Not only that, they had also been given the wrong escape route and were then left as expendable once the higher-ups knew something was wrong.įorced to retreat on foot, they became split up and were killed or captured as they made for the Syrian border. With no vehicles, they then discovered that none of their communications equipment was working. "People were quite happy to lay the blame with somebody they knew couldn't answer."Ĭoburn is withering about the leadership and intelligence failures that led the team to be dumped on a main supply route, almost on top of their target, where they were soon spotted. "His brother had a nervous breakdown and his father died a broken man as a result of what happened to Vince," Coburn says. His is a more sombre, seemingly truthful story, which also differs markedly over the role and fate of the late Vince Phillips. Soldier Five, his book, is ostensibly a straightforward, albeit absorbing tale of one man's ordeal during a mission that went badly wrong.įrom the outset, however, it's clear that Coburn's version of events (written with another patrol member, an Australian known simply as Mal) is different from previous accounts: he is captured, shot and tortured, but there is none of the heroics of killing the enemy that feature in McNab and Ryan's work. The way they've gone after me over the years is amazing."Ĭoburn's crime has been to write a powerful account of what he says happened during Bravo Two Zero. "Oh, if bin Laden wasn't around I'd be enemy number one," he says. Yet if you believe the British government he is a dangerous person indeed. Aside from a clear intelligence, there is little that would distinguish him from the man in the street. He was seeking some real action, and Bravo Two Zero was his first operational mission. About average height, stocky, with dark hair and open features, he served first in his native New Zealand SAS - "I took to it like a duck to water" - before treading an "unofficial" path to join the mother regiment in England. Like many former SAS men Coburn is now a security consultant. "I've just got in from Asia," says the former SAS trooper, who uses the pen name Mike Coburn, by way of explaining the heat, as he offers a glass of wine and settles barefoot on the sofa. He is joking about previous Bravo Two Zero accounts as we sit in an almost unbearably hot London apartment. "Did you like the bit about us blowing up all those tanks?" The words are friendly enough, but the eyes are flat, the irony and sarcasm clear in the New Zealander's voice. Others, too, have been haunted by such memories: those who have so far kept silent. For the family of the late Sergeant Vince Phillips in particular, who have had to live with his vilification, particularly in Ryan's book, for "compromising" the patrol by failing to kill a young goatherd and for seeming to "give up" after they were split and the men tired.
#BRAVO TWO ZERO MOVIE SERIES#
Even now posters on the London Underground proclaim the virtues of McNab's latest novel, while Ryan has been busy fronting a BBC television series and promoting an exercise guide.įor some, though, the memories of that time refuse to die. Vetted and approved by Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD), the books have become an almost sacred part of British military and public myth. Ryan followed with his story, entitled The One That Got Away. Bravo Two Zero, McNab's lionised account of the mission, which was published in 1993, sold millions of copies and launched a slew of copycats. One managed to escape by foot across the desert into Syria.įor Andy McNab, the patrol's leader, and Chris Ryan, the soldier who escaped - both names are pseudonyms - the military blunders led, ultimately, to remarkable financial success. Three of the eight-man team were killed, and four captured and tortured, while trying to destroy Scud missile launchers in north-west Iraq. It was the call sign for a British Special Air Service (SAS) patrol during a mission in the 1991 Gulf War that was "compromised" behind enemy lines. For many people those three words conjure up the image of the soldier hero: the special-forces trooper - the kind of cool-minded killer who could go anywhere and seemingly do just about anything. His account of an SAS mission that went wrong is more about truth than heroics, reports Nick Ryan.īravo Two Zero. Britain's government has spent five years trying to gag Mike Coburn.
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