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Foreword
- The University Press of Kentucky
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xi Foreword Most of us share some level of admiration and respect for the great achievers whom we read about in history or otherwise observe from a distance during our lifetimes. Some of us have been fortunate enough to meet and get to know some extraordinary people of whom legends are made. For whatever reason, I have had the honor and privilege of being surrounded by very special people for most of my adult professional life. Standing out . . . not really above (because he wouldn’t want it that way) . . . but alone, in the unique way that he lived and worked, was Dick Meadows. Dick and I shared a special friendship, nurtured by his desire to mentor and coach those willing to strive for excellence, and by my respect for him as a master craftsman of our business and my need to learn from the best. Alan “Spike” Hoe knew Dick Meadows like very few others. Their professional association, growing to deep friendship, spanned over five decades beginning at Bradbury Lines in Hereford, the home of the famed British Special Air Service. The SAS was founded by Sir David Stirling during World War II in the deserts of North Africa . The rough counterpart of the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets), the SAS gained much fame and respect on the road of hard knocks in the Dhofar Wars, Malaysia, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and more recently Iraq and Afghanistan. Dick Meadows was a natural fit. As a Special Forces noncommissioned officer, Dick spent an exchange tour in Hereford and was given command of an operational troop. Command of these premier units is normally reserved for “badged” commissioned of- ficers—officers who have successfully completed the arduous SAS Assessment, Selection, and Training Program—not sergeants. It was also during this period that Dick met Pam, his future wife, the daughter of the often feared regimental sergeant major. This is clear evidence that Dick was living the SAS motto, “Who Dares Wins!” . . . going boldly in every aspect of his life. xii Foreword Spike was witness to all of this and more. He is uniquely quali- fied to report accurately on the extraordinary life of Dick Meadows, and does so brilliantly in the pages of this book. Spike captures the essence of this exceptional man, his friend, and the soldier/warrior role model from whom so many of us benefited. Having known of the legendary Dick Meadows for several years, I met him for the first time in early 1978 when he was helping Colonel Charlie Beckwith form a special mission unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, of which I was a part. In true fashion, Dick’s approaches were both subtle and often tangential. Before I knew it he had me under his wing, involving me in strange little assignments and activities designed to develop a young captain of nine years’ service into a special operator and leader of very special men. He was a master teacher, patient yet demanding, and always probing, coaching, and coaxing a little more from his charges. He was never a cheerleader or backslapper. His rare compliments were like nuggets of 24-karat gold . . . and they didn’t come easily. Among our ranks were a few veterans of World War II, Korea, and many from Vietnam . No one got any slack from Dick, and to be sure some didn’t like it. But he had walked and survived a tough path and everyone knew it. He was the youngest master sergeant in the Korean War and the first direct battlefield commission that General Westmoreland awarded in Vietnam. He drove himself harder than anyone else, was always competitive at everything he tried, and most often he was the best at whatever he did, from handball to military free fall parachuting. His operational exploits from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Son Tay raid into North Vietnam to his daring work in Tehran during the 1979–1980 hostage crisis are incredible stories in their own right. His later accomplishments in Peru and elsewhere, where he continued to serve, are equally daunting and daring. Mere days before Dick Meadows succumbed to cancer, General Wayne Downing, Paul Zeisman, Spike Hoe, and I spent several hours visiting with Pam and Dick in their Crestview, Florida, home. It was a Sunday afternoon and we reminisced about many wonderful times. Dick was going to try to hold on to life until the Son Tay Raiders’ reunion the following Saturday. As...