Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

by Ben Macintyre

Comedy and tragedy are brothers. Men and women are prepared to die in war, for a cause, but death can be as meaningless and fickle in wartime as it can be at all other times. One of the grimmer ironies of conflict is that so many are claimed, not in the heat of battle, but by cold, capricious accident, often far from the battlefield.

War is not a science: it frequently fails to achieve the intended result, or finds success by chance; it kills the wrong people and spares those fully ready to die.