After the victories of Roberts and Kitchener had scattered the Boer army, the guerrilla tactics of its individual units (which were styled 'Commandos'). Nor was the historical parallel far-fetched. The men for this type of irregular warfare should, he suggested, be formed into units to be known as Commandos. " directly into its Afrikaans' origins: ġ943 Combined Operations ( Min. The Oxford English Dictionary ties the English use of the word meaning " member of a body of picked men. The officer commanding an Afrikaans kommando is called a kommandant, which is a regimental commander equivalent to a lieutenant-colonel or a colonel. Less likely, it is a High German loan word, which was borrowed from Italian in the 17th century, from the sizable minority of German settlers in the initial European colonization of South Africa. In whose language the word comando means "command". It is also possible the word was adopted into Afrikaans from interactions with the Portuguese in their nearby African colonies, This term originally referred to regiments of Boer mounted infantry, who fought against the British Army in the First and Second Boer Wars.
Commandos differ from other types of special forces in that they primarily operate in overt combat, front-line reconnaissance and raiding, rather than long range reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. However, the term commando is sometimes used in relation to other units carrying out such tasks, including some civilian police units. In the militaries and governments of most countries, commandos are distinctive in that they specialize in unconventional assault on high-value targets. In other languages, commando and kommando denote a " command", including the sense of a military or an elite special operations unit. Originally "a commando" was a type of combat unit, as opposed to an individual in that unit.
The "commando" name was permanently established with the introduction of the British Commandos in 1942 the elite special forces units of the British Army in World War IIĪ commando (etymologically derives from Latin commandare, to command) is a combatant, or operative of an elite light infantry or special operations force using dedicated operation techniques.