The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books)

by Robin Barratt

  In July 1977, Brezhnev, together with his entourage, was returning by motorboat to his Yalta residence from Feodosya, where he had attended the opening of an art exhibition of works by the famous nineteenth-century artist, Ivan Aivazovsky. The motorboat captain brought the guests home quicker than usual so there was still enough time to go for a swim. Everything was running as usual with Brezhnev’s bodyguards swimming alongside him. Brezhnev stopped and floated for a while; it was known that the state leader used to like float on the surface with his arms wide on both sides – his security used to call it “Brezhnev’s Cross”. But this time Brezhnev had fallen asleep after apparently taking sleeping pills while on the motorboat earlier. But for the prompt actions of the security team the consequences could have been quite tragic.

  Vladimir Bogomolov, like many of the other security officers, spent a lot of time accompanying the state leader on different trips, both within the USSR and abroad. In 1974 it was calculated that the security team spent 276 days away from home, which was quite difficult both physically and morally. But financially his security team was rewarded quite well as during Soviet times Brezhnev’s personal guards took home around 370 roubles a month in comparison to a qualified engineer’s salary of only 140 roubles.

  Once, acknowledging the high professionalism of Bogomolov’s security team, Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, said that there would never be another team like it and, during Soviet times, the head of the most powerful special service in the world was always right.

  According to Bogomolov, during ten years of protecting Brezhnev as part of his personal security team, they did not once permit anything (such as packages, envelopes, etc.) to be handed directly to Brezhnev by someone unknown, unlike when Mikhail Gorbachev was in Yalta on holiday and a man came from behind a statue and handed over an envelope containing a personal letter directly to the leader. In Brezhnev’s time this would have been impossible.

  Once, in Belorussia during an important event involving the participation of Soviet government officials, another famous Soviet bodyguard, Mikhail Soldatov, prevented an attempt to hand over an envelope to Nikita Khrushchev. One of the female performers, while walking on the stage, put her hand in the pocket of her dress at the very last moment with the intention of taking out a letter for Khrushchev. The leader’s bodyguard managed to grab the woman’s hand before she took it out of her dress. It could have been anything. Her expensive stage outfit was ruined in the ensuing tussle.

  10 November 1982 would always remain in Bogomolov’s memory. On the evening of 9 November, as usual Brezhnev’s security team accompanied him to his residence. Vladimir carried the leader’s personal belongings into the bedroom and wished him good night. Next morning the security team was preparing for the usual working day protecting Brezhnev, which would start with Brezhnev taking a swim in the pool and going to the sauna. At 9 a.m. the senior security officer Vladimir Medvedev went to take his post outside the Brezhnev’s bedroom door while Bogomolov checked the water temperature in the small swimming pool, prepared a lifebuoy and found a couple of minutes to smoke a cigarette. All of a sudden there was commotion, shouting and crying in the house; Brezhnev had died. He was seventy-six.

  After Brezhnev’s death, Bogomolov continued working as a security officer for different state officials both in the USSR and abroad. His most memorable trip was as a part of a security team in Afghanistan, working as personal bodyguard to Afghanistan’s leader Mohammad Najibullah. Najibullah never trusted his own people to protect him and Vladimir received an order to shoot anybody who seemed suspicious. It was a difficult and dangerous job and Vladimir had to grow a beard and moustache so that he could blend in with the locals. Najibullah’s personal security team never wore suits but ordinary clothes, hats, caps, etc. – the protocol was not important, just the security of the person in their protection.

  In the last few years of his life Bogomolov taught other bodyguards and passed his skills and experience on to a new generation through the NAST Russia Bodyguard Academy, and his expertise and knowledge of working in the field became legendary among young security officers.

  In 2009, Vladimir Bogomolov died. He was only sixty-four, but his vast experience will always remain in the minds of those he worked with and taught.

  BOB HONIBALL (LITHUANIA)

  Martial Arts Expert

  Introducing … Bob Honiball

  I FIRST WITNESSED the awesome power and phenomenal speed of Bob Honiball when he and I worked together on the doors at a nightclub called Rick’s Place in my home town of Norwich, in the east of England. It was in the mid 1980s, I was fairly new to the doors and had just started martial arts training. We were patrolling the club when a barman came over to tell us that there was trouble at one of the bars where, apparently, a group of five men decided not to pay for their drinks. Bob and I rushed over and before I had time to blink Bob had downed four of the men in a series of punches and kicks, so fast it took my breath away. He turned to me and jokingly said: “The last one is for you, Rob!” Those were the days on the doors when doormen hit first and asked questions later. Bob was a master at martial arts back then and, twenty-five years later, he is unbelievable. He is undoubtedly one of the very best martial artists I have seen and one of the hardest men I have ever met, anywhere in the world.

  Bob now lives in Lithuania where he has his own dojo and teaches unarmed combat to the country’s Special Forces, police and private security. Even though Bob is undeniably one of the toughest men on the planet, he is also one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. This is his story, as told specially for this book by Bob himself.

  MY STORY

  By Bob Honiball

  I guess it’s always best to start at the beginning as our childhood usually shapes and affects our values, and how we think and act later in life. I was born in 1952 in Liverpool, England, into a working-class family; besides my father and mother I had an older sister called Celia. Guess things were hard in those days, although being a child you don’t really realize it. We lived in a property which was later to be condemned as a slum; the house had no bathroom and had an outside toilet; bathing was a weekly event as we only had a tin bath and had to boil up the water to use it, which took some time. The house was always damp, something my parents forever struggled to remedy. At the bottom of our backyard was a huge factory producing tin cans, so there was continuous noise from the machinery.

  When I was about nine years old I contracted double pneumonia and pleurisy, and nearly died. Because my mother was a nurse during the Second World War, she pleaded with the doctors to let me stay at home where she could give me more care and attention than if I was in hospital. The doctors agreed. I remember the doctor popping in to check on me from time to time, and being given what seemed like bottle after bottle of penicillin; in those days there were no antibiotic tablets. I can still clearly see myself being too weak to even move and remember constantly struggling for breath. After more or less recovering I visited my specialist in hospital for the last time, and he showed me the X-rays of my lungs; both my lungs were black shadows and I remember him saying, “See son, how bad your lungs were, for God’s sake never smoke as it will kill you.” He scared me so much I never smoked but in those days nearly everyone did smoke so as a result I suffered greatly from secondary smoking.

  In total I missed about a year of schooling and this obviously affected my education. In those days we had secondary and grammar school education and everyone had to sit an eleven-plus exam in order to be accepted into a grammar school. I failed and as a result was sent the local secondary modern school; I have never been that academic but feel the schooling I missed while ill had some bearing on my academic failure.

  The school I attended was not a good learning environment; some teachers cared but there was generally little incentive to learn. Really, it was all about just doing enough in order to give the children a basic education and nothing else. Being a tough inner-city school there was also a lot of bullyi
ng; my tactic to avoid this was to keep a low profile, which for the most part worked. It was about this time that the comprehensive school system was introduced. My class, the highest one within our school, was allowed to stay on for an extra year to take exams, but in order to do this we were absorbed into the old grammar school and had to face the fact that everyone thought we were the “plebs from that other school”. This helped to bond the members of our class together and we all looked out for each other. My credibility was enhanced when one day on the playing field I spectacularly threw a boy much bigger than myself over my shoulder. After that I never had to face the threat of intimidation again, although I continued to suffer with bronchial problems virtually every winter, still having to spend long periods away from school. I wanted to be good at sport, but my health affected my fitness and held me back. My uncle Sid and brother-in-law Dave tried to encourage me to get fit but it wasn’t until I was fifteen that my friend Rich introduced me and another friend, Ray, to judo. It was only then that my fitness and health started to improve. However, I continued to suffer with bronchial problems right up to my mid twenties; my sister Celia has said that if it wasn’t for my early judo training she doesn’t think I would be alive today.

  In the early 1960s most people who wanted to study the martial arts had the choice of either judo or karate. There was boxing, of course, but in those days the “martial arts” had a sort of mystery surrounding them which attracted me, so in 1967 I decided to start judo classes with my friends. I continued judo training for several years, but during this time a karate guy came to train with us and one day we asked him to demonstrate his techniques. We had never seen anything like this before; to me karate seemed mysterious, powerful and deadly, and I was sold straight away. I was introduced to my first karate instructor, Sensei (teacher) Harry Benfield and the style of karate was Mushindo Ryu. Harry used to be a street-fighter and a doorman, and the combat effectiveness of karate interested me greatly.

  Eventually, for reasons I can’t now remember, we decided to stop training in this style and looked for one that better served our needs. In 1971 I briefly started training in Uechi-Ryu Karate Do under Sensei Tony Christian and Bob Greenhalgh. In 1972 Gary Spiers appeared on the karate scene in Liverpool and we invited Gary to become the teacher at our dojo (club).

  Gary had been invited to come over to the UK from Japan, where he had been training in Goju Kai karate, by the Sensei Terry O’Neill, who had an awesome reputation as a karate practitioner as well as through working the tough doors of Liverpool. At that time Gary Spiers was considered one of the leading lights of practical karate, introducing his version of Goju Kai karate, a no-nonsense fighting style, to the UK. I always remember the first time Gary walked into our dojo; we didn’t know what to expect. In came this big half-Maori with close-cropped hair, which was unusual as in those days everyone had long hair, a nose that had been broken so many times that the bones had been removed and a scar from an old knife wound running across his face. There was definitely a feeling of trepidation that day, even amongst the real toughies in the dojo.

  Gary was a technician, but the whole focus of his training methods was towards practical no-nonsense fighting. In those days free sparring was tough with no holding back in some cases; I remember Gary standing behind me screaming, “Go, go, get in there, digger, don’t stop.” Having what they call a combative attitude, he always pushed you to your very limit and taught you that once the fighting started you should never stop hitting until your opponent is no longer a threat. Developing this “combative attitude” was the main thing Gary taught his students. He also believed you should always be prepared to fight, no matter where or when, and on a couple of occasions on a Sunday afternoon before training, he would take me and my friend into the pub next door, slap some money on the bar and order the barman to ply us with beer until the money ran out. We would then have to spar full-out for the rest of the training session with a belly full of beer, feeling like you wanted to throw up, with no control or accuracy and knocking spots off each other. Gary was a bit crazy like that and I suppose so were we for doing it! However, he would tell us with his usual laugh that it was important for us to know how to fight, even in an inebriated state!

  Even though Gary had always lived in a violent world, during all the time I knew him he only ever meted out his version of justice to those individuals who deserved it. One of the first stories I heard about Gary working the doors was not long after he arrived in Liverpool. One night while on duty, Gary was confronted by an individual who was waving a broken beer glass at him. Straightaway, Gary picked up another beer glass, smashed it and threw it at the feet of the individual shouting, “You’re gonna need two of them, digger.” The individual’s response was to take to his heels. For me this story sums up the spirit of Gary. Perhaps in some way this also explains the ability to “fight without fighting”; if you dominate the psychology of an opponent in any confrontation you have gone a long way to winning the fight … or you might not even have to fight at all.

  At one time Gary lived with Sean Reich, a student of his and one of my closest friends. Gary got Sean into full-time door work. I was a frequent visitor to Sean’s house and would sometimes sleep over, which was an experience in itself. Being in my early twenties I was impressionable and, like so many people who came into contact with Gary, I was in awe of this larger than life character who had “been there and done it” and who certainly lived life to the full. A lot of people were afraid of Gary but to me and my buddy Sean he was like a big brother who taught us a lot about real fighting, spirit and life.

  Sean worked on the doors of an out-of-town nightclub. One day he had to intervene with a bad guy who had stuck a beer glass in someone’s face. The guy tried to do the same to Sean and Sean turned it back into him, making a mess of his face, a technique we used to practise over and over again. I wasn’t there at the time, but when I went to see Sean at the club the following week, the friends of the guy Sean had hospitalized were in the club, “tooled up”. Sean called Gary for back-up but he was working miles away in the city centre and would take a while to arrive. Luckily for us Gary turned up just in time, with Terry O’Neill and another guy who was a professional wrestler. They had run red lights to get to us and when they walked in Sean calmly approached the group of guys and said, “If you want it, let’s go.” Such was the reputation of Gary and Terry they just got up and walked out and there was never any trouble from them again.

  Interesting events, and meeting interesting people, were always par for the course around Gary. On one occasion we travelled to Spain for a long weekend of training. Driving to the airport Gary produced an SAS (Special Forces) training manual and tossed it to us to read; things like that were not in the public domain in those days and Gary had made friends with a guy from the service who had given it to Gary to look at. It had all sorts of fascinating information, including improvised bomb-making. A few days later, after we returned to the UK, I was sitting with Sean at his place – Gary was out – when there was a strong knock at the door. When Sean answered there was a group of heavy-looking Special Branch guys standing there with a search warrant. When they entered, some searched the property while we were separated and interviewed; Sean received particular interest because he was an Irish American who had spent most of his life in the UK, and at that time the IRA was active in the country, planting bombs and making terrorist attacks. Later we found out that the raid was related to the SAS manual that “someone” had stupidly left on the back seat of the hire car in Spain. Gary laughed it off, of course.

  The one time I saw Gary on the back foot was after an all-night party. The next day I was ill after consuming too much alcohol. Gary, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to drive me back to my mother’s home. He knocked on the door and when it opened I staggered in. Looking back I could see my dear old mum, who was five foot nothing, looking up at this big bear of a man wagging her finger at him, telling him off for bringing her son home in such
a state. It was the only time I saw Gary on the defensive, walking backwards and apologizing in the most polite way possible. A real gent!

  Gary taught me how to get stuck in, to fight dirty, and the importance of fighting spirit and having a combative attitude, qualities I lacked up until then. One day Gary, who had once been a butcher, was cutting up meat; he was quite skilful and knew how to fight with a knife. While I watched I asked him how you would fight someone armed with a knife. He said, “Bob, if you want to fight anyone armed with any weapon, first get good with the use of that weapon yourself.” That has always stuck with me: I have practised various weapon skills and how to counter them ever since. He also fostered in me the importance of always respecting and thinking about the reality of combat, and I’ve always trained and taught with this in mind.

  Training with Gary was excellent but over time his attention was drawn more towards the nightclub security scene. Although Gary taught us a hell of a lot, it was felt by my senseis, Tony Christian and Bob Greenhalgh, that my direction needed to be more traditional and to go deeper into the practice of karate. After training on several courses held by Sensei James Rousseau, it was decided that I should go on to study Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate Do. During this time I trained under Sensei Morio Higaonna, Teruo Chinen and James Rousseau.