SAS Bravo Three Zero

fairly early on in your time in the regiment you earned a certain nickname that kind of defines you and your career began with kay would you please tell us what that nickname was and why you got it kamikaze does and i got that nickname because um i joined when i was in the regiment air troop an air troop specializing high altitude free-fall parachuting so that's jumping from 25 000 feet breathing oxygen and exiting the aircraft with your patrol reaching speeds of excess of 120 miles an hour so just to set the scene you dive out normally at night breathing oxygen with altimeters on goggles on you look like um an astronaut and you were there in the dark um screaming towards the ground as i said excess 120 miles an hour uh but i had three malfunctions um where your you deploy your parachute you look up and you think um that's doesn't look right that's that should be deploying and it's not so there's a certain drill uh that you have to cut it away and as you cut that shoot away you're going to free fall again and you deploy your reserve that happened to me three times the reason you do that if you deploy your reserve parachute it will get tangled with the one that's not working and obviously you you do you don't get a good ending so that um to me three times and i got the nickname kamikaze does and very early on in your uh your career in in in the regiment you also earned another kind of nickname um well actually you and your wife and another kind of nickname to do with a with actually britain's best-selling daily newspaper um and a certain competition you were entered into by your wife and that was really when you first came to the notice of those in command of the regiment tell us about that yes what it was uh i just i served in parachute regiment at first i did eight and a half years and then i did the transition going up to the sas and just in that transition um my wife says um i've entered us into a competition and it's the sun's fittest couple competition and i don't know more of it and um and for a few weeks she says um look you know i'm getting some correspondence bike and i thought i'll just say yes i'll get myself out in this at a certain time like i've got to go away i've got to go to another country and the likes but she was very clever when i come home she didn't let me know i like i think i come home on a wednesday then on the thursday she says oh we're going down to london on the saturday we're doing this competition and i couldn't get out of it so i had to go with it and we went down to london and we actually won it and to my surprise but as you can imagine then my mind's thinking because we're having photographs we've got the cup i'm lifting my wife up and the sun newspaper has got all these pictures and my mind's thinking this is not good i've got to go back to errorford talk to my bosses and tell them exactly what i've done and i'd only just joined um so you can imagine what come about and in the story sorry in the book i tell the story of what the sergeant major actually said to me so this was within uh a few months of joining um the the sas so you basically um earned a certain reputation you were known as the sun's fittest couple um and also earning the reputation already already as the kamikaze um and then 1991 um saddam hussein has invaded kuwait um there's a coalition formed backed by the u.n to get him out of kuwait and the drums of war beating now you're in b squadron and the other three squadrons have already deployed to um to uh the middle east in preparation for going into iraq and acclimatization everything else you are the counter-terrorism squadron and you have absolutely no hope of going to iraq and suddenly just prior to christmas that all changes out of the blue so just talk us through that moment yes as damian said we just accepted that we wasn't in the conflict we were on the anti-terrorist team the sort of thing you've seen with the iranian embassy the guys all in black okay that was uh anything that happens in the uk they have to have a squadron on standby so we are now not involved in the conflict at all we just accepted it three squadrons had already battled ready they'd been preparing for what was coming up suddenly we got replaced by another squadron and we got called into the briefing room and the sergeant major said right be squadron you're off to the gulf and we actually thought he was joking you know everybody's looking around at each other and we're laughing and joking because no seriously g squadron's coming back replacing you b squadron you're going out to the gulf but our role was quite different we were going there as bcr's battle casualty replacements that left two squadrons that were battle ready that was going to be poised on the border of saudi arabia ready to fight independently going up through the desert to baghdad we were simply there as battle casualty replacement simply that anyone that got injured or killed we were simply to replace them and we knew that this was going to be big the buzz that went round ediford at that time that this was the biggest conflict since the second world war and we were told by the colonel we were going to lose a lot of guys because the regiment were getting involved in such a big way 50 years earlier they were already fighting rommel in the desert in north africa they saw this as no different this was desert warfare this time in iraq two sabre squadrons fighting taylor med for the ses shoot and scoot behind enemy lines disruption but they were going to lose a lot of men so from being the on-call counter-terrorism squadron suddenly you're you're deploying what's what's your reaction how do you feel you've got to go home say goodbye to your wife tell her the news it sounds strange but we're excited um this is what you're designed to do you're a soldier and not only that we sas we saw that this was big massive in fact our commanders was talking that if it goes wrong this is third world war stuff and yes the the feeling around camp was a buzz even though we know that it was going to be dangerous we were just pleased if you like to get involved in the conflict and to be able to do something i mean after all kuwait had been invaded the objective was simple to liberate kuwait and we wanted to help so you deploy you deploy to united arab emirates where there's a base you've been given by the the shake there that's the training base everyone's acclimatizing trying to get acclimatized to desert conditions you personally face a very severe problem which meant possibly you should have pulled yourself off the deployment yeah and as you're thinking about that and going through that really bad experience you're thinking if i pull myself off are people going to think i've bottled it they think i'm a coward do you remember that moment and tell the story about how that happened because of your your two times going through sas selection yes damian's referring to i'd um since a a young boy i'd suffered with stomach problems i later found out i'd got a dual dinner ulcer i didn't know and as i went through the first selection i had really bad problems and if anyone has had an ulceria you are basically sick vomiting just feel very very unwell and and that hindered me on my first selection um i come back a second time got through it also hindered me then but i just managed to hold on and and get through with a promise that i would get something done about it because as i was going through the second selection i actually got sussed and one of the instructors pulled me to one side and said you've got a problem dez haven't you i guess yes i have you could look because you've got through and you've got this far you've done well but this is going to plague you forever you need something done about it i didn't get it done in time because when out to the gulf it started up again because as you can imagine it was very very stressful at that time and i was just sick really really bad and i thought to myself that if i go out on a patrol bcr's at that time i am going to uh be a hindrance to the patrol and at one stage i was going on my hand up and said look i feel that bad um i don't think i can do this but as damian's pointing out that are they gonna think that i'm i'm scared i'm a coward so there was a fine balance of yes but if i go out patrol i could jeopardize that patrol and put everyone in danger as it happened i managed to get through it yeah so you you you've basically dosed yourself up on on medicines and got yourself through the worst of it okay and then for you for b squadron it all changes and it changes overnight and what happens is of course saddam in his kind of you know brinksmanship starts lobbing scud missiles these um basically v2 like weapons uh into israel now nobody knows if these are tipped with chemical biological or conventional warheads but saddam certainly has the capability and saddam's bricksmanship is obviously that if he can draw israel into the conflict then it will become a third world war it will fracture the coalition which would be disastrous and so as i say overnight the mission of special forces becomes one of scud hunting the problem is that to do that you have to be hundreds of kilometers inside the iraqi desert and the two other squadrons who have been there climatizing for two or three months have already departed in their land rovers towards the border so they can't be sent in quickly which leaves only b squadron to be flown across the iraqi border deep behind enemy lines now you're stood up as the first patrol there's just one patrol to start with who's on that patrol and how do you feel about it yes the first patrol that was stood up was a bravo patrol and we there was only one patrol going out and it was the original of andy mcnabb okay and chris ryan myself as well as others only one patrol initially and then they said oh maybe we need another one and eventually it was three and i got put into another patrol and that was going to be bravo 2-0 i luckily got pushed over to bravo 3-0 we did have a bravo 1-0 as well um so when i look back on that um everyone knows what happened with bravo 2-0 um it's it was fate if you like because i could have been initially in that patrol um so i was probably very very lucky so in there's this three bravo patrols as has just explained it there's brother one zero brother two zero bribery three zero dez is now on bravo three zero you would expect perhaps that all equipment possible and necessary would be there in theater you faced a very very significant problem for all three bravo patrols faced a very significant problem what was the key thing that was lacking which led to some of those patrols going in on foot there was all sorts of problems and i'll i'll give a broad brush of it we had problems with uh weapons we didn't have the right weapons right ammunition we didn't have the proper radios uh we didn't have the proper vehicles um we didn't have the proper clothing cold weather clothing um it turned out to be the coldest weather they'd ever had on record in the iraqi desert we were told that being in the desert out there we're going to have weather like an a uk spring it was the coldest weather that they'd had and just to underline that it was that cold that guys from my regiment actually died from hypothermia um they was just all sorts of things that just didn't work at that time and we're soldiers and we have to get on with the job in hand so if logistics are the problem simply because the speed of the conflict sometimes logistics can't marry up with the troops on the ground for example when i left early january to go out to the gulf within days i was hundreds of miles behind enemy lines with a lack of equipment for whatever reason intelligence was wrong intelligence was telling us you could have a spring weather it was the worst weather on record they were telling us that it was going to be um soft desert sand like it is in the uae it was hard barren rocky underfoot and underground it was going to be dunes it was flat as like it is as we used to set luna landscape so when we got on the ground and realized that the lack of equipment and the weather and the ground wasn't what the intelligence told us we knew we was in trouble and we actually went out on vehicles and we knew that two of the patrols had gone out on foot and if we were having problems in vehicles we knew that they were definitely going to have problem being on foot so the vehicles that were on offer were basically pretty much standard land rovers they had no mounted weaponry and very little specialist kit now two of the patrols bravo one and bravo tier zero because it was the patrol commanders well actually all of the patrol's decision how you deployed two of the patrols decided to go in on foot your patrol decided to go in with vehicles there were some fairly heated debates between patrol members and the patrols about what was the right approach what just talk us through some of those conversations you had for example with chris ryan about how you were going to go in what it is the when a mission comes in a task that you've got to go in in this case to go out and find scuds okay needles in a haystack if you like out in the iraqi desert they let you decide how you are going to carry out that mission after all the expertise is with the guys on the ground the soldiers on the ground you've had years of doing this so your commanders say that we want you to go out and find these scud missiles because if you don't okay the game changes are is that israel is going to get involved in the war and another one there's a chance of of chemical weapons and if that happens that is going to be big that is going to be third world war stuff the sense of the world is gonna go into chaos however we carry out the missions the way we feel is correct and when you looked at the intelligence that we had it looked initially that we could carry out on foot but also carry out on vehicles so we left the decision to us however what damon's referring to i sat down one day with chris ryan and i said uh so what's the score major says your guys are going in on foots you're carrying a lot of equipment and he said yes but look at the vehicles you've got they don't look war ready so to speak you know you've got no weapon mounts on them you've got no platforms no nothing those are just standard land rovers and i said but yeah you've got to be a little bit naive to think that you are going to be in the enemy's backyard hundreds of miles behind enemy lines and you get compromised you're on foot you're running for syria you can't get back to saudi arabia if we have vehicles we can at least drive back and he said no we can again the intelligence says that we can put in ops observation posts we can observe the msrs like big roads which come from baghdad go all the way up to neighbouring countries syria and jordan we will see these goods and me and chris ryan he put doubt in my mind looking at the vehicles thinking oh he's got a point there and i'm looking at him and i think i put doubt in his mind thinking oh maybe we can't put in an rp either way we made the decisions they decided to go in on foot we decided to take vehicles so the three patrols go in well they deploy uh you you fly across the border um it's a low-level hell flight so you're in chinooks you know 50 100 feet above the ground napa the earth flying uh chaffs firing off you've got a a top gun some american pilot with lock-on on your aircraft because this these missions are so okay that not even you know the coalition command know that these patrols are going in but the three patrols that go in brother one bravo two in bravo three two deploy your patrol and andy nabs patrol one does not talk us through why one doesn't one patrol doesn't deploy and what you feel about that on the crowd we wasn't to know we thought that all three patrols actually deployed we didn't know till afterwards that bravo one 0 didn't deploy what they actually did we went in in two heavy lift channel helicopters the large helicopters these things are 30 meters long several tons okay and twin engine heavy lift helicopters the bravo one patrol that was on one particular helicopter landed they got off the ground had to look round and said this is not the intelligence picture that we was told he had a look round got back on the helicopter had a chat with a pilot and said can you take us to another location we want to have a look because this we cannot achieve the mission the pilot said okay he took off went to another area in the iraqi desert they got off again had a look round and then they had to make an important decision and they decided they said we cannot achieve the mission got back on the aircraft and went back to headquarters so that was the bravo one zero patrol which um the patrol commander decided they that they were not going to deploy and they did not deploy but you land on the ground you get off you drive off the chinooks open ramp you see exactly the same thing okay you get off you look around and there is a flat desert flat as a pancake baron not a scrap of cover anywhere okay and it's hard as concrete now surely at that moment you could have made the same decision you could have also said you know you in the patrol command the des were second in command of the patrol we can't achieve the mission we're not deploying why did you not do that we knew how big the mission was um and we knew that it was down to the three patrols we were told that if we did not find these scud missiles and there was a good chance that saddam eventually would put chemical warheads on him now that would have been a game changer a game changer okay because if israel had come into the war because of these skud rockets and and by the way israel told everyone that they'd put a battalion of paratroopers on standby and if we did not find these good rockets they were gonna fly parachute in onto baghdad okay and fight in baghdad and we knew then that if that would happen even though saddam was wrong to invade kuwait neighboring countries would side with saddam to fight against israel so we knew this was definitely third world war stuff as well we'd seen in saudi arabia hundreds of thousands of troops forming in saudi arabia this is aircraft troops and armor ready to steamroll across iraq and kuwait so answering your question we knew this was massive and the soldier being a soldier you need to carry out the mission but as soon as we'd come off the aircraft and damier had mentioned that we had one hell of a flight coming in we nearly got shot out the sky because of the top gun locked on and the pilot okay maneuvered enough to get rid of the lock-on get us on the ground get us off we drove off he pulled away and at that moment we knew we could feel how cold it was we could see how flat it was we could feel how hard it was on the ground we could almost see baghdad from where we were at we knew that this was massive and we had to see the mission through we felt that because of the vehicles that we had we felt that if we did get compromised at least we weren't on foot we could turn around either shoot and scoot back to saudi arabia i'll go to neighbouring syria and get out of iraq simply because we have the wheels to do so so we felt that we could achieve our mission okay it's a hell of a um it's a hell of a brave decision um you know that takes real um courage and insight and experience you're all long experienced operators you spend that first night basically hiding in plain sight there is nowhere to hide there is no cover so you basically cannot come out put camouflage netting over the wagons and spend the first night hiding in plain sight but very quickly you start to realize that second day as you're on the move moving up to that to the main road the msr the main supply route along which we know saddam's taking his scuds is scud convoys often disguised as civilian transports and as you're moving up to that road that first day to get eyes on to achieve your mission you start to feel how really really cold it is this is freezing cold and there's a measure you take you know you didn't bring the kit in there for that reason but you have to use it bastardize it because it's so cold and it kind of has ramifications later when you're bluffing your way through just talk us through that moment where you you know what i'm referring to yes i am damien's talking about we didn't have enough cold weather clothing um uh simply because of logistics and the problems that i talked about earlier on uh because saddam was going to we're almost certain he was going to use chemical weapons at some time because he'd use them fighting against iran for many many years and he'd used him on his own people the kurds so we knew sooner or later he would use chemical weapons so we had we call them nbc suits where you wear a suit against the body and you wear the gas masks and we were that cold that we put those on okay on on top of our kit or between our kit and and what it is in the clothing it has charcoal on it and the charcoal started to rub off on our bodies and we started to look black and look like um coleman if you like and um it just simply costs a warmth but damien's pointing out as well that it helped us because over the days that we had on the ground is that not only was we wearing shir mags like you're doing the middle east but we were blackened up as well uh in our hands and our faces and the likes and we did a thing that damien has said called hiding plain sight is that because we couldn't hide anywhere we had to do it overtly in front of everyone and in the desert we were bumping into uh goat turtles were bumping into military and saddam was saying that such a massive army that they had different weapons different equipment different clothing so we were all different we were just a rag tiger like our uniform was a mixture of everything including nbc and including charcoal on the skin including shamans we just looked a mess and no one expected an ses patrol to be almost 300 miles behind enemy lines in fact at one stage we was the furthest didn't know at the time we was the furthest and only patrol closest to baghdad in fact we was the only patrol on the ground we didn't know it at the time so this this this kind of having to make do and mend on the ground so wearing these noddy suits nbc suits as diy cold weather gear kind of unwittingly comes to their advantage as the patrol progresses the other thing that you realize very quickly well you're unsure but you suspect um your signaller um giant of a guy um can't get communications through to headquarters he thinks your message is getting through but he can't get any verification that anything's coming back again yeah now when you're that far behind the lines and you're deploying into terrain and climate which is completely different from what the intelligence briefings have told you it should be what's it then like when you cannot actually speak to headquarters yes our radios they're not radios that you can talk into we they're you know stated art radios at that time we we send messages and they get the decoded and they get re decoded at the other end at headquarters but we sense that we're not getting confirmation and we're sending blind so we're open that they are getting our messages and it's it's it's not a good feeling because we we are thinking well if we are not achieving our mission or are we really doing something out here and plus we are now bumping into the enemy we are kind of waving to people through the day we are bluffing our way if you like um the desert believe it or not is quite busy and um but we haven't now got a lifeline back to hq because we are not sure now that our messages are getting through and and one night it was really really bad is that we had a garbled message and we knew that people was in trouble and we knew that the squadrons were coming up behind us hundreds of miles away coming up behind us independently uh to fight up through the desert to take on targets um designated or opportune targets we knew that they'd been hit and we knew there'd been deaths and we're almost certain that bravo 2-0 had been hit as well but we couldn't do anything because we didn't have communication with them we were working independently we were in different areas and we couldn't help them and that was very very very frustrating and it's quite scary because we are saying well if we get in trouble we can't ask for help either and it was decision time of of what we had to do yeah i mean you described that moment when you finally get some form of garbled communications back from headquarters and you realize you've got two full saber squadrons taking casualties and you suspect it it's implied that bravo 2-0 are compromised on the run missing in action you describe that as the darkest moment or one of the darkest moments of the patrol yeah yes but things are about to get in a sense a lot darker um you day two day three you encounter what you think is the scud launch site climb to the ridge just talk us through um what you see what you do about it um and then the aftermath with the with what we suspect is the friendly fire incident and bear in mind that because they don't know if their signals are getting through to headquarters your mission is almost undoable because if your signals aren't getting through you can't call in the locations of the scuds the scuds can't be hit by air power and it negates the whole object of the exercise so talk through that moment where you discover that that site in the desert yes as you can imagine we in the evening what we're trying to do is watch the msrs we were open to catch scuds being moved they were mobile goods and they would set them up in the desert fire them over to neighboring israel and then disappear we were open to see them go up and down the main supply route so at night we would observe it from a distance one evening we saw the only way i can describe it is is lights that you see on the m1 motorway when they do repairs at night there was lights everywhere and we could see it just on the other side of this very low mound so i said to one of guys come on let's go and we managed to crawl on our hands and then pop our heads up and we just saw a hive of activity and we could see a load of soldiers um we could see vehicles and we saw all these lights you know and you know we were trying to make sense of it and we were saying well you know is it a scud launch site and is it you know is it just troops that are just you know betting in the desert so they're getting ready for something and so what we did we got a little bit excited because we thought well we've caught them with their pants down we've got a scud team so what we did we took their coordinates we got on the radio as quick as we can sent those back we had to send it blind with an intention of bringing in an air strike because that was it we were there as bravo patrols to find these skud rockets get their locations send it back by radio to hq they would bring in airstrikes and take them out but we wasn't sure whether our messages were getting through but now we'd caught one and we caught them with their pants down and we sent the messages through and we thought we'd better get away from here fast so we started to pull away and then suddenly you know after minutes there was a massive explosion in front of us and our trucks just stopped okay and we just saw a massive the only one can describe it it's that to me it was like the old footage that you used to see in vietnam when the napalm used to come in and used to spread it on the ground and you'd just get all this explosion in front here and we just stopped my vehicle the two vehicles side by side just watching this big explosion in front of us and it kind of all calmed down and we posed and i remember saying something really stupid to the commander of the patrol and i said so we're not going in that direction then aren't we and he said uh no we know and um we what we did we turned round and slowly pulled away and it was only that evening we got our edge together and what we think it was is that a coalition aircraft a top gun aircraft saw an opportune target and what they do from the aircraft what they see is that if they're gonna fire on anything is that that we pick up a heat source the engine of our land rovers and what they do they'll send a missile and that missile locks on to the heat source what we think happened this particular evening is that because we're moving and not static he estimated guesstimated he wasn't out for us he'd been on a mission but all of a sudden we feel that he'd seen us and go opportune target he let his payload good luckily he missed us what that happened a few times with the other patrols in fact a funny story was in one of the squadrons that come fighting up behind us they did that on one of their patrols luckily it didn't hit them but what they do they got fragments of the rocket and actually presented it to the pilot afterwards and said you're not very good you know your name was off that day thank god so one of the reason one of the ways you're trying to address that is you start putting union jacks big flags out so when you're camped up at night you put the union jack out and weigh it down with stones to try and mark it as a as a friendly as a coalition uh unit to try and stop those strikes taking place but because you've just found a scud launch site you've just radioed it in you've just just escaped what was very likely a friendly fire coalition strike you go into a hide for the rest of the for the rest of the night hours and you move off just before first light do you remember because your patrol commander wants to get you further away from where that happened yes and very quickly within a matter of of a few minutes really you encounter that first uh iraqi patrol and bear in mind you know when when when dez talks about not taking cold weather gear well one of the reasons they didn't take cold weather gear was because they were briefed it would be like britain in springtime the other reason they didn't take cold weather gear is because if you're a an elite soldier and you've got the choice between cold weather gear or ammo you take the ammo so your your vehicles are very heavily laden and one of these is a short wheelbase land rover so you've got eight guys one of them one at one vehicle short wheel by slanderer with four in it you are extremely heavily laden you aren't there's no way on earth you can even try and outrun this iraqi patrol so what do you do instead yes all of a sudden we saw dust in front of us and we saw that it was quite a few vehicles when you see a lot of dust you know it's a convoy of vehicles and we thought this is a contact and we saw these vehicles coming towards us a mixture of all sorts we could see land cruisers we could see some green vehicles but we also saw troops on them and we thought this is it um we just kept on our bearing we just kept driving forward and what we did is that it was countdown time you know um we started to get our weapons ready we would adjust ourselves in our seats like this we would get our weapons put them to the side they were coming up on this side i remember and we was ready for a contact we thought this is it we're gonna get sussed okay the i was the rear vehicle and we had a vehicle in front of us as damian said a larger land rover a smaller land rover by the way we call them a pinky a minor dinka okay we had nicknames for him and we thought this was it now in hiding in plain sight we're not going to be able to get past this one and we could see they were heavily landed they were armed we could see aks they hold them in this position and they're driving fast towards us so we're getting closer and by the second we're getting closer and we're kind of looking at each other and we're just preparing stuff getting ready for our mags to pull out and we just you know just getting things ready jockeying for position to give them a side swipe sort of thing and as we're getting closer and closer we could see them under dusk getting more all of a sudden i see my commander in the front just wave his hand and start waving to him like that i thought good lad so i did the same raise my hand up started waving bear in mind with a mishmash of of uniforms we've got shamans on we've got charcoal on our skin we look black we look a mess we don't look like we are formidable for us to fight and at first he didn't wait back and as they all of a sudden they come right alongside us about 50 meters away so all of a sudden they were holding aks up and cheering and shouting or whatever and i'm thinking what the hell you know we've we've bluffed our way we've got past this and you could see us kind of all look at each other and saying and they went past i remember just looking back like that and just keeping my eyes on them you know and i'm looking at my driver and i'm going to keep going keep going and after any minute now they've suspects they're going to just loop round and come for us and they just kept going and just kept going they just kept going and um that was the epitome of hiding in plain sight that was the biggest patrol that we'd come across and um we was just lucky and uh we carried on with our mission so after that after that um that that that narrow escape bluffing it that murphy's law says if it can go wrong it will and uh you you know you're in these uh appalling vehicles uh you've got no mounted weaponry got no cold weather gear you are the only patrol left on the ground um you are the furthest coalition forces behind enemy lines and you're getting you're getting targeted by coalition air power because they don't know you're there things get worse talk us through how the weather turns and what that means for you as a patrol yes and just prior to that we'd we'd at night would come out and we'd we'd look for scouts basically on msrs and one evening we just saw flashes in the distance and it was baghdad getting bombed and we just sat there in our vehicles and we could see the flashes of rockets coming in from the aircraft and we could see baghdad responding with the anti-aircraft guns and it was taking hell of a pounding a real pounding and we just sat there and we didn't say anything and we must we must have sat there for about an hour and off just watching baghdad getting absolutely pounded and and i i i know i was affecting me and i knew the other guys just simply because of our silence we didn't say anything and as we pulled back we settled down for that evening not saying anything and then what happened is it started snowing and we'd add the gobbled messages of possibly wasn't sure of bravo two zero being on the run we didn't know we knew that they'd had contacts with the squadrons that were coming up behind us a couple hundred miles away nowhere near us and my mind was thinking the mighty sass has been hit you know and these guys we're only a small regiment we all know each other you know even if we don't know each other intimately we know each other by nodding okay we know each other by face all of us we're a small regiment and i knew guys had died and our or our new guys were in a bad way simply because of the garbled messages that we had and we'd seen baghdad get hit and it was snowing and we had no cold weather equipment and we was in hell of a state and the morale was about as low as it gets and at that time we we know we're coming down with exposure in the regiment they teach you to recognize it and and what it is with exposure is that um the the normal thing is your extremities you are extremely cold your hands and fingers and feet and toes are numb you can't feel them but what people don't realize is that your mind starts to go and we are taught to recognize this not only in others but in ourselves and i could feel myself going down and that's a very scary feeling is because you know that you've got to make decisions early because if your mind goes foggy and the way it goes it goes foggy you go irritable you you get very agitated and you don't do things you know if dead starts doing stuff that he doesn't normally do my patrol would recognize it that dez is going down with exposure and we are taught to recognize that in each other but when you feel it in yourself that's a very very scary experience because you know you've only got a short amount of time to make decisions and we are taught to make decisions early simple decisions get more clothing on uh get more hot food and drinks down yeah we have a routine called hard routine where we eat cold food and cold drinks because we don't want to get compromised by the enemy well we realized we have to stop that routine because now we're fighting against the elements so simple things the clarity of mind you've got to do something there and then more clothing lead method drinks shield yourself from the the wind the wind brings down the temperature even more they call it wind chill and it brings down the temperature even more we are taught to buddy buddy okay me and damien we're on a patrol we talk to each other i get a cup of tea on we talk and we were watching each other you know what it's like when you go out to the countryside and you go to a vendor and you get a hot soup and chocolate your morale raises you feel good don't you you know not only do you sleep well that night that's because the elements are hitting you all the time the wind the cold the rain your mind goes foggy you get very lethargic you get very tired so your body buddy system up you make oxy and drinks with your sachets okay from ration packs you shield behind you kept more clothing on and the morale you keep up that evening was very very bad but we managed to get through that evening and get through to the next day yeah so this at this moment your your you you have these debates and they continue for the rest of the patrol because that weather doesn't get any better by the way it keeps knowing it gets it gets colder and more severe but you have these debates and that they're almost a daily occurrence where basically you're trying to make the decision we don't know if our communications are getting through we don't know if the scuds we're finding or even being hit because we don't know if we're getting our radio messages through we're freezing cold we're running short fuel we've got no heavy weapons on the vehicles should we abort what stops you from doing so what keeps you on the mission we know sooner or later that incident that i told you about we bumped into we knew sooner or later we're gonna come across something big and we're gonna be knocked on our hearts we know we are as damian just said we're getting low on rations low on fuel one of the trucks started to cough and splutter we knew it wasn't going to perform or it was getting worse and we knew that we're in their backyard we're hundreds of miles behind enemy lines we're cold we're low on equipment we can see baghdad getting hit we're bumping into people all the time and we know that someone big is going to get us son and we're not going to be in a position to fight the battle that we want in other words we're cold we're we're feeling it now we're we are and and we're not sure whether we're achieving our mission but we had a talk about what we saw at baghdad and we said look we had a nutter and we said if we know that if if we don't do the very best we can if we don't put our hands in our hearts and if we don't when we go back and say we've done everything we possibly can whether we find schools or whether we're not we've achieved our mission the best we can but when we saw baghdad getting hit that night and we knew civilians okay had been killed not intentionally but the fallout of conflicts is that innocent people get killed we knew that we had to do our very very best because we had a talk and we knew that israel every single day was threatening to come into the war they got a battalion in british terms in a british battalion that 650 men that are waiting on standby to parachute into baghdad if israel are coming to the war the dynamics of the middle east would have changed dramatically thousands of lives would have been threatened i'm sure that our government didn't tell the israeli government that it was down to three ses patrols on the ground okay that was going to see save the day okay remember the the the changes was going to be israel coming into the war and chemical weapons that would have changed everything so we knew the hands in our arts we agreed that we will not go back until we feel that we've achieved our mission so and i'm aware of time so you're you continue with the mission for several more days you you identify more targets you radio through the coordinates you're fighting the cold you've all got frostbite things are things are desperate what's the trigger that makes you turn for the border what's the one thing that changes everything we got compromised okay what happened was we're feeling very bad we were all going down with exposure and we knew it was only a matter of a couple of days that we were going to have to run for the border um all of a sudden early hours one morning we had a truck coming towards us now bear in mind we'd we'd we'd been we call it lup lineup point and we're on stag and early as in morning wear this truck and we started jocking for position we thought this is it we could hear it we've been sussed and so we started getting ready for the contact okay we got out as a 666 which is an anti-tank weapon we've got those up we we started jock in position and we started getting around our trucks and we're looking and one of the guys signaled he pointed he went that direction which means enemy that direction enemy and we could hear that it was a truck so my patrol which was on this side jockey from position and i could see the other patrol just in case now we're getting surrounded started to look in the other direction then all of a sudden we popped our heads up and i could see a guy walking towards us and he's walking towards and i'm looking and i'm looking around and i could see a vehicle just behind him this was about 150 meters away i saw and i'm looking and i'm looking around and thinking there's got to be other people here and we're ready as a contact now ready we anti-tank weapon and we realize it's a civilian and the vehicle i'm looking at is a water bowser and civilians used to replenish their troops in the field with water suddenly you turn around and walked back he saw that it wasn't an iraqi patron he saw something different he certainly knew that we were enemy and now we walked back and we were ready and i remember having a 66 on my shoulder as other guys did as well and i'm gonna hit this water bowser and then just common sense you know just tell me this guy's a civilian his compromises we're not going to shoot civilians you know and we all looked into each other and our weapons come down all of a sudden we just stood up and we just said it's being answered we're on the run let's go so we just started and he got in his truck and went away and we knew he was gonna now go and tell troops anyway and we knew they were gonna follow us up okay so now we know we're on the run went to our vehicles pulled the netting down got all ready got on guess what one of the vehicles won't start up okay we thought oh here we go so we managed to get my vehicle one of the guys says quickly got the vehicle around got it behind bump started it got it going in the vehicles and we started running for the border and the rest is another story yeah so just just to round off the last final scene um so you've got you're leading now in the dinky the short wheelbase land rover you've got the long wheelbase land rover behind which you know is is is on the blink yes and you stop yeah because you you you you fear you're surrounded you can see the enemy on all sides yes and the rounds are now coming in right and and you're on the ground and freezing frozen to the ground yeah yeah waiting for them to come for you yeah and they don't close for the kill at that time right yes so you set off again or you try to yeah what's the final thing that happens with that other vehicle breaks down just stopped completely there we go here we go does everybody get on my vehicle now the dinker so we just quickly we have a quick you know here we are in the desert now going down with exposure we know the enemy is following us up we know now they're coming to get us okay that's it we know now something big is what i've talked about is coming to come and smack us and knock us on our ass okay and now this is raising the old heart rate a little bit okay and now we've got a vehicle that's broke down so now we're getting ready for the contact okay rounds have been coming in uh we know we're getting followed up we can see dust in the distance so then one of the guys says right let's get chain on the back old-fashioned let's tow this let's see if we can do it we've got chains in our vehicle chained the front of theirs started with pull lo and behold it started to move and we started to the smaller land rover my dinke was pulling the pinky out of trouble and we slowly slowly made our way back to saudi arabia so for all of this all of this time when you're when you're you know battling the elements battling the enemy battling failed communications to headquarters as you think it you must have spared a thought i would imagine every day for the other bravo patrol that you knew was compromised on the run difference was they were on foot what did you think their chances were i actually thought they were all dead because the problems that i've just described i'm thinking surely if we've had the problems that we are having in vehicles in their backyard remember the conversation i had with chris ryan you know where we should we or shouldn't we is it vehicles shall we go on for because even we thought about going in on foot as well and and at that time i'm thinking with the global messages that i cut them thinking surely they can't survive you know we are barely surviving with the vehicles that we've got so surely on foot they're all dead

Channel: NationalArmyMuseumUK

Views: 221,572

Keywords: NationalArmyMuseumUK, NAM, National Army Museum, British Army, Britisharmy, army, Army museum, museum, special forces, SAS, Damien Lewis, Des Powell, Bravo Three Zero, Bravo Two Zero, Bravo One Zero, Gulf War, veteran, First Gulf War, Operation Desert Shield

Id: LPRGSFq5RWY

Length: 54min 51sec (3291 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2022