow. The personal accounts bring it to life; I found myself on the edge of my seat at times, the story you tell is so exciting and you tell it so well.
Your book is honest in a hugely “non-military history” fashion. I have never seen such a
"warts and all" account in a military history. This will not, I know, make you popular in some quarters. You have written such a balanced account of FF’s history; it is the reality of life with a Baluch regiment in an army officered, in part, by the sort of eccentrics who collect in out of the way and hairy military corners. You have also made clear the gallantry and bravery of even the strangest and most corrupt. How difficult this war was, and how hard the lives of those fighting it were, how stark it all was, all leap off your pages.”
— LT COLONEL NIGEL COLLETT
“Stewart Wilson, himself a veteran of the Dhofar campaign, has written a fascinating and informative account of the campaign covering the period 1970 to 1979 told mainly through the first hand verbal accounts, notes, diaries and documents of many of the participants.
As such it has an authenticity and realism about it which makes it all the more gripping. It is meticulously researched and well supported by maps and air photographs, and detailed and illuminating footnotes.”
— MAJOR GENERAL ANDREW PRINGLE
“It’s story [that] covers much of the operational grist of the war. The author, who served with the regiment, has mined the memories of the living and quarried the archives of the dead for first-hand accounts and stitched them together to produce a complete history.
A very clear impression is given of the complexity; the confusion; the ferocity; the linguistic difficulties; the blue-on-blues and the vaulting gallantry: all in very difficult terrain with lousy maps against a bold, brave, wily, tenacious enemy who knew the ground intimately and was fighting for his survival: cock-ups, triumphs and tragedies galore.”