Montrose Toast wrote:JimHacker wrote: The invention of special forces came in the early 1940s with the invention of the commandoes. The term 'special forces' followed within a decade. I really haven't heard of anything before then which could possibly meet the definition. Thebes had its sacred band, Rome had teams of infiltrators/assassins, the Vikings had raiders and the American Civil War had its scout/marksmen - but none of these were special forces.
Actually the term Commando came from the Boar War. The Afrikaners Kommandos were light horse raiding companies. Churchill remembered them and used the term when he needed raiders after the fall of France...
In most of the ME, the term Commando still refers to mounted troops [as in original Afrikaner use] - Elite Mechanized Infantry units.
The SOF functions have always been around - Commanders just used available elite regulars to fill them.
FYI
In US Army terms, SF is just the Green Berets. Their jobs are recon, raiding, and [primarily] leading/training indigs. A SF A-Team is a Battalion Cadre/MiTT. All functions that previously existed.
Special Operations Forces [SOF] is the big tent that includes SF, Ranger, SFD-D, 160th SOAR, SEAL, Marine SOF [Force Recon], PJs, and the AC-130s.
All the functions of SOF previously existed - the designation/training of specific units to perform them and calling them SOF is the modern invention...
The original question which began this thread was
Biochem wrote:When is Merlin going to introduce the concept of Special Forces to Charis? He is aware of the advantages of an elite group of warriors who can strike deep into enemy territory, destroy their objective and then disappear into the night. After all as Merlin is rapidly discovering, he can't do everything himself.
in that context, we are discussing special forces with the implied definitions of:
1: Charis does not already have them.
and
2: They are capable of striking deeper into enemy territory, and dissapearing afterwards, in a better fashion that what Charis currently has.
Wikipedia has a fairly good article on what the terms Special Forces means, in the current modern context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_forcesI also have a fairly thorough definition up thread, describing what the term 'Special Forces' should be taken to mean, in the context of this discussion, and why Charis can't have them.
The fact that some units, previously in history, could fulfill some of the missions currently assigned to special forces, and that those units would have considered 'special' in their day, does not make them "Special Forces" as we understand the term today.
Since the TERM 'special forces' was invented in the 1940s-1950s, the rule of thumb should be that if you CAN accurately describe a unit with a term OTHER than special forces, that is what the unit should be called. The word special forces is properly reserved for units which cannot otherwise be described, as they are actually an amalgamation of several other terms, including light infantry, commandos, scouts, spies, saboteurs, and bodyguards.
If you believe that certain US Army units are reffered to as 'special forces', when by the definition we're using, they should not be, I'm willing to accept that certain US army units may need to be renamed, and that the common use of the word 'special forces' may have been corrupted over time.
However, I suspect that you're selling those units short: A lot of what the Green berets do is different from what military trainers have traditionally done.