Authors: Peter Ratcliffe
Eye of the Storm (55 page)
The CO checked with Hereford and found that Des had been right. Ken was due to be returned to his original unit as soon as we got back from Saudi Arabia. Determined not to lose a good man, the CO spoke personally to Ken, and ended by telling him, ‘You can write a letter to your wife now, telling her to start unpacking. You’re not going anywhere.’
After that, things got back to normal very quickly.
There was a final, sombre accounting to be made, however. When the war ended we learned that three members of Bravo Two Zero were dead, Sergeant Philips and Corporal Lane from exposure and Trooper Consiglio from enemy fire, and of the remaining five members of the patrol all but one had been captured. In addition, a fourth member of the Regiment, Trooper Denbury, had been killed with Alpha Three Zero just six days before the war had ended, shot dead during a series of running firefight skirmishes with the enemy well inside Iraq.
Yet despite our sadness over losing four of our comrades, there was universal jubilation when it was announced that, almost unbelievably, Sergeant-Major Barry was alive. It turned out that he had been found, barely alive, by the enemy at the place where Kevin and Jack had left him, and had been transferred to a hospital in Baghdad. There, by some miracle, he was operated on by one of Iraq’s top orthopaedic surgeons, who had done most of his training in Manchester and who spoke perfect English. The surgeon had told Barry that he was glad to be able to repay, in some small way, all the good things that had happened to him while he was in England. We learned that Barry would make a perfect recovery, and that he was to be flown out of Iraq by the Red Cross within days.
By the time I had typed up my report and produced a proper map of Alpha One Zero’s desert wanderings, it was time to decamp back to Victor, in the by now far sunnier and warmer Emirates. From there we began to trickle back on the C-130s to Lyneham, and thence to Hereford. I arrived back at Stirling Lines on Gold Cup day, and the first thing I did was go to the bank and draw some money, which I put on a horse.
It lost. I knew I was home.
W
E
came home from the Gulf in late February and early March 1991, and at once began to pick up the threads of normal regimental life – or normal for the SAS, anyway. There was a good deal of media speculation at the time about the Regiment’s role during the war against Iraq, most of it wildly off-target. The truth about what we had actually done would not begin to filter out until after the publication of General de la Billière’s
Storm Command
in 1992 and, particularly
Bravo Two Zero
, ‘Andy McNab’s’ own account of his doomed patrol, which came out in 1993 and completely rejuvenated both press and public interest in the SAS. It is an interest that amounts at times almost to mania.
I went back to being RSM, rather than the commander of half a Sabre Squadron, and everyone took up the threads of their lives and careers pretty much where they’d left off the previous December. The only truly out-of-the-ordinary events were the debriefings of all those SAS members who had been on patrol or in action during the Gulf War, which were held in front of the whole Regiment and recorded on video.
The principle – that everyone would benefit from hearing of the experiences of those who had been at the sharp end, and from discussions of mistakes as well as triumphs – was a sound one, and much was learned from those sessions that has subsequently served the Regiment well in other conflicts. The one jarring note, though, is that what was said then often differs wildly from what has been offered to the public in some of the ‘SAS-in-the-Gulf ‘ books published subsequently. I will come to this later, but will add the comment that readers should take some of the stories peddled to them in these books not with a pinch of salt, but with a shovelful.
Since 1991 also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Regiment by David Stirling in the Western Desert during the Second World War, we also had to work on the arrangements for the various celebrations planned to mark the event. Apart from a formal dinner in the Guildhall in London at which the Prince of Wales spoke, it was also decided to hold a dinner in the Officers’ Mess at Stirling Lines. The aim was to raise funds for the Regimental Association, and selected guests were invited to buy a ticket or tickets, priced at £250 each. There were ten people to a table, and each was presided over by a member of the SAS who, besides acting as host, was there to talk about the Regiment and its history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guest speaker was Margaret Thatcher, deposed at the end of 1990 as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, but still one of the most ardent advocates and supporters of the SAS.
After the dinner Mrs Thatcher stayed the night at the commanding officer’s house as the guest of the CO and his wife, returning to the camp the following morning. Shortly after her arrival, two Puma helicopters touched down on the parade ground. One of the aircraft had brought General Norman Schwarzkopf, and in the other were General (as he now was) Sir Peter and Lady de la Billière. After the usual greetings, they were taken to a comfortably furnished anteroom on the first floor of the Officers’ Mess, where Mrs Thatcher was waiting for them. They met for about an hour, and then the Iron Lady left for London, sweeping out of Stirling Lines with her usual efficient bustle. With the formalities – and politics – out of the way, DLB, being on his home ground, took General Schwarzkopf for a live demonstration at the building we call the ‘Killing House’.
For a supposedly clandestine organization, an awful lot is known about the SAS, and the Killing House – or ‘Close-Quarter Battle House’, to give it its proper title – is nowadays probably the Regiment’s least well-kept secret. Set in an area of Stirling Lines well away from prying eyes, the building was specially constructed in the 1970s to enable the SAS to practise anti-terrorist techniques, and particularly where we might be called on to deal with incidents involving skyjacking, kidnapping, hostage-release or assassination. It is a labyrinth of small rooms, passages, doorways and obstacles, the walls covered with thick rubber to prevent ricochets. The place is also equipped with life-sized targets – some of which can be made suddenly to appear or move by the instructors using remote control – representing not only terrorists or other enemies, but also innocent hostages or bystanders. Only live ammunition is used, in order to make the simulated situations as realistic as possible. The main room, in which people playing the part of hostages are placed, is equipped with a kitchen table and some hard chairs, as well as ‘terrorist’ or ‘hostage’ targets, and these too can be made to change position by the instructors. The whole place reeks of cordite, adding to its rather sinister atmosphere. Nevertheless, it is a very effective training area, and there are many people alive today – some of whom we never talk about – who owe their lives to skills that were developed and honed in the Killing House at Hereford.
It should really have some of those Royal Warrant coats of arms over the door, since it must certainly qualify for a ‘By Appointment to …’ tag, given all the royalty who have been there for demonstrations of our effectiveness. Mind you, if they had had any doubts when they went in, I’m certain that they didn’t when they came out. It would be a very strange kind of person indeed who failed to be impressed by seeing the Regiment in action in the Killing House.
After the demonstration, ‘Stormin’ Norman’ was brought back, with DLB, to the Officers’ Mess for a buffet lunch with officers and selected NCOs from the Regiment who had taken part in the Gulf campaign. He talked to men at random, before presenting a ceremonial Bowie knife to the head of Britain’s Special Forces. With his usual mixture of charm and candour he kept his speech low key, simply saying, ‘One of our finest soldiers was Jim Bowie. It is fitting that you should have the knife he invented.’ The assembled members of the Regiment understood, and appreciated, the message.
With the presentation out of the way, General Schwarzkopf came over to chat with me, and in particular to ask about the Sergeants’ Mess meeting we had held behind enemy lines in the desert, and for which he had signed the minutes. We had got someone to take an official photograph of the meeting, and after our return to Hereford I commissioned David Rowlands, a well-known military artist, on behalf of the Sergeants’ Mess, to paint a picture from the photograph. I had then got a printing firm to produce a limited edition of 150 high-quality prints from the finished painting, each of which was numbered. Now, in the Officers’ Mess, I asked General Schwarzkopf if he would sign the prints, which would then be sold to members of the Regiment or used for presentation purposes. He was sympathetic, but explained that until he retired from the United States Army on 28 August he was forbidden, under American military law, to sign or endorse any product. He added, however, that if I were to get the prints to him after he had officially retired, then he would be willing to sign them.
The plan was that each of the limited-edition prints would have five signatures: the artist’s, General de la Billière’s, General Schwarzkopf’s, the CO’s, and mine. August came and DLB and the CO signed the prints, David Rowlands signed them, and I signed them. Then I took all 150 of them to Tampa, Florida, where General Schwarzkopf was based. He proved as good as his word, signing every one of the prints even though there were many other calls on his time. We sold them for £45 each, which made the whole venture self-funding, for the money we raised paid for the painting, the prints and for my flights to and from the United States. Thereafter, the original hung proudly on the wall of the Sergeants’ Mess at Stirling Lines in Hereford.
That year brought other extraordinary events, and other VIPs to Hereford, among them the Queen Mother, who paid a formal visit to the Regiment that summer. As the RSM, I was placed next to her at lunch. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I found her charming, interested, and delightfully easy to talk to, and with the additional gift of making everyone feel perfectly at ease in her presence.
In the following year, by a happy combination of circumstances, a different kind of celebrity came to Hereford. Like many boys in this country, I had grown up hoping to play for Manchester United. I never did, of course; equally, though, I never imagined that one day I would host the team’s visit to Stirling Lines. As a fan of Manchester United, when the telephone in my office in Hereford rang one morning in 1992, I immediately recognized the Scots burr of United’s brilliant and now legendary manager, Alex Ferguson. To me who, as a small boy, had stood on the terraces at Old Trafford with my pockets jingling with change filched from my father, it was like talking to God. I almost stood to attention.
One of our guys, known as ‘The Cat’ because of his lack of goalkeeping agility, had run the regimental football team and after leaving the army worked at Old Trafford. Some days before I received Alex Ferguson’s call, The Cat had told me that he’d spoken with the Manchester United manager, and wondered whether some of the United players could visit the camp at Hereford. I had a word with the CO and he agreed.
When Alex Ferguson telephoned, I said I’d work out an itinerary for the visit, post it to him and see if he liked it. Clearly he did, for a date was agreed. One Monday, therefore, the players and their manager arrived, and I met them outside Regimental Headquarters. It would take a whole chapter to describe everything that happened that day, but one incident will remain with me for ever. After I had briefed the players on the Regiment’s history and they had asked all the questions they wanted, we had a pie-and-chips lunch in the cookhouse. Then the real fun began.
I took them all to the Killing House for a demonstration of some of our specialities. As has been said, a part of our training routine in that building involves rescuing hostages being held by terrorists. So, to make the demonstration more realistic, we sat Alex Ferguson and two of his best-known and most valuable young players at the wooden table in the main room, then told them that they were the hostages and that they were not to move whatever happened. The rest of us stood in a corner of the room behind waist-high white plastic tape to watch the demonstration.
Moments later, our guys burst in yelling, ‘Get your heads on the table!’ Down went their three heads. Live rounds flew all around Alex Ferguson and his multi-million-pound football stars as the SAS team took out the life-size wooden target ‘terrorists’ standing behind and flanking the ‘hostages’. Although they were in skilled hands, and the firing was over in less than a minute, it must have been a terrifying experience for the United guys.
We left them with their heads down on the table for several minutes. They’d been told not to move, and they didn’t. The rest of the players were laughing because they realized that the shooting had finished and that our guys had disappeared. But still the three sat with their heads down on that six-foot table because nobody had yet told them to sit up. With the possibility of live ammunition being fired, they were not about to take any chances. Eventually we put them out of their misery and brought them out, and the day progressed from there, including live firing on the range, aerobatics in one of the Regiment’s Agusta 109 helicopters, a drinking session in a local pub that soon had every boy in the neighbourhood turning up as word of United’s presence spread like wildfire, and a buffet dinner in the Sergeants’ Mess that ended, for some of us, at four o’clock the following morning. As they are still playing today I won’t mention the names of the players who stayed up, because Sir Alex (as he now is) would probably fine them…