The Regiment

by Rusty Firmin

  The plan was in five phases. Phase One would be the deployment of the sniper and assault teams into position ready to go; Phase Two would be the initiation of the distraction charge followed by our entry into the building; Phase Three would be the assault on the stronghold and domination of the building; Phase Four would be the evacuation of the surviving hostages; Phase Five was the post assault procedure.

  In the background, the police commander at the scene, John Dellow, was formally handing over control of the situation to the Commanding Officer 22 SAS, but I knew nothing about that until later. What I heard at 7.07pm was Major G coming up on the net:

  ‘All stations, this is Sunray. I have control. Out.’

  At this I jumped up from my chair where I was watching the snooker and I started to lead my team towards our final assault position concealed behind a wall at the rear of the Embassy, moving carefully to avoid any chance of being seen and compromised. Outside in the cool, fresh evening air I suddenly realised that I had left my gloves behind in the TV room. Shit! Too late to do anything about it now. Somewhere up above us, the Red Team callsigns were crossing the roofs to take up position to enter by the upper floors, and in the next door building, Johnny Mac and Mel were preparing for their explosive entry across the front first floor balcony. Meanwhile, Frank Collins and Roy were carefully lowering a distraction charge of about a pound of PE4 explosive into the light well in the middle of the Embassy.

  It took about 16 minutes to get everyone in position and ready to initiate. As soon as we reached our assault position, I reported in that Bravo One and the rest of the Bravo callsigns with me were in position and ready to go, and listening in on the net I could hear the other team leaders doing the same. Suddenly, Major G came up again:

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  This was followed immediately by a huge explosion as the distraction charge was set off by Frank Collins up on the roof and the whole area seemed to rock as the blast wave rushed past.

  Our plan was to blow a frame charge to gain entry through the door at the rear that led into the library but looking up I could see a member of Red Team hung up on an abseil rope not far above us, as flames licked out of a window next to him. It was decision time and I realised that if we initiated the frame charge, we’d probably kill him.

  ‘Pull the dets!’ I shouted at Steve and we both began pulling the detonators from the plastic explosive on the charge and throwing them onto the grass. Bob C had a sledgehammer and I told him to take out the sash window to the side of the door. He swung the hammer and the glass shattered, creating an entry point for all ten of us. We threw in flash-bangs and followed them in, moving fast and aggressively.

  After the flash-bangs went off, the room was dark and smoky. We scanned around with the Maglite torches mounted on our MP5s. I saw a black-clad figure standing in front of me, framed by what looked like a window. I realised it was me and I was looking in a mirror. The library was empty, apart from us.

  ‘Room clear!’ I shouted.

  I opened the door into the stairwell and took a quick look at the scene; it was beginning to fill with smoke and CS gas and all I could hear was the sounds of flash-bangs exploding, gunfire, men shouting and women screaming. My team peeled past to start clearing the ground floor rooms and Snapper led his teams down the stairs to begin clearing out the basement, shooting the locks from doors to gain entry to the rooms. With the ground floor cleared we took position to dominate it, focusing on the stairs down from the first floor which was where any threat was likely to come from. We had yet to see any hostages or terrorists. The command net was now in total chaos as everyone was trying to talk at the same time, including the head shed who should have known better. There was no point in trying to speak: nobody would hear anything I said.

  We began to see movement on the first floor as the teams up above started hustling the hostages towards the staircase. They were crying, shouting and coughing up CS and despite our respirators we were also getting whiffs of it.

  As the hostages came down the stairs, I was trying to pick out any terrorists who might be hiding amongst them. The hostages were being firmly bundled downstairs, shown at the back door and then quickly moved out into the back garden where the reserve team and the hostage reception guys were. From my place in the stairwell I was in a perfect position to observe exactly what was going on and to maintain command and control over my team.

  I heard some shouting from the assaulters up above and looked up to see them pointing at one of the figures stumbling down the stairs. I knew this must mean that they had missed something and were trying to point it out to us. The man coming down was tall, dressed in a green combat-type jacket which he seemed to be holding up to shield his face on his left side facing towards me. Above his collar I could see a mop of Afro-type hair. All the study of the pictures during the last six days paid off: this was Faisal the bully, second-in-command of the terrorist group and the most aggressive of them all. I spun him round to face me by grabbing his left hand as he tried to go past.

  I looked straight into his eyes for an instant, then saw he was holding a Soviet-type grenade in his right hand. I was still holding him with my left hand but with my right hand I brought up my MP5 and fired two bursts into his centre of mass at point blank range. He fell to the bottom of the stairs like a sack of potatoes and lay there, as two more members of the team fired into him to make sure. The grenade rolled out of his hand and I saw that the pin was still in it. I checked his neck for a pulse and felt nothing, then picked the grenade up and put it in the pocket of my ops waistcoat.

  There were still wailing, crying hostages coming downstairs, as well as the sound of sporadic gunfire and flash-bangs as every room in the Embassy was cleared. Looking around, there was a sort of eerie mist throughout the interior, a mixture of gas and smoke from the flash-bangs which had been used throughout the operation.

  By now the first floor of the Embassy was beginning to burn fiercely and we needed to evacuate all our callsigns from the building. My team would continue to dominate the stairwell until everyone was accounted for and out in the safety of the back garden. With everybody out, I took a last look round and remember seeing Faisal, spread-eagled, bullet riddled and motionless on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, then I stepped out too.

  We’d been given a simple mission: ‘Rescue the hostages’ and we’d done it. Mission accomplished and it had only taken 11 minutes.

  We hung around in the garden for a few minutes, watching as the hostage reception team did their stuff. One of the terrorists had managed to get outside but he was quickly identified by Sim Harris, a BBC sound man who’d been at the Embassy trying to get a visa when the terrorists attacked, and he was rapidly taken into custody by the police. Strangely, we didn’t feel any great sense of jubilation, there was no high-fiving or backslapping and we kept our respirators on in case any intrepid photographers or news crews had managed to get an angle on the rear of the building. I told my team to head back to the holding area and when we got there, safely inside the RCGP, we finally took the gas masks off.

  The first thing I did was to ask the police sergeant who was running the security at the holding area – an Irishman – what the score in the snooker was but he hadn’t been watching and didn’t know. We quickly got changed back into our civvies and packed our kit for the move back to RPB. I looked briefly into the TV room to check the snooker score and to retrieve my gloves, which were lying on the table where I’d left them.

  With our kit packed away, we were quickly moved into unmarked civilian cars and driven back to RPB by the police for debrief. When we arrived back at our accommodation, we were met by Pete Scholey who gave each of us a can of cold beer. Pete was an old-stager who’d been with the Regiment since the early 1960s in Borneo and been an original member of B Squadron when it reformed. He was now a staff sergeant in the Operations Research department and had been with us to make sure that all the kit worked properly. He reckoned that we’d need a drink after the
operation and had been out and bought a ton of lager with his own money. I’ve got to say, that beer barely touched the sides as I drank it down.

  With that done, we had a more formal reception from the Metropolitan Police who gave us each a plastic bag for our weapons. Each one was registered against our regimental ‘NAAFI Number’ and taken away for forensic testing so that they could work out who’d fired what at who.

  Once the police had gone, everything calmed down and the TV was switched on to see who had won the snooker. There was general disappointment at the news that Cliff Thorburn had beaten Higgins but this was followed by surprise as we watched the TV news coverage of the assault. The BBC had had a camera team up by the Royal Geographical Society at the top of Exhibition Road and they had produced some astonishingly clear footage of Johnny Mac and Mel taking out the first floor window at the front of the building, and subsequently rescuing Sim Harris from the fire. As this was playing out there was a commotion at the back of the room as the Commanding Officer came in, closely followed by William ‘Oyster Eyes’ Whitelaw, the Home Secretary, who was literally crying tears of relief, as he walked round the room, shaking everyone by the hand. There was someone else with him too, a small woman with a big handbag, and it took a moment to realise that it was Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, accompanied by the faithful Denis. As we drank our beer, Mrs Thatcher worked the room, talking to everyone and shaking hands. The late news came on when she was standing by the TV. Johnny Mac wanted to watch himself again and gave a big shout: ‘Oi, sit down at the front: we want to see this!’ Mrs Thatcher swiftly moved out of the way. Once she had spoken to everyone and thanked us all she gave a short speech, ending with, ‘It made us all – all – proud to be British!’ which got her a cheer.

  After that, it was time to move out and head back to Hereford in slow time. I stopped my group at a greasy spoon outside Cirencester where we got bacon and egg sandwiches and a cup of tea, then carried on back to camp. As we drove through the gates, the Ministry of Defence policeman on duty gave us a big thumbs up and shouted something like ‘Great operation, lads’ and I thought to myself: Yeah, it was wasn’t it?

  But then it was back to reality. We parked the vehicles up in the secure hangar and I picked up my personal kit and walked home.

  It was the early hours of the morning when I got there but my German Shepherd, Sabre, was waiting for me, while my fiancée was asleep upstairs. I poured myself a glass of whisky and drank it, then fell asleep in the armchair.

  Next morning I walked back to camp where we had an internal B Squadron debrief on the operation, and after that, it was back to work. Doing all the post-operational stuff that has to happen after every operation: cleaning vehicles and equipment; and getting everything ready in case another situation kicked off. We were given the Friday, Saturday and Sunday off work whilst one of the other squadrons covered the counter-terrorist team and we took the opportunity to calm down and have a few beers at various pubs and haunts around town.

  All of a sudden the SAS were flavour of the month and it was funny to see all the civvie wannabes hanging around town in their camouflage jackets and shades, making out that they’d been on the operation. Twats.

  On Monday morning, a Metropolitan Police team turned up to take statements from us all, wanting a blow-by-blow account of everything that had taken place inside the Embassy. After I’d given mine, I had a sudden realisation that 5 May 1980 had unarguably been the best and most important day of my life so far. It had been almost magical.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BACK TO IRELAND

  After three full years in the Regiment, promotion to lance corporal and the Iranian Embassy Siege I was at last beginning to feel as though I was a fully accepted member. Of course, nobody is ever completely secure in the SAS – or any other part of the army for that matter – because if you fuck up badly, you’re out, but nobody was expecting me to fail any more, and that’s a good feeling.

  The Iranian Embassy had brought a lot of change in 22 SAS. Before it happened, nobody outside military circles had really recognised the significance of what we could do. Military buffs tended to think of the SAS as a kind of Commando unit, harking back to the Regiment’s role in World War II, and while there had been some media coverage of our work in Northern Ireland, quite a lot of it had been negative: as if we were some sort of military hit squad. From the evening of 5 May onwards, everyone in the world knew who we were. They couldn’t name us individually, but we were suddenly national heroes – or villains, depending on your political perspective.

  It also changed how we were perceived in the army. Before the Embassy Siege, nobody took much notice of us when we bumped into other parts of the army during exercises and training; now there was an almost embarrassing feeling that we were being treated like pop stars. Another change was noticeable in the kind of people who wanted to join.

  Since the SAS had re-formed as a regular regiment in the 1950s, serving in it had been seen as a sideways step out of the mainstream army. This was particularly true for officers, who often missed out on promotion and high rank as a result, but also for NCOs too. The kind of high-quality blokes who got through selection would, for the most part, have had stellar careers if they’d stayed with their original units but if they stayed in the SAS, that wasn’t going to happen. They were now in a small unit composed almost entirely of intelligent and highly competent soldiers and competition for promotion and advancement was going to be that much fiercer.

  Despite that, we accepted it because the nature of what we did made it worth it for us. Most of us had realised that we would have a far more satisfying career doing SAS tasks than we would have done being bounced around in the bullshit-ridden ‘green’ army and to get that, we had to make sacrifices. There were two pay-offs.

  The first was that 22 SAS had a firm base in Hereford and wasn’t going anywhere, so if you wanted to, you could put down roots and settle down – always accepting that our role meant that we would be travelling around much of the time but that we always had a home to go back to.

  The second was that after we had finished in the army, there was always employment available on the private security ‘circuit’, where having been a member of the SAS was a pretty much guaranteed route to interesting and lucrative jobs.

  Not long after the Embassy Siege, the government introduced ‘Special Forces pay’ which was an additional supplement paid to members of the SAS, the Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Det to recognise our additional training, the inherent dangers of the job and the fact that we were more or less constantly on operations. This was quite a substantial amount. If I remember rightly, it started off at about ten quid a day which was the equivalent of a promotion and it’s gone up and up ever since. For someone coming from a crap-hat unit, like most of the guys in 8 Troop, who were also now getting parachute pay, it added up to a serious incentive.

  The army also began to look harder at SAS officers and realised that by sidelining them as ‘oddballs’, they were missing out on a real pool of talent. Suddenly, a tour as a troop commander or a squadron commander was a worthwhile tick on their CV.

  All of which meant that people were queuing up to attempt selection, and it was a different group of people than before. It was no longer only guys who wanted to soldier at the top level for soldiering’s sake but also the ambitious and those who were hungry for money. And that can have a big effect in a small unit.

  This was all slightly in the future at this stage. In B Squadron in May 1980, we still had the rest of our tour as the counter-terrorist team to push out on the basis that there’s no rest for the wicked, nor for the unit that had pulled off the most successful mass hostage rescue in history. We were desperate, of course, for another terrorist incident to kick off but, probably not surprisingly, international terrorism decided to give the UK a wide berth after the Embassy and nothing of significance happened.

  Our next operational deployment was back to Northern Ireland in the spring of 1981
but before that happened, Major G, who was still Officer Commanding B Squadron, had the brainwave of sending a number of members of the squadron on the Det surveillance course, and I was one of the lucky ones chosen for this.

  The Det was originally formed back in the early 1970s before the SAS got seriously involved in Northern Ireland. A lot of people seemed to have thought it was a front for the Regiment but it wasn’t; it was a specialist unit who were originally given training by the Intelligence Corps and MI5 in surveillance skills – and by the SAS in CQB – and then basically got on with it, evolving their own operating procedures over time. By 1981, they were pretty good at all of this and they’d come under the umbrella of Special Forces in order to maintain their security and their selection and training standards.

  In consequence, when I was put forward to do their surveillance training there was no need to do the Det selection process, which was very different to ours, or any of the CQB aspect, which was based on what we already did. In fact the first thing I had to do was a week-long photography course at the SAS training area.

  I’d had a vague interest in photography for quite a while but I’d never really understood what could be achieved with a camera until I did this course. Using the basic Nikon FM, we covered everything from simple mug-shots, through long-range photography with telephoto and super-telephoto lenses, aerial photography from helicopters, infra-red and panoramic. We also learned how to develop and print our own pictures. All in all, a very informative course and one which I learned a lot from. In fact, on the back of this, I was appointed chief photographer at Jim Spicer’s – one of the guys from 8 Troop’s – wedding.

  In the background to this I also got married for the first time, to a girl from Hereford called Alison. I was in love with her and I thought she loved me too. As things turned out over the next few years, it emerged that I was wrong on the second count, at least.