The Amazing SAS : the Inside Story of Australia's Special Forces

313 Pages·2005·1.48 MB·English

by  Ian McPhedran

For Verona and Lucy
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
MAKING THE CUT
Chapter 1 A LUCKY DIP
EAST TIMOR
Map
Chapter 2 SPITFIRE
Chapter 3 TIMOR BURNING
Chapter 4 DATE WITH DESTINY
Chapter 5 THE GUERRILLA CAMP
Chapter 6 THE TURNING POINT
Chapter 7 FIRST BLOOD
Chapter 8 THE LANTANA LUCKY DIP
Chapter 9 EYES, HEARTS AND MINDS
AT HOME
Chapter 10 THE OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE
Chapter 11 THE TAMPA—THEIR STORY
AFGHANISTAN
Map
Chapter 12 AFGHANISTAN OR BUST
Chapter 13 OPENING THE DOOR
Chapter 14 DEVIL CARS WITH ONE LONG EYE
Chapter 15 THE BIG CHILL
Chapter 16 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Chapter 17 THE BOWL OF DEATH
Chapter 18 THE EVIL EYE OF THE GOAT
Chapter 19 THE BRIDGE TO IRAQ
IRAQ
Map
Chapter 20 THE HARD SELL
Chapter 21 THE INVASION
Chapter 22 GAME ON
Chapter 23 OUT OF THE BLUE
Chapter 24 WHITE LINE FEVER
Chapter 25 MIGS AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
Chapter 26 GOING HOME
Chapter 27 A FAMILY BUSINESS
Epilogue
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface
My first close encounter with the men of the SAS was in 1996, when fifteen
perished, along with three Army aviators, after two Black Hawk helicopters
crashed during a night training exercise.
Reporting on the story, I came to admire these mysterious soldiers and the
dangerous work they do. The fuse for this book was lit.
Late in 1999, photographer John Feder and I were in Bobonaro in the
mountains of East Timor, close to the West Timor border, on patrol with an
Infantry section. We found ourselves in what looked like an office in the main
street of the town. Inside, two Australian soldiers were armed with unusual,
nonstandard-issue weapons and we guessed they were SAS men, but they
disappeared out a back door without a word.
Some time later at SAS headquarters at Campbell Barracks in Swanbourne,
Perth, I met one of the soldiers and, recognising him, reminded him of the
encounter. He gave me a knowing grin, but didn’t want to talk about it. We
would meet again in 2002 on a charter jet carrying SAS reinforcements and gear
to the war in Afghanistan. Again, conversation was minimal.
During that same Afghanistan trip, John and I were eating in a huge United
States mess hall at Bagram air base, north of Kabul. At another table sat a bunch
of bearded, long-haired men, some dressed in shorts, chatting and laughing.
They were Australian SAS troops enjoying some time off in between patrols in
the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
It was the shorts that gave the game away again, this time in Iraq in April
2003, when the vehicle I was sharing with an ABC TV crew approached an SAS
checkpoint on Highway One to the west of the Euphrates River. The Aussie
accents were a welcome break on the hazardous road trip from Jordan to
Baghdad. We tried to talk to them, but they refused and sent us packing.
I discovered later that concealed SAS troops had, eleven days earlier,
watched my car speed down the same highway in the opposite direction, after
another journalist and I were expelled from Iraq by the dying regime of Saddam
Hussein.
The theme running through these encounters was the mystery of these men.
What were they up to in these obscure corners of the world?
Some of the soldiers I have encountered in faraway places are featured in
this book. Every quote is genuine, chosen from dozens of interviews conducted
during 2004. The soldiers and commanders of the SAS Regiment have made it
clear to me that they do not consider themselves heroes, nor do they think of
their actions as particularly outstanding or amazing.
Their humour, intelligence and professionalism shone through in all our
conversations and, I hope, also shine through these pages, which span the
regiment’s operations from East Timor to Iraq, 1999 to 2003.
This is their story.
Prologue
COUNCIL OF WAR
Nerves were taut as two American helicopters descended through pale moonlight
into the ancient city of Kandahar for a historic council of war.
Australia’s top special forces soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Peter ‘Gus’
Gilmore, the commanding officer of the Special Air Service Regiment, was one
of a select group of men on board. For an hour they had flown low and fast
across the barren landscape of southern Afghanistan, away from the coalition
forces’ forward operating base, ‘Rhino’, towards Kandahar, the country’s second
biggest city.
The modified Chinook special-operations helicopters had just reached the
outskirts of the city when Gilmore heard a loud bang and saw sparks spewing
from the back of the machine. He thought they had been hit by ground fire.
‘It took me a couple of seconds to realise we were still flying, so of course
we weren’t hit,’ Gilmore says now.
It was only a backfire, but it frightened the living daylights out of him and
the others on board the blacked-out chopper. Machine gunners at the rear ramp
and side doors anxiously scanned the eerie, softly lit land below.
United States Marine commander Brigadier General James Mattis—the
commanding officer of Task Force 58, the task group formed to secure southern
Afghanistan—had invited Gilmore along for his first meeting with anti-Taliban
leader Hamid Karzai.
‘I’m going to go up tonight to speak with Hamid Karzai in Kandahar about
how we will prosecute the plan that we’ve been putting in place,’ Mattis had said
to Gilmore. ‘And I’d like you to come with me.’
The general had been contemplating how he would occupy Kandahar when
a message came through from a US special forces team accompanying Karzai,
saying that he would be in town on this night. Earlier in the campaign the same
American team had narrowly escaped annihilation when a misdirected bomb had
landed. A number of Americans had been killed and the commander, a lieutenant
colonel, was still deaf in both ears when he met the general’s delegation.
‘He had seen his sergeant, five feet in front of him, just disappear in a puff
of smoke because the bomb had literally landed 20 metres in front and they’d
lost half the team, just like that,’ says Gilmore.
Mattis, a straight-talking officer in the Marine Corps tradition, had already
decided he wanted to enter Kandahar peacefully and be welcomed by the long-
suffering locals, rather than going in all guns blazing and risking further civilian
losses.
‘He knew that they would have to live there and therefore that how you
occupy would be critical to the ongoing success of the forward operating base,
and, in turn, operations in the south.’
The helicopters touched down at one o’clock in the morning in what
appeared to be a park on the outskirts of town.
It was early December 2001, not quite three months since Osama bin
Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist group had flown two planes into the World Trade
Center in New York and a third into the Pentagon, while a fourth, probably on its
way to the White House, had crashed in Pennsylvania. More than 3000 people
died in the worst terrorist attack in history on that day, 11 September 2001.
On 20 September, US President George W Bush addressed both houses of
Congress and declared the so-called War on Terror. America then unleashed her
military might against the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which was harbouring
bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters.
As the helicopters flew into Kandahar, a city which had been in the hands
of allied Northern Alliance forces for just 36 hours, the area around the
international airport was still being contested by pockets of Taliban resistance.
Two four-wheel-drive vehicles manned by the special forces operators waited to
take the Marine commander and his Australian offsider into the city.
Kandahar, Afghanistan’s major trading centre, was founded by Alexander
the Great in the fourth century BC. The Pashtun city has been fought over every
few centuries ever since. It fell to the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban in 1992.
As the vehicles drove quietly through the city’s narrow and deserted streets
towards the former palace of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Gilmore thought it
was like a scene from a movie. But this was not a Hollywood production, and he
knew that down any one of the narrow alleys could be someone willing to kill
him.
Gus Gilmore had been commanding officer of the SAS since January 2001.
An intense and quite formal officer, the father of three is regarded as one of the
finest strategic thinkers ever to have worn the sand-coloured beret and winged-
dagger badge of the SAS Regiment.
For this mission he was heavily armed, clad in body armour and ready to
fight. ‘There were shady figures in the middle of the night, wearing their black
garb, standing around street corners and down little alleys. You’re always
conscious of the fact that there’s a vulnerability, but you get on with it,’ he says.
Once they reached the palace compound, Gilmore, General Mattis and the
other American officer on the trip, a US special forces commander, were given a
guided tour by a member of Karzai’s staff. In the moonlight the bomb damage
was obvious.
They finally entered a gaslit room. There was Karzai with about eight
advisers and bodyguards. Also present was Karzai’s appointed governor for the
region, Sharzai. The floor was covered with beautiful Afghan rugs and cushions,
and as they settled down in the traditional surroundings, the modern-day chiefs
of war were served pistachio nuts and black tea.
‘There was nothing particularly formal about it. It was almost, “Well, we’re
here”, and the meeting began,’ Gilmore recalls.
Karzai welcomed them, telling Mattis that the reputation alone of the US
Marines was worth 10 000 men. The cultured and well-educated Afghan then
told the group the story of the offensive from the north and the capture of
Kandahar.
‘He was genuinely pleased to lift the scourge of the Taliban, who had
persecuted his people for so long. He was very bitter against the Taliban and
clearly optimistic and hopeful of a better life for Afghanis. It was incredibly
interesting hearing Hamid Karzai talk as a military commander about how they
had just taken Kandahar—his elation, I suppose, plus the fact that things were
turning out well for him at the time.’
After a while the conversation became less formal and the others began
telling their stories. Gilmore was fascinated by the tales of this ragtag army
sweeping down from the fabled northwest frontier, using taxis and whatever else
they could get hold of to carry their fighters. He was seated next to a bearded
warrior aged about forty-five who had skin like leather, a battered face and the
toughest hand he had ever shaken. The man, who didn’t speak much English,
had been liberated from a Taliban prison a few weeks earlier after years in
custody and his tales of torture sent a chill down Gilmore’s spine.
‘Their favourite was to tie them up essentially on a crucifix so that their
arms were outstretched and they were standing up,’ he says. ‘Then the guards
would stand behind them and just push them forwards so they’d land flat on their
face on the ground. They’d do this over and over again.’