The Kiwi's Story

[Aqaba]

www.newstatesman.co.uk/thisweek_index.htm (http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/thisweek_index.htm)
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001553541,00.html (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001553541,00.html)

[This message has been edited by Aqaba (edited 11-30-2001).]

[zeroalpha]

Rumor has it, the book will be out by Feb. at the latest.
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Soldier to publish attack on Iraq raid
BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR
THE Government lost its battle yesterday to stop a former SAS
soldier from publishing his account of the doomed Bravo Two
Zero patrol in Iraq in 1991.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal allowed Mike Coburn, a New
Zealand-born member of the eight-man SAS patrol, to publish
Soldier Five on the ground of freedom of speech.

But the decision included two rulings that the Ministry of Defence
seized on as partial victories in its £2 million legal action against the
former special forces soldier.

The court said that any profit from the book by Mr Coburn, 37,
would have to be handed to the Government. It also said that a
confidentiality contract that Mr Coburn — not his real name —
and other SAS members have had to sign since 1996, to prevent
them from publishing any material gleaned from their career in the
regiment, was “valid and enforceable”.

One of Mr Coburn’s arguments in the series of court cases in
New Zealand, during which senior SAS officers gave evidence
against him, was that he had been compelled to sign the contract
or face being dismissed from the regiment and losing the extra pay
attached to the job, amounting to about £20,000 a year.

An MoD spokeswoman said Mr Coburn had signed the contract
in October 1996 and had left the SAS the year after. He
submitted the manuscript of his book to the MoD in September
1998. It was decided to enforce the confidentiality contract and
seek to block publication in Britain and New Zealand, where he
was living.

One of the reasons given by the Court of Appeal in ruling in favour
of publication of Soldier Five was that the material in the book
was already in the public domain.

The book gives a different version of the events in Iraq which led
to the death of three members of the SAS patrol, first
commemorated in Bravo Two Zero, the bestseller written by
Andy McNab, who was the leader of the covert unit.

Mr Coburn claimed in court that his former patrol leader’s
account, such as the allegation that the Iraqis tortured the four
SAS members who were captured, including Mr Coburn and Mr
McNab, exaggerated what had happened. He also criticised the
senior SAS command, saying that it abandoned the eight soldiers
to their fate behind Iraqi lines instead of coming to their rescue.

He told the court that when he returned to Hereford, the SAS
base, his commanding officer revealed that he had considered
court-martialling the surviving patrol members after the failure of
their mission. Mr Coburn was shot in the leg and arm when he was
captured by the Iraqis.

The MoD decided to draw up a confidentiality contract after the
publication of Mr McNab’s book and two others: the Gulf War
memoir by General Sir Peter de la Billière, Commander of British
Forces in the 1991 conflict, which included a chapter on the
exploits of the Scud-hunting SAS units, and another bestseller by
Chris Ryan, the only member of the SAS patrol to escape.

He walked all the way to the Syrian border, surviving extreme
conditions. Two patrol members died of hypothermia and another
was killed in a gunfight with Iraqi soldiers.

Mr Coburn said that they were not heroes, contrary to the
impression given in Bravo Two Zero — in fact, the mission had
been a shambles.

Mr McNab, a former sergeant, claimed in his book that after Mr
Coburn had been hit in the leg and arm “there was certainly no
screaming and no noise coming from him”. But in his account, Mr
Coburn writes: “I was screaming my head off.”

It has been claimed, though never confirmed by the MoD, that the
confidentiality contract caused concern among other members of
the special forces.

The MoD spokeswoman welcomed the Court of Appeal ruling
that the contract was valid and enforceable. Yesterday Mr Coburn
said that he still intended to publish the book and that the profits
would have gone to the families of the dead soldiers.


[This message has been edited by zeroalpha (edited 12-01-2001).]

[abprar]

I'll certainly buy his book and support him if the profits go to the families of the fallen blokes.

Any of you blokes read "Eye of the storm " by Peter Ratcliffe,it sheds light on the B20 episode as well as some other episodes.
Ratcliffe was RSM at the time.

[wcollar]

Eye of the Storm was a good read. I don't think that he's going to go drinking with Andy Mcnab or any of the other novel writers anytime soon. I thought his book was "approved" by the SAS but I also heard that they didn't want anyone writing about the inner workings of the unit. R/wcollar