by Pete Scholey
The attack went on for some time, with the four men clinging to the earth for protection. During a lull in the firing, the helicopter was able to land again, bringing in the urgently needed mortar bombs. The enemy attack resumed the moment the chopper was on the ground and, once again, it made a rapid exit. The mortar was soon brought into action and the team’s retribution was swift and accurate. They dropped their bombs onto the enemy positions, wiping out one fire position after another, even after dark, when they targeted the muzzle flashes of the enemy weapons. The action lasted until 3.00am, when the enemy finally withdrew. Having originally arrived in the position in the early afternoon, the four men were by now thoroughly exhausted, but still could not relax as they had to take turns to stand watch on one-hour stints until first light.
While A Squadron’s operational commitments kept Bronco extremely busy, he still managed to fit in a few little diversions. His troop, 1 Troop, was the squadron’s Mountain Troop and, partly to keep himself up to scratch in mountaineering techniques, Bronco took part in three major British Army expeditions. The first was to the Axel Highberg in the Canadian Arctic, the second to the Indrasan Kula Kimal in India and the third, in 1975, was to scale a satellite peak to Everest in the Nepalese Himalayas. This was the prelude to a far more ambitious adventure in 1976 – an assault on Everest itself.
Bronco’s climbing partner on the Everest expedition, where they were part of a military team of 28, was fellow SAS mountain expert John ‘Brummie’ Stokes. They had climbed together, professionally and for pleasure, for ten years and were determined to make their expedition the first to put British soldiers on the roof of the world.
Reaching the summit of Mount Everest is the ultimate goal for any mountaineer. The highest mountain in the world, Everest stands at just over 29,000ft (8,848m) and reaching the top poses a number of peculiar problems. The environment presents major medical hazards. The higher you go, the less oxygen there is in the air. At the summit of Mont Blanc in Europe, which stands at 15,774ft (4,808m), there is half the amount of oxygen most of us are used to, and at the top of Everest there is less than a third. Climbing at the highest altitudes, therefore, requires the use of oxygen masks and the carrying of heavy oxygen cylinders. Without this supplementary oxygen, the lungs cannot supply enough oxygen from the air to the blood to keep the muscles and organs functioning properly. The oxygen deprivation can result in the brain and lungs swelling in what is known as a high-altitude oedema and can also cause a thickening of the blood leading to burst blood vessels in the eyes and clots in the legs. At lower altitudes, these effects can be mitigated by acclimatization. Spending time at altitude allows the body to adjust to the strange environment, but at anything over 11,500ft (3,500m) it simply cannot cope. A skier stepping off a chair lift at that sort of elevation would feel no real ill-effects if he was then to start off down the mountain after a few minutes. If he hung around for a few days, however, his fitness levels would deteriorate, the muscles unable to achieve optimum performance. At altitudes above around 18,500ft (5,500m) the effects on the body are more dramatic. Starved of oxygen, the cells that go to make up everything in your body become damaged and if you hang around in that rarefied atmosphere for long enough, you will die.
Of course, it’s also terrifyingly cold. The average temperature of dry air reduces by 3.6–5.4°F (2–3°C) for every 1,000ft (300m) you ascend. The temperature at the top of Everest can easily reach -40°F (-40°C). Such a cold environment works to reduce the body’s core temperature. Proper protective clothing has to be worn to ward off hypothermia, which is a killer. With the sub-zero temperatures, of course, come unpredictable weather conditions, snow and ice. Traversing a glacier – a slowly moving frozen river of ice – is a very risky business. The glacial ice can be laced with cracks or crevasses concealed beneath snow ‘bridges’ that collapse when a climber sets foot on one. On 10 April 1976, a member of Bronco’s expedition, Terry Thompson, a Royal Marines captain, was killed after falling into a crevasse.
Generally speaking, falling into a crevasse will not kill you. Many crevasses are relatively shallow, but the fall may well leave you injured and unable to climb up the icy walls to escape. Hypothermia will then take over in the extreme cold of the crevasse. The 1976 team, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Tony Streather of The Glosters (The Gloucestershire Regiment), planned their route via the Khumbu Ice Fall, the most dangerous part of the mountain. Notorious for avalanches and crevasses, more climbers have died at Khumbu than anywhere else on Everest. From there they would progress to the South Col, establishing six camps at ever-increasing altitudes en route to the summit. The South Col is a plateau at about 26,200ft (7,939m), beyond which the summit assault team faced the daunting ascent of a ridge to the South Summit at 28,750ft (8,712m). Beyond that lay their ultimate goal. Bronco and Brummie were selected as the first two to make the final assault.
On 14 May, Bronco and Brummie arrived at Camp Six at 27,600ft (8,363m). This was the final camp before the summit, but they were to be trapped there by atrocious weather, unable to leave their tent for 36 hours. By the morning of 16 May, the storm had broken and the two set off around 6.30am. Approaching the South Summit they encountered loose, powdery snow that slowed them up, a trek that they were expecting to take no more than 90 minutes stretching out to six hours. The delay meant that when they reached the South Summit, they had to assess their position. Common sense dictated that they should continue climbing until no later than 2.00pm, at which point they would have to turn back. Otherwise, they might reach the summit but would not make it back to the sanctuary of Camp Six before dark. They left two half-full oxygen bottles near the South Summit for use on their return journey, relying on one full bottle each to get them through the last few hundred feet of the climb.
By the time their self-imposed 2.00pm deadline arrived, Bronco and Brummie had just one hurdle standing between them and the summit. This was a sheer cliff of solid rock 30ft (9m) high. It took them 45 minutes to scale the cliff, at the top of which they faced the slope leading to the summit. A mound of snow ahead of them marked the highest point in the world. There are no words to describe their utter elation at reaching the summit of Mount Everest, but there was little time for celebration. Bronco and Brummie took a few photographs before beginning their long descent. They knew that they would have to move fast to reach Camp Six before dark. In order to speed their progress, Brummie took off his snow goggles to see better. What he saw filled him with dread. A dark bank of cloud was closing in, meaning bad weather was on the way.
More by luck than judgement, the two managed to locate the oxygen bottles they had left near the South Summit but, with a blizzard beginning to blow, they knew that they stood no chance of reaching the sanctuary of the tent at Camp Six before dark. They had no choice but to prepare for a night in the open. Utterly exhausted, they began digging a snow hole in which to spend the night. The likelihood of survival was slim, but both men knew that the hole was their only chance of staying alive. They had no radio to call for help and, even if they could have contacted the team lower down the mountain, no one could reach them until daylight, and then only if the morning brought fair weather. Crawling inside the snow hole, they huddled together to wait out the night and the storm.
As the weather worsened, snow began blowing into their refuge, threatening to bury them alive. They blocked the entrance with their rucksacks. By now Brummie was losing his sight. Removing his goggles had brought on ‘snow blindness’ and, although he knew that this was probably only a temporary condition, it made it all the more difficult for him to stay awake. If either of them drifted off to sleep, they would never wake up again. They smacked and punched each other to stay awake as the savage cold chilled them to the bone and the wind outside developed into a howling gale. Brummie eventually went completely blind and started having difficulty breathing. At that point Bronco removed one of his gloves to feed Brummie oxygen from his own bottle. In doing so he knew that he was exposing himself to the risk of f
rostbite and that he would probably lose the fingers of his right hand.
Through sheer determination, the two remained awake throughout the long hours of the night and were eventually discovered at around 9am by a team that had climbed up from Camp Five. The team, originally intent on reaching the summit themselves, now undertook the difficult and dangerous task of leading Bronco and Brummie down to safety. Every step was sheer agony for both of them, and Brummie, unable to see at all, had to rely on his rescuers to guide his boots into every foothold during the descent.
Both Bronco and Brummie lost all of their toes to frostbite, with Bronco ultimately having to have portions of the fingers on his right hand amputated as well. Remarkably, their ordeal didn’t put them off climbing at all. They both returned to Everest in later years, including one expedition as part of an SAS team that was struck by tragedy when an avalanche wiped out their camp, causing serious injuries (Brummie suffered a broken neck) and killing Tony Swierzy of G Squadron.
Bronco has also been involved in expeditions to the North and South Poles and gives regular talks on mountaineering and polar exploration. On one of his early lecture tours, shortly after his return from the 1976 Everest climb, Bronco found himself in Glasgow, en route to an engagement in Ayr. One of the ‘visual aids’ he used during his lectures was a glass jar containing his amputated fingers and toes, carefully preserved. He was carrying the jar in his rucksack when he passed though a particularly rough area of Glasgow and started to worry about something that would surely never be a problem for anyone else. It was not unknown for the odd street fight to erupt in that area of the city and Bronco was wary of being caught anywhere near such a bust-up, knowing that the local constabulary was likely to round up everyone in sight, even innocent bystanders, and throw them into the cells. His great fear was that if he was arrested and searched, the fingers and toes in his rucksack would make the police think that they’d caught a serial killer complete with trophies from his ‘victims’.
At one stage, the digits in question were in storage in the medical centre in the camp at Hereford, where I was assisting the medical officer in administering annual injections to the admin staff. Bronco was at home enjoying a few days’ leave. As I decided we needed a little diversion, I phoned Bronco and told him he was urgently needed in the medical room. He instantly leapt on his bike and pedalled like fury to the camp. When he arrived, I handed him a pair of clippers and told him his toenails needed trimming. He saw the funny side and we both adjourned to the NAAFI (the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, the British armed forces’ official trading organization) for a mug of tea.
Bronco now lives in Ledbury and remains very fit and active, having written several books and continuing to give talks about his adventures. He drives as little as possible, preferring to cycle wherever he can, including a twice-weekly visit to Hereford. He remains in close contact with his friend and co-climber Brummie Stokes, who now runs Taste for Adventure, an organization that arranges adventure activities for, among others, under-privileged youngsters.
Bronco may be best known for conquering Everest, but he ranks as one of my all-time heroes not only for his courage and endurance in the mountains, but also for his bravery and dedication as a truly professional soldier.
WO2 SQUADRON SERGEANT-MAJOR DON ‘LOFTY’ LARGE
As we lay in our ambush position, the jungle floor beneath us was wet and soft, heavy with the damp smell of decay that had been all around us for days. We had nothing to do but wait for a target to appear on the river below us. Then it started to rain. The four of us exchanged glances as we heard the first rumbles of thunder echoing in the hills. The rain was both a good and a bad thing. At first, the drops were hitting the jungle canopy and the foliage of the old rubber plantation in which we were hiding made a gentle pattering sound. Soon, however, the downpour was crashing into the leaves and churning the surface of the river, creating a constant, unnerving hiss, like the sound from a badly tuned radio. The good thing was that the noise of the rain would mask any din we created when we struggled back along our escape route. On the other hand, the rising water level could also make the swamp through which we had originally come totally impassable. Our route could simply vanish, trapping us between the swamp and any pursuing enemy. For now, though, all we could do was wait.
During the last four days as we had observed the enemy river boats ploughing up and down the waterway laden with men and equipment, we had dutifully reported their movements by radio. Now our job was to hit one vessel, cause as much damage as possible and then pull out fast. We needed at least an hour of daylight in order to put as much distance as we could between us and anyone in pursuit before night fell – you can’t make any headway in the jungle after dark. But, unlike the weather, it seemed like the enemy river traffic had dried up. So we waited.
It had been over a week since we had left the old mansion house that was D Squadron Headquarters just outside Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, in western Borneo. We were driven to an airfield where a Twin Pioneer light aircraft waited to take us on to Lundu. There, a chopper had been ‘burning and turning’ ready to lift us into the jungle right on the border between Sarawak and the Indonesian territory of Kalimantan. Today they are our friends, but back in 1965, under President Sukarno, the Indonesians were most definitely the enemy. (For more on the historical background of the Borneo conflict, see chapter 5.) Our patrol was one of many that had been sent into the jungle to cross into Indonesian Borneo to seek out the forward bases from which the ‘Indos’ launched their deadly cross-border raids. We had to identify the routes they used for infiltration and to find out how they supplied their jungle camps.
When we had been given our mission briefing, D Squadron had just three weeks left of our Borneo tour before being shipped home to the UK. This would be our last chance to locate the base that was thought to be on the Koemba River. Our approach to the river was through dense jungle in hilly terrain that fell away into swamps closer to the river. The smaller hills were not charted accurately on our maps and the extent of the swamps changed dramatically according to the amount of rainfall. Studying aerial photographs couldn’t show you much of the lie of the land because of the jungle canopy, and once you were in among the canopy visibility was down to just a few yards in places because of the density of the vegetation. It was a confusing and frustrating landscape through which to try to navigate, but Kev (Kevin Walsh), Paddy (Colin ‘Paddy’ Millikin) and I had complete confidence in our patrol leader, Don ‘Lofty’ Large.
Lofty had been with the Regiment since 1957, and had hacked his way through the jungles of Malaya, hunting down Communist Terrorists (CTs) during the Malayan Emergency. He had 20 years’ experience as a professional soldier and commanded a great deal of respect, not least because he was 6ft 6in (1.98m) tall (hence ‘Lofty’) and had fists like sacks of potatoes. In Oman in 1958 he once lost his temper with a donkey carrying supplies and felled it with a single punch. You rarely saw Lofty lose it like that, though. He was one of the most laid-back men in the British Army and it wasn’t because of his physical stature that he had the respect of us all. We looked up to him because he was simply the finest soldier any of us had ever met. It was Lofty’s navigation that took us through the hilly jungle towards the Koemba; it was Lofty who led us through the stinking, bug-infested swamps, wading waist-deep through water covered with green algae; it was Lofty who chose our lying-up position (LUP) just a few hundred yards from the elusive Indo base; and it was Lofty to whom we looked now as we waited impatiently for a target vessel to fall into our ambush.
Suddenly it appeared. The noise of the rain had almost drowned out the sound of its engines. Lofty had seen it first – as patrol leader, he had the best vantage point. It was his job to spring the ambush. Within a few seconds we all had a good view of it – a gleaming white 40ft (12.19m) motor launch flying the enemy flag and so many military pennants it almost made you want to stand to attention and salute it. On Lofty’s signal, we would break cover, t
ake up our fire positions and let loose. He held out his arm and we gripped our Self-Loading Rifles (SLRs), waiting for his ‘thumbs up’. But the signal never came.
‘What are we waiting for?’ I heard a voice behind me mutter. ‘The f***ing Ark Royal ?’
As the motor launch disappeared round the bend in the river, Lofty squatted down beside us. ‘Sorry, lads,’ he said, making no pretence at a jungle whisper but speaking up above the sound of the downpour. ‘There were women on that boat. Could have been kids as well.’
From Lofty’s position, he had been able to see straight in through the glass surrounding the bridge of the motor launch. He had seen a man in a white naval uniform and another, obviously an officer, in army greens. The woman had been standing between them, dry as a bone under cover of the boat’s bridge, and had any one of them chosen but to glance in Lofty’s direction, they could not have failed to spot him. The line-of-sight distance between them was only about 10 yards (9m). Yet Lofty had stayed stock still, risked being spotted; risked being shot; risked his life because he had the impression that there were other women and children aboard the launch. There was no arguing with his decision. None of us would have wanted to shoot up a boat that had women and kids on board. So it was back to the waiting again.
Far from easing off, the rain grew even heavier. Thunder crashed and lightning lit up the mid-afternoon gloom of the jungle storm. Our time was running out. We were fast approaching the point where we had to choose whether to risk waiting until first light the next day, or whether to head for home without hitting a target. The decision was made for us when the unmistakable chugging sound of a diesel engine came thudding through the sloshing rain. When the boat nosed into view it was a long, wooden, barge-like river boat with a canvas roof that was rolled down at the sides. Lofty gave the ‘thumbs up’ and had placed three shots on target before I hit my firing position. His first shot took out a soldier who was facing in our direction, his second was for the man next to him and his third felled the soldier next nearest to us, thus eliminating the most immediate threats. We were each to expend 20 rounds on the target. The 7.62mm rounds from our SLRs, the standard British Army issue rifle of the day, were immensely powerful. They could pass through 2ft (0.6m) of timber, so even those soldiers on board the boat who tried to take cover would not have been safe from our shots penetrating the hull. We concentrated our fire on the rear of the boat, trying to disable the rudder, propeller or the engine and by the time Lofty called for us to stop, smoke was billowing out from under the canvas awning and flames flickered deep in the heart of the vessel. It was listing to one side and the engine had stopped, leaving the boat to drift back downstream, slowly sinking.