SAS The Soldier's Story - The Falklands and Colombia

we are still trying to plead with them to be sensible to be humane and to release those hostages that are in there after the deadline we will kill everybody here all the hostages [Music] for the first time ever there's the chance to go behind the cloak of secrecy that is the sas sas the complete soldiers story which includes unseen footage and interviews experience the grueling training [Music] the amazing speed and the unbelievable strength of the greatest fighting force in history [Music] also available from the explosive and compelling tv series are a further four [Music] videos [Music] they always say luck shines on the brave these are the men who risk everything when you join a force like the svs you know that you'll be used for the best jobs [Music] get the sas's side of the story get the videos and get viewing [Music] the plan was for bee squad and to be loaded into two c-130s on the ascension isles we would then fly across the south atlantic to the rio grande air base on tierra del fuego crash in on the runway and destroy all the aircraft disabled except missiles kill all the pilots in the officer's missed and then abandoned the hercules c-130 aeroplanes we would then have to escape and evade to the chilean border on foot 40 or 50 odd miles away it would be the biggest operation the sus had carried out since the second world war when it would be a suicide mission [Music] on the 2nd of april 1982 argentina invaded the falkland islands three ses squadrons were deployed each given a specific task my squad and b squadron began examining options to attack an air base on mainland argentina and to destroy the jets which were to threaten the task force [Music] were tasked to conduct classic ses hit-and-run raids behind enemy lines on the falklands g-squadron was to form the reconnaissance team gathering the intelligence urgently needed to help plan the recapture of the islands in one of the most daring sps operations of the war ten four-man patrols were covertly inserted onto the islands three four weeks before the british landings they were on their own the main british forces were still on the ascension isles 3 500 miles away it was early hours of the morning when we left homies the journey was about 150 miles and my patrol were landed by a helicopter 20 odd miles away from our observation post it took us about five nights to reach it over difficult and very exposed terrain we had to take everything we would need survive behind enemy lines for at least a month and each man was carrying about 130 pounds of kit a lot of the weight was made up by weapons and bullets if it all went wrong we weren't going to carry all that weight over 20 miles just to surrender we were worried about minefields but there was uh just just no time to check for them being lead scout i just wouldn't have had any idea if i was walking into one until it was too late we'd be moving for most of the night and before daybreak would make a slit trench and then disappear for the rest of the daylight i remember once i was already in my sleeping bag and usually when you're laying in a sleeping bag you're quite warm but this sleeping bag was soaking wet it was freezing cold and i was dreaming that i was actually digging up a row with a pneumatic drill i was actually shaking like that and i woke myself up with a shaking if it's dark you can get up and do some press-ups or whatever to keep warm but in the daylight you've just got to wiggle your toes wiggle your hands and so on just tense yourself up every now and again so that you can get the blood flowing through the veins our feet were in pretty [ __ ] state some of us had trench foot and i still haven't regained all the filling in my toes we were positioned above the argentinian garrison and air base at goose green which posed one of the biggest threats to the proposed british beachhead at san carlos we were tasked to establish how many troops there were and assess the strength of the defenses we were building up a picture for the troops that would actually be taking out goose green in order to get into the best position it was necessary for us to set up our observation post under the main flight route for the picaras chinooks and huey's all flying around so it was uh quite difficult sometimes lying in these shell scrapes when these aircraft were using this hilltop as a navigational aid they came so low that sometimes you'd just be choking on the exhaust views night time was our busiest time we'd uh send off our situation reports by morse back to hermes where they were logging all the information that was sent to them from all of our temper trolls building the big picture this was our most vulnerable time as the enemy could well have intercepted our signal and pinpointed our position using a location finder in this event we had no hope of any backup it would have been a fight to the death everything we saw we passed back in our situation reports we initially reported that we could see at least 600 argentinian soldiers dug in which is a battalion although they were later reinforced we could also see a pukara ground attack aircraft as well as a fuel dump we called in an airstrike on these targets and it was spectacular to see it happen watching the fuel dump blow up and just disintegrate in front of us there was one time at night when we heard this argentinian helicopter really loaded down with men flying from port stanley to reinforce goose green it was flying solo and so slowly it would have been easy to shoot out of this guy but that would have risked giving away our position and we couldn't take the risk our fight was with our eyes and ears the patrol moved out several nights before two power arrived to attack darwin and goose green by this time reinforcements would swell the argentinian garrison to 1 300 men outnumbered three to one two para recaptured the settlement against overwhelming odds in one of the most bitterly fought battles of the war while g squadron continued to gather intelligence my squadron was finalizing plans for the attack on the air base in argentina [Music] by the time we got to ascension we were fully committed to the in tubby type raid all intelligence reports indicated that this was a high risk operation there was a lot of apprehension amongst the squadron members about this mission when you join a force like the svs you know that you'll be used as tactical troops used for difficult jobs be used for the best jobs and that's what we get paid for if you don't like it you can leave any time you want [Music] i believe the way the headshed looked at it we would be sacrificed so that many more lives could be saved in the task force just one missile hitting hermes would have put the whole falklands operation in jeopardy they believed if we knocked out the superes and the exocets we could save the two carriers from destruction and the british army at the end of the day would have achieved their aim which was victory on the falklands [Music] come hour start major b squadron got us all together his words were it's a go get the gear prime the grenades charge the magazines the trucks are outside load up and we'll go to c130s we climb onto the trucks we sit there waiting i could see the c-130s gearing up about two or three hundred meters away you're beginning to think about the battle ahead you're beginning to have your reservations you begin to weigh up the options you hope that your weapon doesn't jam when you need it to be working 100 you're trying to remember if you can fire the m202 properly will it work will it blast the jet will it do the business all these things are running through your mind you're waiting you're waiting this is the worst bit you know it's gonna all happen very shortly and then suddenly the oc appears a brief conversation in the lead truck and then it ripples down through the trucks operations scrubbed that's it boys you're off the truck your first thought in fact is disappointment you're so hyped up and ready to go you just want to do it you want to get on with it you want to do the job and then you start to think good old svs common sense has taken over i finally realized that this would have been a suicide mission instead of sending the entire squadron in the c-130 the new option was to send in an eight-man team by helicopter they were to locate the air base and destroy the aircraft themselves they loaded into a stripped-down long-range helicopter for the low-level dash to the mainland if there was any problem with locating the drop-off point they were to be flown onto the border with chile and to conduct the mission from there it was a one-way flight the helicopter crew were briefed to ditch the chopper in chile and initiate the explosives that had been packed into the chopper floor as they approached the mainland the handheld radar warning device suddenly began to ping warning the patrol and the pilot that a hostile radar had locked on now pinned continuously it was agreed that the mission should continue [Music] they made an attempt to find the first drop-off position nearly crashing into the side of a hill until they found the valley where they could fly up undercover land the chopper and do a png sweep of the area looking for the drop-off point by this time the chopper was drastically short of fuel there could be no more map wreckers of the area or else they wouldn't reach the ditching point in chilling the border option was on drop off on the chilean broader do the job from there get out quickly hit and run after drop off no one knew exactly where they were but by mid-afternoon the team were already deep inside argentina and we're heading for the rio grande air base [Music] they sent their first radio message back to hereford informing base that they were in enemy territory the eagle has landed [Music] but by now two thousand argentinian marines were searching the countryside for them the patrol was all for carrying on with the mission despite the huge odds stacked against them but it was decided by the headshed that the time scale and the distance involved precluded the hit-and-run operation therefore the upstream in harryford decided to abort the mission the patrol now went into the recovery and extraction phase far from being lost and bewildered and wandering through the rugged chilean countryside as it first thought it now seems the british crew have been successfully spirited out of chile sources talk of a top-secret operation which led to between three and five british crew from the sea king flying out of punter uranus probably on one of the daily commercial flights chilean investigators assure the crew deliberately destroyed the helicopter with an incendiary grenade it seems the incident is so shrouded in secrecy that few people except senior chilean air force commanders know the details close to san carlos the site of the intended british landings played pebble island following airstrikes against port stanley argentinian aircraft had been dispersed to the pebble island airstrip these included pakara ground attack aircraft which could have devastated the british forces as they landed the threat had to be removed the aircraft had to be destroyed and the job was handed over to d squadron well we had very sparse information most of it's supplied by over flights by fast jet it was decided therefore to infiltrate a reconnaissance team by canoe which is the way that it actually occurs a small team was infiltrated onto the land mass adjacent and then paddled across onto pebble island caged their boats and conducted a reconnaissance of the target the team confirmed that there was settlement that was garrisoned by argentinian forces possibly up to 200 men aircraft crews maintenance crews and 11 aircraft sitting on the airstrip uncamouflaged so the assault team had explosive charges in standard charge form and everybody carried their own personal weapons and as larger quantity as ammunition as they could carry well we deployed from hms hermes which had to come fairly close in so that the aircraft could be within range we flew in very low level and we dropped off onto a predetermined helicopter landing site we then moved off to conduct the assault when the troop withdrew somebody detonated command detonate landlines the lads you see a couple of injuries one was concussion and one land actually got shrapnel although they were very superficial they were held back off the tide and everybody made the rendezvous and then we got out as quickly as possible but i remember looking back and just seeing a sea of flame you know it was a great feeling and we all knew that we'd done it without loss of light and with a very minor injury the diversionary raids were planned to create the impression that there was a large either airborne force or helium force arriving to take the interest away from the beach landings that were going to be conducted in san carlos sound to that end we had four separate targets to take on a troop level we deployed onto unwrecked helicopter landing sites they put us onto the ground into four different locations and we went off cross country very very heavily laden with equipment we got onto the targets attacked them without any reconnaissance and then packed up and then had the long march back to san carlos which we knew was going to be our final rendezvous point having conducted the assaults and i say all we did was deliver the firepower we didn't even follow up to check whether we'd hit anybody or anything and that was the aim of of it was just to make a big noise and get out it was necessary for us to transfer from hermes to the assault ships and we deployed onto a hms intrepid which was the marine carrier we do this by what they call cross decking which got very good at this means throwing everything on board an aircraft getting on the aircraft sitting on top of the kit flying off to the next ship unloading the aircraft putting the stuff to bed as quickly as possible it was like a helicopter ride you know you go on a helicopter you transferred ship you got off yeah it was a habit and then suddenly literally the last lift of the squadron out was loaded with the remnants of mountain troop squadron headquarters and elements of g squadron and attached personnel suddenly the red glow of the helicopter wasn't there anymore that unfortunately tragically never made the ship and crash into the sea some people actually watched it happen which is fairly horrific luckily enough though several of the guys managed to survive that and although the loss was horrendous i don't believe since world war ii we've ever had a loss like that in one go and even more more importantly the hardest thing to come to term was but that it was an accident twenty very good men went to the bottom of the scene the crash affected the whole regiment most of the lads had assaulted the airstrip on pebble island and went down in her chopper there have been deaths before but not like 20 guys all at once it's usually one or two guys getting killed but for 20 to be lost like that was just an unbelievable blow no one was sure why the helicopter went down but they think it hit an albatross if they'd been killed in an ambush or something like that okay it's still a waste of life but at least they would have died soldiering it seemed a total waste for no apparent reason they were good lads and they'll never be forgotten we were initially sent down from ascension to the south atlantic to reinforce d-squadron following the tragic helicopter crash in order to get to the south atlantic as quickly as possible we had to parachute into the sea off the falklands and rendezvous with hms andromeda [Music] after many hours flying we were given the orders action stations standby so we made our way to the tailgate i was number one in the stick tailgate open you clipped on i could see hms andromeda below red arm green go you launch yourself out into space and you get a severe buffeting by the slipstream of the aircraft you plummet downwards you can feel the jerk of the chute being deployed above your grub your lift webs to steer you have to release your equipment which is suspended by two hooks around your front you're into the sea the chute collapses down in front of you you have to release the canopy and now you've got to start treading water you've got a diver's dry suit on you you've got to hold your hands out of the water because your fingers are exposed to the cold also your head's exposed to the cold you tread water and you hope you soon be picked up by the rigid radar i could see the lights starting to come on on hms andromeda and i was drifting further away i'd been in the water now about 25 minutes i could feel the hands going numb i could feel the extremities of the face going numb i rose upon at the peak of the next wave and luckily i could see the rigid raider heading towards me which meant that within minutes i was lifted into the boat transported a fast rate of knots towards hm andromeda [Music] as the landings began british ships were being sunk at the rate of almost one a day the british task force faced the probability of losing one of the aircraft carriers hermes are invincible which would have jeopardized the entire british operation to recapture the falklands on the 25th of may two argentinian superease approached the task force and fired two deadly exorcist missiles sinking the atlantic conveyor a ship loaded with vital supplies for the british forces the threat to the aircraft carriers could no longer be tolerated the mainland option was back on [Music] a small submarine that recently arrived in san carlos bay it was small enough to avoid coastal defenses around the mainland of tierro del puego the mission was to travel in hms sonics arrive offshore mainland argentina inflate rubber assault craft on the submarine casing we would then load up all the ammunition weapons explosives m202s grenades the full complement of war the submarine would then submerge we would float off and head to the beach and do a tactical landing from the landing point we'd make our way across country by foot to the airbase at rio grande we'd set up an op and assess the situation we would then decide whether to bring the squadron in to do the job or whether it was feasible to do the job ourselves we loaded all our kitten equipment aboard the submarine we submerged and headed towards argentina on the way under cover of darkness we practiced our float off to perfection we arrived undetected off the coast of tierra del fuego and sat on the ocean floor waiting for the green light they always say luck shines on the brave if you've ever been in a big battle like i have certain things happen to get you off the hook things that are unexplainable the green light never came the submarine commander after five days on the ocean floor received the now famous signal white flags are flying in stanley it was the 14th of june 1982 [Music] victory [Music] [Applause] [Music] mr major used his first speech at the united nations to announce britain's intention to enter the war on drugs in colombia he told the general assembly that parents today have no peace of mind fearing their children could be exposed to the lethal menace of narcotics british troops are going there to train the violence is directed by the drug barons against us and and against our children and we think it is entirely proper to help the colombians we have no intention of abandoning them to deal with that problem on their own april 89 the sas go in [Music] their task destroy the cartels take out the drug factories [Music] 1989 margaret thatcher tied him with the then american president started to get very concerned about all the drugs movements through america and through europe and obviously into england and they decided to try and make some sort of effect against the drug cartels and reduce it at source rather than trying to fight it on the streets they got together and decided the best way to go about it was to send special forces down into colombia with the colombian government's permission to try and have a go at the cartels it was decided that they wouldn't actually deploy down there operationally fighting the cartels so decided to actually aim it at training the colombians in anti-drug operations special forces capabilities there were two major uh drug cartels one being run by pablo escobar the other one by gatcha gacha was actually taken out a while just before we got there which left harbor escobar as the main player there right from the start we never knew who we could trust you could have somebody killed for as little as five dollars this is the most violent of cities there's a killing here every three hours some committed by these motorcycle gangs who work on retainers for the cartel after we've been there a while we we were to find out that there was a price on our heads of at least 25 thousand dollars escobar's farm was literally you know a paradise he made himself a paradise then uh but he was very security conscious he trusted very few people he knew that people constantly after him his own people as well as the government or terrorist groups i don't believe he had any sort of character about him at all apart from being a ruthless thug you know he was ruthless if he wanted somebody dirty of him did at the end of the day they are killers they've got in their position by killing people and they're using money and drugs to influence all sorts of different operations and they're trying to make themselves a little respectful of this and those people deserve to be taken out and put away in 1989 i was in headerford and i was between jobs at the time and uh happened to have been sitting in the public bar uh suddenly depressed about the thought of not having any work and um through the door of the bar came a friend of mine and he approached me about doing some work in south america um he told me that they they actually wanted a person assassinated and when i was told who it was it immediately lifted my morale and uh had this feeling of sort of well-being that um i could actually go away and do some work which was worthwhile the job was to assassinate a drugs bomb the leading drugs ban in the world his name was pablo escobar and basically what we had to do was to go to south america assault his house which was called hacienda napolis and and terminate terminator at this house [Applause] these men are fired to kill colombia's most notorious drugs baron pablo escobar the operation started here in the colombian city kali the 12 britons hired by a colombian known as the don slipped quietly into town and moved into a remote estate just outside the city we arrived in south america and we were taken to a training area after a briefing and i ran the men through a series of little tests and just to see whether the standard of training was and we eventually built a sort of a hierarchy a pecking order if you want to call it that and we formed ourselves into three different teams with myself in charge this was to be their base tucked away in a clearing in the jungle a small wooden hut [Applause] while the men trained and planned for the hit on the target 250 miles away they were fed and supplied by colombians hired locally fishing for food in the river was one way of testing their explosives and zeroing in the sights on armalite rifles by now the armory was virtually complete the men wore gloves to ensure there were no fingerprints on shell casings left behind next to arrive was the first of two helicopters to be used in the operation by now the second helicopter in army colours had also arrived and it was time to start rehearsals the plan was to fly low over escobar's estate dropping five forty pound satchels of explosives on his house before the assault team landed and swept through killing anybody who came in their way the enemy forces on the target for approximately you may think that's a bit strange you know why would 12 men go and take on 80 but when you think of it there was no there was no no group bigger than 12. and the fact is we were killing we carry enough ammunition on us to kill three approximately 3 000 men so when you balance up the fire power that we had we also had a helicopter gunship available it balanced the whole thing out and made the whole um plan feasible so we got to the stage and we rehearsed in rehearsal rehearse action and casualties what happens if a helicopter goes down what happens if um if one of the men go down what medical kit do we have available what happens if the helicopter crashes the whole thing was ironed out in the rehearsals that we did and you know the i have been brought up is in a school that look is a combination of experience and skill and the more skilled you are the luckier you'll be they were now waiting for the intelligence report to come through that the drugs baron was at home on june the 4th the message came through and loaded to the hilt they left to kill their target but as the team flew low over the mountains towards their first refueling stop the weather closed in the helicopters were separated and the second one crashed into a mountainside when we hit the ground the chopper turned over and the blades of the chopper were still turning never get out of the chopper until the blades stop so immediately started screaming to the men don't move till the blade stop don't move to the blade stop at this time i was hanging upside down but my legs were jammed in the door of the helicopter i looked at the pilot his left leg and his left arm were totally severed i couldn't get a drip into him and asked for what morphine we had available and i put it into the pilot i found myself getting into deep deep shock there was no needles left for the medical packs and the drips were thrown thrown all over the place i eventually found a drip i couldn't put it into myself so i actually broke the top and i started actually drinking the drip and squeezing the fluid into myself to try and stem the shock uh i was extremely dizzy and then it was then that i realized that the the extent of the injuries i had um had broken four ribs at the front broken four at the back and some old parachute injuries that i had were actually aggravated i went in the estate of collapse and one of the men pulled me onto a little ledge and he left me there and as the group walked out one of the men asked me if i wanted his uzi he was the colombian interpreter i says no and i i thought for a couple of minutes i thought he was just escorting them off the ridge and the group went away and i was left on my own on the ridge i'd broken one of the rules of survival i should have made someone stay with me i couldn't get contact with the men being as they'd taken the radio with them to signal to the helicopter and i lay on the ridge and something told me that they were not coming back for me i was something like 20 yards from the helicopter and it took me the best part of 30 minutes to actually crawl to the helicopter and recover what kit i had available by this time the pilot had died i managed to get some shell dressings salvy some some drips i found a can of beans and a couple of packets of biscuits and some explosives i moved on to the ridge and i settled myself down i tore open the shell dressings and i put them inside my jacket to give me some insulation and i lay there on the ledge for the rest of that night and his first light came i thought maybe someone will be here to pick me up no one came i lay there all that day and the main thing was to try and keep myself alive on the second day i had no sense of time i i didn't know what time it was i was totally disoriented and all i could do was claw back what training i had what had actually been punched into me by people and the main thing was to stay alive but all i had to draw on was training what had been told how had been trained beforehand how it had been put across me by my instructors and can i tell you in that situation that actually gets through to you i druid drew on advice from people unknown i i drew on the fact that i'd spoken to prisoners of war and people who'd escaped and how they managed to survive in adverse conditions and finally i drew on uh my faith um i was brought up as a catholic and uh i sat there on the ridge and i was i was trying to make a deal with god you know him and i were sitting sort of talking to each other and you know i i i i mowed through and i said um you know should i should have promised to be a good boy never to do anything wrong again go to church and do this and i said i can't do that because i've let them hand down so many times before so the best deal i could actually give my make in this conditions was i made a deal with them that if i got rescued that would not scream with a pain or or winch and uh and i left at that and i managed to get through the best part of that second day um and i could hear some chopping in the distance and things starting through my mind here online in badman's territory i can hear these noises are people coming to rescue me or is someone coming to do the business on me and this has been through my head the whole time and what's actually um the the assault on the mind at the moment is what am i going to do if it's the bodies um and the whole thing was going through my mind was you know how to die properly you know how could i if i did go to go to my you know my maker like a warrior and um the a number of things come up i remember my wife saying to me why don't you cons and do you soldiers concentrate so much in dying rather than living why don't you concentrate on living and then i i remember reading a book and it said we owe god to death uh he that dies today is quit for tomorrow and as i say the the chopping sound was getting closer and closer to me and eventually i could hear spanish voices i couldn't hear any english speaking i thought if it would have been anybody to do with me they may have brought some of my men with them so i made that decision then i say right if i do go i'm going to take as many of these people as i can with me so i stacked up what magazines i had for the submachine gun i took um i hungry and i pulled a pin out and i held it my hand they held a submachine gun my mother hand and my intention was um to die like a soldier should it uh come about i lay there until the people were almost on top of me and i sort of just sprung and i shoved the submachine gun into a man's stomach who didn't see me and he immediately threw his hands up there and he started screaming amigo amigo he said i'm your friend i'm your friend and i realized that help had suddenly got to me soldier mack maddie back to london and prepared to return to colombia for a second hit these mercenaries were embarrassing to the government and to the regiment and had to be stopped no one would like to think there was operating in the theater of operations where perhaps former colleagues were also operated and it could be a threat to them or a potential threat that is not a healthy environment the establishment made a call i met them at the top of the stairs one was late 50s early 60s very composed the impression i got was that the chap had he was a bit of a bureaucrat of some type the other chap uh he looked the the operator type the operative um he never said enough what he just made the introduction please come on music the impression i got they were they were telling me they had knowledge of everything that was going on and they were letting me know that they knew everything was going on now peter our sources tell us that you just come back from a trip from colombia now who authorized this trip oh no one would have been known so you went all the way to colombia yes i did yeah under your own steam under your own heading under my own steam for what purpose i went to try and pick up on the job i was doing before and um i think you know what it was i might know what it is but i want you to tell me that's what i'm asking you i felt always been spoken to like a naughty boy um well i was out there and i think you know what it was and if he didn't know it was something wrong because we informed the the americans what was actually going on you were born in america yes we did you felt it necessary to inform the americans but you didn't feel it necessary to inform our majestic government you were formed by the americans and over a fight you were well so exactly we never actually uh thought of the british government at the time and that we we felt it was not in their sphere so consequently we informed sources in washington and the word we got back from was get on with the job get it done and get it quickly and get out now i can assure you now peter but it's only by good luck and good fortune that you've returned from this trip because if we had our way you would certainly not be coming back and you wouldn't have come back and you'd have been buried in some bug out in the middle of the jungle and that would have been the end of the story as far as we would what are you actually seeing what am i saying yeah well do i really spit it out for you yeah yeah okay well we were going to take him out um i don't know who well there's only one way you can take people out isn't it and if we say we didn't want you to come back i'm going to take you out that doesn't actually going to take you out for a walk does it it means it's going to take you out permanently and permanently means permanently one of the things that they kept saying did you know you're going to be shot down on the way back from the target and they assumed that i i hadn't cared for that type of thing happening to us and an actual fight we had i don't think they gave us credit for actually thinking that this type of thing could happen because uh you take out the body and the guys you've taken out the bodies are taken out and everything's all cleaned at the end of it for them to assume that we didn't actually plan for that i felt they didn't give us credit where it was due look um i i think you'd be the same person who's been here congratulate me had the helicopter had been flying in and made it to a target i crashed on the way to target you the same people the establishment knew would have come here and shoot my hand and saying good job old boy and what not well that's probably alright but the answer is you've been warned you've been warned so as far as i'm concerned that's the end of the subject but be rest assured we'll be looking at you so i would suggest that you modify the way you do things and i'd suggest you perhaps adhere to those rules in the future thank you thank you there were certain conversations going on in hereford that peter immaculate was operating in a mercenary capacity in colombia he wasn't quite sure exactly what he was doing it was loosely discussed perhaps at some stage we may have to take him out or we would come up against people that he had trained none of us were happy about that not the people that was operating were happy about that this was one of our own people but we did not know exactly what he was involved in but we have no doubt the government knew at all times was involved in [Music] by the early 90s the sas trained anti-narcotic squads were beginning to make inroads into pablo escobar's organization but it was a constant battle the production sites were continually being moved they'd spotted a couple of airfields and a couple of laboratories where they process the coke we went in first a helicopter come down into a hover we were deployed went into the tree line followed by another helicopter coming down behind us initially there was only something like six of us deploying onto a ground before we had no clue who was in there we went in we didn't come under any fire we got ourselves together we started to move forward we come to a clearing where there was a laboratory all the people in there apart from a couple of the peasants that were obviously sort of in there mixing it had obviously gone they'd fled we moved into the laboratory and we could see just a complete distillery if you like for cocaine um there are all the different types of stuff that they need to make it large stores jars fridges generators they're running everything stills so they then decided to destroy everything that was there so they torched everything like gasoline around and then they torched it [Music] despite these successes escobar could never be found whenever we got close you would just disappear when the operation i was talking about when they were actually after pablo escobar they deployed some of the troops we had trained and a number of um small four-ton pickup vehicles and they put too many people in the vehicles and they blew the vehicle up scattering something in the region over 30 to 40 people and then the drug cartels actually come out hiding went round selected the officers and shot them all despite these setbacks the training continued [Applause] we were literally taking them from scratch teaching them how to use their weapons that they already had we're teaching them all the different field craft they would need to know and working all the way up through that type of scenario to working as a company so they could move in support of each other with good communications good command and control and work against the cartels using the offensive tactics chaotic scenes at the funeral service for pablo escobar drug trafficker billionaire killer but a hero to thousands in his home city of medellin the guns that surrounded him in life surrounded him in death though brandished now by the military that hunted and shot him escobar who had the blood of hundreds on his hands died almost defenseless trying to escape across a rooftop he'd been shot repeatedly by troops who had surrounded the two-story house the authorities say they tracked him with electronic equipment programmed to recognize his voice on the telephone the colombian president says the killing is a massive step towards ending the drug trade we knew we could have an impact if we could get it right uh it took us a few years to get it right but we did get it right there is no doubt that um the operations that took place there from ourselves did have um an effect on the drug cartels that we reduced the flow of cocaine from colombia the people we trained had a direct effect on the drugs wall and there's no doubt about that it's only the fcs they could have provided that training for [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 51min 48sec (3108 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021