Secrets of the SAS: In Their Own Words (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Kill or Be Killed - full transcript

The SAS.

The world's most secretive
and feared military unit.

The SAS, in reality,
is nothing like anything

I have ever seen portrayed
on a movie or TV.

It's better than that.

For 70 years,
this mysterious force

has played a pivotal role

in every British military operation
you've heard of

and plenty you haven't.

We know we're on it,
the British Government will deny

all knowledge of us being on it.



In this series, for the first time,

elite SAS soldiers talk
in unprecedented detail

about the gritty reality of life
inside the Special Air Service.

You have to have control,

but when it's necessary,
and only when it's necessary,

act with extreme violence...
professionally.

Piling off of helicopters,
people swinging down ropes,

enemy running this way.
It's carnage.

Cars and guns, stuck everywhere.

You've got pistols and machine guns
in the car,

you've got all sorts going on.

It was great fun,
like a video game almost.

There is no such thing
as an uninjured soldier.

We're trained to go to war,
we're trained to fight.



But how do you train
to look at somebody

that was once your friend
and is now dead?

I basically drunk myself into
a stupor and tried to shoot myself.

Get out the car!

This is the frank,
intimate truth

of serving and surviving in the SAS.

Combat, for a soldier, is violence
in its absolute pure form.

There are no restrictions on you.

Being in a violent atmosphere
like that becomes addictive.

We find that quite difficult

because we're a nice, you know,
liberal democracy,

and we've sort of sanitised warfare.

Er... But there's, you know,
sections of society that--

And in particular, young men as well,
particularly like to fight.

On the battlefield,

if somebody attacks me,
I have to attack them back.

And if I don't attack them back,

they'll keep attacking me
until I'm dead.

First time I shot a bloke,

the first thought
that went through my mind

was, "Got him."

I never thought of those guys
as married men,

photograph of the wife and kids
in the back pocket.

To me, they were just a running,
charging, adrenaline fuelled target.

They were just the enemy.
They were people I was fighting,

and quite frankly,
and to be perfectly honest,

I enjoyed what I did.

And it was kill or be killed.

So, it all came about,

the Royal Irish had taken a turn
in their wagons

in an area
they shouldn't have been in.

They'd come across a checkpoint
run by some West Side Boys

and they'd been captured.

The West Side Boys are a team of
screaming lunatics from West Africa,

and who were ready to fight anybody
who came in there

and give it to them.

They would chop arms and legs off,
they would kill members of family,

they were high on drugs and alcohol.

A real kind of gangster
type of enemy.

They were hacking people's heads off;

you're dealing with people
that are absolutely off their tits.

They could be stoned,
they could be all sorts.

The hostages are being held
by heavily armed West Side Boys...

...at an isolated jungle camp.

There was no doubt in my mind

that if we didn't go in
and rescue the Royal Irish

they would've been
horrifically executed.

We was told, "Get yourselves over
to Africa, go and get them back."

Are you scared now?

From my point of view,

all I really wanted to do was hear
that actually,

yeah, we were gonna go
and get these people.

Let's go.

Are you scared?
I'm talking to you!

D Squadron, 22 SAS fly in
and begin preparation

for a hostage rescue.

General public believes
we dress up as camels.

We sneak in with our slippers on
under the cover of darkness

and ninja people to death.

I think there's some
very strange views about what we do.

Motorcycles with rockets on them
and all that sort of shit.

The reality is,
the first thing that we always do

is plan the mission
in microscopic detail.

There is the thing that the seven Ps,
you know?

Prior Planning and Preparation
Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

You think about something, like
an attack, a hostage rescue,

there are such high stakes

that you have to invest so much time
in the planning process

to allow for different contingencies,

to make sure
that you've got the right plan.

The motto of the Special Air Service
is "Who Dares Wins,"

but, actually, what it should be is,
you know,

"Check and Test. Check and Test."

When we built this life-sized
replica of the enemy camp,

it was all done by kind of mine tape

and a little signs, like,
where the hostages were.

Sweep the room. You take the right,
I'll take the left.

So that if we arrived there at night
we'd kind of know directions

of where things were
and distances and stuff.

Go, go, go!

I land on the football pitch,
hopefully, swimmingly well,

I fight across unresisted, you know,
we win the day, it's tea and medals.

What if they fire back?

Well, we'll take cover
and we'll support all this.

What if they do this?

Well, we'll do this
and he'll do that and that'll happen.

What if-- You know?

So you've asked all these questions
in your own mind.

There's the whole myth.

Special Air Service, you know,
the perfection and all that.

We're clearly not because,
first of all, we're human beings,

who've got to come up with plans
to achieve an aim.

And that aim always involves
going against an opposition

who have got definitely
a different plan than yours.

Anything's moving,
just stop it from moving.

- Yeah.
- Should be good.

I think things
almost invariably never go to plan.

But, bizarrely,
the amount of planning

that you've put in will help you
bounce back from that.

Intel says our boys
are in the back rooms.

So the West Side Boys are supposed to
be sitting round here on the floor.

It puts you in a place

where you're forced
to make decisions.

You aren't being told what to do.
And some people relish in that.

Absolutely, we're cleverer
than the enemy.

Every time. Every time.
Because we know how they work.

We've studied the enemy.

We study the target until such times
as you find their weakness.

Everybody has a weakness.
Every target there's an easy way in.

There's an easy way to do things
and there's a hard way to do things.

We'll invariably always find
the easy way to do things.

Unless it's women, of course.

Then it's usually
the hard way to do things.

It was very, very high risk.

It was a very unique environment
within a jungle camp

that was kind of deeply located
with a heavily armed enemy.

Getting those hostages out
was never gonna be easy.

We were effectively just
going down there, all guns blazing,

straight into their back yard
for a punch up.

It seemed almost so obvious

that we would get casualties
from that.

The official mission title
is Operation Barras.

The SAS have their own name for it.

We ended up, you know,
going in for what was, you know,

it was called
Operation Certain Death.

So it's gonna be, you know,
it's a do or die type of thing.

Irish Ranger. Look at him.

Look at him.

The SAS send a four-man
recce patrol upriver

to study the target in detail.

So my role for
Operation Barras was recce patrol.

So we were dropped off
to go and find the camp

and report back
prior to the main assault coming in.

The purpose of the recce is simple.

Give the attack team
enough information

to incapacitate or kill the enemy
as efficiently as possible.

It allows you to build a pattern
of movement

for what's going on
in the target area

so that you can add that
into the planning phase

to work out how to go in
and neutralise the target

with the least amount of effort.

You can get almost within
touching distance of the enemy,

such is the nature
of that environment

as long as your camouflage is good
and you're keeping the noise down,

you can almost go into the camp
and come out of it...

remaining undetected.

The post
that Colin's recce patrol set up

is called an OP,
an observation post.

It's a job every SAS soldier
is intimately familiar with.

I used to like the old OPs,
you knew where you were.

Obviously, you had a job to do
and that's why you were in there.

So you would come in
under the cover of darkness

and take the insides
of a bush out with you

and discard them somewhere,
inhabit the inside of that bush.

You don't just randomly get in a bush
because you like bushes.

Well, not on working days, anyway.

At the weekends,
you do what you like.

I think the longest one I ever did
was about 18 or 19 days.

But you could go in probably
a bit longer than that.

Ideally you shouldn't wash
or brush your teeth

for about a week before you go in.

If you think about
somewhere like the jungle,

if someone's brushed their teeth,
you can smell that mint

for maybe 100 or so meters away.

So the smallest things
make big differences.

You can't have hot food,
you can't go and use the toilet,

so you'll eat your compo
or your ration's cold.

Shit in a bag and piss in a bottle.

So that you for all intents
and purposes, you've never been there

should anybody go
and discover that position

or walk through that position
at a later stage.

Granted, you can't watch
Jeremy Kyle, or whatever

but, you know, it's certainly
not the end of the world, is it?

You stay alert by taking the piss out
of each other.

One example of that black humour
would be...

I was in a small four-man team
in a bush,

I'd just literally come off stag,
we call it,

when it's your turn to look.

The guy taking over from me

and he had to go the toilet
quite quickly,

to the point where his eyes
were bulging,

he was struggling
to deal with his belt.

And as he asked me
to get the cellophane from him,

which was always in the top flap
of the Bergen,

I'd literally just laid it out
for him,

and he was squatting
right in front of me.

Went to the toilet.

It was rather a nasty case
of diarrhoea,

and I got most of the interest off
that in spatters across my face.

It's not the most glorious side
of the military world.

There used to be a recruitment advert
for the army

and it would show you
this guy called Frank.

And it would be
"De-de-de-de-de. Here's Frank,"

and then he would be enjoying himself

on the ranges somewhere
playing soldiers.

It looked so glamorous.

If you want a job
with a bit more adventure

and excitement,
to be frank, join the army.

And there was me having diarrhoea
spattered all over my face

in the middle of a bush,

it didn't seem to have
the same connotations.

OPs are not limited
to distant parts of the world.

The SAS have used them
a lot closer to home.

It was outside Belfast and we'd
been in the OP for quite some time.

A lot of times the IRA would check
the local areas with their dogs.

And this bloody brute came up
and I'm lying there

and the thing pissed on me.

And it takes a lot of self-control
to lie there

while some big brute of a dog
is pissing all over you

and you can't do anything about it.

OP living
is not for the faint-hearted.

The reality of it
is fucking hard work.

In Sierra Leone,

the OP team are radioing back
information on the camp,

where the British hostages
are being held.

The West Side Boys are out of
their brains on drugs and alcohol.

They're armed to the teeth.

The hostages were having their kit
taken off them.

They were getting slapped
around a bit.

I think there were some mock
executions and stuff like that.

So I think it was important
that a decision was made to go

and go get back what was ours and
get it done. Do you know what I mean?

The overall main assault
had three options

coming in by helicopter,
road or boat.

The option of going up the river
silently at night,

and creeping up and getting right
on top of them before we started,

that would have been
a cracking option.

Everybody would be
dropped off by boat

and we'd kind of advance to contact,
if you like.

Make their way through the jungle.

I would sooner sneak up
and cut your throat in your bed

than what I would have
to take a chance of shooting you

from the other side of the bush.

Do you know what I mean?
And having to fight to your bed.

There's been several times

when slitting throats
was the only option.

I don't want to expose too many
of my techniques here but there's...

I have many ways of killing people.

Some of them
just with looking at them intensely.

In the end, they decide
the river is not navigable

by a large enough force.

And the West Side Boys
would hear them coming by road

long before they arrived.

That just leaves helicopters.

So when it was said

that it's gonna be
an air insertion...

- what were your feelings?
- "Fuck!"

- Really? Why?
- Yeah!

If you look at the air option,
you know, flying in anywhere

there's a chance
you're gonna get shot out of the sky.

If you lose a CH47,
a Chinook, full of troops,

you've lost half your fighting force
in one go, haven't you?

Because it was a pretty ballsy plan,
you know?

To fly into the middle of the jungle,
fall out of two helicopters,

give everybody a good beating,
grab your fucking prize

and come out of their alive.

After seven days
of intense planning,

the mission gets the green light.
They will go in at dawn.

You know, for years' people have been
doing dawn assaults, haven't they?

You never hear of a mid-afternoon
assault, do you know what I mean?

The night before, then,
you know it's on?

- You're going--
- You don't know it's on.

No, you don't know
it's on the night before.

I've been up to the wire
so many times before.

"Yeah, it's definitely on.
We're definitely going."

"This time we're definitely going."

And then all of a sudden
it's on the truck, off the truck.

"Right, lads,
it's all fallen through."

Yeah, I've been on the build-up
for many a job

that's been scrapped
at the last minute.

You get on the helicopters,

the rotors would be
turning for an hour

and you'd just be sitting there

because they're waiting for the go,
no go, and all that.

And then the rotors will go down
and you stop

and you read your book
for another day.

My squadron, B-Squadron,
was earmarked

for what would have been,
if it had have taken place,

the biggest operation
the SAS ever mounted.

In peacetime. Or wartime.
And that was Operation Mikado.

During the Falklands War in 1982,

the SAS planned to send
an entire squadron

to attack an airbase
on the Argentine mainland.

We would land on the airfield,

attack and destroy
the Super Etenards, kill the pilots.

We would then fight our way
out of there,

and drive over the Chilean border
and surrender to the Chileans.

And our OC stood up...

and he gave the most stirring speech

I've ever heard an officer give
in my life.

It was simple, moving and inspiring.
And he stood up and said,

"There's only one unit that stands
between multiple casualties

and probably success or failure

of the effort
to retake the Falklands,

and that Unit's B-Squadron. 22 SAS."

And I remember sitting there
and my breath stopped.

My hair stood up
on the back of my head.

And I'm like, "This,
all my life has led up to this.

This is what it is."

When we drove out those camp gates,
you could have heard a pin drop.

Everybody was silent.

Everybody was thinking
the same thing.

"This is probably the last time
I'll ever see this place again."

We went up to loaded onto the C130s.

And quite frankly, at that moment,
it wouldn't have mattered to me

if the entire Argentinean Air Force

was waiting for me just over
the horizon. I just wanted to go.

And as we were taxiing
towards the runway,

a chap ran,
literally ran in front of the--

I was in a separate C130,
ran in front of the lead C130.

Started to wave his arms.

Came up and it turned out
that the RAF had spotted

a new radar installation
just off the coast of Argentina.

They believed that that
would detect them on the way in,

and they scrubbed the operation.

So that was it.

I, personally, was disappointed.
And I wanted to do the operation.

My particular job was
to go into the officer's mess,

which we had a mock of the...
And kill the pilots.

Gave me great pleasure that I was
being given a lot of money,

or paid a lot of money
to kill officers.

In Sierra Leone,
the SAS attack team

ready themselves for the assault.

Operation Certain Death is on.

Even when the odds
are particularly bad,

you'd still rather have those odds
and be part of something

than not have those odds
and not be part of it.

It's nothing
that you weren't expecting.

It's no one's suddenly dumped
on you,

"I'll tell you what, we're gonna go

and do some stuff
in the jungle tomorrow, lads!"

It's very, very business-like.
Because it's a profession.

Most people have been doing it for,
you know, well over a decade.

Everybody's a volunteer.

The idea, "You don't like it, lads,
get out." It's as simple as that.

You know, you were supposed
to have written a will

but I just paid lip service
to that sort of thing.

I didn't write a will at all.
I just, you know,

there wasn't anything
to fucking have, anyway, for a start.

I'd pissed it all up the wall!

So you weren't getting nothing.
Do you know what I mean?

But I... literally, like I say,
wrote a letter to the missus,

you know,
something for me boy to open

when he was, you know, of age
and that sort of stuff.

Just in case it all
it didn't pan out,

you know,
the way it was supposed to for me.

You'd be lying
if you weren't probably

a little bit nervous, scared,
you know?

I don't want to die.
Nobody does want to die.

But it's one thing
we're all going to do

sooner or later, isn't it?

There's no other unit in the world...

where a man can depend
on the man standing next to him

as much as he can in the SAS.

There's no standard for the shape
and size of a guy,

or even the intelligence of a guy
within the SAS.

Okay, so in short, I was adopted.

I was brought up in Southampton
and around the South Coast.

Those people
that brought me up down there,

they ended up splitting up
and I ended up in children's homes,

in my sort of like early teens,
I suppose, from the age of 12.

Dropped out of school,
got in a fair amount of trouble.

And I was a kid that would go
and poach for fish in the New Forest,

and get in the odd fist fight now
and again, do you know what I mean?

It wasn't nothing...
it wasn't malicious,

it was just,
that's what I enjoyed doing.

A quite dysfunctional family.

My father was a...

And my father's brothers, my uncles,

were all criminals
of one kind or another.

In and out of prison.

Absolutely a rebellious teenager.

Expelled from several schools
for all sorts.

Yeah. An interesting young lad,
I would say.

I joke about it now.

I say the area I was brought up in,
Postal Park,

was so tough if a dog
had two ears, it was a sissy.

I used to say if I went to school
in the morning,

they'd search me for a weapon,

if I didn't have a weapon,
they used to give me one.

But it gives you
a sort of rough idea of what it was.

Before I was 14,
I had been knifed across here.

Somebody put a poker
through my jaw here

and took two of my back teeth out,

and someone ambushed me
on the stairs of my tenement block

and put what the police thought
was a hatchet to my head here,

nearly killed me.

Left school
with a cycling proficiency.

I didn't do particularly well...
...and I took that twice.

I didn't know nothing about the SAS

apart from I'd seen
a few people dangling off a balcony

when I was a kid
on the television, you know,

and I didn't really pay
that much attention to it.

If I hadn't joined the army,
I would have gone back

to the housing estate
that I was in at that time,

you know,
and then sort of gotten into gangs

and all that sort of stuff.

I failed the first army medical.

Because I had borderline
malnutrition, believe it or not,

in a 20th century country.

And when I did join,
I just passed the medical.

I was very, very thin. Very weak.

And I had a bust up with my mother,
shortly after I joined.

And she's actually kicked me out
of the house on the Sunday afternoon.

So I rang the army up
to ask them if I could join... early.

They sent a chap down
to the railway station

and gave me ten old shillings
and a train ticket to Aldershot

and put me on a train with the words,
"We're your family now."

Some quarters would probably see you
as complete lager louted thugs

and hooligans, you know?

There isn't, for me,
a stereotypical trooper.

To me, we are just ordinary blokes.

But you do need to be capable
of being very aggressive

when the time comes.

It's the day of the rescue.

One of the sergeant majors
who briefed us

before we got on the chopper
gave a sort of like a rousing,

"Fight, fight, fight".

And, "If there's no fight left,
have another fight".

He gave, you know,
a sort of five-minute

"Right, come on, lads,
let's fucking do this."

When you're young
and that's what you wanna do,

and, you know,
that's what you've trained up for

and that, you know,
it's like "Bring it", "Get it on".

You know, "That's what I wanna do."

Ultimately, it was about malleting
the West Side Boys.

It's them, it's us,
they are the enemy, we kill them.

Kill more, kill more than them.
We never over think it.

You shoot me, I'll shoot back.

Colin's recce patrol
also prepares for battle.

They have been living rough
in the jungle for days.

You're constantly sweating,

your diet's not good,
you're eating rations.

And at various times

you'll have leeches and bugs
and stuff all over you,

I guess that's not the most
ideal physical condition to be,

you know, having an assault in.

Colin and his patrol

move right up to the edge
of the rebel camp.

Phil is with the main assault force
charging upriver in five helicopters.

So I didn't have a seat.
So I was sort of like stood up,

holding onto this fucking strap
that was on the thing.

As soon as he got
the go ahead to go,

he dropped down

to a suitable low level position
where he could get up the--

I think, it was the Rockall Creek.

That initial drop out of the sky

to get down to the desired level
was quite a sort of like...

You know what I mean?

You can see your dinner comes up
past your eyeballs.

It's from that two-minute warning,
really, that you zone

right into what you're doing.

You're knocking on the door
of Man Town

and you're about to get out.
Do you know what I mean?

So it's-- You know,
that's fairly nails then.

That's pretty hard. You're in.

You are gonna be going into a fight.
You're having it. It's on.

There is an elation.

And it's not to the point
where it overtakes

what you're doing
and all that sort of stuff.

This is what I did. This, you know?

For a living.
This was my whole existence.

So therefore when you're getting in
and things are kicking off,

there is almost like a completion
of, "Yeah, I'm doing it."

The feeling prior to going
on any type of operation,

is absolutely geed up.

You've got the opportunity to go
and do something

that the rest of the world
are not doing.

So you're full of yourself.
Absolutely full of it.

It's my job. It's what I did.

It's what I enjoyed.
It is what I was passionate about.

I couldn't wait to do it.

To the point I actually fucking
was wishing it to fucking happen,

in a way, which is probably wrong.

There were
child soldiers and women with guns

- where you were going?
- Yeah.

Did the guys talk
and worry about that?

They were targets where we went.
And targets were taken on.

You know? Get this, they were women
and they were children

and all that sort of thing
out of your mind.

It's... they were targets,
they were legitimate targets

and they were dealt with accordingly.

And unfortunately, that's the kind of
place where we went.

It was talked about.
"What's gonna happen if this happens?

What's going to happen if that..."

You know, I'm not going to try
and play pat-a-cake

and tickle the fucking AK-47
out of a 12-year-old's fucking arms

who's pointing it at my face
and could pull the trigger.

Put it that way.

The choppers went overhead
to the kind of centre of the camp.

And there immediately began
a lot of fire.

Going both ways.

There used to be an old saying
that, "Join the army,

see the world, meet exciting
and unusual people and kill them."

Combat for a soldier is violence
in its absolute pure form.

There are no restrictions on you.

There is an edge
of indestructibility.

We're going in to do exactly
what we're meant to be doing.

This is fate, we're going
to close now on the enemy.

It was like Chinese New Year.
It was going off all over the place.

The kind of fast ropes
got thrown out. Big thick ropes.

And the guys were just flying
down them.

Just kind of sliding down
one by one, but quite quickly.

There's blokes going everywhere,

people, you know,
piling off of helicopters,

people swinging down ropes,
you know, enemy running this way...

It's carnage.

How can you jump out
of an aeroplane?

How the hell can a fireman
go into a burning building?

You counterbalance the fear
with the objective at the end.

So, yes, it's not right
to be fucking shot at,

or it's not right to run
into a hail of bullets.

But, yes, it is right for me to go
and save those people,

or for me to give supporting fire
to this man here,

and for me to do that job.

There I was in the middle
of a football pitch

in a dusty African village
with nothing to hide behind,

in the middle of a fire fight.
And that's the way it was.

You get a shit sandwich,
on goes the ketchup,

choke the fucking thing down
and move on.

They've got heavy machine guns
in there.

They've got rocket launchers.
They've got all sorts of stuff there.

You expect there
to be a little bit of argy-bargy.

It's a fight, innit? You know.

A lot of people
that have had close fire

will tell you the same things.

The sound it makes, the air transfer
in your ear, that...

That very close air movement,
that makes your head move.

It makes you flinch.

It's a sound that you always identify
with being very close to danger.

Because that noise that it makes
means that it's really close.

We got incoming fire from places

that we hadn't actually, at first,
thought we were going to.

So that was dealt with.

Life changes on the battlefield.

If somebody attacks me,
I have to attack them back.

And if I don't attack them back,

they'll keep attacking me
until I'm dead.

So those normal restraints
on which we live our everyday lives,

it's removed, it's gone.

When I shot the men, I shot them--
Most of them fairly close up.

And it never worried me because--
In fact, quite the opposite.

It... And I have to be honest,
it gave me a kick.

If they're there to be neutralised?
No sympathy for them.

For a soldier, it's not the same
as somebody-- you murdering somebody.

I never thought of those guys
as married men,

photograph of the wife and kids
in the back pocket.

To me, they were just a running,
charging, adrenaline fuelled target.

There was no real emotion
behind the whole thing,

because it was all,
if you like, muddled up

with the whole adrenaline aspect
of life.

Being in a violent atmosphere
like that, becomes addictive.

It's a buzz.
I'd be lying to say it wasn't a buzz.

The SAS
storm through village buildings,

killing and capturing rebels
who are hiding or comatose

from drugs and drink.

British Army!

Clear!

The hostages are safe.

But some of the West Side Boys
have escaped into the jungle.

Until we're all sure that they're not
gonna come into the village

while you're making your getaway,
you know,

you've got to make sure that you keep
an eye on what's going on.

But, you know, you need your tea,
don't you?

I mean...
...you're on the reorg

and when you reorganise yourself,
you sort your casualties out,

you re-plan your magazines,
you do all the stuff that makes--

That if it goes on again, you know,
and...

You know, it was fucking gone
ten o'clock, I needed a cup of tea!

Do you know what I mean?

There's only so much you can do
in the morning, isn't there?

You've got to have your brew break,
haven't you?

He probably was brewing up
a cup of tea at some point.

There was a lot
of tea making going on.

We were quite quick in how fast
we get the kettle on.

So if there's a lull in the battle,

there's every chance
that somebody was brewing up.

Tea just keeps the army going.
And that's it.

It's a big cultural thing
that's been going on for centuries.

Perhaps, the weirdest place
I've had a brew

was... having tea or chai,

at Saddam Hussein's desk.

Kind of going through his drawers

and having a look at his
business cards and stuff like that.

When you think of who's sat there
and some of the stuff that's gone on,

that's probably one of the most
surreal places I've had a brew.

I had a little gas cooker.
I stuck that in the thing,

and I got it on and boiled my water,
made my brew.

It was only a couple of second job.
You know what I mean?

It was quite surreal, to be honest.
But... No.

You've got to look after yourself,
haven't you?

The surviving
West Side Boys regroup...

and launch a counter-attack.

Contact!

Colin and the rest
of the SAS recce patrol

come in from the jungle
to support the main force.

Big Phil was at the north side
of the kind of camp,

and I remember seeing him.

He was engaging into the jungle

and I remember quite one
long burst on the minimi.

I think there were quite a lot
of enemies that were coming back in.

It's almost like a zombie film.

So they're kind of running at you,
kind of drug fuelled,

rage, not with any kind
of clear soldier-like purpose,

and you're firing
with armour piercing rounds,

and it's just appearing
like red dots on them

and not having any punch at all.

They're almost
like not breaking stride.

They just keep coming.

And you just have to keep firing
until eventually they fall.

You know,
these people do tend to do

what we call comfort shoot.
You know?

They spray and run away.
All that sort of stuff.

When you've got, you know,
said guy like, you know,

doing his Hollywood
sort of AK-47 hit,

fantastic that he's doing that.

Because he's kicking off
more than five rounds,

the weapon's gonna go
all over the place.

That's why, you know,
none of that stuff exists.

You know? Short sharp bursts.

No more than three to five rounds,
no more.

Controlled burst.
Killed him instantly.

No problem. Kill or be killed.

By the end of it, there was a pile
of bodies in the middle,

there was a load of hostages,
and there's a little pile of weapons,

most of the buildings were destroyed,

like the roofs were blown off
or the...

They had a lot of holes in them.

There was a lot of smoke
coming up from the buildings.

And we were all just kind of running
onto the choppers at the end

and trying to kind of whiz out there
before attracting too much fire.

It was...
I felt quite relieved that, you know,

I was actually on that chopper
on the way out.

I won't lie, I thought,
"Thank fuck for that!"

Do you know what I mean?

But then there was also
a feeling in me,

and this is quite a hard one,
and I can't--

I can get my head round it slightly.

You almost had this feeling
of thinking, "Right, what's next?"

You can go through
so many emotions in a day.

Or in an hour, even.

You can have fear.
You could have anticipation.

You can have pure fucking violence
running through your veins

as you're fighting through, to,
you know, complete calm afterwards

when you're assessing
the situation, to, you know,

deep fucking sadness
at a very tragic fucking loss.

One of your guys
got hit and killed?

Yeah. Brad. Erm...

Like I say...
...it was a shame,

Brad was a tremendous guy,
a really good friend of mine.

Well-respected, well-liked guy
within the squadron.

And it's a price that is paid,
you know.

It's paid by everybody.

I didn't see Brad get hit

but he was part of the force
that went in on the jungle

and he was shot and, yeah, and died.

So, yeah, there's always times
when it's real.

You know? It's not just...
you know...

It could easily
have been someone else.

It could easily have been me,
you know.

That kind of thing's always there.

We had a drink on this-- on the ship,
on the way out of there, you know?

Which we talked about
what had happened with your mates.

And I think, you know,
talking about it with friends

and that sort of stuff,
and not trying to bottle stuff up

is quite an important
healing factor for me, you know?

The fact that I am able to talk
to people about it, who understand.

It's pointless me talking to people
who don't understand,

because they don't understand.

Some guys didn't even talk about it.
Some guys went outside and had a cry.

Some guys wanted to know the details
of exactly what had happened,

so it was all like clear
in their mind.

Everybody, everybody was different.

So you get all these emotions
on this rollercoaster of a day.

It kicks the fuck out of you,
I've got to say.

At the end of it, you're like,
"Jesus Christ", you know?

It was only sort of like
24, 36 hours later

and I'm sat in my living room
in Hereford

watching the fucking telly
and being asked

to put the fucking bin bags out
by me missus.

And I'm like, "Fucking Hell!"
Do you know what I mean?

It's quite a stark contrast.
With stuff like that, you know?

Because it was such a sort of like--
You know, you've gone to Africa,

you've done this,
now it's time to go home.

Sooner or later,
every SAS man

returns home for the last time.

What happens to these elite killers

when their time in the regiment
is up?

One minute you're there,
top of the game.

You know, you're king of the castle
wherever you go.

You're something
a little bit different,

a little bit special.

And then you leave
and then all of a sudden

you're a member
of the general public.

Told everybody I was going to leave.

Told them I was going to become
a police officer in Northern Ireland.

Everybody told me I was off
my bloody head. But there we have it.

The journey to the man I am now
from the man I was...

when I was a soldier,
really began in the RUC.

As a police officer...
for the first time,

really, I had to deal
with the victims of violence.

I remember
I was interviewing this girl...

I can't remember what it was about,

but during the course of it,
she broke down

and it turned out she'd been raped.

And I remember her folding herself
into my arms as she told me about it.

Seeing that poor, fragile girl
at this stage,

suddenly you see a victim.

Dealing with that,
and dealing with the victims,

changed me.

Because I could actually see
what violence did.

I had always been determined
to educate myself.

Education,
I'd never had an education.

I'd left school without an education.

I thought when I was given
my SAS beret...

that nothing would ever match that.

I thought, "This will be
the crowning achievement in my life."

But it wasn't for me.
It was just merely a step.

The day I was called to the bar.

That's the thing I'm most proud of,
becoming a barrister.

And I'm most proud of
the work I do as a barrister.

I represent victims.

The victims of the excesses
of the state.

Victims of the police.

You know,
when the police step out of line.

That's my main field,

because the police
do a very difficult job,

but some police step outside the job.

And when they step outside the job,
they need someone who's a voice.

That voice nine times out of ten,

if you're in the North of England,
is me.

That's why whenever I see somebody
asking for money on the street,

I nearly always give it to them,

because I'm always acutely aware
if I'd have turned left

instead of turning right,
it could have been me.

The army definitely saved my life,
there's no two ways about it.

Phil left the SAS
shortly after Operation Barras.

I struggled with married life,
I think, not everyone does.

But, you know, my personality mixed
with the missus,

which was fairly similar to me
in as far as she was quite,

you know, outspoken
and what have you,

it didn't work massively well.
Know what I mean?

I would probably like
to have spent a little bit more time

with my children than what I have,
bearing in mind the upbringing I had.

I think I used to be full
of testosterone

and spunk and trying to push it
all over the fucking place,

to be honest with you,
know what I mean?

I think I've mellowed out
a hell of a lot over the years now.

Do you know? I still get
a bit excited in some people's eyes.

But that's the way I am.
I don't think you can change me.

You know, my missus is,
"Well, you're not normal".

I'm probably not,
compared with some people,

but what is fucking normal,
do you know what I mean?

I won't never be beaten.

I will always--
If you knock me down, I'll get up.

Next time.

Operating undercover

in one of the most dangerous cities
on Earth.

It gives you a massive buzz
until it goes wrong.

Fuck off!
I'm not getting in that fucking car.

If I'd got in the back seat
of that car,

I would have been beheaded,
tortured and killed. Body's dumped.

If they're going to kill you,
they'll kill you.

You hope that if it's gonna
happen, it happens quick.

There are no more decisions to make.