Soldier 'I': The Story of an SAS Hero

I was one of the chosen four due to appear in court – the ones who’d drawn the short straws. I’d spent three days in court in Hong Kong and was deemed to have the necessary experience. A legal veteran! It was thought I was better equipped to withstand the pressure than some of the other lads. I was to be a star witness. A real patsy, a scapegoat for the percentage players! This sort of exposure can’t go on, I thought, this must be rectified for the future. Some precautions had been taken. The coroner had ordered that no photographs or sketches be taken in court in any circumstances whatever. Furthermore, it had been agreed that we could be identified by alphabetical designations to avoid the use of our real names. The cover was scant in the extreme. It offered little consolation.

My confidence in the system had already been severely dented by events prior to our reaching court. There were four of us: Sam, the superstitious one who’d refused to play the Ouija board with Valdez just before Operation Jaguar, Steve, Tom the Fijian abseiler – now recovered from his burns – and myself. We’d been at Group HQ, awaiting the arrival of a Black Maria to spirit us unnoticed to the court. What should turn up but a bright red Vauxhall Viva!

Worse still, on arrival at the court, instead of being taken to the back entrance we were driven up to the front where all the press were waiting. They spotted the car immediately and came running towards us, cameras flashing. ‘Get to the back! Get to the mortuary door at the back!’ Sam was yelling at the driver as we all ducked down. Luckily the police driver was well trained. With tyres squealing, he did an emergency reverse and about-turn and, with Fleet Street’s finest in hot pursuit, roared towards the rear entrance, through a large gate and into a courtyard. We were through the back door before the perspiring gentlemen of the press were able to catch up with us.

Just inside the mortuary door we were faced with a gruesome sight: the naked body of an old man laid out on a trolley. He had recently been subjected to a post-mortem. A huge cut stretching from breastbone to navel had been peremptorily sewn back up with large blanket stitches. The crown of his shaven head had been lopped off like the top of a hard-boiled egg and it, too had been clumsily sewn back on again. The stench of formaldehyde was sickening.

While I was waiting outside the courtroom to be called, my spirits rose a little when one of our senior officers, who’d come to meet us for our final brief, revealed that the member of the jury nearest the witness box was a very pretty young thing no more than twenty years old. I decided that when I was asked to relate how Faisal had ended up with thirty bullet-holes in him, I would tell the story directly to her personally, gory details and all. A nice intimate conversation, just she and I. At least it would take my mind off the court ordeal.

I came back to reality with the rumour that newspaper reporters were climbing onto the roofs all around the building to get pictures of our exit. I just hoped to God the police would get it right this time and reverse a Black Maria right up to the back door.

The usher nodded to me to get ready. I got up and waited just outside the swing door that led into the court. I pushed the door open a few inches with my foot to try and get a feel of the atmosphere inside so I could be a little better prepared when I entered the arena. I eyed the young female juror with expectation. Then the coroner looked up from his notes and said in measured tones, ‘We will now hear evidence from the military personnel who brought the siege to a conclusion.’

With eyes like hawks, everyone present spun round to face the door where I stood. A deathly hush descended on the court.

A voice boomed out, ‘Soldier I: take the stand.’

Photo Insert 2

^{The name’s Winner, Pete Winner. Prince Charles’ close-protection instructor poses with his charge’s Aston Martin.}

^{Hong Kong, 1978. Pete (right) with Clint, the inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police’s Special Duties Unit.}

^{The SAS seven-a-side rugby team, with Pete, their coach and manager, at the far right. Here, just after an Army Cup victory, the team poses in front of the clock tower at Stirling Lines.}

^{Prior to the siege, B Squadron practices house assault tactics at the Combat Village at Elm Farm near Hereford, a compound of half-a-dozen buildings used for combat training.}

^{Training at the mock-Embassy, built to resemble a small British Embassy of the type often found in global troublespots. In an emergency the SAS expected to be deployed to defend such embassies, as they did in Zaire in 1991. To the right is the Methods of Entry wall, where troopers practised blowing in windows and doors.}

^{In this rare image, the assault team is briefed in front of a scale model of the Iranian Embassy, in the SAS’s Forward Holding Area next door, at No. 14–15 Princes Gate. At the far left of the model are the cellars, where Pete’s team entered the Embassy.}

^{Fast-roping from a helicopter in full assault kit, onto the roof of the mock-Embassy training building, Elm Farm. Pete is the figure in the foreground.}

^{The abseil team prepares on the roof, ground scouted by Pete’s team on the evening of 2 May.}

^{The second-floor balcony of the Iranian Embassy. At far left in the top photo, Tommy Palmer is about to enter the building, his gas-mask and hood burned off, while Tom the Fijian dangles in the flames at top right, his abseil rope jammed. Before he was cut down, Tom suffered serious burns, but he still entered the Embassy with his team – an action for which he was awarded the George Medal. In the small world of ex-SAS private security, Tom and Pete would later do another job in Kensington together, but this time guarding diamonds.}

1 Perched on the roof, assault teams abseil down the rear of the building, in the course of which a trooper inadvertently breaks a window with his boot, arousing the terrorists’ suspicions that something is amiss.

2 As a diversionary tactic, SAS explosives experts lower a powerful charge through the central glass dome, detonating it moments before simultaneous assaults are launched against the front and rear of the embassy.

3 A team leader’s abseil rope becomes snarled, abruptly halting his descent, suspending him helplessly above the second-floor rear balcony, and thus obliging the other members of his team to forego the use of frame charges and smash their way through the windows with hooligan bars. Stun grenades set fire to the curtains and carpet, causing flames to emerge from the windows and burn the entangled trooper.

4 An assault team crosses into the garden, smashes its way through the french doors leading into the library and proceeds to clear the ground floor and cellar, which are discovered unoccupied.

5 Crossing from an adjacent building, an assault team detonates frame charges against the armoured windows on the front balcony, throws in stun grenades and enters the building amidst billowing smoke.