Lt-Col Ron Reid-Daly died Tuesday at his home in Simonstown , South Africa after a three-day coma.     An SAS commando unit veteran during the Malaya campaign of World War Two, he went on to lead the Rhodesian Light Infantry before his first retirement from military service in 1973.     He came out of retirement in the mid 1970s with an appointment at the rank of major, initially to take charge of a newly stood-up combat tracker course, going on to take command of the Selous Scouts Regiment.     While most of his more famous exploits of modern military history took place as commander of that regiment, he later went on to command the entire Transkei Defence Force during the late 1980s.

Lieutenant Colonel Ronald "Ron" Francis Reid-Daly (1926 – August 9, 2010) founded and commanded the elite Selous Scouts special forces unit that fought during the Rhodesian Bush War.

Born in South Africa, Reid-Daly entered military service in 1951 and served with the C (Rhodesia) Squadron of the British Special Air Service (SAS) in operations against insurgents in Malaya. Rising to the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, he was later commissioned and achieved the rank of Captain. He retired from the Army in 1973.

    In late 1973 he was persuaded by General Peter Walls, then chief of the Rhodesian Army, to return to active duty in order to form the Selous Scouts, an elite special forces unit to combat the growing threat posed by nationalist guerrillas. Drawing on his Malayan experiences, Lieutenant Colonel Reid-Daly built up a skilled and highly professional regiment from scratch. Although the Selous Scouts achieved many of their military objectives, their unorthodox methods created tensions within the military hierarchy. Reid-Daly had several brushes with the Rhodesian authorities.

    In 1979 rumours surfaced in Salisbury that that the Scouts were poaching ivory along the Zambezi valley. These were never proved and the colonel, as a well-known conservationist, dismissed the allegations as ridiculous. In the process of defending himself against them Reid-Daly verbally attacked Major General John Hickman. For this he was charged with insubordination and sentenced with a reprimand. Disgusted, he resigned as the commander of the Scouts in August, but continue to fight a legal battle against the judgement, proclaiming his innocence. This continued even after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe , and only stopped after Reid-Daily moved to South Africa in 1982.

    In South Africa , Reid-Daly became commander of the Transkei Defence Force, and later was the leader of the private security firm Security Services Transkei Pty Ltd. For the final decade of his life, he resided near Cape Town.