The Regiment
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37. Edward ‘Geordie’ Lillico. Investigating an Indonesian camp across the Kalimantan border, Lillico’s D Squadron patrol ran into a heavy ambush. Both Lillico and his lead scout, Ian Thomson, were badly injured. Thomson managed to crawl back to the ERV, while Lillico dragged himself through the jungle for a night and a day, narrowly evading enemy troops.
38. Helicopter flying over Borneo: the SAS campaign here in the 1960s was a victory for the concept of tiny units operating with maximum efficiency and the principle of hearts and minds. As Denis Healey commented, ‘one of the most efficient uses of military force in the history of the world’.
39. Tony Jeapes in Dhofar. Jeapes, OC D Squadron during its first tour in Dhofar, had the idea of raising a thousand surrendered Jebali tribesmen to spearhead the campaign against rebels in the hills.
40. ‘Lab’ Labalaba, hero of Mirbat. When the tiny SAS team at Mirbat, Dhofar, came under sudden assault, Labalaba kept up uninterrupted fire from a field-gun until shot dead.
41. SAS patrol searching the scrub, Dhofar hills. The ‘Jebel’ in Dhofar proved unexpectedly difficult terrain.
42. Mirbat, Dhofar. The battle-ground seen from the mortar-pit beneath the BATT house. Several members of the SAS team had to cross this open ground to reach the gun-pit, to the left of the fort, where Labalaba manned the artillery-piece.
43. SAS patrol withdrawing across Jarbib, Dhofar. The first attempt to occupy the Dhofar hills was cut short after twelve days, with the SAS-men suffering from exhaustion and dehydration. Having shown the rebels that the SAS could operate in their territory, though, the operation was considered a success.
44. Peter Ratcliffe in Dhofar. An ex-Para who joined the army to escape a humdrum life in Salford. Ratcliffe would later become RSM of 22 SAS, and the only SAS NCO ever to relieve a squadron OC of his command in the field.
45. Simba position, Qamar mountains, Dhofar. Peter Ratcliffe’s ‘Green Five’ sangar here came under enemy fire from mortars and Katyusha rockets on successive days, killing two of his patrol, and wounding others.
46. The Iranian Embassy siege. Red Team leader sustains burns to his legs from blazing curtains while abseiling down to a rear window. As he swings away from the flames, the SAS-men on the roof are initially unable to cut him free, in case he misses the balcony and plummets fifteen feet to the ground.
47. The Iranian Embassy siege. Executed in the full glare of TV cameras, Operation Nimrod lasted only eleven minutes, but gave the SAS instant celebrity. Previously little known, the Regiment was to become a household name and to spawn imitators in almost every country in the world.
48. Pebble Island, Falklands War. D Squadron, 22 SAS scored a spectacular success here when they destroyed Argentinian aircraft, including ground-attack Pucaras - the first raid of its kind since L Detachment days.
49. Royal Navy Sea King helicopter, Falklands War. The crash of a Sea King while cross-decking from Intrepid, resulted in the death of twenty members of D and G Squadrons, 22 SAS and support elements. The death-toll included eight senior NCOs, among them two squadron sergeants-major, the most devastating single loss the Regiment had sustained since the Second World War.
50. SAS mobile patrol, Gulf War. For the Regiment, the Gulf War marked a return to their early role of desert raiders. Equipped with ‘pinkies’ - Land Rover 110s - fitted with Browning machine-guns, GPMGs and Milan missiles, backed up by Unimogs and dirt-bikes, one hundred and twenty-eight men of A and D Squadrons, 22 SAS, were sent across the Iraq border on deep-penetration ops.
51. ‘Saddam could go swivel’. Peter Ratcliffe, RSM, 22 SAS, holds a meeting in the Wadi Tubal in Iraq, at the height of the Gulf War, to discuss new furniture and fittings for the sergeants’ mess. The event is both a calculated expression of professional coolness, and a gesture of disdain at Saddam Hussain’s regime.
52. Candidate for 23 SAS Regiment (TA) on selection, Brecon Beacons. SAS selection has been called ‘the toughest human proving ground in the world’. Not a trial of physical strength, athletic prowess, or even pure endurance, it is rather ‘a battle for a man’s mind and a test of his will to win’. The pass-rate for all three SAS regiments is about ten per cent.
53. The aftermath of the Loughgall ambush, Northern Ireland. Acting on a tip-off, the SAS Ulster squad lay in wait for Provisional IRA men planning to destroy the RUC station here with a bomb carried on a JCB digger. Opening fire only after the bomb had been set off, the SAS scored the British Army’s greatest ever success against PIRA.
54. 21 SAS Regiment (Artists’) (TA) on parade at the Royal Academy of Arts, London Artists’ Rifles forebears.
55. ‘We are the pilgrims, master …’ The clock tower at the SAS base in Hereford, engraved with the famous lines from Flecker’s Hassan, is a monument to fallen SAS comrades, and to the everlasting honour of the Regiment.
Epilogue
The lives of Vince Phillips, Steven ‘Legs’ Lane and Robert Consiglio were commemorated at a memorial service at St Martin’s church, Hereford, a week after the squadrons returned from the Gulf. They were buried with full military honours, among the graves of fallen comrades who, like them, had not ‘beaten the clock’. The pallbearers and firing party were turned out in immaculate service-dress with sand-coloured berets and SAS wings. WOI Peter Ratcliffe DCM, marching solemnly behind Phillips’s coffin, could not help overhearing Vince’s two young daughters sobbing. Ratcliffe, the archetype SAS warrior, maintained the mask essential to the sacred post of Regimental Sergeant-Major. He could not show how moved he was.
These men, and the thousands of others who have served in the SAS, from every conceivable background and nationality, were not the supermen of public imagination. Such beings, as T. E. Lawrence said, do not exist. What made them distinct was not muscle and brawn nor super-powers, but commitment and courage, the will to carry on when there was nothing left, the spirit to dare all to win all, for the everlasting honour of the Regiment.
The pallbearers came to a halt by the graves. As the coffins were lowered in, the firing party presented arms with crisp movements. The RSM and officers saluted. A bugler played the last post. In a quiet voice, the padre read the service.
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Notes
Prologue: ‘I always knew you would do a good job, but I never knew it would be this good’
1. Robin Horsfall, Fighting Scared, London, 2002, p. 154.
2. Clive Fairweather, interview with Nigel Morris, 2005.
3. ibid.
4. ibid.
5. Horsfall, Fighting Scared, p. 154.
6. Clive Fairweather, interview with Nigel Morris, 2005.
7. Peter de la Billière, Looking for Trouble: SAS to Gulf Command, London, 1995, p. 126.
8. ibid., p. 164.
9. ibid., p. 328.
10. ibid., p. 331.
11. Horsfall, Fighting Scared, p. 167.
12. De la Billière, Looking for Trouble, p. 334.
13. Anthony Kemp, The SAS: Savage Wars of Peace, London, 1994, p. 153.
14. Horsfall, Fighting Scared, p. 170.
15. Horsfall, Fighting Scared, p. 171.
16. De la Billière, Looking for Trouble, p. 337.
17. Ken Connor, Ghost Force – the Secret History of the SAS, London, 1998, p. 173.
18. Horsfall, Fighting Scared, p. 173.
19. Everything 2: website: The Iranian Embassy Siege 2006.
20. Clive Fairweather, interview with Nigel Morris, 2005.