If we ignore specialised training and go down the pure hard pyscho route, the French Foreign Legion deserve a mention:
The training there is brutal you learn to survive everything short of a nuclear holocaust, on forced marches in the jungle they are used to having a
couple of members incapacitated to severe injuries every trip. Do they stop and airlift them, no they have the remaining men stretcher them for the
rest of the route! (Plus they have to build the stretcher from natural materials in the jungle! )
I remember seeing a documentry on their training down in French Guana, They have an assault course in the jungle for which the record for a squad of
Legionaires is about 2hrs, the green berets had a go and it took them well over 24hrs to complete!!
Although as the narrator pointed out the whole point of the course was to work as a team to complete it (As it was virtually impossible to do
otherwise) the Green Beret's gung-ho tactics of trying to out-do each other may have hindered them!
In reality this debate could go on ad infinitum as everyone has their personal favourite - I'm British so i'd plump for the SAS and SBS it's a
known fact they train most of the world's SF.
But hey horses for courses, the only true way to settle this would be to put a squad of each in the most diverse enviroment on earth and see who
eventually walks outs...which would all be a rather pointless waste of life to settle a forum posting!
On a more humanitarian viewpoint:
Every soldier has a part to play in a war, however heroic, the infantry in WWI that survived the horrendous conditions in the trenches for months on
end are special forces if you think about it realistically they are just not the high profile glamour boys, remember the hardest part about being a
solider is having to kill a complete stranger when all he has done is be on the other side of a religious/political/insert reason decided by a few
people in command to stop the opponent doing it to your own people and living with the knowledge of what you have done. It doesn't matter how many
ways you know to kill them. And in that way i suppose any special forces are a good thing if employed right, to achieve a result whilst minimising the
impact to other people of both sides.
Would a better thread be 'The Special operatives with the worst/most horrific record of action'? (At least the patriotism towards your own
country's forces would subside.)
[edit on 7-10-2004 by tobermory]
[edit on 7-10-2004 by tobermory]