The War That Never Was
For the very first time, The War That Never Was tells the fascinating story of a secret war fought by British mercenaries in the Yemen in the early 1960s. In a covert operation organised over whisky and sodas in the clubs of Chelsea and Mayfair, a group of former SAS officers – led by the irrepressible Colonel Jim Johnson – arranged for a squadron of British mercenaries to travel to the remote mountain regions of the Yemen, to arm, train and lead Yemeni tribesmen in their fight against a 60,000-strong contingent of Egyptian soldiers.
It was one of the most uneven running battles ever waged; the Egyptians fielded a huge, professionally-trained army. The British fought back at the head of a ragtag force of tribal warriors. Egypt’s President Nasser later described the battle in the Yemen as ‘my Vietnam’.
It’s a fascinating, forgotten, and rip-roaringly entertaining pocket of British military history, much in the spirit of Ben McIntyre’s bestselling Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat.