Ex-SAS Rusty Firmin: The Regiment, Operation Nimrod & British Special Forces

i am your host lawrence rosenberg and this is the alpha human podcast our guest today is rusty furman rusty is a 27-year british army veteran who spent 15 years with the sas the british army's elite special forces unit rusty has been involved in some of the sas's most dangerous missions including the planned attack on argentina during the falklands war and the sas's covert operations against the ira however rusty is most well known for his actions in operation nimrod the may 1980 iranian embassy siege in london where he was a key figure in the sas's storming of the embassy as the blue team leader rusty authored a very popular book on this historic event entitled go go go which gives a gripping account of the siege which culminated in the sas rescuing 19 hostages and killing five of the six terrorists the book has recently been turned into a major motion picture entitled six days starring jamie bell airing right now on netflix and i've seen it and i have to tell you it's a must watch rusty is also the author of the regiment a detailed portrayal of what it was like for him to be part of one of the most renowned special ops forces in the world rusty welcome to the show thanks for the invite nice to have a bit on there i suppose for a change yeah i know it's great yeah thank you very much and i hope they enjoy the podcast when it's finished thank you so much yeah i'm sure everyone will um so you're just kind of getting into the sas a little bit because in america everyone knows the navy seals right um everyone has heard of delta force uh but my understanding is that you know when i grew up you know everyone had heard of the green berets that was that that was the american special forces so when i was a kid that that was big and there was the film uh of course uh back in the day i believe with john wayne so it made special special operations right and the special forces a really uh sexy thing and you know people want you know kids wanted to grow up in b green berets um but we always heard when i was a kid growing up in the 70s we always heard about the sas and you know maybe it was around the time of when you guys made your big splash and came out in the open right you're coming out party really uh was with that and was with that embassy siege in london um but before then not much was known about the sas but it turns out i believe if i'm correct that our own delta force which i guess is the closest thing uh to the sas here in america when it comes to special forces our own delta force i believe was actually styled uh on the sas right down to the selection process is is that the case yeah it's the case um funny enough i did selection summer selection for the sas in 1977 um so i know firsthand because on that selection we had the old hamshank you know the yak and we didn't know who was we didn't know who was he turned up and it happened to be bucky burruss um a fella that you probably know anybody that knows anything about delta he was there right at the beginning that's right so charlie beckwith he had the idea along with another guy i can't quite remember his name but they had to send somebody to the uk to do the training because they wanted it styled on the sas how else could they do it unless somebody turned up for the training so july 1977 i can tell you now when we started bookie burroughs came across from the states he was an officer and he was well liked on the course we had a big course because we um and he must have learnt a lot because it was when the parachute brigade in the uk was being disbanded and we had a lot of disgruntled paras running around didn't know what to do they came on their selection i was a commando myself and i came on selection we all met up so bucky boris hung in with us all the way through and then finally when that course was finished i think delta was set up round about november um november the 19th springs to mind 17th maybe so right at the end of that summer selection is when delta force were formed and i know that because i was part of it so that's when it formed and it was formed the same year in 1977 as i joined and passed selection to get into the sas incredible um so you have um a really interesting history because you know the these days a lot of the stories will hear is that people go into the military at least in the u.s those that want to become part of special operations or want to become an operator there there's so much information on it now so many books so many films um it's great obviously for recruiting if you're looking to find the best of the best uh then you know certainly there's this attraction now for those that want that kind of excitement and adventure to join the military with the intent to go into the special forces but i mean my understanding of your story is that uh i mean you're a 27-year veteran and you were in the military in the uk uh from the time you were 15 years old uh so you know be great to understand a little bit more about what inspired you to end up joining the sas because you certainly didn't join the military to do that no i didn't i was more or less taken to the army recruiting office as a 15 year old i was heading downhill i'll be honest um not far to go either at that age i was going downhill uh anyway i was taken to the army recruiting office um never thought for one minute you know that i'd get in to the military let alone the junior leaders regiment royal artillery at that age which is 15 to 17 in those days um was a junior soldier spent two years but trained basically i didn't want to be there if i could have had 50 pounds uk pounds back in 1965 had it been gone i'd have been history had it gone out the army i couldn't get it a lot of money then stayed in and i went football was my you know football i was a tracksuit soldier basically i loved it okay if i could get in tracksuit every day through whatever way i could do it but that's what i did because i love sport and that's what i did i ended up playing all sorts of sports um in the early days and then i got itchy feet i didn't have really any parents or anything and no family to fall back on the army became my family and without me actually knowing it i didn't go there and say adopt me but i was quite well liked and i got on with a lot of people and as that progressed i then took a bit of interest in the military okay because i knew that if i wanted to move somewhere i'm going to have to do some hard work didn't like the thought of it but nothing is in my day wasn't given to you on a plate you had to go and get it forage free so yeah i represented the british army which is a good standard at football got there i've gone from the artillery um into two nine commando which is based a few miles down the road from where i live these days on dartmouth in england um so i spent four years there what is this what is two nine commando july commando is the um you got the royal marine commandos yeah yes and then you've got two nine commander royal artillery which are there to support the royal marines wherever they go they need an artillery unit so a battery four batteries normally in a unit would go with one of the commando units four one four two four five forty commando you know you know so that would be our side of it and of course they would have an engineer side five nine commando okay so that's how it was then so that that's how it was and once i got to two nine commando it wasn't long before they saw something in me which i didn't see myself they said right we want you to go on the training wing you're fit you know you do this you do that so i'm now coming up through the ranks um and i find myself going to the training wing that actually meant i could be an attractive as much as i wanted because i was teaching young commanders coming in to be go get your green berry guys i've got mine right so that was you know that was that and but after a couple of years i just got my itchy feet and there was only one more place to go and that's in 1977. the only place i could go to improve and do what i wanted to do was the special air service the sas so i asked it's voluntary you can't be posted there it's voluntary i asked if i could do a course um and that's he said yes fill in the paperwork and then in july 77 i've been done some pre-training the year before i turned up in hereford along with some good mates of mine um from other units and we all went on to the serious course together not everybody passed it but it was like it was something i wanted to do and i did pass it at the first attempt so it's you know it's very difficult as i understand it uh to pass the sas and in fact i understand that so if the again here in america everyone knows how difficult selection is for the navy seals right everyone's ringing that bell to quit uh and it's incredibly difficult they have a 75 fail rate but as i understand it the sas has a 90 fail rate is that is that true um quite sure what it is these days but certainly when i didn't mind generally speaking um it was um attempt wave a 10 pass rate would be considered fair um so the one selection we did as i say and that was when bucky burris was on we were to set up delta and stuff that had a bigger pass rate but they had a really good standard of guys on that and more of them so you would expect i can't remember what it was exactly but even to me i would think it would have been in probably 20 pass rate something like maybe double what it would normally be so but it was the standard and the quality of guys on there they came from good units fit wanted to do the job and of course that helps when you've got to put your head down and then look up and of course that's what happened so we had a good pass rate on that generally speaking yeah you're right it's not um it didn't used to be more than around about 10 percent and there's not very many um there's not very many members of the sas i believe there's only between what 400 or up to 600 at any one time yeah as i say i i can talk mainly about my day and four squadrons if you had um a maximum of 60 in a squadron there's 240 a couple on the outline side 300 maybe 400 would be a good guesstimate if you like um in those days yeah for certain yeah that's so so i mean that's not a lot again uh in in the states there's you know thousands of uh seals and uh green berets um and you know again i know from speaking with a number of uh special operators that selection no matter where no matter what it is whether it's green berets delta navy seals that it is incredibly hard and the only way you're getting in there is if you're the hardest of the hard um but again there's always been this mystique about the sas and uh i'd love to know why again back in your day um and and by the way i don't know you know there's i heard you know there i know there's a show in the sas on the sas is very popular right now back back in britain um right who who cares um you know i i've heard your comments on i mean my comments i'm telling you now i really am and i'm sad for the people who really want to get involved in it um it really is that bad it's shocking but it's very easy program for people to watch yeah i mean if you join the sas based on watching that program you're going to get you know you're in for a rude awakening you're going to get your ass handed to you well let's put it this way i've just turned 70 right you know what it take me good for 70. it take me a week to get to their standard right and i'd walk through it myself right now all right so let's go back to the real deal um in your day so with with a 10 pass rate um with a bunch of really um i'm i'm assuming tough guys motivated guys in the beginning with with only a 10 pass rate so maybe 20 some odd guys coming through it um at a selection why is it so difficult well if it was going to go through if it was meant to have lots of lads joining well it'd be the same thing in my opinion it'd be well anybody can do it that's how it was designed in the first place way back when they used to use small units or five men maybe all the jobs you know that other people didn't want to do and of course the the difficulty is not just the physical side it's up here the mental side as well you've got to have that mental toughness and mindset when the chips are down you're the one who's going in right that's what i volunteered to do nobody put me in there and nobody put anybody else in it's totally voluntary if you volunteer for something you have to put your chest out and say right i'm going for it and the will to win and the motto who does wins i think explains an awful lot so how did you okay but how did you go from someone who if you got your hand on uh you know on a pinky on a 50 pound note if that you'd be out of there uh when you were a kid how did you go from that to i'm all in and i'm ready to do whatever it takes i grew up i grew up on my own and i was forced to make certain um command decisions if you like about what i was going to do once i'd been in the forces a while i realized realized that there was a pension at the end of it so it helped you know there was a couple of times when i nearly walked out the door which i could have done for free later on but i didn't i started then looking from this little scrawny runt and i was only five foot two and weighed about seven and a half stone um when i went into the military and then all of a sudden i'm up there five foot eleven fit and i was doing what i never realized was there in the military to do i wasn't educated that way special forces the scs were about i didn't you know i've been i say that i've been in the sas three years before i knew it existed you know what i mean yeah until the embassy came up that was the first real apart from the northern ireland troops and stuff of course watch what i say about that as you can well appreciate that and of course it was for me it was something that i did i could have dreamt of as a kid but i didn't know about it but then i found here i was with long hair down here in the military doing this covert stuff and it was all the stuff i wanted to do and early on i didn't know about it when i found out about it i went for it and that was just my own nobody pushed me that's my own willpower and what i wanted to do and i had to strive for it to get there it wasn't given to me and nothing was given to me after that either it almost sounds like destiny that you ended up there possibly part of it yeah i would think probably i never planned it as a kid that's for certain but then when what was happening in front of me and where i could go and the quality of guys that were around me you know what when i was in the sas for 15 years right i don't ever remember not wanting to get out of bed and go to it's work there's something i can tell you that now i wanted to be there so what i meant what i meant earlier when i said why is it so difficult i understand why you'd want to weed out anyone who isn't like you um and obviously they do a very good job of finding the rusty furmans of the world uh but i'm curious as to what maybe not why is it so difficult meaning what is so difficult about the selection process what do you go through yeah okay well it's to most people it's actually not what they used to okay you're in a normal army unit in in in the military um when i was serving and then you hear about something in this case for me it was the sas but the difficulty was actually turning up on day one and then you always have a look around who's around you know and you have a look at these these lamps and stuff some other six foot six some of them are small right in between and then you think right but the one common goal is you all have to do exactly the same to get through it isn't for everybody the long days the you know the drive out to the brecon beacons a lovely place to go get out the vehicle and then you go right there it is you've got your first hill in front of you and then you're off it's physically it's demanding physically it's tough you're on your own and you know there's something at the end of it and they have all these timed test marches in the last week well you don't know what the timings are that you have to pass okay they don't say you've got four hours to do that now what happens is you get out different weather conditions you know and let's be honest it can be brutal out in the brecons it could be red hot like it is today so each day you had to physically prepare yourself and you had these heavy weights and weapons to carry and get from reference or rendezvous point rv point what if you want to call them to rb point where somebody would go right there's your next rv you know like you're not allowed to write it down or anything they show you on a map you confirm it back to them you're here you've got another 12 kilometers maybe to go or seven eight mile whatever you want to call it and you're off and that is where your total believing in yourself if this physical state of your mind and body there's no lifts there's no help that's it and if you don't make the time the instructors just go you're off and they take you off go back to camp pack a kit and you're gone and so when we got back each day was a look around like this to find out who was left right so that's the difficult part of it i found the physical side i'm not being funny i didn't struggle on the physical side at all i really enjoyed it um it might sound a bit masochistic but actually i enjoyed my physical side of it it was just wondering you upset somebody maybe looking over your shoulder some of your good friends have gone and then you think glad i'm still here deep down you're now pushing your chest out ready for the next one aren't you right you've got to beat me and that's it you know that's that was it they and and not everybody's capable unfortunately doing that have you have you always had a competitive spirit yeah anybody who knows me will tell you that yes your question and for the uh so for anyone in america who's not aware um what are the brackens american beacons in in wales there are um for those is this doubt more or less on the england welsh border it's a it's a range of mountains with once you go on to them they're inhospitable at the best but you know we weren't allowed to run around tracks and roads and stuff you know so you cross grain in which means it's difficult on your body however because of their situation uh two and a half hours from camp so you go out there in a vehicle not too far away get a full day's work in there and that is where we did the majority of the selection itself including when bucky burroughs was there he can vouch for that because it can be really once that cloud and mist and rain comes down it could be anywhere in the world and they're quite high not the highest in the world obviously but a very very good challenging training area i can tell you that and then you also do you also go through uh jungle training right is there also desert training or is it jungle training would be the normal follow on from that so you've worn your body down as much as you can wear it down really on selection and then you've got a day or two to pack your stuff and get cleaned up and then we were off out on the plane to um belize in central america which is a dirty jungle it's it's not clean it's full of all sorts of stuff but once again a training area but when you get there you're worn down you know after a month on selection and then you start again you know the climates of the jungle don't you it rains and thunder and light in all night every night about four o'clock in the afternoon so you're not getting a lot of sleep even if you want to go to sleep you don't get a lot of sleep then the following day you're back out and it's physical and it's hard work and once again you've got people falling by the wayside pack your kit get on the aircraft back to the uk back to your unit they're gone they don't hang around it is like that so you've lost a few on selection you then start losing them and people are around you they're gone and yet the numbers are coming down considerably anybody who gets injured normally would get a second chance if they wanted it if they were taken off it's very difficult for whatever reason so it's fair but it's hard and because it's fair and hard it's the same yet again for everybody but not a lot of people like the jungle once they get there they don't like it you know um it's just different me i was okay with it i got bitten to death and all but actually you know part of the game yeah difficult the training tested yeah so i understand you also go through something similar to uh the the us army special forces uh survival evasion resistance and escape school i understand you guys do some kind of combat survival and resistance program where uh you guys for a week are hunted down and and interrogated um you know i know the green berets do a mock uh pow camp so did you have to go through something similar um well once again once you've come back from the jungle yeah now there's nobody wider than this you know what i mean they're they're like shredded in body but the fun bit was that you're right they take you in strip you before you go out the numbers that are left and give you what is a great coat in those days which is a really really hairy horrible thing to wear string around the middle um the same sort of thing on your trousers a pair of boots what you stand up in and they take you to the training areas and dump you in my day was in two two together was maximum and you'd be dumped in all different places but you'd be given um tests to do to get to certain rendezvous points with that you'd have a hunter force whoever it would have happened to be their job would be to hunt you down with dogs and if you got caught you go in for interrogation and it works like that um and it it's quite it's quite um uncomfortable let's say at times because of the weather you've got no magic waterproof kit and stuff you weren't allowed to get caught in the barns or outside the training areas you're gone okay that was it we knew what would happen if you tried to cheat it wasn't worth it so you you're going all around these areas meeting up for our bees they might give you a sandwich if you're lucky um that would be it and then the next day if you meet up um i mean i used to try and travel mainly at night for obvious reasons unless a smelter rat like a dog was coming or something would have to make a different plan but generally speaking it's left to your common sense and you're learning all the time obviously but you had to evade and i never got caught on mine um eventually at some point they'd pull you off and say right that's it it's no duff that's what they call it this is the end of this part of it and you're not quite sure whether they're you know you don't say anything to them right they take you away blindfold you they take you off to a camp somewhere and it starts like that and in the camp you know there's other guys around because you can hear hear them but you can't see them and you stood against walls stress positions and stuff um and that goes on or until they decide right would take him in front of interrogator um i think i went in front of two or three male and and they try to get information and you stick by the big four the number ranking name and date of birth you can't really go wrong um and that's how the game is played you start inventing you start talking you you'll be off you won't make it it it's i know people who actually won't mention any names but i was playing chess with the the guy who was trying to get his information out of him playing chess and i'm going to cover to you your mind does things to other to people when you're in that stressed position of course make no bones about it but you've just got to think number one can name date of birth that's it you start giving stories and a bit of a cover story it's never going to work because i'll turn it against you somewhere and that's not what you're taught you're taught number rank name date of birth that's it and that's how i got through um i went through that they took me off took me back blindfolded as i've just gone through um and that lasts as long as it lasts until somebody grabs you on the shoulder take yeah take your blindfold off right this is it that's the end for you now you don't know if you've passed or failed okay i think the first thing is yeah what do you mean the end for me you know have i ever failed um and that's your first thought isn't it that's human nature but that is it what these mean is you've finished you've done what you wanted the time has run out you're now going to get on a on a bedford which is the um the old three terminal type vehicles we had fought on us what they and you see other lads coming on there they give you a cup of tea and stuff it's all over then it's back to camp to get ready for your next part so your body is being worn down from day one you know selection all the way through to the jungle all the way through to the combat survival as we called it and e and e escape and invasion and yeah when i look back and when i thought back on it once i got through i was really chuffed with what i've done you know mm-hmm i didn't want to have any thoughts anywhere failing i didn't i didn't have that i i couldn't stand it when i saw the other guys you know when you see them before they disappear and heads are down on their chests and stuff you know i didn't want that yeah i guess um you know that that inner competitor within you that that that determination again that's what selection is is meant to uncover those that have that uncommon trait because everyone talks a big game until right until they're going through the kind of thing that you're going through and that's a simulation but then when you have to go through the real deal like operation nimrod and god knows how many other missions you are on they can't afford to have someone second-guess themselves and break so um i think that's a good segue for us because i i want to get into operation nimrod um i love the movie six days um i really did and uh uh jimmy bell is great [Music] so on april 30th 1986 terrorists stormed the iranian embassy and took 26 people hostage um so the first thing is and again i know the story but for the benefit of our audience why did these terrorists um why did they raid uh the iranian embassy and take those people hostage well the the story is that um nobody knew at the time that it was a saddam hussein backed operation so that was interesting um the six terrorists were brought together um obviously everything happened came across to the uk and if you look at kazakhstan and places like that was an all-rich part of the southwest part of iran just where iran and iraq's border is you come down all the way down to the gulf almost and because it was on the southwest it was iranian it belonged to the iranians but the arabs from iraq and surrounds they wanted to go there because it was all rich right so there was an awful lot of them there and this obviously pissed off um you know iran so the secret police would go out collect some people kill some leave some to tell the story and of course what they wanted to do in iraq was send the terrorists over make a statement bring the world's attention to what's going on in kazakhstan whatever you want to call it right and that's exactly what they did and they made a hit you know they got the world press and had they done that on day one day two and handed themselves in it would be a different story right it would be no film six days okay it would have been two and a half days or two days that's how and why they were sent to the uk with one mission their mission was to go to the iranian embassy 16 princess gate in london kensington take it over by force and hold the hostages hence world media coverage on the streets of london right in the center the heart of the capital look what we've done and let's be honest did it make the headlines yes big time and that's where it all started and so when you first heard uh that uh the sas your that your um team was called in to handle this what what went through your mind had you ever been on anything like this before a mission it never happened in the uk before nobody ever had you ever been on such a mission no northern ireland stuff and yet but this was different we were on the counter terrorist team we'd only taken over a couple of weeks before um from d squadron we were b squadron right and we took over from d squadron and then this happened we were to some degree lucky that everybody was there because we were due to go on an exercise up to northumbria right up the north and we were due to do an exercise over the bank holiday weekend which is the weekend we're talking about 30th of april which was a wednesday through to the 5th of may which is bank holiday monday so that was when somewhere in there we'd have been gone on an exercise but in fact we got the call on the little bleepers we used to carry on our belt or any pocket with the operational call out instead of a training call right and then everybody piles into camp to find out what's going on get a brief in little briefing no more no social media in them days if you remember and that's what we did and that's how we found out and then we found out it was an operation well nobody wants to go on an exercise if there's an operation going on right and that included me so that's that's where we that's how i found out i was quite in inner yeah i'm up for this one yeah right so you you were you were excited yeah and i was the team leader at that time i was only a team member i became a team leader later on before we did the assault right and i i saw that in in the film uh where you were asked to step up and you're like yeah um so i was curious what was the sas called in because it was an embassy and technically that's foreign soil i mean had the sas ever operated on on british ground before well i shouldn't say that um what i should say yeah yeah um why were they called why were they called in because we were the county terrorist team and it was deemed a terrorist incident don't forget this was not our operation and a lot of people don't understand that from day one it was a met police operation supported by the sas our counterterrorist team i see to be hosted in the police are already involved in it before us we then get the call we then go down eventually to join in with the police and we're supporting them because at this moment in time there is no um there's nothing on british soil for example there's not been proof of murder right statue the prime minister the best one i've ever known she was in charge well she got backbone you know i wish they had a day i'll be honest um and she was in charge met police had the operation did a great job we supported them to start with and that's how it went on yeah the reason i ask is because i guess now we're so used to um the fact that the police they have their own counter-terrorist teams right to operate in situations like this it's you know it's rare like to you you wouldn't think that the american um that the navy seals for instance would handle any kind of terrorist action in domestically within the country and so when you think of the sas you think they're going on all these foreign missions um and there was there was a point in the film where the negotiator max vernon um he when he's told that the sas are queued up um he was like are you [ __ ] kidding me like he was you know in the film at least he he was he was shocked right so it's like yeah the maxwell is a very good friend of mine he's um 84 in a wheelchair now okay yeah great great guy um i never met him for 37 years until the film during the siege never met him after the siege i met him whilst the film was being made um prior to coming out in 2017-18 so max is like that because he was the head negotiator and there comes a point we might come on to in a minute but he tells me that he felt like a failure because he didn't talk it to an end right he'd do is he got us six days of valuable time to plan prepare rehearse what we were going to do if we were ever needed to go into the embassy if it had gone in in day one let me give you an example being bloody i can tell you that now it would have it would have won but it had been bloody because we had the time that was given to us by max doing negotiating and drawing out the timelines them six days went quite quickly hence the name of the film six days but i can tell you now he did a tremendous job without that could have been slightly different result but we were ready after six days i can tell you that now to go and rescue the hostages yeah he's portrayed as having been shattered by the um by not having been able to to kind of negotiate through the the process as opposed to sending the team in that's his job this job is negotiated yeah and he may have felt like he let himself down but he didn't in one way he didn't negotiate but in the other way the hostages were released right and that rescued shall i say um that was the aim that was the aim of the rescue of the hostages was a mission he helped indirectly if you like or directly gain us that time because there was no time over those six days which were wasted we were doing something concrete just in case we had one plan then we had another plan and with a plan if that plum didn't you know it was an invaluable time the amount of training at least from what we see in the film the amount of training and they could only show so much that you guys were doing um during those six days is is is phenomenal i mean you trained to take out the terrorists on a bus yeah and so they kept showing how you were how you would work that bus yeah how to go in that way and then when that was shot down you trained to storm the embassy by building you guys were building models and a replica of some of the embassy which you guys are trying for first like you know which which would have been harder for you to assault the terrorists on a bus on the way to heathrow uh or would it have been uh or or was it harder to assault the embassy oh the three different options really um was the um what we call the stronghold assault which is actually the embassy now they've got that they've secured it we don't know what they've got in there we knew what some as time went on we found out weapons and hand grenades and stuff that they had we didn't know anything about booby traps and stuff i didn't know if they had any of that type of stuff not at all it didn't matter that was a stronghold assault the other one would be the um open-air assault trying to get them to come out of the out of the um embassy to maybe get onto a coach that means they're going to have to come out into the open well we've got an assault team ready to assault them and we've got snipers in position to take out terrorists that would have probably been quite an easy one to do the coach option once they were on the coach in a very small vicinity right yeah you saw what we did yeah and the thing was that to us wouldn't have been we that wouldn't have been the best one either so the middle option trying to get them out into the mid you know out into open open air if you like with all the hostages coming out and the terrorists dotted around we've got snipers and we've got the assault team waiting to assault and rescue the hostages that would probably be our favorite option but after proof of murder and they murdered lavasani okay but when that happened it changed and max vernon's voice it's a whole new ball game now salim salim being the leader of the terrorists that's right he knew that he knew that so we would have probably at the time take out the open air option as i say stronghold assault nobody really wants to go into a stronghold that's being held by terrorists and stuff unless you have to it forced our hand in the end this is that you didn't muck around once as proof of murder that was it you were going in handed over from the police to the fcs and the police then are actually supporting us um there were a number of moments where you were you were ready to breach uh and uh and storm the embassy again at least in the film they show you ready to to kind of go through that door time and time and time again and each time you're caught you're told to stand down um and you're jumping up a bit to get in there yeah that's it you know after six days we're ready um either way if they were gonna give themselves up and come out whatever we were ready to to go perfectly we had everything that we could do i don't think there was an awful lot left we could have done that we hadn't looked up and tried to you know even build in all the rooms room by room to figure out which way doors open and obstacles it's not like the real thing but it wasn't wasted it was time well spent and a lot of it came into use when finally we did have to go and rescue the hostages and you there was you even spent time uh studying the faces of the terrorists just just staring at those pictures and trying to to remember the faces of the terrorists uh in the film they were showing how how much you concentrated on you know the the that with the two teams we had the red and the blue team i was blue team and with red team so when we were in there and had these photo fit boards made up for each they had terrorist picture on there maybe with a chamac around him then underneath that would be weapons um scorpion maybe some machine gun handgun grenades so you look at each one then we know there's some female hostages and we know there's some male hostages so i wasn't too bothered and i won't say i never took any notice of the females because i knew there wasn't any female terrorists so mine was concentrating on these six terrorists with these photo fit you know probably a4 size paper and something like that with a picture of them on their good picture and then a little bit speaks perfect arabic and speaks english all built up with the weapons at the bottom so my job and an individual i didn't say to any of my guys and they didn't rusty but they're gonna have a look at them boards now individual responsibilities get on there and keep clocking as much information as you can because you might need it and it's the only way you're going to get a look at anything part of the planning and preparation as we call it and we have the seven ps you know a prior plan in preparation prevents piss poor performance and it's all part of that right um and it's a good one to remember um because it's individual nobody can make me do that and i can't say to my mates hey get back over there they do it themselves this is part of their motivation this is part of what they're set up to do this is where the training exercises that we do you know um come into it because it's all reality training now it's an operation and you're gonna have to use it for real and then you get the opportunity finally to go in um as you said uh margaret thatcher um gives the order uh and and you know from the beginning of the film it's made clear that you know that uh britain is not negotiating with terrorists they will never leave uh british soil alive um and or or at least captured uh and uh you guys you know as soon as they end up killing a hostage you guys are given the green light you go in and then after all that training um you call it saad's law we call it murphy's law um things don't go as planned initially right we planned we planned everything but we we call it actually is another one fear we call it what ifs okay and what ifs and you've got your plan what if such and such now there are sometimes things you have to do yourself as part of your team we know with the assault team snipers will love waves for themselves because i did all eventually i did sniping i did the assault team and i did the ops money ops manager of the county terrorist team so i've done them all but on this particular one i was on the assault team or what ifs what if such and such but you can't say what the what ifs are we've covered them in the plan but you know what if the rope snags up and somebody gets burned on the very floor where the hostages and the terrorists are supposed to have the biggest you know right right in the center of the building okay you've got the ground you've got the basement ground floor first of all second third fourth they're in the middle of the building and of course the very floor is where the guys got hung up and were burning on the ropes yeah so what if well they had their own what ifs it finally cut him down but you lose a bit of momentum you know because the big bang has gone off right but the communications were crap i've got to say so you didn't actually know quite what was happening on the other side of the building inside the building but what you did have you had your own job now it's a ground floor um because you enter as many entry points as you can simultaneously if you get hung up on one you've still got guys going in somewhere okay send everybody through the same window it won't work so with every floor at the same time and military multi-entry points very important because you want to get in there and do your job and clear as fast as you can and gain that momentum um an initiative back and the one thing to remember the mission was to rescue the hostages nothing else rescue the hostages right and you know there's so there's a scene in the film and obviously you know there's so much chaos going on in there you know especially now there's a fire there's smoke everywhere um you know one you know a couple your guys are burned up uh but they're still in there and you you could you know you you've killed a number of the terrorists and you guys are clearing them out of the building you're clearing them out of the embassy um bringing the hostages uh down the stairs bringing them down the stairs and then and you're there and you you're you're grabbing each it looks like you're grabbing each hostage before you let them go to look at them you put your hand i mean yeah if you see me going into the building with no gloves in i've got one hand there right have you ever seen that the black and white photo when i go in the beginning that's it that was your nickname no gloves that's right for me i've got one hand ready normally to do something with if you know it's just part of my training and is up there ready just in case and or something do something with it i know that can shoot with one another okay right not a problem and it's only that if you want to put it back but the fact was that everybody come down the stairs we didn't know fully where they were and where they started from at the top but we've got guys on the fourth floor third floor second floor first floor as my group on the ground floor and a basement four guys in the basement so you're talking about 34 guys maximum who actually entered that building on the go go go to to clear it it's not like the russians where they send in hundreds of guys they've got no command and control with total command and control of everything we tried to do in there the guy coming down the stairs and with everybody else i suppose you're going to come on to him in a minute yeah my job and the other guy's job if you can't see them you've got to turn them and you remember i said you're studying all those pictures yes and i'm i'm pretty good at facial recognition um and you and you're trying to get them out the building as quickly as you can you're right there was smoke there was flashbangs there's gunfire there was gas in the air because we used gas um that's why we have respirators on and we're training them so we're comfortable in them but you still know there was 19 hostages and you know there's six terrorists right everybody coming down the stairs in panic they're not looking at rusty they're looking to try and get out the building right quickly as they can and we're helping by pushing them down to the next guys you could say forcibly but fair it was intense treat everybody the same the idea is it was burning and it wasn't a pretty sight inside so you know again this this is a bit like pandemonium these people are freaking out we're grabbing them you're you know you tell them get the f out get the f out get the f out um and there's a scene in the film where again you're glancing at each one and you gr and you grab one of the guys as they're coming down the stairs that could very well be a hostage and it's very dramatic in the film where they show you through the respirator staring at this guy's face and then i guess upon recognizing that this is a terrorist you gun him down right there in place um and it turned out he had a grenade in his hand i don't know if you knew that or not and that's why you or you just recognized his face but is that how it went down that's that's exactly how it went um where i was in the stairwell was my commandment control i was in charge um and i could see down i could see out the back and i could see up the stairs to the first floor i had some help by people shouting and pointing fingers i couldn't hear a word that was saying you know john and them john mack you know i could see that they meant business or something happening down where we are that maybe they've seen from the top and they're trying to alert us see the communications forget them radios no no no not a chance so i just clocked what he was doing but then there was bodies and one guy everybody else wanted to get out and the one guy faisal he was the second in command found out later of the um of the terrorists he was mixed in amongst them i was alerted slightly by up the top but they were coming down towards me anyway they weren't going upstairs they were coming down so when i got rid of a couple of the hostages the one guy who was looking over the banister rather than concentrating and getting out of the building could see quite clearly they had these um olive green jacket on like a we call them combat jackets in that day it was the old type olive green no camouflage when i grabbed him it was his turn when i grabbed him and turned him round the mate the army snapper he he actually seen it as well and the grenade was in his hand he didn't know if the pin was in the knot it didn't matter it's a weapon it's dangerous so that's when you see me let go of him but mate hit him on the back of the head because he couldn't get his weapon around there's a bit of a third but at the same time i just fired them two bursts of um gunfire from the mp5 into him and he fell to the bottom of the stairs and the young grenade dropped rolled out which i picked up later on the pin wasn't in the pin was in sorry right go off um it was that quick so it's it i mean it's an incredible story um all the all the hostages were rescued um which you know is a fantastic result uh five out of the six terrorists killed uh one of them one of them put in prison for life although i could see he got out in 2008 um but uh just just an incredible success and all of a sudden the sas um you know who was previously always operating in in the shadow so to speak is now on the world stage um is that you know was the sas well known uh in was it in the public eye before this uh or did this really put you guys uh in the spotlight it um it changed the operation itself changed the sas um it wasn't particularly well known before that um it did a lot of operations and stuff throughout the war second world war it did the great battle of mobath in 1972 which was a secret war nine guys fought off two three hundred um of the adu you know the bad guys um but there was wasn't a lot you see social media changed would have changed everything wasn't any so let's say the sas was known here say hip level all of a sudden with that one operation it went way above your head and everybody knew who they were and what they were what they were capable of doing hence all these foreign um training teams wanted the brits to go and train them in counter-terrorism me included i went out to train people as well so it did it rosie it rose to a different level and i'm convinced i know that the siege has still talked about today okay it took 37 years to get a film out on it but that is where the awareness of what it was changed um not long after i mean the security was really bumped up on the camp everything and it was all down to um the operation that was success a success which was um operation emerald and not really and uh you know i can tell in speaking with you um that you're you're extremely passionate about what what you've done and it's clear how much you loved it and enjoyed it um it's very clear but you've all you've also you also present a different side you know i've read a lot um uh you know interviews with you and um some of your book the regimen and uh uh you had some you know and some of the i've listened to some of the podcasts you've been on but i'm gonna quote here from the sun um where you uh you were commenting on the siege uh all these years later and you said we had a job to do and we just wanted to do it we had been waiting and planning for six days so when we heard the explosion and the go go go we were like coiled springs all they wanted to do was get in there and rescue the hostages and i was supposed to be playing in a football club final that day so i just wanted to get home so well that's a true story but you know the the thing is today okay that team was called westfield's football club right hey the manager to this day is still the same manager andy morris he's still the manager and i should have been playing a kid in minster harriers up in the west midlands in the cup final the good news is his brother stood in for me and scored the winning goal it all worked out it all worked out mate but but is is was part of your success and is part of a elite special operator success the fact that they you know look to me looking at this it's exciting it's adventurous um i love to read about i love to talk to special operators like yourselves who have done such incredible things for their country um but that you know that's to us looking looking at you guys and your achievements but for you it's part of your success the fact that uh special operators or is it just yourself look at it as just a job and a job that just needs to get done i i call it i still call it a day job it was my day job it took a long time to get there okay it was a day job and that's exactly why nowadays i don't make any any big deal about it you say oh legend this and i said no i'm a legend you know it's all it's been and gone people are so passionate about some of the stuff that goes on this day and age you know we showed them what can be done um yes terrorism has changed it hasn't but it was my day job and it was the last day job it came with us on that don't forget there was another bunch of good guys on that job and everybody did the business they were supposed to do yeah i mean in your in your book um you say that to quote you you said i wasn't a secret agent or a superman i was a soldier and a [ __ ] good one so are most of the guys i served with yeah i can't i that can't be changed that is the truth so what so what differentiates you rusty um not everyone could do the job that you do or that you did nor you i can't i couldn't be a vehicle mechanic because i can't do that either okay but but clearly you know there are some very unique differentiators about yourself um and it would be i i think really important to understand how someone like you is built what makes you different in your opinion what makes you different what makes you unique well as i say growing up wasn't easy no real parents being schooled to school to school passed around different parts of the family to look after me and really i didn't have a figure to look up to you know i didn't have anybody so i was left you know i started work i think i was 11 or 12 um writing newspapers out in them days at five o'clock in the morning so they'd be delivered and when i started doing that there was no there was nobody ever said well well done to rusty nobody nobody okay it wasn't until i did the duke of edinburgh's award um the bronze award way back i realized that i was capable of doing more i i was going downhill okay but i got through that hurdle whether i'd gone in the army not would i still be the same guy i don't know once i got through that hurdle of somebody saying well done i thought well done yeah and that's how it started and from that i've built but i've got a passion for the country i live in and certainly since i've come out the the the army the regiment if you like um i've found that there's there's always something more you can do it's how much you want to do extra and that's why we always say always a little further you might see that quote from me very often or who dares win you've got to put yourself up there i haven't got anybody pushing me it's just rusty and if anybody else i know a few other guys around you doing that some some don't it's up to them but from my beginning i've had to work for everything i've got i haven't been given anything i've enjoyed it and i think if i had my time again i'd go back and do it just go back and do it again considering i didn't ever want to go in the army in the first place incredible what um so what kind of a mindset does it take for someone to do what you've done for someone to be a part of the sas what kind of mindset must you have so that because again it could be tricky like you said you know i guess by the time you got to the sas you are already all in so but you know for anyone contemplating you can't go straight into the sas from civilian right you have to have done a couple of years in the military somewhere right not just volunteers or civilians so anybody who wants to go into the ss first of all has to volunteer but the civilian walking down the road can't just say oh i'm going into someone on selection that won't happen so i have the basics of basic training and everything else before you go there you can't learn it there okay and you'll be found out within minutes which would be unfair because it might be a guy that might be some good but he needs to go into a unit maybe the parrot maybe the commandos maybe an infantry unit it doesn't matter they came from all over intelligence core you know that's why they've got such a cross um section when you're planning you've got engineers you've got artillery guys you've got all these brains in the same room making a plan they're not all infantry they're not all paris and all commandos they've got a big cross-section infantry as i say you know intelligence corps vehicle mechanics they've all passed selection but they've all had a grounding in their own personal um before they ever tried it and there isn't many people trying selection after two years they normally um you know it would be a bit difficult certainly when i was doing it um so they you know you have to do your own homework first and then put that voluntary bit where you go i'll sign the form i'm volunteering would you say oh sorry go ahead no it's okay you said see earlier on in the conversation you mentioned that so much of this is psychological yeah so that's what i want to kind of understand from your perspective again what what is the frame of mind what is the reference point what is the the mindset that someone has to have doesn't matter you know now okay so they've been in um the military now and they're volunteering for the sas most of them are going to wash out as we know only 10 are going to make it what is what what is it that that 10 of a very few actually have psychologically as an advantage well if it's anything like me not everybody's the same we all know that but nothing else mattered for me i had the goal of i've volunteered i've signed the form from here want to pass and whatever i have to do to get through that course i'm going to do my very very best but the sacrifices if you're married you may have to pay a sacrifice i wasn't married at the time i was single so i didn't have any any anything behind me to worry about what i had was a goal in front of me and that goal was to succeed my my my brain wouldn't do anything else the fear of failure well i didn't want that hanging over me ever and everything i went for i did and everything i thought about i tried to get up there to be one of the very best and only that way of thinking in my opinion from what i'd done is that's how i went about it but for me i passed some very good guys who got injured as you can expect on the course like they came back and they passed a second attempt and stuff i don't know if i'd come back if i'd failed that course to do it again i don't know but what i did know is i didn't want to fail and i think that is primary to how i got through because i shut off everything okay i was there on time i wore the right kid i looked after myself i was fit okay i knew i could get injured or she can but i didn't and at the very end of it when they gave me a very in belt i wondered what what the big deal was all about in the first place and i did you know you come off that high you've got your burying belt there great exactly what i want but then i don't know you just come down then you're now part of the team and the team is the sas where you're going to learn year after year for if i know you can get booted out the sas anytime and i've seen it happen um for different reasons and the fact is that mine you know i just wanted to get on with what i went there to do and did and i came away without many injuries i've injured myself more down here than i ever did in it now my mindset my mindset was that nothing else i have found um in interviewing high achievers over the the course of my career i have found that uh and i often ask this question um you actually answered it um for yourself which is i find that one of two things drives a high achiever and that is either the just the infatuation with the idea of winning which drives them to do whatever it takes or or the the the absolute hatred of losing one of they're both powerful motivators and for most people we're all anyone who's an achiever it's a mix of both but there's always a stronger driver so i guess for you it was you you would do whatever it takes so that you didn't walk away a loser well let's let me see what i found out afterwards my name surname is fermin okay it comes from feminists which is partly french i'm not a french speaker but what does it stand for i'll tell you what it stands for steadfast and resolute and i think that seriously it does when i found that out years and years ago i thought that's me i don't know if you agree but that is fact steadfast and resolute i'd like to think i am yeah i mean standing you know standing like a rock in the face of whatever it takes to get something done exactly but a day yeah you know look everybody everybody fails um it happens but not everyone has that pure like hatred um of having to live with failure such that it will push them to be successful and do whatever it takes to be successful so it's not so much that it's a pro that it's bad to fail we're human we all fail but it's how you look at it and how it drives you or the opposite of course as i said many people uh view it more they're more interested in achieving the metal achieving the trophy achieving the accolade achieving the mission and that's what drives them it doesn't really matter which is the driver but i've found that in individuals such as yourselves and in high achievers it's one of the two that are pushing them to go as you say a bit further always a little further always a little further it's not a big step but if you keep enough of them you're going to get further always a little further so after the sas rusty you you had a number of really really wild uh and cool and and crazy roles i mean you you've done uh diamond mine security in west africa you've delivered armored cars uh to cnn news crews during the kosovo war in sarajevo um you were security advisor for mel gibson while they were making uh you were you were a security advisor uh and a bodyguard for the japanese embassy in afghanistan like you've you've okay yes i run the security for them outside of america worldwide they have 50 odd countries and so all of these weird places and stuff and going into russia and all them type of job yeah i did that for a number of years so what after the sas of all the really um interesting work that you've done what's what's been your fav what has been your favorite um role since leaving the sas what have you enjoyed the most i've really enjoyed um really towards the latter end really um when they it was fun all the jobs i did were different and when i was doing the diamond mine there was 400 1400 black guys on there that was that's what they were in them days and it was myself as a security consultant along with a diamond mine valuer who was russian right we had to go and live there but i ended up helping to train their first division football team so i was a bit of a hero for them because here i was investigating them but the diamond all-stars the football team twice or twice a week i could get in with them and seriously yeah but i was on my own in the middle of a car i'm sorry not 17 miles from a car with no communications to the outside world until the weekend so they're they're different right but they the fun ones were to towards the end um getting the film together and helping with the stuntmen and over in new zealand and meeting jamie and teaching him to become rusty and that was all fun so i've done so many i can't say i won't put my hand on my heart and say i wish i hadn't done that because you know i built the whole help build the um the airstrip and every all the security over in um in africa as well for a big uh oil company you know so i've done all of them and everyone was different but i've enjoyed them all um they call it scared on some of them apprehensive definitely because sometimes when you're on your own you are on your own it's um all of it's been i think because i want to do a third book i'm just looking for a bit of help from what i did from leaving the regiment um i want to make sure that i get it together properly and what i'd like to do my third book from 1992 until present because some patron of four different charities okay as well so i've put an awful lot of work as you might have seen into um the charity side of life yes um so i've done an awful lot of that over the years helping with you know raising their awareness and so yeah i'm i've really been involved in quite a lot and i've got no intentions unless i have to stop in that because the doctor when he said you've got to slow down i said if i slow down i'll die you know i said i'm just going to carry on you know and that's exactly what i'm going to do but i've enjoyed it you know things like this we're doing now but it's all nice because other people that listen to it nowadays with podcasts and stuff my wife should be up to this one as soon as she can you know um it's actually giving maybe something back i've taken a lot worked hard to get it but now people are learning you know you know the the videos i do and stuff yes so many good comments and stuff on that it's worth doing people people are enjoying it and even through lockdown i've given an awful lot out to people who can't wait for the next one so i've enjoyed it it and you should um because there's a lot of inspiration to find in not just what you've done yeah uh but the way you portray it and the you know the again as i said you know a lot of look let's be fair a lot of a lot of veterans who've done your kind of work come home with ptsd um they have all kinds of issues that they're battling through very hard for a lot of the guys these days to transition uh back to civilian life and it's always good to hear um a story from someone and i don't know if you've ever felt anything like that as well if you've ever had ptsd or if you've i i've i've been diagnosed with ptsd in 1990 i think it was four you know anything about it but psychiatrists called in me and he said yeah so i went for help then i was left to self-help to some degree then for 10 months i went off the road all together with um i don't mind admitting anxiety and depression and i'd i've been to charities i didn't do any work i wouldn't go out the house very little but he never thought it was going to happen to me and he did but you know what i fought through it and it took me 10 months i don't mind admitting that but then when i came out of it anybody who's listening just have a look over the horizon i took 10 months to come out of it but i came out of it and since that 10 month was what 2017-ish a bit late but still it was there since i came out i haven't looked back and there is hope for anybody if they can put this mind to it it's it's there as well yeah we've seen stuff we've done stuff the fact is it can be beaten i've beaten it yeah that's that's such a that's a such a powerful testimony rusty and i've done it and this is the kind of thing this is you know when you say you know you've taken a lot and now you're giving a lot back it's it's words like that which i think go a long way to helping people um overcome their anxieties their fears and some of the things maybe they've been through uh as a soldier as a veteran see that boxer yes you probably can't read it no that's medical and in there it's full of paperwork wow so trust me i've been there and i'm back out and i'm not looking back at that at all but trust me for 10 months nightmare absolutely nightmare however here we are today talking about it and and you know that is probably the most important thing that you can do is to uh you know is to talk about talk about that talk about um your experiences and you know to give back whether you're inspiring someone whether you're teaching someone with whether you're passing on some of your knowledge um it's impossible yeah and that's exactly what i'm doing yeah well we're we're thankful for it rusty and i'm super thankful that um you've given us given us an opportunity to speak with you today um i'm sure a lot of the the people that listen to our show uh are going to want to look much further into uh your story and some of your exploits and learn more about you uh where can our audience find you uh what are some you know do you have social media do you have a website that you can direct people to yeah i'm just going to give you um first of all um bear with me the first one is uh sure is that right i'll be right with you right the first one is we've got a website okay let me first of all let me give you the facebook page okay and it's sas orientated but you don't have to be we look i'm an admin on it we look at everybody that wants to come on this okay and we've got quite a lot in a very short period of time we've got nearly 7 000 already in a couple of months wow so it's called sas special air service military collectors and facts page okay okay so anybody who comes to that they will ask to join we look at them they don't need to be military they may want to see what that type of page does they could purchase stuff of people they can look at facts they can put facts on there as long as they stay within the guidelines and we don't have any problem the walter mitty's that have been on there you've been them all it takes us five minutes me and shane to work them out right one is where all the videos are being watched right now and this has got it's on its way to um 11 12 000 yeah i've been all over it yeah your youtube channel and it's called rusty furmin two different words rusty furmin sas tv that's my youtube channel and a website where you can look at a lot of the stuff we've done is um www dot rusty hyphen furmin dot org forward slash shop you'll see the books on there go go go the definitive story of the embassy siege and the inspiration for the film six days and then my other book it takes me through from when i was born all the way through to 1992 when i left the scs is called the regiment 15 years in the ses and you can get them even if you want them posted directly i sign everything and post them off personally to anybody who comes to my site there's nobody else involved in it it's me i do it from home books are over there the other books are there so you're getting it direct from me the round of third parties involved it's me i sign and send and yes there's an awful lot gone out over the last six weeks i can tell you that so that's on there and the rest i think you'll be able to recently wade through anybody wants um rusty furman goes under his own name i don't have any aliases on twitter i don't have aliases on facebook i don't have aliases on um instagram i don't they're all rusty furmin so right two separate words okay rusty fern i'll put all i'm gonna put all of your links up uh in our in our show notes so when we post it up uh we'll include all of the links for any of our audience uh that's okay you didn't realize that yeah you you only you're only doing the audio it doesn't do the video no we're doing the video well what we've just done now yeah yeah no this is this is this is all being recorded so oh dressed up for you mate no no we love it we love the football look that's it football club tonight they can actually win the premiership tonight liverpool yeah they can yeah just as if you get beat tonight then liverpool won it they're already 20 points ahead with a few games to go it's that they've walked it this year but i didn't realize i thought it was just going to be in audio but no you've done you no you've done great on video and we're super happy that uh that you did the show rusty thank you so much for being a part of this and i wish you tremendous success i really hope you write the third book yeah we're looking forward to that i'm sure there's lots of adventures there for us to kind of uh delve into but uh yeah this has been great and i hope you'll come back on the show again oh anytime mate

Channel: Lawrence Rosenberg

Views: 7,379

Rating: 4.818182 out of 5

Keywords: Podcast, Military, UK Military, SAS, Netflix, 6 Days, Special Ops, SAS Mission, Book Author, History, Military History, Blue Team Leader, Iranian Embassy Siege, SAS History

Id: RcYDCY83LHk

Length: 92min 1sec (5521 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020