'I see the faces of the dead every night when I close my eyes': Incredible story of British soldier who fled home at 17 to join the French Foreign Legion then waged war for the CIA in Vietnam... before his own battle with PTSD began

Via David

 In 2000, Bob became the only man in the UK – and Europe – to reach the highest-attainable grade, 10th degree Grand Master American Kenpo

The incredible story of a British soldier who was trained as an assassin by the French Foreign Legion before fighting as a mercenary in the Vietnam War has been told for the first time in a new book.

Bob Rose, now 80, was born in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham in 1937. 

As an unsettled 17-year-old he fled to the French Foreign Legion where he was trained to be a cold-blooded killing machine.

On his first mission he killed an Algerian rebel by shooting him first in the brain, then the heart, after watching him for six consecutive days through a rifle viewfinder.

Bob then served in the British Army's military police before signing up as a mercenary to fight for the South Vietnamese Army in the Vietnam War in 1967.

There he helped the CIA implement the controversial Phoenix Programme that rooted out Viet Cong leaders and claimed nearly 40,000 lives.

The horrors he witnessed, including watching his best friend's chest being blown open by a grenade, left him with severe post-traumatic stress which he now battles by practising the brutal martial art American Kenpo.

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