by Pete Scholey
I decided that it would be a good idea to pay him a visit as soon as I got the chance. I walked into his hospital ward and spotted him, his leg in traction, lying in a bed adjacent to the only other patient in the room. This was a guy who had been through a rough time. He was an American serviceman who had been badly shot up in Vietnam and was being treated in Germany prior to being shipped home. He had just come out of a coma and had more tubes coming out of him than Piccadilly Circus. When I walked in, smartly turned out in uniform with my beige SAS beret, he glanced at me and I nodded a greeting. He just snorted.
‘SAS, huh?’ he grunted.
‘That’s right’, I smiled, trying to appear friendly.
‘What do you know about soldiering?’ he hissed. ‘What the hell have you lot done since the end of World War II?’
I then politely began explaining to him exactly what we had been up to, starting with Malaya then moving on through Aden, Borneo and Oman. I was just launching into a few operations in detail when Pete, whom I hadn’t even yet acknowledged, roared from the other bed: ‘Knock it off, Scholey, before you bore the poor bastard right back into a coma!’
In May 1980, Pete was involved in the most high-profile operation ever undertaken by the SAS, when they stormed the Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate, London, after it had been taken over by terrorists. (See chapter 14 for more detailed background to this incident.) Pete was first in through the French windows on the ground floor at the rear of the building, dashing through the embassy’s library as explosions rocked the building and gunfire erupted upstairs. His team’s job was to secure the stairwell, clear the basement and prepare to receive the hostages as they were bundled downstairs. For Pete and his team, the greatest dread was encountering booby traps or the explosives with which the terrorists claimed to have rigged the building. Intelligence reports had maintained that the terrorists and their hostages were on the upper floors, but as Pete cleared a barricade from the door to the basement and pulled the pin from a stun grenade, he couldn’t help wondering if someone was lying in wait in the gloom of the cellar. Charging down the stairs in the wake of the shock from the ‘flash-bang’, the troopers shot the locks from the cellar doors and kicked them in. Pete booted one door open and immediately spotted a figure lurking in the shadows. He opened fire and, with deadly accuracy, put 20 rounds into an empty dustbin.
Having cleared the cellar, Pete’s group took their positions on the main staircase as the first of the hostages, eyes streaming from the effects of the tear gas, were manhandled down to the exit. Passed from man to man, the hostages were hustled from the building as quickly as possible. The embassy was ablaze and there was still the very real danger that any surviving terrorists (two had not yet been accounted for) could detonate hidden explosives. As the next in line was passed from one black-clad SAS man to the next, a cry went up, ‘That one’s a terrorist!’ The necessarily brusque handling of the hostages was altered to slaps and kicks to keep the terrorist moving towards the exit. Later identified as Faisal, the second-in-command of the terrorist group, the man was almost doubled up as he approached Pete, as though he was hiding something. Then Pete spotted it. Even through the slight misting of condensation inside his respirator eyepieces, the detonator cap of the Russian fragmentation grenade was unmistakable in the terrorist’s hand. Pete brought his MP5 SMG to bear, but could not open fire. Hostages and other SAS personnel were in his line of fire. Pete’s rounds would pass straight through the terrorist and kill his own mates. Quicker than the blink of an eye, Pete raised his MP5 and clubbed the terrorist to the ground. The man fell down the last few stairs with Pete right behind him and as he hit the floor, Pete emptied a magazine into him, with another SAS trooper opening up too to make sure of the job. The grenade rolled from the dead man’s hand. Thankfully for all those in close proximity, Faisal had not had time to remove the pin.
A year later, Pete was called upon to give evidence at the inquest into the siege deaths at Westminster Coroner’s Court. Pete was asked to explain why Faisal had incurred 39 bullet wounds. He had to explain about making sure that a terrorist is incapacitated under such circumstances, and about the rate of fire of the MP5, although he was tempted to give the answer that first sprang into his head – ‘Because I ran out of ammunition, Your Honour’.
Pete spent the last three years of his service as a member of the CRW Wing of 22 SAS, instructing on all aspects of anti-terrorist training. When he left the Regiment in 1987, he quickly found work as a security specialist and bodyguard, travelling all over the world on jobs for some very high-profile clients.
I am proud to say that Pete remains a close friend to this day.
SERGEANT TOMMY PALMER
Tommy Palmer braced himself against the bulkhead of the Sea King as it skipped over fences and rocky outcrops, rising and falling, swinging this way and that like some kind of crazy fairground ride, ducking below the enemy radar by following the contours of the hillsides. It was late spring 1982, or it had been when he had left Hereford. Outside, 8,000 miles (12,874km) from Hereford on the edge of the Antarctic, the southern hemisphere autumn was turning to winter in the Falkland Islands.
The Sea Kings that had picked up Tommy and the rest of the B Squadron detachment from their temporary home aboard the Royal Fleet Auxiliary landing ship Sir Lancelot had been blacked out for night flying from the moment they took off. It had been late afternoon but already dark when they lugged their kit out onto the wind-swept deck of the Lancelot to await the choppers’ arrival. The Lancelot lay crippled in San Carlos Water, having been hit by bombs dropped from Argentine Sky Hawks on 24 May, one of which had smashed through the starboard side and lodged in the bowels of the ship without actually detonating. Once it had been removed by a naval bomb disposal team, the damaged ship was declared safe and adopted as a base for the SAS QRF (Quick Reaction Force), among others. It wasn’t so bad. Tommy had had worse billets in Oman, in Ulster and had spent nights out in the Brecon Beacons where he would have been glad of a bomb-damaged ship to shelter in – not that you were ever likely to find such a thing up a mountain.
Tommy had struggled into his Bergen rucksack and climbed in through the gaping side door of the Sea King along with the others, claiming a space against the bulkhead as the door was slid shut, blocking out any illumination from the lights on deck and plunging them into a gloomy darkness. Their chopper lifted into the air, swinging round to head west before racing low across the water out of San Carlos and across the Falkland Sound into enemy territory on the island of West Falkland. They had now been airborne for what seemed like an age, although Tommy realized it was actually only about 20 minutes. Through a window he caught a glimpse of the countryside, flat and grey in the dim, watery moonlight. Tommy knew that would not be how the helicopter crew was seeing it. They would be viewing the hillsides in psychedelic shades of electronic green through their passive night goggles. The goggles acted as image intensifiers, using all available light, even that from the stars, to allow the aircrews to see in the dark. It wasn’t clear as day, and you wouldn’t be too happy with the ghostly shapes you saw through the goggles if they were appearing on your TV set, but once you got used to them the goggles were like having cat’s eyes. The CRW team used them in the Killing House back at Hereford, a large concrete building with internal rooms which could be used to simulate the various scenarios in which the anti-terrorist teams might have to operate. When the lights went out and the room was full of smoke, a trooper could still spot his targets and pick them off as easily as if they were in broad daylight. Daylight, in fact, came as a bit of a shock after using the goggles. When you took them off as you left the Killing House at the end of the exercise, you had to shut your eyes and blink a few times to stop it feeling like you were staring straight into the sun.
Any sign of sunshine was still several hours away from B Squadron now, however, as the Sea Kings slowed, the noses of the aircraft rearing up slightly before they settled down onto their LZs. The side door was hauled open
by the crewman, the chill of the cabin immediately invaded by the far sharper cold of the mountains. Tommy was glad to get out, happy to scurry away from the roar of the two Rolls-Royce engines and the clatter of the Sea King’s five huge rotor blades; delighted, above all, to be on terra firma as they adopted their all-round defence position. He’d been in plenty of choppers before. The confidence and skill of the chopper crews always helped to settle any nerves the lads might have about sitting helpless in the spartan interior, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with their mates. But now every SAS soldier had another anxiety gnawing away at the back of his mind. Now he had to work that little bit harder to stop himself thinking about what would happen if the chopper went down.
Tommy had no fear of flying and had proved many times that he had what it took to cope with the dangers they all had to face when on active service. But, like everyone else around that time, when he climbed into a Sea King from the deck of a ship, he couldn’t help but think for a moment about what had happened to the guys from D Squadron when they were transferring from Hermes to Intrepid. It was only a five-minute cross-decking flight. The last ones to go, they had slung their kit into the Sea King and climbed aboard, pulling on their lifejackets, a few of them in combat gear, most just in the light kit they had been wearing on Hermes – boiler suits or fatigues and sweaters. None of them bothered struggling into the cumbersome rubber survival suits. The chopper’s side doors had been removed to make it easier and quicker to ferry men and equipment, but that didn’t worry any of them, either. They’d done this dozens of times before. It must have come as a relief when the chopper lifted off, as Hermes was wallowing around uncomfortably on the kind of rollercoaster waves that washed your last meal around in your guts. At least the Sea King would fly straight and level for a few minutes.
The chopper had lifted off from the rear deck of Hermes and wheeled away to starboard to close in on Intrepid, just half a mile away across the heaving waves. Intrepid was supposed to have been decommissioned that year, but her retirement had been postponed due to the Falklands War. There was an obvious need for the ship, which had an enormous dock in her stern that could accommodate eight landing craft. Above the dock was the landing deck for which the Sea King was headed. Another helicopter had just touched down, so D Squadron’s aircraft made another circuit, waiting while the engines of the chopper on deck slowed to a complete stop and the rotors could be folded away to let the deck crew roll the machine into the ship’s hangar.
Suddenly there was a loud bang, the kind of impact that leaves car passengers stunned when another vehicle rams into them. The Sea King lurched sideways. From over 200ft (61m), it dropped like a stone. The men inside were flung across the cabin in a tangle of arms, legs and loose kit. The chopper smashed into the surface of the sea and freezing cold water immediately surged in through the open doorways. Disoriented, shocked, many of them injured, the men struggled in blind panic to fight their way out. Lifejacket straps, pockets and sleeves snagged on unseen obstructions and were desperately wrenched free. For those who made it out of the mayhem, there was little to offer them hope. The Sea King was almost completely submerged, having capsized when it hit the surface. Hermes and Intrepid appeared as distant lights that vanished as the survivors were sucked down into the troughs between the waves. The South Atlantic froze them so quickly that their arms and legs already felt like lead. They needed every ounce of strength they had to keep on kicking and thrashing to keep their heads above the water. They coughed and retched, spewing up salt water and aviation fuel. The lucky ones made it to an upturned emergency liferaft inflated by the chopper’s co-pilot. They clung to the raft, held on to each other. Those who were still wearing lifejackets inflated them and watched as the aircrew struggled to activate their search and rescue beacons, firing flares that rocketed up into the night sky, glowed with faint hope then drifted away on the wind.
They all knew that they couldn’t survive for long in the water before the freezing conditions sapped their strength, dragged down their body temperatures and allowed the onset of exposure to drain the life from them. Their training had taught them that much. They knew they had to get out of the water soon, or they would all die. In the end, they were in the sea for 30 minutes before they were picked out by the searchlight of a rescue helicopter. The machine hovered over them as the winchman lowered the harness that would pluck the first of them from the water. By that time a launch from the frigate Brilliant was also on the scene. Its crew dragged the exhausted men aboard, most of them too numb with cold even to move their arms. There were just nine survivors. Some of them had been so far gone that they had to be manhandled all the way onto the ship and then laid down under a hot shower to raise their core body temperature and reverse the effects of hypothermia.
D Squadron lost 20 men who perished in the crash. Some had been on temporary attachment with the Regiment for the duration of the conflict. Many more had been Tommy’s friends, men he had served with when he was in D Squadron, men with whom he had drunk, trained and fought. The cause of the disaster was attributed to a bird strike that had taken out one of the engines. Tommy thought it strange that a single sea bird could have caused all those deaths. He also knew something of what the survivors had gone through. He’d been in that freezing cold water himself not that long ago. That was how he had arrived in the South Atlantic.
The long journey that had begun in Hereford had paused when Tommy and the others reached Ascension Island. There they had waited for their orders, expecting to join a ship heading south for the Falklands. When they were finally briefed for the task ahead, it came as a shock to find that they weren’t destined for a long sea journey at all. They were going to Argentina. The plan was to fly a team by Hercules C-130 directly to the Argentine air base at Rio Grande to destroy the squadron of jets based there and, along with them, the deadly Exocet missiles they carried. In the bar at the American airmen’s club on Ascension Island, they had downed flaming Drambuies the night before they were due to fly out. They were letting off steam, fully expecting to be setting off on what some believed to be a suicide mission the next day. Tommy was not one of those doubters. He had great confidence in his own abilities and knew that if any outfit could pull off such a mission, it was the bunch of half-drunk reprobates sitting round the table with him. A raid like that was, after all, what the Regiment was all about. The lure of legendary exploits like that was what had drawn them all to the Regiment in the first place.
Tommy had joined the Regiment from the 33rd Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, when he was just 22, three years after he had first signed up. He had more reason than most to remember his Selection course as something of a nightmare. He thought he was doing pretty well until he picked up an injury and the Selection team had refused to let him continue with the course. Later that year (1973) he was given another chance and went through the whole process again. This time he sailed through and was sent off to do his jump training with the Paras. Nine years on, having been to the Far East and the Middle East, it looked like he was about to head west, if that wasn’t an unfortunate turn of phrase, on a lightning tour of a very small part of South America.
Ultimately, of course, they never did pay a visit to the base in Tierra del Fuego. The raid was called off and Tommy, along with Pete Winner and the rest of their group from B Squadron, was dispatched as replacements for the men who had gone down in the Sea King. Ironically, the quickest way to get them there was to dump them in the sea. Tommy had swapped the warm sunshine of Ascension Island for the perishing cold of the South Atlantic Ocean when he parachuted into the sea along with Pete and the others, to be picked up by the Marines from HMS Andromeda. The water had been shockingly cold. He had been zipped up inside a survival suit and fully prepared for his ducking, but the cold of the water still came as a real jolt to his system. None of them would have lasted long without the survival gear. Once the Andromeda had delivered them to the Falklands, they were eventually transferred to the Lancelot and kept busy with ope
rations just like the one he was on now.
After the Sea Kings departed, they surveyed the bleak moorland, making sure that their arrival had not been observed by any hidden Argentines, then formed up for the long trek to their ambush point. Trudging across the damp Falklands mountainside was, for Tommy, very much like being in the hills back home, not in Hereford, but in Scotland.
Tommy had been born in Falkirk in 1950 and had spent a lot of time as a lad roaming the Scottish countryside, becoming an expert poacher. He was well-known in the Regiment as an ace scrounger and I had first-hand experience of his expertise when I was his driving instructor. We had been bouncing over open countryside near Hereford in a Land Rover, as I attempted to teach Tommy the fine art of cross-country, four-wheel driving techniques, when Tommy suddenly slammed on the brakes. Having come close to breaking my nose on the dashboard, I was left uncharacteristically speechless when Tommy simply gave me a grin and leapt out of the wagon. He nipped round the back and reappeared with a shotgun and a large sack. This was rabbit country and there were hordes of the little devils all around. Tommy thought it would be criminal not to bag a few for Lofty Wiseman. As the Regiment’s survival guru, he could cook up a fine feast with a handful of rabbits.
The terrain the SAS had to negotiate as they headed for their ambush ground was, of course, not the sort of ground with which even a Land Rover could cope. They stepped over or waded through countless streams that cut into the hillside and criss-crossed the landscape. They cursed as the waterlogged ground on either side of the running water sucked their boots down into the marsh. By the time they reached the hillside above the valley where a previous recce team had observed regular Argentine patrols, Tommy and the others were cold and damp, but fully alert for any sign of the enemy. They spread out to find cover that would give them the best possible fields of fire. Then they watched and waited.