First Into Action (39 page)

The invasion of the Falklands was in full swing when Kiwi’s patrol of four SBS operatives, along with four Royal Marine mountain leaders (MLs), was dropped off by a rigid raider on a beach miles ahead of the advancing British troops. They were headed across the barren, treeless land for a rocky hilltop from which they would observe and report Argentine troop movements. Both teams were following the same route for several miles prior to eventually splitting up and heading towards their objectives.

Navigating at night was difficult on the Falklands because of the lack of easily recognisable landmarks. Also the compasses used were designed for the northern hemisphere and were problematic, but all the patrols had that trouble and were making do well enough, relying more on contours and features. The craggy, rolling hills were hard to distinguish from each other, and in the darkness, distances between the looming silhouettes were hard to determine.

Kiwi was a powerhouse of a man. He was not tall, but when I first met him he had twenty-two-inch biceps, having taken a fancy to bodybuilding for a few years. When he realised that having large Schwarzeneggertype muscles meant he had to carry and feed this extra bulk, which was completely useless for this kind of work anyway, he slimmed down to train himself for triathlons, a much more suitable conditioning for special forces work.

Shortly before the Falklands, he trained for several months to have a crack at the sit-ups world record, which was held at that time by a sixteen-year-old boy, I believe. A light frame was needed to even hope to equal the boy’s record of several thousand. Kiwi was far from light, but he was never interested in hearing about what could not be done. He was extremely fit, courageous and had a great sense of humour, especially when it came to his own antics.

We gathered in a local pub and surrounded him as he began his sit-ups on the pub floor. I can’t remember how many he did, but it was into the thousands, although he failed to reach the record. But as Kiwi would say, ‘Winnin’ wouldn’t mean much if no one else ’ad a go.’

When he could finally do no more, he was helped to his feet and handed a beer, which he poured into his grinning mouth. The flesh on the small of his back had been worn away, but he never gave it a second thought. He hugged his new wife from whom he was inseparable and said, ‘I think I’ll ’ave a go at press-ups next time.’

The two patrols had been yomping together for several miles when the MLs paused to query their location. There was some dispute as to where they actually were. The ground had been covered by another SBS patrol a few days before and Kiwi was sure of where he was. After some disagreement, the two patrols eventually parted and went their separate ways. Kiwi’s number two was Colby, the self-appointed leg surgeon from the
Narwal
adventure.

Kiwi and his team pressed on for several more miles and arrived in the area of their final position. But they were not a hundred per cent clear as to their exact location with regard to the map. This was a dangerous situation to be in. For every patrol’s operating area there was an outer ring, a buffer zone, that was out of bounds to that patrol and all others. This was intended to prevent patrols on the outer boundaries of their own areas from coming into contact with each other. As long as everyone stuck exactly to their route they should never come into contact with another patrol. If another one was seen in your area it was presumed enemy. That night, the area adjacent to Kiwi’s was owned by an eight-man SAS fighting patrol, armed to the teeth and dug in waiting for bear. Argentinian special forces patrols were reported to be moving in groups of four in the area looking for British special forces, and the SAS wanted to bag one.

Kiwi’s patrol was in fact just outside their area and inside their buffer zone. It appears the SAS patrol had also misjudged its position and were not within the boundaries of their area. They were dug in inside their own no-go buffer zone that overlapped with Kiwi’s.

As Kiwi’s patrol arrived on the barren hillside, the SAS saw them, brought all weapons to bear, and waited for them to move closer into range.

Kiwi, unaware they were being scoped, actually paused the patrol to study the ground. He knew something was not right and that it was highly dangerous being misplaced in this locale. Before he took the patrol another step he had to figure out his exact location. They were inside the SAS’s killing zone as it was, but the SAS wanted them even closer, and so they waited.

Kiwi decided to leave two of the team there and he went forward with Colby, who was several yards behind him, to recce the hill crest – the spot where the SAS were hidden – to confirm their exact location.

Kiwi was a dark-skinned, squat figure with a slender, wiry moustache. To suggest his features could have been mistaken for Latin would be fair, especially in the dim light. Probably more damning was the chest harness he was wearing, which was very similar to the ones Argentinian special forces wore. All the SBS team had these. At that time, the Argentinians had a better chest harness design for the terrain and conditions than the one the SBS were using and, in the usual style of learning even from one’s enemies, the men had the ship’s tailor make copies of them. It’s likely these two factors helped to seal Kiwi’s fate.

As Kiwi closed in with Colby, who was well spaced out behind him, an SAS trooper called out, ‘HALT!’

Kiwi stopped immediately and started to raise his hands. He was only yards from the SAS patrol. What happened next took only seconds. Kiwi never had a chance to even open his mouth. The instigating moment probably came, although it is unclear, when the two SBS operatives in the rear reacted to what they thought was a contact with Argentinians, and went to ground. The SAS opened fire. Kiwi was hit from point-blank range. The second round that struck him in the chest ignited his spare ammunition, which exploded, ensuring his instant death.

Colby could do nothing but dive and roll about the bare ground in an extreme effort to avoid the hail of fire. The two SBS operatives in the rear also came under heavy fire. In a fire-fight, verbal communication between soldiers is imperative to establish fire control. But the SAS firepower was loud and heavy. The most astounding thing about the whole incident was that only Kiwi was hit. The SAS fired everything they had at the other three, including grenade-launchers. Hardly a shot was returned by Kiwi’s patrol simply because they had little cover more than a few inches high to get behind and they were doing all they could to avoid being hit. It must have been like a frenzied duck shoot from the SAS point of view, but none of the remaining ducks would go down. They kept rolling and zig-zagging all over the show. It then appears that, since the SAS had all started to fire together, they ran out of rounds at about the same time, and as they hurried to change magazines, in the sudden pause in the noise, they recognised the English voices of the men they were shooting at.

The SAS patrol leader called an immediate halt to the fire.

After some verbal exchanges, nationalities were confirmed and weapons were lowered. Colby’s first thought was of Kiwi and he ran to his friend and held him in his arms. He could not believe Kiwi was dead at first but it soon became obvious as the others closed in.

There was a strained silence between the two patrols. No one argued that the other was in the wrong place – this would only truly be confirmed later. It was pointless anyway. The incident was reported to both sets of headquarters and Colby was eventually ordered to bring in the patrol while the SAS remained in position. Colby and the other two SBS operatives placed Kiwi in a sleeping bag and buried him under a pile of stones while the SAS watched silently from their position a few yards away. The two patrols sat apart for a while without exchanging a word, then the SBS team gathered their gear and headed off towards a helicopter pick-up several miles away.

Several days later, Kiwi’s body was retrieved and brought back home to England.

It was not the end of the matter.

When the Falklands conflict was over and the victorious troops headed home to England, most of the SBS and a handful of SAS went back on the RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary)
Resource
, which was headed for the Ascension Islands, where the men would then take a VC10 home.

The cloud that hovered over the SBS operatives after Kiwi’s death still remained and not all members were celebrating the end of the war with as much gusto as the rest of the task force. To pass the time on board, most men hung out in the bar and played board games or read. Colby and the other two from his patrol were on board the
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along with – an oversight, on reflection – the SAS patrol that killed Kiwi.

The SAS troopers might well have been ignored by the SBS on board had one of the patrol, known as Ging, not begun to discuss the shooting incident with a couple of his SAS colleagues. He did not realise that the man sitting next to him nursing a beer was Colby.

Colby had been deeply affected by Kiwi’s death. Not only had he been a close friend, but he felt he shared the responsibility for them being misplaced.

The precise words Ging used to describe the incident have been argued over, but there seems to be no doubt that his tone was that of a braggart. He was accused by those close by of saying, ‘We should’ve killed the lot of ’em.’ Whether he meant that the others were lucky not to have been hit, or that he would have been content to have shot them all, only he truly knows, and perhaps Colby, who remains in no doubt.

Colby snapped.

Colby was a brute of a man and another corps rugby player. He was not to be trifled with at the best of times, but especially when he’d had a beer. He stood up, grabbed Ging by the throat and started to pummel him. Ging’s SAS colleagues leapt in to stop him, and might have had difficulty getting Ging out of Colby’s powerful grip had it not been for half-a-dozen SBS men who rushed over to help separate them. Unfortunately for Ging, another SBS man, a particularly hard, squat Scotsman and former member of the Foreign Legion who had a reputation for taking on entire pubs when the mood took him, had also heard, or misheard, the comment. He took over from Colby, who was being held down by the others, and proceeded to take Ging apart. On Ging’s best day he was not even a close match for the Scotsman, and it was not until his face had been smashed and a chunk of his hair had been ripped out of his skull that the Scot was pulled off.

The SBS CO was immediately informed of the incident and he quickly contacted the CO of the SAS by radio to ask him to remove his men ASAP. (Apparently the gist of his request was that he could not otherwise guarantee that a certain SAS trooper would not go missing before the journey’s end.) A chopper was flown over a few hours later and Ging and the rest of the SAS section were extracted to another ship.

The SBS performed well throughout the conflict and, despite the usual routine of having many of our successes being credited to the SAS, the powers that be knew we had done well. When all the troops were back home, Thatcher took a helicopter ride to Poole to personally review the SBS and praise them for their outstanding work. She did not go to Hereford. There was a reason for this snub.

Thatcher had come to distrust the SAS because they had used their satellite communications system throughout the conflict to report directly to their headquarters in Hereford, circumventing the overall headquarters in London. This was a severe breach of procedure.

It seems that what at one time appeared to be the SAS’s advantage, their self-assuredness and relative autonomy, and the SBS’s disadvantage, their traditional ties to the Marines and therefore their strict adherence to protocol, created a reversal of fortune for both units.

In the eyes of London, the SBS, having proved their worth and that they were every bit as good as the SAS (if not better in many areas), suddenly became the unit of choice. This was borne out on many occasions and quite demonstrably several months after the Falklands, when the SBS were chosen, without the SAS, to conduct a sudden and important operation against Eastern Bloc special forces which, for reasons of national security, cannot be described in this book.

When the squadron returned from the Falklands it was quickly back to business as normal. But a few months later, tragedy struck again with the loss of the SBS’s most highly decorated and respected operative – Coke, my team commander.

15

I was still in MAT and part of Coke’s team when, a few days before Christmas in the Poole headquarters, he came into our team office holding a new experimental American limpet mine and asked me if I wanted to join him on the range to try it out. The SBS were looking for a new mine at the time and this device appeared more sophisticated than others we had tested. It had a new type of electronic timer built in, but the anti-lift device had been removed as the Americans did not want to divulge its full intricacies unless we committed ourselves to buying it.

I was busy at the time, up to my ears preparing a report after a MAT reconnaissance we had just completed on a new class of supertanker. I declined to go, and said I would catch up with him later that evening. Coke was a handsome man and, though he had been quite the lad in his younger days, he was now happily married to a lovely girl he had met in Hereford while working there with the SAS – the one that got away, some SAS used to call her.

Early that evening, as it grew dark, I closed up the office for the night and headed into the HQ building to change into my civvies before going home. As I stepped into the corridor the sergeant major walked out of his office looking ashen, having just received a phone call.

‘My God,’ he said, ‘Coke has just been killed.’

As I have said before, Coke was the most highly respected man in the squadron and the news of his death rocked the entire organisation. The man probably most affected by his death was the sergeant in charge of the explosives range that day and the last person to speak to him. It was Colby.

Coke had arrived at the range with the limpet mine, and a large plate of steel was laid out in ‘the pit’ and the limpet magnetically stuck to it. Once the limpet was in place everyone else cleared the range and went back to the safety of the bunker while Coke set the timer. He set it to give himself time to walk back casually to Colby and the others with a minute to spare.