'Often what I had to do with what really happened is to scale it back to make audiences believe it, because the reality was so wild and so bizarre that you audiences would've thought 'that can't have happened,' but it did. Of how much of the story was true, Knight added: 'The things that are so outrageous and wild that you think someone must have made up are actually the true things. 'So I began to use those as well, and then you have to just take a deep breath and leap into it and start telling that story, so I began telling the story, really affirming Stirling, Paddy Mayne, Jock Lewes, and how those three people who are very different to each other came together to create this extraordinary organization.' Knight said Macintyre's books were 'so brilliantly written and comprehensive so they gave an overview of what happened,' and he added: 'Then sort of into the first-hand accounts, I'm always very keen to use first-hand accounts, so the diaries and the accounts of the people who were there. The EPIX drama is based on Ben Macintyre's non-fiction history book of the same name, and creator Steven Knight told Newsweek how he used Macintyre's work and also met with one of the original SAS members, Mike Sadler (played by Tom Glynn-Carney in the show), to tell the unit's story in the drama. Stirling, Paddy Mayne and Jock Lewes were three of the groups founding members, with Lewes acting as the training officer, while Mayne helped lead the team alongside Stirling, before taking over the unit. It focused on operating behind enemy lines to attack the armed forces of the Axis powers.

In real life, the SAS was founded by Scottish British army officer David Stirling, played by Connor Swindells, with the unit operating as a commando unit within the British Army.

Rogue Heroes is based on the creation of the real Special Air Service during World War II in 1941. Alfie Allen, Connor Swindells and Jack O'Connell in as Jock Lewes, David Stirling and Paddy Mayne in 'Rogue Heroes,' which tells the true story of the founding of the British Army's Special Air Service unit during World War II.

Company of heroes movie true story