Soldier Five: The Real Truth About The Bravo Two Zero Mission

I read The one that got away & Bravo 2 zero some years back but recently saw people criticising those accounts for being embellished. Decent account from another perspective but not much that hasn’t already been documented.

Excellent book about the ill fated Bravo Two Zero situation. In some respects it doesn't tell us any more than McNab and Ryan do, but Coburn has never written anything before or since which make me believe his story. He doesn't want to become a famous author, this is it.His frustration spills over towards the end, when he finally returned back to the UK. I see no reason for him to make the majority of this up, since a lot is the same as other stories and if you're being cynical you could say he was simply repeating it but some points are well known to the public. The sheer clusterf&@k of the situation is very obvious.It took me initially by surprise half way through to read about how he'd got there, from being a NZ soldier, but this broke up the story well and provided a human nature to Coburn that was very interesting. I know the MoD would never like to be painted in a bad light but at the end of the day it's a machine with many moving parts, aka human beings, who can make mistakes. It's such a shame so many mistakes happened at one time, else the whole incident would have been quickly forgotten by all.

I don't think I have anything really to add to praise for this book but I'd like to add a little something to the questions of it's veracity.In Andy McNab's first account he states that in their initial contact with the enemy the eight man patrol was engaged by a full enemy company (100-120 men) and two armoured personnel carriers which they destroyed. In his version of events his fellow SAS soldier Chris Ryan states that they were initially fired upon by a pair of local militiamen who were then joined by about a dozen more in a truck. He also heard the machinegun of an armoured car which he did not personally see but Mike Coburn who was also in the patrol did. Lastly they were attacked by the soldiers at a nearby artillery position using their anti-aircraft guns in the ground to ground role. According to ex-SAS soldier Michael Asher who returned to Iraq and interviewed the local people the patrol was attacked by exactly 3 local militiamen who were all veterans of the Iran/Iraq conflict. So who is telling the truth and who is lying?In Chris Ryan's account he states the battle started when he waved to the militiamen in order to try to fool them that they were friendly troops but he made the mistake of using his left hand which no Arab would do (in Middle Eastern culture it would be considered an insulting gesture to wave or shake hands using the left). McNab never mentions this but it's possible he simply never saw it due to his position or that he was looking the other way at the time, covering his respective arc of fire on the flank whilst Ryan who first in line in the patrol would be always scanning ahead. The militiamen who Michael Asher interviewed, having never read Ryan's book, also mentioned this detail, giving impressive credence to their story. But if they are telling the truth it suggests that 3 men armed with assault rifles could take on and defeat 8 men armed with assault rifles, machineguns, grenade launchers and anti-tank rockets in a stand up fight which seems extremely unlikely. Also it rathers beggars belief that the hundreds of Iraqi soldiers at the nearby anti-aircraft positions which all accounts agree were there simply ignored this massive gunbattle occuring on their doorstep. So is Andy McNab telling the truth or is Chris Ryan? Or Mike Coburn? Very possibly they both were, the men were hundreds of yards apart in the midst of a life or death firefight with loud explosions, gunfire, smoke and clouds of white phosphorous running hell for leather whilst trying to carry extremely heavy loads, Ryan saw things McNab and Coburn couldn't see and vice versa due to the terrain and their recall was of what was important to them at the time which obviously differed between the three. They both saw completely different bits of the same battle and described it accordingly, like the old fable of the blind men trying to describe an elephant by touch. McNab may never have been aware of the prescence of the local militiamen because Ryan was first in line and he was some ways behind him, by the time McNab was engaged in the running battle the soldiers at the anti-aircraft battery had joined in and they were the focus of his attention. Mike Coburn says he saw an armoured car firing a machine gun and two truckloads of Iraqis. Certainly the Iraqis at the artillery position would have needed some form of military vehicles to tow their anti-aircraft guns. Morever it would be weeks before any of the patrol could sit down and make a comprehensive written record of what had actually happened during which time McNab and Coburn were subject to a series of intense firefights, hypothermia, physical exhaustion, dehydration, capture, horrific torture and the death of three of their comrades. Meanwhile Ryan endured an arduous week long solo trek through the Iraqi desert (including inadvertently giving himself radiation poisoning from a contaminated spring and being forced to kill 2 men with his knife and bare hands) which left even a superfit and tough SAS trooper like himself a physical and emotional wreck. McNab and Coburn were also incarcerated for a considerable time with their fellow patrol members meaning that they would have swapped stories about what happened and influenced one another's recollection. Notably Mike Coburn also backs up McNab's story of hijacking a taxi which Asher pours a lot of doubt on. As for McNab's controversial decision not to take vehicles I'd point out that the other two patrols which did take vehicles had to abort their missions immediately whilst Bravo20 were able to remain undetected for up to two days. My point is that numerous witnesses can see the same thing and describe it countless different ways, they're not necessarily lying. This tends to be what the public and press can never understand in court or inquires, they expect everyone to have perfect recall and to have all seen the same thing, when they don't people begin to see conspiracies where there are none (Oliver Stone I'm talking to you!). Asher conducts his interview 10 years after the event with the Iraqi secret police looking over the shoulder of his interviewees. And frankly if I read in his book one more time how honourable the Bedouin are and how he understands them I'm going to scream! I just spent a 6 month tour in the middle east this year and actually I've found quite the reverse, especially when it comes to martial feats. So I'm prepared to give the members of the patrol the benefit of the doubt, combine their three accounts and you probably get an accurate picture. One thing I would say is that McNab and Coburn are a lot more charitable towards patrol member Vince Philips whilst Ryan seems to blame him for the patrol's failure. Hard to know one way or the other, everyone seems to have made their share of mistakes and no one person can be held accountable.

Was very much looking forward to reading this after Bravo Two Zero by 'Andy McNab', The One That Got Away by 'Chris Ryan' and The Real Bravo Two Zero by Michael Asher.After the alleged exaggerations in McNab's book (more so),the negative portrayal of a fallen comrade in Ryan's book and the detailed investigative work by Asher, this provides a balanced view from within the patrol itself.The thing I found most revealing in Coburn's book is the dialogue between the various members, mainly at the LUP position and his account of events before the compromise. It is very good to see Coburn's positive recollection of Vince Phillips, who in this version comes across as the brave, experienced professional he must surely have been, given his long service in the Regiment.Coburn really emphasises the fact that despite the patrol's circumstances of having lost communications and the flat featureless surroundings, they made every effort to carry out their mission and get some valuable information back to base if the mission did have to be aborted.There's no macho, Rambo-like antics in this book, only realistic, thoughtful perspectives about the patrol and its fate.For those reasons I rate this as the best of the three books from the patrol members and ranks along side Asher's brilliant book on the same subject.5 stars.

I've put 'struggling to finish' as the title and not because the author is crap, or the storyline is poor, far far from it. It's because I don't want to get to the end and find out the lads before had lied and made money on those who didn't come home.I'll edit this when I complete it but up to now it's a book I'm struggling to put down, yet don't want to complete.

Read the other SAS Bravo Two Zero books, all seem to tell a slightly different story, this probably seems the most balanced and nearest to the truth, whether it is who knows.

This book is very well worth reading,and you have to admire the author.Having read this and Asher's 'True story of Bravo Two Zero'(another must-read book) you realize that Steve Mitchell's, sorry 'McNab's' 'Bravo Two Zero' is highly fictionalized to the degree its very clear why 'Coburn' had to write his book. Coburn is supported in publishing this book by another patrol survivor Mac. Had 'Coburn' not signed the 1997 contract (that the USKF had to sign) then we would have seen this book a lot earlier. Shame on the MoD for taking the royalties off the author in 2006.

Read about another soldier who survived Bravo Two Zero mission

Solid book from a different POV. Read it alongside Bravo Two Zero to get a good perspective.

......This one seems much more honest and reality sticked than all the other reconstructions ok ok ok ok ok ok

Soldier Five recounts the events of the infamous Bravo-Two-Zero mission that went so awry during the First Gulf War, and is also the personal story of how a young Kiwi (New Zealander) came to serve in 22 SAS, via the NZSAS. The author comes over as a very pleasant personality, full of youthful enthusiasm and ideals - and he's not afraid to poke gentle fun at himself from time to time as he looks back from an authorial position of greater experience.The story is told more or less in chronological order, in a first-person action-man narrative. But unlike other books about the same events, Coburn is more focused on cock-ups (errors) than heroics. The litany of failures that led to three members of the patrol dying and four being captured is truly extraordinary and it is a testament to the skill of the author that the reader feels strongly the sense of astonishment, confusion, and frustration that mounts with each additional problem the soldiers had to face, effectively marooned hundreds of kilometres behind enemy lines.This chronological approach makes the last third of the book more powerful, as we learn that Bravo-Two-Zero was placed into the theater of combat for no real purpose and that it was subsequently abandoned to its fate by an OC (officer commanding) who "would have sacrificed half a squadron to get a Scud." As Ken Connor, another ex-Regiment man, commented in his book Ghost Force, special forces had no business being deployed merely to chase around in the desert in the hope of finding one or two mobile Scud launchers. No matter how you dress it up, that's not a strategic mission. When one considers how much time, effort and money is spent on training members of the Regiment, it is very disappointing for the Rupert (officer) to have been so laissez-faire about the fate of his men. Like Coburn, by the end of the book we feel disgusted by the attitude of those in command and this disgust is then compounded by the long drawn-out saga of how the UK Ministry of Defence tried to suppress the publication of Soldier Five even though by that time Andy McNab's account and Chris Ryan's account plus a movie were already in circulation.I came away feeling fortunate that Coburn's determination to get his book published was eventually successful, and that anyone who wants to can pick up this book and get more of a picture regarding the patrol and, by extension, some of the larger issues surrounding the use of the Regiment and the attitudes of those high up in the military command structure. It's something of a shame to consider that nearly eighty years on the words spawned by World War One should still seem to have some force: "lions led by donkeys."

Es handelt sich nunmehr um die vierte Aufbereitung der Story von Bravo Two Zero. Es ist gut geschrieben und wird seinem Ziel gerecht. Einige Fakten werden geradegerückt, die hauptsächlich von Chris Ryan, offenbar aus Marketinggründen, verfälscht wurden. In einigen Punkten weicht Coburn auch von Andy McNab ab, der größte Unterschied besteht aber sicher zu Michael Ashers Buch "The Real Bravo Two Zero". Ich fand es lohnend, auch diese Sicht der Geschichte zu lesen. Letztlich wird aber kein Unbeteiligter nun sagen können, ob beispielsweise die geschilderten Gefechte nach Entdeckung durch die lokale Bevölkerung tatsächlich stattgefunden haben. Etwas schade ist das Fehlen jeglichen Bildmaterials.