by Rusty Firmin
This book is dedicated to my lovely wife Torky, who helped to push me on and motivate me during all those times when I was feeling down and depressed: without her support, I doubt the book would ever have been finished. Also for my sons, Mark and Matthew, who have always stood by me and for whom I have nothing but love and admiration: and when they read this, they’ll know what their dad was doing all those years!
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Childhood
Chapter Two: Boy Soldier
Chapter Three: Gunner
Chapter Four: Commando
Chapter Five: Selection
Chapter Six: Continuation
Chapter Seven: New Kid on the Block
Chapter Eight: Learning the Ropes
Chapter Nine: First Blood
Chapter Ten: Back to Ireland
Chapter Eleven: Suicide Mission
Chapter Twelve: Water Jump
Chapter Thirteen: Back to Work
Chapter Fourteen: Later Years
Chapter Fifteen: Swan Song
Plates
Abbreviations and Glossary
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly I’d like to thank my agent, Andrew Lownie, who got this project off the ground and has seen it all through to a successful conclusion. Andrew got me together with Jack Hughes, who got the job of hammering my reminiscences into a publishable form, so thanks are due to him. The team at Osprey Publishing – Marcus Cowper, Laura Callaghan and everyone else – have been a pleasure to work with, so a big thanks to them too.
I also want to thank the Pilgrim Bandits Charity (www.pilgrimbandits.org) for their support. To some extent it is my work as a patron and ambassador for this fantastic organisation that got me thinking about writing this story. I was lucky: I was never seriously injured during my military service but many more haven’t been so fortunate. The Pilgrim Bandits supports and challenges some of the most severely injured service personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have done a marvellous job: I have nothing but admiration for them. Always a little further…
Finally, I served for 27 years in the British Army and I want to thank all of the friends and colleagues who helped to make that a – mostly – hugely enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Many are still with us and some have sadly passed away but we were a team and we all played our part. Who Dares Wins!
Rusty Firmin
INTRODUCTION
It was the end of June 1991 and a big party was being held at the Paludrin Club, the all-ranks bar at Stirling Lines, Hereford, the headquarters of 22 SAS Regiment. And lucky me, I had an invite.
It was a special day. The Gulf War had finished three months before and the story was that the ‘Operational Awards’ list was about to be published and that some members of A, B and D Squadrons were going to be on it. The Regiment were planning to celebrate.
I was invited even though I hadn’t been in the Gulf – not for want of trying, I might add – and despite the fact that I wasn’t, technically at least, a member of 22 SAS any more. By then, I was a permanent staff instructor with 23 SAS, one of the Territorial Army (TA) SAS regiments, 60-odd miles up the road in Birmingham, and I’d been there a year. But I’d joined 22 SAS back in 1977, I was still in uniform and I was still SAS, so someone put my name on the list and there I was.
As the beer started to flow, I sought out two very old friends. John McAleese I’d first met when we were doing the ‘beat-up’ for the Commando Course at the Plymouth Citadel in 1974. We’d both finished that, passed the Commando Course and won our green berets together, and had a lot of fun in the process. Pete Morrison, always known as ‘the Mink’, was on SAS selection with me in 1977 (as was John Mac, although he injured his ankle and couldn’t finish the course first time round).
Somehow or other, we had all finished up in 8 Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS and had been soldiering together, through good times and bad, ever since. The SAS is a close-knit regiment and over that time we’d got to know each other better than we knew our own families. We’d stormed the Iranian Embassy, we’d parachuted into the South Atlantic and we’d spent innumerable days and nights hiding in hedgerows and roof-spaces in Northern Ireland together, and even though we all lived in the same town, it was good to have the opportunity to get a few refreshing beers down our necks in a safe and secure environment, where we didn’t have to worry too much about who could overhear us as we told our war stories to each other.
Eventually, the time came for the big reveal and the commanding officer stood up to announce who had been honoured for their part in the fighting in Iraq and Kuwait. As the list was read out, you could have heard a pin drop. The Regiment had received an astonishing array of gallantry awards. There was a Distinguished Service Order, three Distinguished Conduct Medals, six Military Medals and 19 Mentions in Despatches. I knew from serving in the Regiment that it was composed of brave men, but this total comprised nearly a quarter of the guys who’d actually got out on the ground.
As I said, I hadn’t been able to get out to the Gulf and neither had John. The Mink had, but we were all surprised. From the stories we’d heard, things hadn’t actually gone that well. One eight-man patrol from B Squadron had fucked up so badly that three of its members had died – including a well-respected friend of ours, Vince Phillips – four had been captured and only one had managed to evade to safety after an incredible 200-mile walk across the desert. Yet now we learned that the patrol commander, a B Squadron sergeant, had been awarded the second highest honour a non-commissioned officer (NCO) could receive for bravery. As the party continued the mood began to change. Instead of the atmosphere of congratulation that you would expect under these circumstances, it began to degenerate into accusation, denunciation and anger. A rumour was going round that some of those who had been honoured had actually been considered for disciplinary action. A Squadron were making accusations against B Squadron and vice versa, D Squadron were digging into A and B. Before the night was over, punches had been thrown and blood spilled.
You could argue that that party set off a chain of events. British Forces in the Gulf had been commanded by General Sir Peter de la Billière, known to all as DLB, an officer whose career was completely entwined with the SAS. He’d been a troop commander in the 1950s, a squadron commander in the 1960s, Commanding Officer 22 SAS in the 1970s and Director SAS at the beginning of the 1980s. If there was such a thing, he was the public face of the SAS and throughout the latter stages of his involvement, he had been discreetly organising publicity for the Regiment, primarily through books written by friends and acquaintances, as well as developing close links at the highest levels of government.
A little over a year later after that night, after DLB had left the army, he published a book about his time in the Gulf. Although the Regiment had only played a small role in the conflict, DLB knew his market and the guys’ exploits were plastered all across it. Once again, the SAS was front page news. DLB’s problem – supposedly – was that he’d lost a lot of money as a ‘name’ in the Lloyd’s insurance market and he needed to make it back quickly. The rumour went around that he’d been allowed to interview members of the Regiment with a view to putting their stories in his book. This developed into a conspiracy theory that some of the gallantry awards had been inflated to make his book more saleable. Personally I thought that credited him with a lot more foresight than he actually had.
But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Some of the soldiers whose stories DLB had told at second hand were out of the army by now, and why shouldn’t they tell the world what had happened? DLB’s second-hand glory was outshone by their first-hand accounts and suddenly the SAS was a publishing phenomenon, with ex-SAS soldiers falling over
themselves to tell varying degrees of tall tales about their exploits.
This caused different reactions in the army and the Regiment. Some took the view that SAS soldiers should be not seen and not heard and pushed through a ban on serving members being allowed to write their memoirs, either now or in the future. Others, more realistically, thought that if people did publish stuff about their time in the SAS, they should at least tell the truth.
By then I honestly couldn’t give a stuff. I left the SAS in 1992 and started on a busy career as a VIP protection specialist all round the world and although I gave some interviews about the SAS for a TV series in the mid-1990s, I was far too busy to think about writing about my time in the Regiment. I had a whole new life to get on with.
But time passes. As the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Embassy Siege approached, I thought it was about time that somebody who’d been closely involved should tell the full story. As I’d actually shot the second-in-command of the terrorist group, I reckoned that I qualified for that. And with that under my belt, why not tell the story of my journey through the army and SAS? It’s more than 22 years since I left the Regiment and none of the people I served with are still in the SAS so it couldn’t do any harm to dispel a few myths and tell a few hard truths.
So here it is. I wasn’t a secret agent or a superman; I was a soldier, and a fucking good one. So were most of the guys I served with. This is my story and a little of theirs too, and I hope you enjoy it.
CHAPTER ONE
CHILDHOOD
Like a lot of the people I wound up serving with, I joined the army more or less by accident. It certainly wasn’t anything I’d intended to do with my life; in fact, if I’d thought about it, which I didn’t very much when I was young, I suppose I might have wanted to be a professional footballer, although I hadn’t made any moves in that direction either. In fact, when I eventually found myself sitting, crying, on a train heading towards the Junior Leaders’ Regiment Royal Artillery at Bramcote in Warwickshire as a 15-year-old, I’d been drifting pretty much aimlessly through life.
I was born on 4 February 1950 in Carlisle. I don’t have any memories of my real mum and dad but I must have done something to piss them off because they put me up for adoption and, 14 months after I was born, the Carlisle City Juvenile Court of Summary Jurisdiction handed me over to John Arthur Russell Firmin and his wife Nancy Chapman Firmin of 2 Hewson Street, Carlisle, Cumberland. They named me Walter Harold Russell Firmin. I think I have a memory from this time of waking up in bed with my new mum and realising something had changed, but that may just be wishful thinking, and in fact I didn’t find out that I was adopted until many years later.
My memories of early childhood are episodic. The house we lived in was a typical small council house, close to the Carlisle Swimming Baths. I remember it had a big open coal fire on which we used to toast bread and that at this time Mum was a housewife, looking after me while Dad was at work. He was a soldier, a sergeant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC)* based at a big supply depot just outside the city. He hadn’t always been a ‘blanket stacker’ but he’d lost an eye fighting at Anzio during World War II, so that’s where he ended up.
*Now part of the Royal Logistic Corps.
When I was about three, Dad got posted overseas and we went with him to Klagenfurt in Austria, which at that time was still being occupied by British, American, Russian and French garrisons. I have a vague memory of taking the car ferry to the Hook of Holland and the long drive down through the Netherlands and Germany but not much more. Dad was working at a British Army repair and supply depot and I was old enough by then to go to a local kindergarten where I learned a bit of basic German: enough to be able to play with the other kids and to order food and drinks when we went out to cafés and restaurants.
We were in Austria for two years, or thereabouts, but perhaps the biggest event came right at the end of Dad’s tour of duty when my parents adopted my real half-sister, Hazel, who is four years younger than I am. To coincide with her arrival, we moved on to what would be Dad’s final posting with the army at a supply depot in Catterick in North Yorkshire.
In Catterick, we lived in a small end-of-terrace house on one of the army married quarter estates. The first Christmas we were there I remember waking up to find a pillowcase full of presents on the end of my bed. As I dug through it the last present I came to was a proper, leather, laced-up Casey football. For some reason, this seemed to me to be the best present of all and I took it everywhere.
On the army estate I began to make friends and began to get into training as a juvenile delinquent. There was a railway line running through the garrison which was used to bring supplies and equipment to the ordnance depot and, for some reason, this was like a magnet to me. When I went out to play, I would always go to the railway line and fool around there, much to my parents’ concern. Back in those days, people didn’t worry that their kids were going to be abducted and murdered by child molesters, but getting run over by a train was a distinct possibility. I’d be outside, kicking my ball about or playing on the railway line until all hours, and with Hazel now on the scene, Mum could only keep half an eye open for me. Instead, when Dad got home he’d yell out for me – he had an incredibly loud voice – and I’d pick up my football and scurry back for tea.
Catterick was where I started real school for the first time and it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to be an academic superstar. I hated the place, didn’t want to do any work and, being small for my age and a bit of a loner, I didn’t get on with most of the other kids. It didn’t matter to me then; as long as I wasn’t in school, I was happy and that was that.
A strong memory of that period is of sitting outside our house in the pouring rain, watching a thunderstorm passing over. It all seemed a lot of fun until, with a deafening crack, lightning struck the drainpipe which ran down the side of the house, a few yards from where I was standing. The noise, the smell of burning and the sheer shock were enough to get me bawling my eyes out and I ran indoors, where I was comforted with a slapped arse for being stupid enough to stay out in the rain. Any time I heard thunder after that, I was straight indoors.
When I was six, Dad finally left the army and we moved back to Carlisle to settle down. We had a council house in Longsowerby and I was sent to a primary school in Denton Holme. This was a happy time for me. My mum, Nancy, was a lovely, kind woman and Dad was around much more now as well, now that he was back in civvy street. I began to make a few friends locally too, and although I was still rubbish at school, life was good.
My best mate then, and for a long while after, was George Creighton who lived on the same street and we played together all the time when I wasn’t in school. Apart from football, the other thing I really liked then was playing with guns. I had a cowboy outfit and a gun which fired caps, but even better was my dad’s Webley air-pistol which I could sneak out of his cupboard when he was at work. This was the type that had a big air chamber with a spring-loaded piston that you cocked by levering up the barrel when you loaded it. I was too young to buy proper pellets but found out that it would just as easily shoot small balls of rolled-up tin foil. As an experiment, I shot my four-year-old sister in the leg with one of these and – oops! – it certainly did work. There was blood everywhere and when Dad got home from work, I got a thorough hiding from him.
The occasional spanking didn’t seem to do anything to deter me though. Another game that George and I came up with involved my dad’s old steel helmet. The idea was that one of us would put the helmet on and stand in the back garden, while the other would throw three darts in the air; the idea being that the darts would bounce off the helmet. This worked for several turns but, inevitably, I wound up with two of the darts sticking out of my knee and any sympathy my parents felt for me was tempered by their anger at me for being so stupid: time for another spanking.
One of the best times of year for me was in the lead-up to Bonfire Night on 5 November. Back then you could buy 240 pe
nny bangers for a pound and that’s just what we did. Throughout late October and the first few days of November, we’d all be sneaking around the estate, our pockets bulging with fireworks which we’d light and then drop into the empty milk bottles that people left on their doorsteps for the milkman to collect. The explosions would blow these apart and we’d run off, screaming with laughter. It’s fair to say that without being criminal or violent, I was a bit of a nuisance.
Same with the football. I took my leather football everywhere with me but our stadium, if you like, was an area of garages down the end of our road. I’d spend hours down there with my mates, using one of the garage doors as a goal and the big, heavy ball would be thumping against them with monotonous regularity. It must have driven the neighbours mad. Every now and then, one of them would come to our house and ring on the doorbell to complain. Dad would nod his head and ground me for a day or two but he never seriously tried to stop me, not least because I was a sulky pain in the backside if I had to hang around the house too long.
I started to notice around this time that if any trouble went down, I was usually the one that copped the beating for it, whoever else was involved. It was probably because my red hair made me readily identifiable. To be honest it didn’t bother me: the occasional slap on the arse or slippering was more than made up for by the fun I had. I was young and full of energy and high spirits; and it all seemed worth it. I wasn’t being beaten up or abused: that’s just how we rolled in those days.
Having said that, one incident does stick in my memory. A group of us went round to play with a girl from the next street while her parents were out and someone had the good idea to paint one of their rooms. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, so we all got stuck in. The mess was indescribable but none of us was bothered until we heard her parents coming home. At this point we bomb-burst out of the house before they could catch us. Of course, I was the one they recognised and her dad was straight round to complain. By the time I heard my dad shouting for me, I was cleverly hiding under my bed but he came upstairs and hauled me out. Whatever excuse I came up with was neutralised by the fact that I was still completely covered in paint. He must have bloody near worn out his slipper on my backside that afternoon and I was still crying when he took me round to apologise, snuffling and snotty, with the tears rolling down my cheeks.