Based on recently released wartime files, interviews with surviving
veterans and previously unpublished private papers, this is the
incredible story of the origins and operations of a wartime special
forces unit that defied the odds.
Z Special Unit, one of the most intrepid but arguably the most unsung of
Allied Special Forces of the Second World War waged a guerrilla war
against Japan for two years in the south-west Pacific. On some of their
81 operations Z Special Unit slipped into enemy harbors in canoes and
silently mined ships before vanishing into the night; on others they
parachuted into the dense Borneo jungle to fight with headhunters
against the Japanese and on one occasion they landed on an Indonesian
island and smuggled out the pro-Allied sultan from under Japanese noses.
The Japanese weren't the only adversary that Z Special Unit encountered
in the brutal terrain of the Pacific. In the mango swamps of Borneo and
the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea they were faced with venomous
snakes, man-eating crocodiles, and deadly diseases. But it was the enemy
soldiers who proved the most ruthless foe, beheading those Z Special
Unit commandos who fell into their hands.
"Z was a different operation to anything else," recalls veteran Jack
Tredrea. "You were never told what you were going to do. You weren't
allowed to talk about what you were training for in case any of us were
caught. You could have been tortured and divulged information."
Drawing on veteran interviews as well as operational reports and
recently declassified SOE files, Gavin Mortimer explores the incredible
history of this remarkable special forces unit and the band of
commandoes that defied the odds.
