Bravo Two Zero

On the night of 22 January 1991, at a remote airfield in Saudi Arabia, under cover of darkness and in conditions of the utmost secrecy, eight members of the SAS regiment boarded a helicopter that was to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines. Their mission, under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, was to sever the underground communication link between Bachdad and north. west Iraq, and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers before Israel was provoked into entering the war. Their call-sign: Bravo Two-Zero.

Each man laden with fifteen stone of equipment, they patrolled 20 km across flat desert to reach their objective and find a hiding place before first light. Within days, their location was compromised. The Iraqis attacked with armour, and after a fierce firefight the patrol was forced to escape and evade on foot to the Syrian border, 120 km to the north-west. That first night, in pitch darkness and weather cold enough to freeze diesel fuel, they covered 85 km – farther than two marathons. In the desperate days that followed, though stricken by hypothermia and other injuries, the patrol went ballistic. Four men were captured. Three died. Only one escaped. But in their wake lay 250 Iragi dead and wounded. For Andy McNab and the other survivors, however, the worst ordeals were yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they were tortured with a savagery and relentlessness for which not even their intensive SAS training had prepared them.

This book is a breathtaking áccount of Special Forces soldiering in all its stealth, ingenuity and aggression. It is also a chronicle of superhuman courage, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds. Believed to be the most highly decorated patrol since the Boer War, Bravo Two-Zero is already part of SAS legend. Andy McNab’s story will surely become a classic of war literature.