UK's SAS offer rare details of secret missions

[September 23, 2011]  LONDON (AP) -- Veterans of Britain's elite Special Air Service say newly disclosed wartime files offer rare details of the regiment's secret missions, including an ambitious 1944 plan to capture or the kill infamous Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Formed during World War II, the SAS has allowed previously hidden accounts of its wartime efforts to be published in a book marking the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1941.

Files written by the regiment's founder David Stirling and others document attacks in North Africa and France as Allied forces battled with Nazi Germany. They had previously been stored in secret archives and their existence kept hidden for 50 years.

Proceeds from the book will go to the SAS Regimental Association's welfare fund.

[Associated Press]

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