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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Military life & institutions
![See Willy See (Paperback): Faith A. Colburn](//media.loot.co.za/images/x80/500219148688179215.jpg) |
See Willy See
(Paperback)
Faith A. Colburn; Cover design or artwork by Brittany L Roos
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The Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard is the world's
oldest surviving royal bodyguard, having been founded by Henry VII
in 1485. Today it is purely a ceremonial body, but in the past it
was a true bodyguard and the nucleus of a fighting force at a time
when England had no standing army. Even in its early years its
ceremonial role was of great importance, supplying a richly arrayed
retinue to enhance the King's status. In this first comprehensive
study of the early years of the Yeomen of the Guard during the
reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, Anita Hewerdine examines the
variety of roles performed by the Guard, both within and outside
the Court, as well as detailing the apparel worn by the yeomen and
the weaponry with which they were equipped. Hewerdine's book is the
result of intensive research, using numerous unpublished documents,
as well as a variety of printed sources not readily accessible to
the general public. It will be essential reading for researchers of
Early Modern Military History and sheds light on a previously
overlooked aspect of the Tudor Court.
Portuguese paratroopers or "paras" began as a stepchild of the army
and found a home in the Portuguese Air Force in 1955. Initially,
the post-World War Two Portuguese Army seemed to have had mixed
emotions about the need for elite, special-purpose forces that
operated in small units with the attendant flexibility and elevated
lethality. Shock troops have been traditionally controversial, and
even the vaunted military theorist Baron Karl von Clausewitz saw
little point in them. The history of the paras in the Portuguese
Army is illustrative of this ambivalent view. Nevertheless, in a
"war of the weak" in which insurgents avoid government strengths
and exploit its vulnerabilities using agility, deception, and
imagination, such small, crack government units are particularly
well suited to counterinsurgency operations. This appreciation
emerged with the threat of a new kind of war in Portuguese Africa,
an insurgency, and the new and visionary Air Force well understood
the potential of paras when combined with the mobility of the
helicopter. The Air Force saw an urgent need for troops who could
fight an unconventional war, who could not only defeat an enemy but
separate him from the population in which he sought concealment and
support and on which he depended for funding, recruits, and
intelligence. These were specialised warfighters who in one minute
were physically destroying an insidious enemy and in the next
administering aid and support and protecting a vulnerable
population. These were just the troops that Portugal would require
for military success in its approaching battle fought between 1961
and 1974 to retain its African possessions, and this vision would
be realized on the African battlefield with devastating
consequences. This book tells the paras' story as researched from
Portuguese sources. It details how they were formed and trained and
how they developed their imaginative, effective, and feared tactics
and applied them in operations to protect the population from
insurgent predations and destroy a vicious enemy.
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