Remembering a legend on Father's Day

[Ku-winda]

I am remiss in not doing this much earlier, but it only seems fitting to remember my friend David Scott-Donelan on this day, Father's Day. David passed away at his home in Sierra Vista, AZ on 12-27-23 and had a memorial service later in January with family and friends, including old comrades Rob Noyes-Smith (Rhodesian SAS) and Jim Schneeberger (Selous Scouts) among them. As many of you know, David was widely regarded as one of the premier tracking instructors of our time and served over fifty years in various capacities on activity duty and as a civilian contractor for multiple governments. His early career was spent in Rhodesia with the SAS, the RLI and Selous Scouts during the Bush War and he helped pioneer and launch the highly successful Tracker Combat Unit in support of counter-insurgency tactics. He later served with South Africa's 5 Recce, but ultimately relocated to the United States to train our finest, including the Marines, Army and US Border Patrol in a craft he spent multiple decades refining. I won't soon forget our many conversations around the Rhodesian Bush War, as he recounted in unbelievable detail everything from the very mundane to the most adrenaline packed situations you could imagine. My only regret is that I never asked to record him, as those recollections, like many of those each of us have had with our own fathers are now lost to time. In any case, he was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word and I miss him dearly on this day, just like my own father, a CWO4 who served in WWII and Korea. Both men were incredibly kind, modest and above all patriots. Will try and round up a pic or two of David to post later. Happy Father's Day to all.

 

[VertigoBE]

Very nice write up. Thanks for this.

And a shame indeed that those experiences, recollections have not found their way to the written word.

Happy Father's Day to you all!