In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
You can probably guess that Sir Winston Spencer Churchill is one of my life long heroes!
In 1940 when Hitler had lost the Battle of Britain in the air, he turned his forces towards Russia. As with Napoleon he chose the wrong time of year and suffered the same fate of the Russian winter and its toll on soldiers and equipment.
Meanwhile back in England Churchill was planning his strategy to fight back.


The Commandos were created. These were soldiers recruited as preferably unmarried and keen for battle. Their training was set up by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes, both masters in Close Quarter Combat (CQB). Churchill met some resistance to this plan from more conservative senior officers. He nicknamed this new service "The Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare"


In 1943 Fairbairn was sent to the United States of America to set up the training for the Office for Strategic Services, or OSS (now the CIA) His second in command Lt. Rex Applegate, later to become the famous Colonel Rex Applegate, a master of CQB.


Likewise back in Britain the Special Operations Executive was already operating in occupied countries, again with training established by Fairbairn and other experienced military.