Damien Lewis

Dan, you know, we founded Special Forces Soldering in World War II, and these men were charged to do the unthinkable.

In fact, they were charged to think the unthinkable in terms of ways to attack the enemy and then to put that into operation.

Because if you can think of an unthinkable way to attack the enemy, by default, the enemy will never have conceived of it.

That's the beauty of it.

So these were maverick lateral thinkers, piratical individuals, and that's exactly what they proceeded to do.

It's one of the reasons why they were so unpopular, because they were doing things in a completely different way.

Now, what does that mean?

It means that they, that legacy, that model upon which all special forces now are founded, bear in mind,

When the US wanted to make Delta Force, which is their nearest equivalent to the SAS, what did they do?

They got their two guys and put them through SAS selection in the Brecon Beacons to learn how to do it.

Bucky Burrus, who's a good friend of mine, is one of the first people to have done it.

So they then went back to America and founded Delta Force.

So we invented the model that everyone now uses.

And how does that cascade down into the present day?

Well...

I was with some fairly senior figures from Ukraine's special forces recently.

And what Ukraine is doing in terms of special forces operations is absolutely brilliant.

They are pushing the envelope to the degree almost that the SAS did in World War II.

Look at Operation Spider's Web.

And I spoke to the guys about it.