CHAPTER twenty FINDING THE SITE OF VINCE'S death was a tremen-dous advantage to me because, like the first LUP, the spot was a fixed anchor point from which I could work both backwards and forwards. This was important, for while I had found the place, and probably the cause, of Vince's death, I had not yet ascertained the circumstances. That night we were invited to the Bedouin farm for dinner, and our hosts, who belonged to the Duleim tribe, slaughtered sheep for us. Once again a vast number of guests popped up out of the desert, and after we had gorged ourselves and were sat drinking tea, there was a lot of banter. Abbas was ribbed ceaselessly as 'the one who caused the prob�lem in the first place', and at one point a row broke out between the Bedouin and Abu Omar, the sour-faced mili�tary minder, who declared that the SAS patrol had been `cowards who ran away from two boys and an old man'. It did my heart good to see the Duleim tribesmen throw�ing down their headcloths and declaring angrily that the government representative didn't know what he was talk�ing about. These people had to dice with the conditions Bravo Two Zero had encountered here their entire lives and understood instinctively that the true heroism the patrol had showed was not in gunning down countless men, but in surviving the appalling enemy of this desert in winter. At one point during the evening there was a touching ceremony when Mohammed handed over to me Vince Phillips's binoculars. I looked at them carefully � they were badly broken, and although they were olive-green in colour, they were certainly not identifiable as British army issue. I remembered, though, that Ryan had made a reference in his book to members of the patrol buying pairs of little binoculars in Abu Dhabi before the opera�tion, which he described as a distinct asset. Surely, I thought, this tended to support Mohammed's claim that the binos had belonged to the dead Vince. Afterwards, I asked him if he knew of any tank berms in the area, hoping to find Ryan's LUP of 25 January. He looked puzzled and began to ask the others, 'What does he mean?' Nobody seemed to know, so I explained that I was looking for a sort of hole in the ground where the British soldiers might have hidden. Mohammed's face suddenly cleared. 'I know the place,' he said. 'The place I found tracks the day after I took Flips to the morgue � but it wasn't anything to do with tanks. It was a water catch-basin the Bedouin dug with a bulldozer.' `You- mean you returned to the area after you'd taken Phillips's body away?' `Yes, because I thought there might be more of these men about. I saw tracks by Flips's body the day before and I knew he hadn't been alone. I returned with five other people � my relatives, mostly.' Ever since arriving on the plateau I had wondered why tanks would be in place up here when they were needed at the front in Kuwait, and the idea that the 'tank berm' was a catch-basin for the Bedouin seemed to make more sense. The next morning, soon after first light, we headed out to see the 'berm' in Mohammed's pick-up. As we drove, I asked Mohammed if there were many such basins around here. 'No,' he said. 'This is the only one I know of. We haven't dug any in recent years because of the drought. Actually, there isn't much of it left now because it has been filled in by rain and snow over the years, but at the time I found Flips � ten years ago it was quite deep.' He stopped the car surprisingly soon after starting off and showed me an oval-shaped hollow, no more than a foot deep, but partly surrounded by what had obviously once been high banks, of spoil. It wasn't much to look at, but it was clearly the remains of some sort of earthwork, and I for one hadn't come across anything else like it in the area. Surely, I thought, this had to be it. `So you came here the day after you found Phillips?' I asked Mohammed. `Yes,' he said. 'I returned with five other men and we followed the tracks back from the place I found the body. It was very muddy then, and the tracks were clear. I could tell they weren't the tracks of locals. Anyway, when we arrived we found a lot of scuff marks around the water-basin � signs that people had been here, not just passing by, but had spent some time here. There were quite deep ruts leading up to the pit and there were a lot of marks around them too. The tracks led � off north directly towards the place where I had found the body.' I looked around and noticed that the Duleim houses where we had had dinner were in clear sight, not much more than a kilometre away to the east. I wondered again if they or their predecessors could have been mistaken by Ryan for a military post. This was crucial, I realized, because it was the apparent proximity of the military post (or vehicle) which had prevented the SAS men from cud�dling up, getting on a hot brew or moving around, any or all of which actions might have saved Vince's life. Ryan even emphasizes in his book how Vince asked him if they could cuddle up together, to which Ryan replied that it was 'too dangerous to move'. Mohammed confirmed that there had been no houses in that spot in 1991, and as for a military post, there never had been one here, he said. The nearest military instal�lation was the now ruined one I had seen while following in the footsteps of McNab, more than fifteen kilometres away. That couldn't even be seen from the berm. What about a military vehicle? `There was no military vehicle here then,' Mohammed said emphatically. 'I was here at the time, and I would either have seen it or seen its tracks. Nothing can pass through here without the Bedouin knowing. There was no military post and no vehicle, and no house that could have been mistaken for one.' What surprised me about the berm was that it was so close to the road � no more than ten kilometres away. This was astonishing, because Ryan says that they left the road at about 0030 hours on 25 January and did not arrive here until 0500 hours � four and a half hours' march to cover ten kilometres. When I looked closely at Ryan's map, the LUP of 25 January appeared to be only about ten kilometres north of the road, suggesting strongly that this could be the spot. And if it was, I could make a good assessment of the distance Ryan actually covered on the night of 24/25 January. Disregarding his own map, he writes that they had covered sixteen kilo�metres southwards from the LUP, then ten kilometres west, then another ten to fifteen kilometres north back to the road. At the most generous estimate, then, his group had covered only forty kilometres by midnight on 24 January from the original lying-up place, in roughly eight hours, rather than the sixty de la Billiere reports in his account. This would, incidentally, mean that they were walking not at the nine kilometres per hour Ryan says, but at five kilometres per hour � the standard SAS pace for an unladen patrol in good conditions. If the lying-up place of 25 January was only ten kilo-metres north of the road, then even giving Ryan's recorded figures the benefit of the doubt, his group cov�ered only fifty kilometres that night, rather than the seventy he says. Judging by his map, though, the distance may have been even less � perhaps no more than forty. Anyone who has tried to march forty kilometres at night over rough and unknown country carrying thirty kilos will recognize that this was no mean feat. To have cov�ered seventy, or indeed, the 'two marathons' as McNab says they did, beggars belief. Incidentally, if Ryan did cover fifty kilometres that night in eleven and a half hours, then the average pace was 4.3 kilometres per hour � one which most SAS men would recognize as pretty good, given the execrable conditions. My next task was to measure the distance between the berm and the place where Mohammed had found Vince's body. I asked Mohammed to take me back to where we had built the cairn, walking in a straight line. Although I couldn't see the little pile of stones from the berm itself, it very quickly came into focus in the flat desert. There was no mistaking the reading on my GPS. The place Vince had died was exactly three kilometres from the berm. I checked it over and over again, but � there could be no possible doubt. It was three kilometres from where Ryan and the others had lain up to the place they had lost Vince. At the pace they had been going on the previous night, that would have made it under an hour's journey, but taking into account that they were suffering profoundly from hypothermia, it might have been an hour and a half. Yet Ryan states baldly in his book that they covered forty kilometres that night and lost Vince after twenty. I had already noticed that, since the Krabilah road lay only sixteen kilometres north of the berm, it would put Vince's disappearance north of that road, when Ryan states it was to the south of it. But more than this,
Ryan clearly gives the idea in his book that Vince's decline was a gradual process that continued over hours as they tried in vain to encourage him onwards, with ever-diminishing success. If Vince had gone within an hour or so of setting off, it immediately threw the whole affair into a very different light. It even meant that the date given on Vince's head�stone in St Martin's churchyard in Hereford � 26 January 1991 � was probably wrong. Ryan says they left the berm at about 1830 hours, so if my information was correct, the time of Vince's collapse � or at least his disappearance � cannot have been after about 2000 hours on 25 January. If what Mohammed had told me was true, then Ryan must have been extremely confused about the events of that night, because even the facts he reported to the Regiment were wrong. This is borne out by the Commanding Officer's official letter to Mrs Phillips informing her of Vince's death, stating that he had wandered off in the 'course of the night, and had died on the night of 25/26 January. This information, which can only have come from Ryan, .suggests that the disappearance of Vince Phillips had occurred well into the night's march, rather than a mere three kilometres � 1.8 miles � from the starting point. Ryan did apparently tell the Phillips family that Vince had died on the night of 25 January � why, then, does the headstone bear the date 26 January? The only other versions of what happened that night come from McNab and de la Billiere. Both probably orig�inate from Ryan or Stan, and are therefore interesting for the extra details they put in or leave out. McNab, for instance, says that at one point when they stopped Vince had become incoherent, and Stan and Ryan tried to hud�dle around him to give him body heat, but without much success. He implies that they were walking together until they started to ascend a gradient, when Stan stopped to wait for Vince, but Vince didn't appear, whereupon both of them went back to look for him. De la Billiere's account differs only in one significant detail: he reports that Ryan left Stan and went back to look for Vince alone. Both accounts are wrong in at least one aspect � Ryan and Stan could not have been climbing a gradient when Vince disappeared, since in the area where Mohammed found Vince's body there are no gradients: the desert here is completely and utterly flat. McNab himself repeats the intelligence brief the patrol were given before the mis�sion, stating that within seventeen kilometres of the original MSR, the land dropped no more than fifty metres. If Stan and Ryan abandoned Vince to die alone and cold as Stan has now admitted, then, of course, they had had no choice. Militarily, they had done the right thing. The great weakness of all Special Forces operations has always been the problem of casualties. The official doc�trine is simply to leave them, but there is also an unwritten code of comradeship in the army obliging men to save their comrades if there is the slightest chance. There could be no moral condemnation of Ryan and Stan. Had they not abandoned him, they would all have died. It struck me suddenly that Ryan had felt intensely guilty about Vince's death. Even after he returned to Britain he admitted that thoughts about Vince plagued him, and he continually went over the things he might have done to save him Ryan must have known when writing his book that his condemnation of Vince was a breach of Regimental tra-dition, yet he adamantly followed it through. The other members of the patrol were obviously furious at his por-trayal of Vince, because, following the TV version of The One That Got Away, the Phillips family received letters from Coburn, Dinger and McNab, all criticizing Ryan in no uncertain terms. 'At no time throughout the patrol did Vince display the actions portrayed . . .' Coburn wrote. `On the contrary, the very fact that he was in the patrol disputes Ryan's version of events, otherwise he would never have been allowed to deploy across the border .. . although I did not know Vince well, I found him of immense help to me personally on the build-up to the operation. His strength of character and Regimental expe-rience was a constant source of confidence. His actions on the ground can only be described as professional and you . . . have every right to be justly proud of him.' u Stan later told the Daily Mirror, 'What gives me the greatest pain is how Vince's death was written about by Chris Ryan. Any one of us could have dropped first. It just happened to be Vince. But to say, as Ryan did, that he wasn't up to it was despicable � utterly despicable � and the whole Regiment thought it and still thinks that.' Dinger characterized his reaction to the portrayal of Vince by Ryan as 'shock, anguish, loathing' and called it a pack of lies. 'If you can draw any comfort from this let�ter,' he told Veronica and her husband, 'it is that I tell you the truth. Vince was a good mate and a key member of the patrol in a difficult situation. Vince DID NOT corn- 217 promise the patrol or behave in the manner portrayed. It was an honour to have known Vince and served with him on operations.' 29 In a letter to Vince's father, McNab confirmed that Vince had done his job proficiently and attacked Ryan bitterly for denigrating 'comrades who would have sacri�ficed their lives for his had the situation demanded it'. 30 Despite these reassurances from other patrol members, there was still the classified SAS report about Vince which had been leaked to the Mail on Sunday that appeared to have given official sanction to Ryan's story. A close scrutiny of the report, though, leaves little doubt as to its source. Since McNab does not say that Vince alerted the herdsboy by moving, and Dinger expressly denied it, surely this allegation can only have come from Ryan himself. Similarly, the allegation that Vince fell asleep on stag is only mentioned by Ryan, and the asser�tion that his 'heart wasn't in it and he lacked the will to survive' is similar in form and content to Ryan's book. As he was officially second-in-command of Vince's half-patrol, Ryan would have been the proper source for such a report. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Ryan's last conversation with Vince, lying in the ruts by the berm, slowly freezing to death, might provide a key. Here Ryan says that Vince confessed to the fact that he had spotted the herdsboy, and that the herdsboy had therefore seen him, confirming Ryan's view that the ser�geant had jeopardized the entire mission. One of the reasons that Vince was suffering so badly from hypother- mia was because � on his own admission � Ryan had refused to allow them to break hard routine, as McNab had done, and risk compromise by the enemy position 600 metres away. Yet by making hot brews and risking compromise, McNab had put the lives of his men higher than tactical considerations. And my eyewitness said there was no enemy position nearby, so Ryan's refusal to relax is questionable, considering Vince's condition. Could it be, I wondered, that Ryan felt so deeply guilty for his refusal to abandon hard routine, even though according to my witness there had been no enemy nearby, that when it came to writing his book he was compelled to try to persuade his readers � and perhaps even himself � that he was not really responsible for what happened to Vince? CHAPTER twenty-one THE KRABILAH ROAD WAS ONLY sixteen kilometres north of. Vince's cairn and as I came off the roof of the plateau and began to descend into the more broken coun�try beyond, I saw the line of pylons that Ryan mentions running parallel with the asphalt road. This confirmed my belief that Vince's disappearance could not have occurred twenty kilometres north of the berm as Ryan says, because he also recalls that as he and Stan descended from the 'cruel, high plateau' he hoped to God that Vince was doing the same. I followed their-progress under the pylons and across the road towards the two-metre chain-link fence sealing off the railway line. The fence looked impenetrable from a distance, though Ryan wrote that if they had not been in such a weakened condition they would have scaled it in a minute. As it was, they had to cut their way through with a Leatherman. I had one with me and would have like to have done the same, but my minders were waiting on the other side and I thought it inadvisable to start cut�ting up government property. It was only when I got right up close that I saw it would not be necessary � the fence was only nominal, riddled with gaps and holes, and I passed through without even breaking step. I was fairly sure that I was on Ryan's and Stan's line of march on the night of 25/26 January. Ahead of me, beyond the railway line, was a round-topped hill, perhaps the very same one on which Ryan had seen anti-aircraft gun-emplacements. A few kilometres further on the land broke up int
o a moonscape of serried ridges, bronze-green in colour and penetrated by the deeper green veins of wadis filled with low scrub. It was in one of these wadis that the two of them had holed up at about 0530 hours on the morning of 26 January, wrapping their arms round each other for warmth. WHEN AT MID-MORNING THE SUN broke out of the clouds, Ryan realized that it was going to be a fine day and said a silent prayer of thanks The sunshine saved their lives. One more day in the kind of conditions they had endured in the berm would certainly have seen them off, he thought. The relative warmth of the day revived them and, to restore morale, they began cleaning their weapons and laying their kit out to dry At about noon, they heard goats approaching and saw to their dis�may that the animals were accompanied by a young shepherd, who sat down to watch his flock. Ryan was all for 'doing' the Arab if he came in their direction, but Stan demurred � he thought the shepherd might be able *to help them get a vehicle and food. The argument was cut short when the man approached them abruptly and, according to Ryan, Stan jumped up and grabbed him. He seemed innocuous enough � Ryan suspected that he was of low intelligence � but Stan began drawing pictures in the air and repeating 'house' and 'car', to which the man nodded and jabbered in Arabic. Impulsively Stan decided to go off with the man in the hope of getting hold of a vehicle. Ryan thought the proposal ridiculous, even stupid, but Stan was set on the idea, and was even prepared to leave his weapon behind to cut a less aggres�sive figure. Eventually Ryan let him go, on the understanding that he would wait here in the wadi until last light � about 1830 hours � and if Stan failed to return, he would press on alone. Stan had already started off with the Arab when Ryan called him back and insisted that he took his weapon. Once again he tried to persuade his comrade to shoot the Iraqi, but Stan replied that he trusted him. Taking his M16 but leaving his web�bing, he set off east with his new companion. Ryan watched the two of them until they disappeared, swal�lowed up by the landscape. He was not to see Stan again until after the war. RYAN AND MCNAB'S BOOKS BOTH contain short descriptions of Stan's last few hours of freedom gleaned from personal contact and the official debrief after the war. Stan's own account was included in a television documentary first transmitted in February 2002. Ryan wrote that Stan had walked for about four hours with the goatherd until, in the distance, they had seen a group of buildings with vehicles parked outside. The man had pointed to them and turned away, leaving Stan to approach them alone. As he had neared the houses, an Arab in a white dishdasha had emerged and Stan had tried to engage him in conversation. The man had made a dive for the vehicle � a Toyota Land-Cruiser � and, thinking he was going for a weapon, Stan shot him down. The sound of the gunshot brought about eight militia-men armed with AK47s charging out of the building, and Stan blasted away at them, taking out two, until his ammunition ran out. He made an attempt to get into the Land-Cruiser, but while he was fumbling for the key, the windscreen was smashed in and he found him�self staring up the barrel of a Kalashnikov. Firing wildly into the air, the Iraqis bundled him into another car and drove him to the nearest town, where he was questioned by officers and given tea. Later, though, he was starved, blindfolded, and beaten so badly he sustained a hairline fracture of the skull. Eventually he was reunited with McNab and Dinger in a holding centre in Baghdad. Stan's account of his capture by the Iraqis, as portrayed in the television reconstruction, was broadly similar. However, the version of events that McNab says Stan told him when they met is basically the same, but differs in some details. McNab reports, for example, that it was the shepherd � an old man, in this version � who volun�teered to take them to a house and a vehicle, drawing pictures in the sand. While in McNab's account it is clear that Stan intended to hijack a vehicle, return with it and make a dash for the Syrian border that night, Ryan's account is far more ambiguous. Although Stan- does talk about getting a tractor, Ryan repeats that he is convinced the Iraqis wouldn't help. He likened their situation to two German paratroopers dropped in the UK during World War II � any British civilian offering assistance would only be doing so as a ruse, `to put us in the nick', as Ryan wrote. At one stage Ryan apparently tells his mate, `It'll mean us splitting up,' � an almost subliminal indication that he knew his friend would not return. In McNab's text it is a but rather than a group of buildings that the shepherd guides Stan to, and a soldier rather than a civil-ian in a white dishdasha whom the SAS man drops. A group of six or seven more soldiers then runs out, and Stan gets off three shots, hits two of the squaddies, gets a stoppage and runs to the car, where he is brought up sharply by a rifle in the ribs. I HAD ASKED ABBAS IF HE KNEW of any isolated cottage, but or group of buildings in the desert nearby, and once again he came up trumps. As I camped that night on the side of a broad wadi, he turned up and told me that there was only one such house that he knew of �about ten kilometres from here and twelve from the main road leading to Ani, the nearest small town. The house was uninhabited now, but was owned by a man from his own tribe called al-Haj Abdallah, an educated person who lived in Ani, but who owned a large flock of sheep. Abdallah, he told me, knew about the capture of a British commando here in 1991. Not only was this Abdallah a distant relation of Abbas's, but he had also encountered him in Baghdad, when he had been presented to Saddam Hussein with himself, his father, and Adnan Badawi as another citizen who had helped foil the commando patrol which had been dropped on Iraqi soil. That night Abbas and I talked for several hours by the fire. He told me of his years in the Special Forces during the Iran�Iraq war � how he had been terrified of dying until he had dreamed of his grandfather, who had told him not to be afraid. He described the incidents in which he had been wounded, horrific accounts of hand-to-hand fighting, and told me how he had come face to face with an Iranian in no man's land. 'He was a big fellow,' he said. 'And I was out of ammunition and so was he. He pulled a grenade out, so I jumped on him and hit him a great wallop with my rifle-butt. When he went down, I picked up a stone and kept on bashing and bashing him with it till he let out a long "aaaaaaargh". God forgive me, but it was him or me. Another time I was crawling over a ridge with a friend and the Iranians opened up on us with machine-guns. A bullet hit my helmet and knocked me out and my friend carried me back to our lines. He got a citation for that. `God knows, I have been near to death many times and now I don't fear it any more. You only fear death if you are attached to the things of life. I love my children, but I know they have only been lent to me by God for a time and aren't my possessions. The same with money or live-stock � we are only the stewards of our wealth. It doesn't belong to us but to God, and we cannot take it with us when we go. My only problem is my ankle � I can't run or walk far any more. The doctors here have no fear of God. They operated on me in Baghdad and it came out worse. Do you think I could get a better operation in Britain?' Abbas had the qualities which I admired most in the Bedouin: their courage, endurance, hospitality, loyalty and generosity. He was a simple man with an uncom-plicated outlook who had been dragged into a hellish war, had seen the worst that the modern world had to offer, but had never lost his humility. I realized, too, that Abbas was the key to the whole story � not only my own inves�tigation, but the Bravo Two Zero story itself. Fate is a strange mistress, I thought. Andy McNab's patrol had been dropped on the doorstep of a man with twelve years' experience in Special Forces, who had spotted them and organized an attack. Everything that had hap�pened to them had resulted from his alertness. In my story, too, he had been the prime mover: he had intro�duced me to the man who had found Vince, related Adnan's story and showed me the site of the hijack. Abbas might have been 'got at' by the government, I reflected, but when you spend weeks in the desert with someone, their true character comes through, and I would have put Abbas bin Fadhil down as one of the most honest men I had ever met in my life. `It is a sin to lie,' he told me often. 'You might get away with it, but you cannot hide from God. Lying is a terrible disgrace.' THE HOUSE ABBAS HAD TOLD ME about lay where he had said it was, ten kilometres away � it was neither a gro
up of buildings, nor exactly a hut, but a stone-built cottage of about four rooms standing by an ancient well on a wadi side. The roof had fallen in and the rooms were full of rubble. Abbas told me that the well had been dry for many years. I couldn't tell, of course, if there were any other cottages like this one around, but Abbas had told me there weren't, and certainly I had seen no others, nor were they marked on the map. The house was connected with the main asphalt road to Ani by a cart-track, and while I waited there in what little shade there was, Abbas went off to fetch al-Haj Abdallah. I had a long wait. It was afternoon by the time they arrived back Abbas introduced me to a surly, bespeak cled man, who looked anything but a Bedouin. He wore a red shamagh with black cords and a gilt-edged brown cloak. Abdallah had been brought up in Ani, where he was a local party official, but had inherited a large flock of sheep, which he kept out here on the fringes of the desert. The cottage was now derelict, but in the past he had used it to house the shepherd who looked after his flock. Ten years ago, he said, it had been used by a young shepherd whom he described as backward, which imme�diately struck a familiar note. Ryan had described the man whom Stan had gone off with as being of low intel�ligence and the village idiot. I asked avidly after this shepherd, but Abdallah said that he was no longer work�ing for him. We sat down in the shade and I asked Abdallah to tell me what he had seen here back in 1991. 'It was 26 January,' he said, 'and I drove from Ani in my Toyota pick-up to visit my shepherd who was then living in this cottage, to see if he needed any food or drink. When I arrived he wasn't here, but as I looked around I saw a man up in the wadi about two hundred metres away. I drove towards him and I realized he was a foreign soldier. He was carrying a rifle. I drove up and spoke to him � I know a little English � and asked him what he was doing there. I said to him that I would go to Ani and bring back food, and he seemed quite agreeable to this and didn't try to stop me. Of course, I went straight to the police in Ani and told them there was an enemy soldier near my cottage. They collected about fifteen men and set off back in Land-Cruisers. CHAPTER twenty-two RYAN WRITES THAT HE WAITED for Stan in the wadi until about 1830 hours, when he decided that his friend wasn't coming back and set off on the original bearing. He had been marching for only fifteen minutes when he saw headlights approaching the place he had just left. His first thought was that Stan had actually managed to get hold of a vehicle, but when he realized there were two sets of headlights he knew it had to be the enemy, and that Stan had been captured. The two vehicles came charging towards him in the moonlight and, according to Ryan, he found shelter behind a small bush, where he prepared to make his last stand. He didn't know, he says, if they had seen him, but he didn't want to take the risk. He had already opened up the 66mm rocket-launcher he had carried with him since the first contact on 24 January, and when the two four-wheel-drive vehicles got within twenty metres he let the first vehicle have it with a rocket head-on. There was a whoosh and a resounding thump as the missile struck home, and the vehicle stopped. Ryan dropped the useless 66mm tube, grabbed his M16 and smacked a 40mm grenade into the bonnet of the second vehicle. He then charged the vehicles, sprayed the men in dishdashas who were sitting in the back with bullets and then, realizing he was out of ammunition, ran away. He picked up the rest of his magazines and hared off into the desert until he could run no further, then slowed down to a walk, carrying on without a break for a further two hours. Although this must easily have been the most dramatic action Ryan had ever been involved in in his life, he devotes only eleven lines of text to his close-quarter assault on the vehicles. He does not mention details of the drivers or passengers, saying in passing only that there were 'men in dishdashas' in the back. No images, sounds, smells or sensations are evoked whatsoever, and there is no mention of any reaction from the enemy force � not so much as a scream, even. The Arabs � who Ryan says were obviously looking for him � seem to have sat there passively like statues, without even trying to jump out, run away or fight back, while the man they had been on the lookout for had mowed them down single-handedly. Not everyone has brilliant powers of description, of course, but Ryan's do not seem to be lacking in the other parts of the book. It is not every day one knocks out two vehicles and kills a score of enemies, not even in the SAS. Coburn, in his testimony at the Auckland trial, singled out this incident as fictitious. Coburn was not, of course, there at the time, but he certainly was present at the offi-cial debriefs afterwards, in which, according to former RSM Peter Ratcliffe, Ryan did not mention having had contacts with any Iraqi personnel during his walk to freedom. Ryan continued alone, coming to the Euphrates that night, where he filled his water-bottles, then he turned due west towards Syria. Moving by night, lying up by day, boxing round any obstacles, he managed to continue without food for another five days until he finally climbed across the border fence near al-Qaim in the early hours of 30 January. Earlier that night, though, he says he faced the final test of his will to survive when he was obliged to kill two Iraqis, one with a knife and the other with his bare hands. Ryan says that in the course of that night he had inadvertently walked into the middle of an Iraqi army motor-transport park surrounded by houses and full of soldiers. As he crouched in the shadows, trying to work out how to get back to the road, two men approached, and when they passed, Ryan says, his sur vival instinct took over and, whipping out his knife, he struck the first man in the neck and 'ripped his throat out'.31 The other man ran off, but Ryan rushed after him, brought him down and, getting one arm round his throat in a judo hold, wrung his neck. The man died instantly. Once again, though this is apparently the first time in his life that' yan has ever killed men with his hands, he devotes only a paragraph to the whole incident. McNab himself has explained in his book just how difficult it is to kill a man with a knife- 'You have to get hold of his head,' he says, 'hoik it back as you would with a sheep, and just keep on cutting until you've gone right through the windpipe and the head has just about come away in your hands!" Yet what impelled Ryan to go out of his way to attack these men in the first place? 'Ryan's . claimed actions during his E and E run,' wrote SAS vet�eran Ken Connor, 'were directly contrary to the standard operating procedures taught to every SAS man in combat survival training . . . Chris Ryan knew that his prime task was to protect the rest of his patrol by evading capture, yet he claims to have invited contact with the enemy by launching attacks on Iraqi sentries. Either he was badly trained, or he deliberately broke SOPs, or we must seek another reason for his version of events!" Ex-RSM Peter Ratcliffe says in his book Eye of the Storm: 'In the official debriefing ... which was recorded on video,' he writes, 'Ryan" made no mention of encountering any enemy troops during his epic trek to freedom. Yet in his book there are several accounts of contacts, and even a description of an incident when he was forced to kill an Iraqi sentry with a knife. If these incidents happened, then I find it difficult to believe that they could have slipped his mind during the debriefing.' 34 THAT NIGHT I SLEPT AT THE COTTAGE where Stan had been captured and in the morning I continued my progress towards the Euphrates, crossing undulating ground that was dotted with what looked like semi�permanent Bedouin camps. I crossed beneath the pylons under which Ryan had sat down, and the road beneath which he had lain up in a culvert. It was the early hours of the morning by the time I came to the great system of dry wadis Ryan mentions, and as I made my way through the muddy fields down by the Euphrates, the first light of dawn was already gleaming on the water. When I reached the bank I knelt down and filled my water-bottles, just as Ryan had done somewhere near here ten years earlier, and sat back to watch the sunrise. I had accounted for the death or capture of seven mem�bers of the Bravo Two Zero patrol, all of them under different circumstances from the ones described in the books. Ryan's fate was known. He was 'the one that got away', who had personally made SAS history by completing the longest escape march ever made by a member of the Regiment. It was a feat of human endurance and deter�mination which has rarely been equalled � a riveting story in itself. Thi
s always had been, I thought, a story that was much more about the desert than about the Iraqis: Chris Ryan might not have killed all the Iraqi soldiers he says, but he had survived against the greater enemy, against all the odds. I had intended to complete Ryan's march to the Syrian border � easy enough in daylight, with time and logistics on my side � but suddenly I no longer had the stomach for it. There would always be the ghost of Vince Phillips. I took a long, cool drink of the ancient water of the Euphrates, just as the sun burst in all its royal fiery plumage over the distant hills. CHAPTER twenty-three THE DAY BEFORE I LEFT BAGHDAD I was taken to see some relics of the Bravo Two Zero patrol that had been arranged for a private viewing in a house in the sub-urbs. There were no M16s, but all four of the patrol's Minimis were there, painted camouflage colours, one of them with its top-cover smashed. This, I imagined was Stan's Minimi � the one McNab had carried until after the split, and had dismantled. There was a mass of web-bing, impossible to identify � although one of the pouches contained brown waxed-paper wrappings that might have held the plastic explosive McNab had appar-ently been carrying when he was captured. I was also shown three of the eight Bergens the patrol had ditched when Abbas and Hayil had bumped them. The other five packs were missing, purloined by Bedouin or soldiers somewhere along the line, Abu Omar said. The three remaining packs were of the SAS type I was familiar with, one marked 'Bob' � obviously Bob Consiglio � and another 'Lane'. This latter had been the patrol signaller's Bergen, I thought ironically, and the one that McNab said Legs had told him was 'shot to fuck', though it was perfectly intact. The third pack had a name scrawled on it that I didn't recognize, but may have been a Bergen drawn from the stores at random before the campaign. I was disappointed not to have found Ryan's own Bergen so I could confirm that it had been struck by an S60 shell as McNab says. This was the crowning touch on a journey that had become much more than an attempt to find out the truth about Vince Phillips: a journey that had turned into a fascinating historical detective story. If what I had dis-covered was correct then Vince Phillips had not compromised Bravo Two Zero. The patrol hadn't even been spotted by the herdsboy as they had surmised, but by the man on the bulldozer who had wandered into their LUP quite innocently. He had seen two men, not one, and even if one of those was Vince, Abbas had been so close to them that eluding his view would have been impossible. They had not been attacked by masses of Iraqi infantry and armour, but by three civilians. They had not charged, and they had not been shot up by S60s. They had carried 95 kilos per man not twenty kilometres over flat desert, but only two kilometres. They had not been pursued by the enemy. They had not covered the distances they claimed on the first night of the escape and evasion plan. They had not hijacked a New York Yellow Cab, had not had a shoot-out at the vehicle checkpoint, but had left the car before reaching it, and had had an Iraqi with them in the vehicle. McNab and Coburn had not shot up a large convoy. They had not been mistreated by their captors, at least not initially, but had been shown acts of kindness. Vince Phillips had not been responsible for the split, nor could the cowardly behaviour ascribed to him by Ryan possibly have occurred. Vince had probably died on 25 January, not the following day. Ryan did not destroy two vehicles nor gun down their occupants. Neither did he kill any sen�tries with his bare hands. Finally, far from clocking up 250 Iraqis killed and injured, Bravo Two Zero did not inflict anything like the massive casualties McNab and Ryan claim in their book. BACK IN SWINDON, I PRESENTED Vince's binoc�ulars to the Phillips family and showed them film clips of the Iraqi Bedouin helping me to build the memorial cairn. They were delighted with the binos and moved by the fact that I had buried the can of Guinness, but greeted the participation of the Bedouin with some surprise. I understood why. The Iraqis were the enemy � why should they be helping to commemorate the death of a man who had gone out there to kill them? I was familiar with the Arabs and spoke their language, but for most British peo�ple, I realized, it was difficult to see past the prejudices created by years of what amounted essentially to propa�ganda. In the end � to people back home � my witnesses were `ragheads', and why should anyone believe them? I was reminded of Saint Exupery's story in The Little Prince of the Turkish astronomer who discovered a new planet: the other astronomers would not accept his discovery because he wore Turkish dress. Of course, the Iraqis might have penned the names 'Bob' and 'Lane' on the Bergens I had seen in Baghdad. In fact, the entire operation � everyone I'd interviewed and everywhere I'd visited � could have been part of a massive sting. One scenario ran like this: while I had been delayed in Baghdad on the pretext of awaiting permission from the military, Iraqi intelligence officers had read McNab's and Ryan's books, digested the story right down to the most insignificant details, and rushed up to Anbar to brief Abbas and his brother and all his family as to what they should say. Adil, the shepherd-boy, had been instructed to say that he had not seen the patrol in the wadi. McNab says the patrol was attacked by armoured personnel carriers and large numbers of enemy troops; Abbas was to say there had been only three men. McNab says they were pursued by vehicles for many kilometres; Abbas was to tell me there had been no pursuers. McNab wrote that they hiked twenty kilometres carrying 95 kilos � fifteen stone � per man; Abbas was to say that he had heard the helicopter, come in two kilometres away. Ryan asserts he was the first man in the patrol when it moved out, but Abbas was to say it was the last but one man who waved to them. Abbas was then to introduce me to Mohammed, who was also briefed to say he had found Vince's body in a certain place on the plateau, kilometres short of where it had actually been found, and give all the details of what had been in Vince's pockets � even a photo of his wife and two daughters, which the Iraqi intelligence had somehow found out, even though that was not mentioned in either of the books. Mohammed had also been told to convince me he had Vince's pistol by a cunning double bluff, and had been given a pair of binoculars that had once belonged to Vince to emphasize his veracity. Mohammed had been obliged to show me a pit which he claimed was Ryan's 'tank berm', which hap-pened to coincide with the point marked on Ryan's map. He and Abbas and the other Bedouin had been induced to pretend they thought the patrol were 'heroes' to prove that they had no axe to grind. The Iraqi intelligence agents would also have had to concoct a newspaper inter�view with Adnan Badawi and get Abbas �. whom they had got me to employ as a guide without suggesting it by making sure I got separated from the vehicles on my first day out � to tell a cock-and-bull story that Adnan had been with McNab in the car and that there had been no shoot-out at the VCP. They had also somehow found out McNab's real name, which was a closely guarded secret even from the British public. Ahmad, the police sergeant major, had been told to corroborate Adnan's story, and he and all the witnesses in Krabilah been got at in advance to present a sugar-coated version of the arrest or deaths of members of the patrol and, with the inhabitants of Rummani, had been admonished to tell me, if asked, that no Iraqis had been killed or injured. The more I mulled over it, the more I realized that it just wouldn't wash. So many of the facts I had been presented with were totally irrelevant to Iraqi propaganda �whether Adil had or had not seen the patrol, for instance, which man had waved, or the exact location of Vince's corpse. So many other facets of the books were question�able completely independently of my Iraqi witnesses: the fact that Ryan reported that the heli drop-off was only two kilometres from the LUP, for example, or that an Iraqi had been present with McNab in the taxi; the fact that Coburn had pointed out that many of McNab's and Ryan's claims were false. The effort to assimilate all the detailed material and to concoct an alternative scenario would have just been too great a task for an intelligence service in a country exhausted by war, with a return of lit�tle value. Our film was not, after all, going to get sanctions lifted. If there were inaccuracies in what I had been told, it was much more likely that they were indi�vidual, rather than part of a conspiracy � a failure of memory here, a small prejudice there, an individual inter�pretation or an attempt to sh
ow oneself in a favourable light. But most of all, I didn't believe there had been a conspiracy because over the weeks in Iraq I had come to trust Abbas � this 'idiot on the bulldozer' � as one of the wisest and most honest men I had met. Nevertheless, I knew that many would question the statements of my witnesses, which is why my final objec�tive was to talk to the man who had been at the very heart of SAS organization during the Gulf War: ex-RSM Peter Ratcliffe. As everyone in the army knows, the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major holds almost mystical conno�tations. The RSM is a unique figure: the highest ranking non-commissioned officer in a regiment or battalion, he generally has more experience than anyone else in the unit, including most of the officers. As there can only be one RSM at any one time, he is the symbol and embodi�ment of the Regiment itself. I met Peter Ratcliffe on neutral but mutually familiar ground, in the Brecon Beacons, where both of us had trained with the Parachute Regiment more than twenty years earlier, and where both of us had passed selection for our different SAS units. Ratcliffe was a man in his early fifties: a very fit, alert-looking individual, whose jeans were immaculate and whose walking boots were highly polished. Ratcliffe had been awarded the DCM for his role in commanding an SAS unit behind enemy lines in Iraq during the Gulf War, where he had become the only NCO in British military history to have relieved an officer of his post. He had also had the gall to hold an official meeting of the sergeants' mess in the field � the subject of the painting Mess Meeting at Wadi Tubal by war artist David Rowlands. Ratcliffe had remained in the army for several years after the war, and had eventually been commissioned, leaving with the rank of major. He described the transition from RSM to major as 'changing from a cockerel to a feather duster overnight'. He had done stints with both 21 and 23 SAS and an armoured regiment before retiring. According to his own story, when Ratcliffe was being presented with his DCM by the Queen, Her Majesty commented that 'it must have been terrible in the Gulf War'. 'Actually, Your Majesty, I quite enjoyed it,' Ratcliffe replied, which immediately cut short the conversation. Down-to-earth, frank and open, I suspected that Ratcliffe's rather stern, bluff exterior concealed a deep ability to empathize with others and an extremely high intelligence. First, I asked him about the allegations that the Bravo Two Zero patrol had been ill-prepared for the operation. `They turned down the idea of taking vehicles,' he said. `That, in my opinion, was their biggest mistake. Both the Boss (Commanding Officer) and I advised them strongly to do so, but McNab rejected the advice. That was really the cause of everything that went wrong. As for prepara�tion, they had access to the same data that everyone else had at that time � no more nor less. The satellite images they had weren't the best because they didn't show depressions, but with experience McNab should have known they would be there. As far as the weather goes, the met boys predicted that it would be much milder and no one serving in the Regiment had fought in the Iraqi desert before, so we had no experience. As you know, pre-dicting the weather is never easy � the point is that we were all in the same boat.' I realized that, in fact, the patrol had had more detailed information than they had suggested � McNab notes that the intelligence officer who briefed the patrol told them that the desert was rocky with hardly any sand, yet he had persisted in going ahead with the idea of digging an OP anyway. Ryan states clearly that he did not find the presence of barking dogs near the hell drop-off point unexpected because the satellite images they had been shown revealed human habitation. This negates McNab's statement that Abbas's house should not have been there. The allegation that there were more than three thousand troops in the area is unproven, and is irrelevant anyway, if Abbas's account of the firelight is correct. In the end �even if they existed � these troops did not play a part in the capture of the patrol. According to my witnesses, Consiglio was shot by civilians and the rest of the patrol were captured by civilians or police. In addition, McNab might have detected the presence of a military base � and therefore the possibility of troop concentrations and anti�aircraft defences � simply by looking at the map, on which the compound stands out 'like balls on a bulldog', as he would have put it. `What about the fact that they were given the wrong radio frequencies?' I asked Ratcliffe. `When a signaller is given frequencies for an operation, he is supposed to check them, and it is the patrol com-mander's duty to make sure he does. "McNab" wrote in his book that this was a "human error" that shouldn't happen. again, but the question is, whose error? The responsibility was McNab's.' I enquired about the allegation � particularly by Coburn � that the Regimental command had not sent an immedi�ate rescue mission in keeping with tradition: a failure that was tantamount to betrayal. `A helicopter did go out on 24 January,' Ratcliffe said, `but the pilot was taken seriously ill and had to turn back. Subsequently, two rescue missions were launched � one involving both a British Chinook and an American heli-copter and five members of the Regiment. They searched the area where the patrol should have been and followed their probable escape and evasion route back to Saudi, at great risk to their own lives, but did not find them because they had changed their E and E plan and gone for Syria instead. McNab had written very clearly in his plan, which was submitted to Operations before the mission, that in the event of serious compromise, the patrol would head towards the Saudi border. To have changed the plan would have been fine if they had been in radio contact, but they weren't, and by changing it they were putting at risk the lives of all those involved in attempts to rescue them.' Finally, bearing in mind what I had been told by my eyewitnesses in Iraq, I asked Ratcliffe what the patrol had said about their experiences on their return to the UK after the war, in March 1991. `Every member of the Regiment who had been on patrol or in action during the Gulf War was debriefed on return;' he said. The debriefings were held in front of the whole Regiment and recorded on video. The idea was that everyone would benefit from hearing about the expe-riences of those who had been at the sharp end. The one jarring note is that what was said at the debrief often dif�fers widely from what has been written in some of the books published later. When Ryan was debriefed we all marvelled at his skill, courage and endurance in walking 186 miles to safety. But he made no mention at all of encountering enemy troops on his trek. I talked to Ryan on many occasions afterwards and he never made any references to knocking out vehicles or killing men with a pocket knife or his bare hands. I personally find it puz�zling that he should have forgotten that. As for McNab, he told us in the debriefing that the patrol had been involved in several minor skirmishes with the Iraqis and had returned fire. There was no mention at all of being involved in firefights with hordes of enemy or extremely heavy contacts with Iraqi armoured vehicles and substan�tial contingents of infantry' Ratcliffe also said that he felt it insensitive on Ryan's and McNab's parts to hide behind pseudonyms when they named their three dead colleagues in their books, in deliberate contravention of the Regiment's traditional silence. Ratcliffe, who writes under his own name, scorns the idea that McNab uses the pseudonym for security rea�sons. 'Neither McNab nor Ryan are serving in the Regiment any longer,' he said. 'So what possible reason could they have for concealing their true identities?' Finally, Ratcliffe solved the mystery of Vince's missing dog-tags. 'He probably wasn't wearing any,' he said. 'I never have. Mine are still sealed in the plastic bag they were issued to me in. A lot of the lads never wear them at all.' WHATEVER MCNAB AND RYAN WROTE, the fact is that they and their comrades survived against incredible odds. They were dropped behind enemy lines without transport in an area where concealment was nigh impos�sible, and yet they persisted with their mission. Once compromised, they displayed a determination and resourcefulness that were almost incredible given the terrible conditions they were obliged to work under. They gave their all, and pushed themselves to the very bounds of death � some of them beyond it. The grit and resilience they displayed in the face of overwhelming odds were in the highest traditions of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment: the finest fighting unit in the world. As Abbas himself said, 'They were heroes. T
hey were given an impossible job, that's all.' Their true heroism is only marred, Ratcliffe agrees, by the dubious nature of much of what they have subse�quently written. So why was the basic story not enough? The blame must lie not with McNab and Ryan, but with us, the reading public, who demand of our heroes not endurance, but the resolution of all problems by force. In today's morality, when the response to every international threat is to hit out, force itself is viewed as cleaner and more upright than subterfuge, and aggression and violence are the defining characteristics of heroism and power. More than anything, McNab and Ryan exist to hide a truth about war that is to be found at the level of Baghdad's Amiriya Bunker: that it is a filthy business in which thousands of innocent people are mutilated and killed by faceless weapons developed and operated by tens of thousands of faceless men and women. In this age when wars are won by technology, we are more anxious than ever to believe in Rambo. But Rambo does not exist, not even in the SAS. He is a cipher � an acceptable human mask for the incomprehensible monster of mod�ern war. NOTES TOTGA: Chris Ryan The One That Got Away London 1995 BTZ: Andy McNab Bravo Two Zero London 1993 EOTS: Peter Ratcliffe Eye of the Storm London 2000 GF: Ken Connor Ghost Force � The Secret History of the SAS London 1998 SC: Sir Peter de la Billiere Storm Command London 1992 1 McNab in an interview with the BBC 2000 2 McNab BTZ p30 3 McNab BTZ p136 4 De la Billiere SC p192 5 Ratcliffe EOTS p191 6 Ryan TOTGA p31 7 Ratcliffe EOTS p230 8 Ryan TOTGA p57 9 Ryan TOTGA p25 10 Ratcliffe EOTS p202 11 Ratcliffe EOTS p203 12 Ryan TOTGA p53 13 McNab BTZ p41 14 Ratcliffe EOTS p177 15 Ratcliffe EOTS p129 16 Ratcliffe EOTS p243 17 Connor GF p474 18 Ratcliffe EOTS p200 19 Ratcliffe EOTS p200 20 Ratcliffe EOTS p200 21 Ratcliffe EOTS p243 22 Ratcliffe EOTS p243 23 McNab in an interview with the BBC 2000 24 McNab BTZ p199 25 Ryan TOTGA p156 26 McNab BTZ p148 27 De la Billiere SC p237 28 Mike Coburn in a letter to James Phillips 19/2/96 29 Dinger in a letter to James Phillips 19/2/96 30 McNab in a letter to James Phillips 19/2/96 31 Ryan TOTGA p156 32 McNab BTZ p148 33 Connor GF p492 34 Ratcliffe EOTS p260 ABBREVIATIONS AAAnti-aircraft guns AK47Aktion Kalashnikov (7.62mm assault rifle, originally Russian-made) APCArmoured personnel carrier AWACS Airborne warning and control system COCommanding Officer (in charge of large formation eg a regiment or battalion) DCMDistinguished Conduct Medal (awarded to non- commissioned ranks for bravery, now replaced by DSO, Distinguished Service Order, for all ranks) FOBForward operating base (SAS HQ nearest to area of operations) GPMGGeneral-purpose machine-gun (7.62mm machine-gun with sustained fire capability) GPSGlobal positioning system (satellite navigation device) LRDGLong Range Desert Group (WWII Special Forces group, immediate predecessor of SAS) LUPLying-up point L2High-explosive grenade M165.56mm Armalite rifle, US-made 251 M20340mm grenade-launcher affixed to M16 rifle MSRMain Supply Route NBCNuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare NCONon-Commissioned Officer OCOfficer Commanding (in charge of smaller units, eg a squadron or company) OPObservation Post . RSMRegimental Sergeant Major (highest non- commissioned rank in a regiment or battalion: individual responsible for discipline) SBSSpecial Boat Service (Royal Marines) TATerritorial Army 2 i/cSecond-in-Command INDEX Abbas bin Fadhil, desert march, 93-4, 101-3, 117-19 drives taxi, 133-6, 144, 154 with Duleim tribe, 209 meets Hussein, 103-4, 225-6 LUP wadi, 52, 63-88, 99, 238 on Phillips's firearm, 206 reports bodies found, 189-90 Stan's capture, 225 supposed briefing, 239-40 wartime experience, 226-7 Abdallah, al-Haj, 103, 225, 228-9 Abu Dhabi, 210 Abu Kamal, 146, 148 Adil bin Fadhil, 63-4, 66, 68-9, 71, 240 Ahmad (Ministry of Information), 23-6 Ahmad (policeman), 143-8, 151, 154-7, 172, 181 al-Haqlaniya, 41, 131, 136, 190-1, 201 al-Hitawi, Ahmad, 135-6 al-Jauf, 35, 37, 91, 92 al-Qaim, 131, 233 Ali (minder), 29-30, 41-2, 68, 104-5, 134 Amiriya Bunker, 23-4, 157, 248 Amman, 15 Anbar, 29, 133 Ani, 225, 228 Arab campaign (1916-17), 17 Auckland, trial, 12-13, 183 Azraq, 16 Badawi, Adnan, in article, 25, 103, 143 meets Hussein, 103, 225-6 refusal to talk, 135 reports commandos, 143-4, 181 speculation about, 138-40 taxi passenger, 25, 134-40 Badiyat Ash-Sham, 15 Baghdad, Amiriya Bunker, 23-4, 157, 248 equipment seen, 164, 237-8 holding centre, 183, 224 journey to, 15, 18-19 meetings in, 20-7 253 reason for delay, 240-1 Scud vulnerability, 36 Bedouin, Buhayat tribe, 64, 67 customs, 19, 50-1, 87, 97-8, 101-3, 109-10, 179, 227 Duleim tribe, 209-10 and memorial, 206-7, 239 military reaction to, 98-9 origins, 15 Belfield, Richard, 12 Bell, Gertrude, 166 Bravo One Niner, 37, 108-9 Bravo One Zero, 37 Bravo Three Zero, 108 Bravo Two Zero, ammunition levels, 159-60 background to team, 1-7, 37-9 bulldozer approach, 66, 68 at checkpoint, 132-3, 137-45, 174 compromised, 3, 72, 194, 217-19 crosses road, 123-80 eludes police, 143-9, 151-4 equipment, 55-7, 72 abandoned, 86, 154, 187, 237 escape route, 91-3, 117-25, 127, 145-6, 151-2 evidence lacking of kills, 180 near Euphrates, 151-7 helicopter rendezvous, 90-1, 111, 120 insertion, 39, 71-3 LUP berm, 193-4, 210-13 LUP knoll, 118-122 LUP wadi, 39, 41-8, 52, 54-61, 65, 67-77 firefight, 75-86, 99, 171 marching order, 77-8, 111-12 mission aims, 1, 7, 14, 43-4, 59-60 patrol divided, in desert, 112-16, 118-20, 188-92 near checkpoint, 161 seen by Bedouin, 75 seen by boy, 11, 22, 51, 60-1,66-8 sees farmhouse, 47-51 shepherd offers food, 125 supposed pursuit, 89, 106 taxi hijack, 25, 126, 131-40, 144-5, 149, 174 Bravo Two Zero, 1, 41, 108, 139, 183, 202 buddy-buddy system, 171 Bush, Pres. George, 36 checkpoint, Krabilah, 132-3, 137-45,146,158-9,174 close-quarter battle, 125 Coburn, Mike (or `Mark'), accuses SAS command, 92 ammunition level, 159 background, 39 book by, 3, 183 captured, 151, 154-5 chases boy, 60 court case, 12-13 near Euphrates, 152-4 with GPS, 90 hospital treatment, 155-6 hypothermia, 123 254 on Ryan's escape, 232 supports Phillips, 217 comms, 55-6,58-9,77,84, 89-90,112-15 compound (on plateau), 129-31;212 Connor, Ken, 234 Consiglio, Robert 'Bob', back�ground, 38 casualties suggested, 159 death of, 171-4,245 equipment, 237 impersonates Iraqi, 131,141 conspiracy, rejected, 239-47 de la Billiere, Gen. Sir Peter, 33-4,37,188,213, 215-16 Deilan (minder), 15 desert, conditions, 16-17,94-7, 117-18,122,244 plateau, 128-9 terrain near road, 127-8 water required in, 95-6 weapon found in, 118-19 Desert Storm, 32-5 Dinger, background, 38 in captivity, 177,181 hears Consiglio firing, 171 on Rummani, 161-3,165-6 supports Phillips, 217-18 escape-belt, 89 escape plan, 91-2 escape route, changed, 91-3, 245-6 Euphrates, 146,152-4,161-7, 233,234-5 Eye of the Storm, 13,234 Fadhil (Abbas's father), 74-5, 82 Fadhil, Abbas bin see Abbas bin Fadhil Fadhil, Adil bin see Adil bin Fadhil Farraj (on Rummani), 167-8 Fayadh (discovers McNab), 175-9 Fellahin (peasants), 162-3, 167 film, 12,15,239,242 Fulcrum TV, 12 Furneaux, Charles, 12 Geneva Convention, 182 Goran (minder), 15,18-19 Habbaniya, 204 Hawran, Wadi, 43,94-5,101 Hayil (Abbas's nephew), 63, 71,75,78-88,93,237 Hejaz railway, 17 helicopter, drop-off point, 71-3,110,117 rendezvous, 90-1,111,120 Hussein, Pres. Saddam, atroci- ties, 179 attacks Israel, 35 Iran�Iraq war, 30 Kuwait invasion, 31-2 portraits of, 19,21 propaganda, 158 releases hostages, 33 rewards Abbas, 103-4, 225-6 255 Hussein, Uday, 19, 21, 26-7, 68, 135, 182 Illingworth, Grant, 14 Immediate Action, 184 interrogation, resistance to, 182-3 Iran-Iraq war, 30, 88, 226 Israel, 35-7 Jordan, 90 Krabilah, bridge, 163 checkpoint, 132-3, 137-45, 146, 158-9, 174 distance from cairn, 221 police station, 181, 184 road/hijack, 25, 131-4, 136, 141-3 wadi, 154 Kurds, 182 Kuwait, 31-2 L Detachment, 7 Lane, Trooper Steven 'Legs', background, 38 at checkpoint, 132-3, 135, 142 equipment, 237 hears Consiglio firing, 171 LUP wadi, 58-9 on march, 124 Rummani, 161-9 Lawrence, T.E., 16-18, 57, 107 Legs see Lane, Trooper Steven Little, Alan, 24 Long Range Desert Group, 18, 44, 107 LUP see entries under Bravo Two Zero and McNab and Ryan McNab, Andy, account accu�racy, 7, 13-14, 73-4, 84, 118-20, 137, 145-8, 179-80, 187, 213-14, 237-9, 248 background, 6, 37-8, 52-3 blames SAS command, 2-3, 71,245-6 book by, 1, 41, 108, 139, 183, 184 bulldozer, 65-8 captured, 175-9 casualties claimed, 23, 158-60, 239 Coburn's capture, 154-5 on Consiglio death, 171 dental treatment, 183-4 on desert temperature, 17 eludes police, 151-7 equipment carried, 45, 55-7, 72,94-5 escape march, 117-24 escape plan, 91-3, 245-6 fighting knife, 124-5 helicopter rendezvous, 90-1 hides in culvert, 176 impersonates Iraqi, 131 interrogation, 181-4 LUP wadi position, 187 firefight, 75-86 patrol aims, 43-5, 59-60 patro
l divided in desert, 112-16 on Phillips, 3, 111, 215-18 rejects transport, 107-8 256 on Rummani capture, 161-3 on Ryan, 54-5 on Stan's capture, 223-5 troops near wadi, 130-1 vehicle hijack, 131-2, 134-40, 144-5, 149 vehicle not taken, 126, 244 Malayan Emergency, 34 map, of route, 41, 93, 120, 127-8 Ministry of Defence (Iraq), 25-6 Ministry of Information (Iraq), 21-6 Mohammed (Abbas's relative), 19-91, 196-206, 210-16, 240-1 Mohammed (on Rummani), 165-6 Morris, Nigel, 26, 95, 133-4 Mosul, 25, 135 Nur ad-Din, al-Haj, 142, 156, 161, 163-5 Oman, 105 Omar, Abu, 29, 42, 104-5, 209, 237 OPEC, 31 Phillips, Dee, 10 Phillips, Jeff, 9-11, 190 Phillips, Sgt Vince, back�ground, 9, 38 binoculars, 204, 210 body found, 190-2, 196-208, 214 children, 10, 202-3, 240 death, 10, 22, 189-91, 196-208, 211-12, 214-16 date, 214-5, 239 dog-tags, 247 fitness, 6, 10 hypothermia, 195 injured, 111, 115 `lost' in snow, 195-6 in LUP berm, 193-4 memorial, 206-7, 239 patrol divided, 112-15, 190 photographs, 202, 240 portrayal of, 3, 6-7, 54 and shepherd-boy, 11, 60, 69, 194 vindicated, 217, 238-9 Prenderghast, Guy, 18 propaganda, Allied, 174 Iraqi, 158 Provisional IRA, 185 R Squadron, 34 radio, 55-6, 58-9, 90, 189, 192, 245 destroyed, 119 Ramailah oilfield, 31 Ratcliffe, RSM Peter, ammuni- tion levels, 159-60 book by, 13 equipment carried, 57 escape plan changed, 91-2 highway hindrance, 19 meeting with, 243-7 pseudonym use, 247 - Ryan's escape, 232-4 SAS involvement, 35 training, 52, 76-7, 98 transport, 106, 107-8, 244 257 use of knives, 125 Rowlands, David, 243 Royal Green Jackets, 53-4 Rumadi, 29, 133, 204 Rummani (island), 161-9 Ryan, Chris, account accuracy, 7, 12-14, 118, 120, 187, 212-13,232-5,238-42, 248 background, 6, 38, 52-3 book by, 2, 11, 12, 41, 119, 188, 217 bulldozer approach, 68-9, 194 on Consiglio, 159, 171 escape, 231-4 helicopter rendezvous, 90-1, 194 on hijack, 139-40, 149 leaked report, 218 leaves Phillips, 215-16, 221 LUP, 26 Jan, 222-3 berm, 193-4, 212-13 wadi firefight, 81-2 wadi position, 187, 190 on McNab, 54 opinion on transport, 105-6 patrol aims, 43-5, 59-60 patrol divides, 115, 188, 192-3 on Phillips, 3, 10, 11, 110-11, 187, 192-6, 214-48 rationalising Phillips's death, 218-19 road crossing, 188-9 on Rummani capture, 161-3 on Stan's capture, 223-4 SAS, 21st, 34, 44, 53 22nd, 1, 13, 34, 38, 53, 188, 248 A,33, 35,37,38,44-5, 53, 105 B,33, 37,43,44,105, 108 D, 32, 33,35,37,44-5, 53, 105 G, 32 23rd, 4, 14, 34, 38, 44, 53 63 Signals, 34 264 Signals, 34 competitive nature of, 52-3 founding of, 17-18 leaked report, 11, 218 satellite images, 74, 107, 245 Saudi Arabia, invasion blocked, 31-2 patrol route to, 90-1, 106 Schwarzkopf, Gen. H. Norman, 31-6, 44 Scud missile, fired, 35-6 patrol aims to destroy, 1, 14, 43, 44 specifications, 35 Seven Ps, 2 Shamir, Prem. Yitshak, 35-7 Shaft al-Arab waterway, 30 shepherd-boy, 11, 22, 51, 60-1, 66-7, 187, 240 Soldier Five, 12, 183 Soldier Magazine, 2 Special Boat Services, 34 Special Operations Executive, 124 Stan (Mal), background, 38 captured, 222-5, 227-9 desert march, 111-12 LUP berm, 192-6 on McNab's story, 183 on Phillips's death, 196 training, 105-6 Stirling, David, 17, 34, 107, 156, 179 Storm Command, 188 Subhi (lawyer), 172-3 Syria, patrol heads for, 90-1, 126, 145, 152-3, 175-6, 233, 246 Syrian Desert, 15 Ti oil-station, 175 taxi, hijack, 25, 126, 131-40, 144-5, 148-9, 174 Tehran, 36 Tel Aviv, 36 temperature, in desert, 16-17 Territorial Army, 53-4 The One That Got Away, 2, 11, 12, 41, 119, 188, 217 Thesiger, Sir Wilfred, 179 trial, Auckland, 12-14 UK Special Forces, 34 UN sanctions, 15, 26, 31 United Arab Emirates, 35, 37 US 101st Airborne, 35 Victor Two, 19 Zayid (orderly), 156-7
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