Brother To Dragons, Companion to Owls Behind the Lines

OK, gents. Um, really, I've got you all in here,

the only person who would be being briefed is Sergeant Matthews,

as he is the raid commander, but what I'm going to do

is give you all the scenario and the intelligence brief,

the remainder of the course then can thin out

and I'll brief you in detail, Sergeant Matthews,

on the actual mission you're about to undertake.

OK. The scenario, like all scenarios, is a little unrealistic.

However, if you listen in, you'll get the general gist

of what's happening.

After your recent escape

from the notorious Dostand Interrogation Centre

on the mainland of Ranginshar,

it's been decided by the brigade commander that inside information

gained on the centre

makes the MNAW Cadre personnel the most logical choice

to carry out a direct-action task against the actual fortress.

Intelligence reports indicate that vital information

and propaganda material is being transmitted

via some sophisticated aerials and radio equipment

to their operation centre on the mainland

which is about 300 kilometres away.

'NARRATOR: The Cadre's next assignment

'is the infiltration and metaphorical destruction

'of a communication station somewhere in southern England.

'A mild deterrent is a moat, 40 feet deep.'

Also, here you've got a...a mass of air photographs.

And on the air photographs, I just want to explain to you,

within the actual fortress area, the target...

'The target is a radio mast to which they plan to attach

'a massive explosive charge.

'Surprisingly, perhaps, command of the raid

'is given not to an officer, but a sergeant, George Matthews.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: With it being part of the course,

'obviously there is pressure.

'You're under pressure for the whole of the course, whatever you do.

'Failure in this mission will be detrimental to me

'and to the rest of the guys on the course,

'so I obviously want it to succeed.'

Prior to actually going in.

Mission...

..our mission is to carry out a reconnaissance of the fort

and the route to it with a view to further operations.

Execution, general outline...

..it will be an operation carried out in six phases.

Phase one - the move from here to Raiding Squadron.

Phase two - the move by rigid raiding craft to the beach.

Phase three...

'NARRATOR: As in everything that they do in their dangerous trade,

'the emphasis is on meticulous planning.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: I would say that any bit of information you can get,

'from whatever source, reliable or otherwise,

'is...is vitally important to you when you consider the plan

'to carry out your mission.

'You can't even formulate a plan

'until you've gathered every little snippet you can.'

If the farmer across the road

lets his dog out at 10 o'clock every night,

we want to know about it.

If he let's his wife out at 10 o'clock every night,

we want to know about it.

Any questions on the recce checklist?

Weapons, each man will carry an AR-15 and four mags.

'NARRATOR: The AR-15 is the ArmaLite,

'a weapon rarely issued to British Forces.

'It is light and short, distinct virtues when climbing with it.'

'Its chilling notoriety comes from its adoption by IRA terrorists.

'What attractions has it got for them?

Well, once you split it in half...

you take the locking pin out.

And you can take these out and it splits in half.

So you can imagine that, from there to there, is one piece,

and then the butt is your second piece.

And it fits very nicely underneath a pram...

underneath a small child or something.

Yeah.

Um, and also, another reason is... is that...

Now, on a normal weapon like the SLR,

when you break it in half, you destroy the zeroing...

..but on this weapon, once you break it in half...

..the sight,

the rear sight and the fore sight are on the same bit of weapon.

Because of you breaking it, you're not going to disrupt the zeroing.

It's very easy for terrorists to get hold of the weapon,

disjoin it with that locking pin there,

and that's your weapon ready to fire and you haven't got to zero it again.

It's zeroed from the last time.

- Does it kill people as well? - Um, not as well, no.

It's got a very high muzzle velocity

and it tends to go straight through people.

And it's certainly not got the stopping power that the SLR's got.

But, um, it'll make your eyes water.

'In daylight, they check out the terrain

'they must pit themselves against in darkness on successive nights,

'first on reconnaissance, then in the attack.

'The cliffs are wet and treacherously crumbling.

'To lose a foothold here has predictable consequences,

'as Corporal Rory Dale discovered when he fell 80 feet

'to an unexpected reunion with his wife.'

I was resigned to the fact that it was such a drop,

anyway to me it was, and...I was resigned to the fact that,

you know, at the other end I wasn't...

Well, I was going to be dead. I really thought I was.

And when I hit the deck, to my horror, I was still conscious.

So, um...it was quite painful.

I could feel the blood filling my lung up, um...

And...well, I rolled onto that side so I could just fire on one lung,

but then I just thought,

"Well, it won't be long now, you know, for the wait."

I thought, "I'm either going to pass out or...kiss the world goodbye."

But, um...

Unfortunately, I never lost consciousness at all, so...

I felt pain all the way back here.

Well, if it was up to me I'd like him to come off the course,

but he wants to stay on this, so I go along with what he thinks.

I'm just glad that he's turned out to be lucky.

I think, for the way that he fell and for the height that he dropped,

he's very lucky to be sat in the bed now.

'The Marines are to be put ashore by the Rigid Raider Squadron

'who are equally meticulous

'in charting their course to the yard.'

'What distinguishes all these Special Forces units from the rest

'is that, even in peacetime, their high-performance training

'involves perpetual risk.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: To be quite honest, um...

'you must accept certain risks in the job we do,

'um, be they the nature of the job or in some cases a self-inflicted risk

'by whatever plan you decide upon.'

'Unfortunately,

'casualties in an operation such as this are almost...a certainty.'

'And, as such, you have to accept the casualties

'and try and complete the mission.'

'NARRATOR: That night, as they return for their full-scale reconnaissance,

'the element of playing soldiers has gone. This, by any standards,

'is a beastly climb.

'Corporal Craig has been designated to lead it,

'a man whose career, after earlier botch-ups, is right on the line.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: Obviously, as raid commander,

'I wanted it to be a success.

'And in that respect, you're maybe...willing the guy to do it

'when really the climbing of the cliff may not be feasible,

'which is where you've then got to draw the line.

'Am I doing this for my sake to make the raid a success

'or is it becoming too dangerous for the guys involved,

'i.e. the lead climber and the number two climber?'

WAVES LAPPING ON ROCKS

'NARRATOR: The main danger is the lack of reliable footholds.

'To paraphrase Corporal Dale, the man who fell off in daylight,

'it looks horrific.'

I must admit it does from here, it's, um...

giving me a few kittens. Um, however, don't forget,

we're looking at a fairly blank bit of wall.

The coving in itself is not too bad.

The rock is friable, but it's only about grade V Diff.

That is the most we ask them to lead at night unseen, V Diff,

and that's what it is, but...

for a young ML2 it's a fairly horrific experience to get up there

and to have to lead it. He's got to be pretty sure of himself.

He's done about 40 foot of climbing. Now, he's got his earth axes out now

and I think he might've even put his crampons on

to help him get up the steep earth and up to the top. But...

he'll know he's done it once he gets there.

You're feeling confident, nonetheless?

I'm always confident.

Cut!

'CORPORAL CRAIG: The rock was just falling apart. There was loads of it.

'I was digging away at the earth, pulling tufts away

'and digging away at the earth

'to find hand holds underneath on the rock.

'And even then, they were just flaking away.'

'NARRATOR: But the reconnaissance succeeds. They scaled the cliff,

'remained undetected as they checked out the fortress's defences

'and by 1:00am are home for tea.'

No, it's in his locker.

'Much of the credit goes to Corporal Craig,

'a man almost uncomfortable with praise.'

What did you think of it? I saw your climb, you did very well.

It was a difficult climb. The main problem was there was no protection.

Yes, so I hear. It all dropped out, didn't it?

- Yeah, well, the two... - The rock was just falling apart.

The original plan was that I was going to plan the rock band

and Corporal Dixon was going to climb through me

and climb the steep earth. I was going to belay on,

but there was nowhere to belay on

cos all it was was just earth on top of the rock

and I couldn't get the, um, earth hammers in very well.

That's where all the sparks were coming from.

I managed to get a small rock in which I hammered in with the hammer,

but that slips out as I climbed past.

And further on, I got a seagull basher in,

which I had to hammer in again. And that, as well, came out.

Yeah, you were having a few kittens.

- Just a few. - However...

Once again, I'd said in the orders

that it was going to be a... a reasonably,

I wouldn't say off the cuff,

but the route itself was difficult to plan

because we didn't have air photographs

and the map was very sketchy.

So, as I said, we're going to pick the route on the way.

'NARRATOR: At 2:00am,

'they're still collating the information they brought back,

'right down to the nocturnal comportment of the local cows.'

The cows are quite timid.

Yeah, good point. Very good point. They're not very skitterish.

We actually went through a field of bovine

and they didn't bolt for the fence.

Yes, cows - a very valid point.

Right. Cows, um, docile.

Right, here we go. Get down to business.

Conclusions and recommendations... on the mission.

The mission, what did you think of the mission itself?

Feasible, I would say, very feasible...

'Most don't go to bed at all. Fuelled by adrenaline,

'they work on their scale model

'to assess the more vulnerable points of their target,

'which just happens to be a genuine link

'in the NATO communications chain.'

Situation - enemy forces...

..once again there's no change in the enemy forces' situation.

We had no contact with the enemy last night on the reconnaissance.

However, there was a Land Rover patrol out,

thought to be two men within the vehicle.

So they are patrolling in Land Rovers, that's confirmed.

No guards were seen patrolling the ramparts.

Has anyone any problems on the "situation - enemy forces" paragraph?

'An innocent scrap of polystyrene, a small trick of the trade.

'They left it here beneath the outer ramparts of the moat

'during their reconnaissance.

'It marks what they judge to be the safest line of approach.'

My boat will lay off in the ogging.

It'll just lay off and allow this boat,

if you could do the honours, Russ,

to come into the cove. That's the beach party's boat.

Putt, putt, putt, into the cove. OK?

There should be a beach tonight because of the...the timings.

Putting back the timings,

even if it's just a small one, there will be a beach.

'At last, the real test. The raiding party comprises 13 Marines,

'and who better to lead them up the initial cliff face again

'than the virtually reincarnated Corporal Craig?'

'So, for the second time in under 24 hours, Craig edges his way upwards

'in darkness.

'These pictures are caught by image intensifier.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: A lot of the time he was out of my view.

'And all I could hear was the grunting and groaning, if you like.'

'He's the sort of guy who would try and try,

'and the first you know that he had failed to climb the cliff

'would be when he landed in your lap.'

'NARRATOR: Their next problem,

'since the defenders also have image intensifiers,

'is in covering open ground.

'It is here that they adapt their camouflage training skilfully,

'using a dark background of undergrowth as a blind.'

'Unlike war, in which surprise is the most potent of weapons,

'their biggest disadvantage is the defenders know they're coming.

'All they don't know is the precise hour or from which direction.'

'After the cliff face, the moat is child's play.'

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: A lot of time is spent, prior to giving your orders,

'on contingency plans for all eventualities.

'Everything, to the most minute detail, must be covered.

'If everything goes fine, then great,

'all you've done is wasted a few hours and some paper.

'If everything doesn't go to plan, then at least everyone is sure

'in their own mind what is going to happen should something go wrong.'

OBSERVING GUARD: The two wandering sentries

think they've spotted a light somewhere around close to the mast.

So what we intend to do is to stand the guard too,

send one of the vehicles through on a normal patrol sweep

to have a closer look at it,

and possibly send two of the sentries around

to take a more detailed search of the area of the mast.

Um, if we strike something, we might get a bit of action.

If they don't initiate it, we will.

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: You've got to think from an enemy's point of view

'what could be the most effective,

'and rather than do what the enemy suspect you of doing,

'you do something totally different.'

'NARRATOR: Have they done something different?

'Have they come and gone?

'Not only have they outwitted the defenders, their own instructors,

'they've also made monkeys out of a BBC camera team.

'We waited four hours to film them actually planting this dummy charge

'and saw nothing but stars.'

REPORTER: Half past four in the morning, and here we are,

the charges on, not one, but two of the, um, the masts.

Tell me, first of all, how many people

have you had out patrolling out tonight?

We've had a total of 12 on the ground,

including the drivers doing the mobile patrols.

Um, sentries working round at half hour intervals,

two at a time and taking quite a good look at the area.

So, as you can see, with the charges being laid,

the raiding force of Twos course have done very well indeed.

We don't know how long they've been here,

um, by chance the sentries have found the charges,

and we have seen neither hide nor hair of them.

They could have been gone for hours.

These simulated charges would obviously be on a timing device,

and, for all we know, they could be back in their base camp

having breakfast and these had been blown.

The first thing we would have known was the explosions.

They've done very well indeed.

REPORTER: I'm just putting my feet on this...

FEET SCRAPING GRAVEL

..they crossed 40 yards of that and didn't make a sound.

Not that we found out, no.

What they could have done, they can use a lot of,

a lot of other noise - aircraft flying over,

the Land Rover actually moving.

Probably the best time for them to come and put the charge

was actually when the Land Rover's passed.

A lot of gravel noise from the wheels,

and they just scoot out behind it.

Once it's gone past, put them on and bug out again.

Plus, they may have lain there for a while watching the sentry routine,

which is the normal thing again you would try and do.

'So, good effort, though.'

'OFFICER: Excellent effort, they've done very well indeed.'

'NARRATOR: There was no question of them

'recreating their moment of triumph for television -

'like the magic circle, the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre

'are reticent about revealing their tricks.

'And anyway, they weren't totally satisfied.'

Well...well, I wouldn't say a total success.

It didn't work out quite as we planned.

The, um... As I told Andy, he had epics with the grapnel idea.

Which wasn't his fault, the idea was sound,

it was just the tree that wasn't sound.

Um...but all in all, the guys worked bloody hard, and there it is.

We did a good recce, got all of the relevant information.

The guys, you don't need to motivate guys like this.

They're...tremendous, tremendous workers.

And we've just seen the work they put in on things like the model,

you're not going to get that anywhere else

except a bunch of guys like this, and it all paid off.

Normally, it just wouldn't happen this quickly.

You wouldn't do a recce the night before

then hastily crawl out your bed at 7 o'clock in the morning,

having had three hours' sleep and write a new set of orders

for a complete night raid.

Um...but if you can do it under stress, when you're tired

and when you've just had a... a hard spell of graft,

then you can do it any time, really.

And that's the idea of the training, it's supposed to be hard.

There's a lot of pressure on you.

cos you know, if I couldn't have got up there,

then the whole operation would have been knackered,

or it certainly would have been slowed down for a while.

Say I fell off or I just refused to go.

Like this morning, I was having second thoughts

about whether I was going to do the climb tonight.

I said to Andy this morning I says, "If I get to the rock face tonight,"

and I says, "It's psyched me out,"

cos it was quite difficult last night,

I says, "If it's psyched me out, you're going to have to climb."

And he said, "Fair enough."

Which meant we'd have had to change equipment round

and he'd have had to lead it.

As it turned out, when we got to the rock face I felt all right.

So I went and did it again.

I'm trying to make my mind up

whether he's just a damn good climber or whether he's on drugs. It's um...

- Where is he? - He's bombed out, I tell you,

the man knows no fear.

To free it all the way, no protection or anything,

one slip and that's it, you know?

You're bringing him home in a bloody plastic bag.

But, um, he's incredible.

Well, I'm not on drugs, and I'm not totally fearless,

because when I went in tonight, I was, for choice of a better word,

I was shitting myself after last night.

I'm only human.

Straight across the track...

'GEORGE MATTHEWS: It is, when all's said and done, a very small part

'in a very large, condensed course.

'And there isn't the time for pats on the back

'and self-congratulations, no matter how well it went.'

'Tomorrow morning, one of the other guys'll be in charge

'and I'll be the man in the ranks trying to support him.'

'Four days later, and after five months of preparatory training,

'the Arctic Marines get their first glimpse of snow in central Norway.'

DISTANT SHOUTS, HOWLING WIND

And angle yourselves towards... the other bank.

EXPLOSION

'NARRATOR: The temperature - -14 degrees centigrade.'

Use your poles.

Your poles, your poles.

Good effort, Russ.

Go on, Russ. Go on.

'This amusing little diversion is to teach a man

'how to survive if he falls through the ice.

'For obvious reasons,

'it's the first thing they learn in their new environment.'

Get your Bergin out. Bergin out. Bergin!

Bergin, Jim.

Bergin, Jim.

That's it, do it.

It's all right, well done, keep going.

Good effort, Jim.

Go on, Jim, fight it.

Get in there!

Jim, try to get your Bergin out.

It's pulling me back in!

Get your Bergin out.

That's it, well done, Jim.

Now get your other ski pole and use both.

Well done.

'The dash to get dry is vital.

'By Arctic standards, 14 below is a balmy spring day,

'but a man soaked to the skin wouldn't survive for long.

'The locals don't risk it.'

SPEAKING IN NORWEGIAN

Let's go!

Ooh-ah! And out, together. And out.

It's cold, eh? Together.

You've got to be careful you don't do this too long -

stay in one place

You're back starts getting cold, turn around quickly and bend.

And stretch. And bend. And stretch.

And bend. And stretch.

Tops on.

That gives everyone now, then,

you should be taking on the feeling,

"Oh, it's not that bad, the old snow,"

so you don't worry about it,

it starts to give a bit of confidence.

You can do this with your companies,

ten seconds, get your kit on. Go.

'If it all suggests a return to the cold bath ethic

'of the English public school, the illusion is shattered

'by the cheerful depravity of their marching songs.

'Delicate ladies may wish to close their ears.'

COMPANY ECHOES SINGING

# Saturday night

# I went to town

# To take a walk

# And look around... #

GROWING DISTANT: # Saturday night

# I went to town... #

# I picked her up

# I laid her down

# Her long blonde hair

# Fell all around

# I picked her up

# I laid her down

# Her long blonde hair

# Fell all around

# I put my hand

# Upon her knee

# She said, Marine

# You're teasing me

# I put my hand

# Upon her knee

# She said Marine, you're...teasing me

# I put my head

# Between her thighs

# She said, Marine

# You're way too high

# I put my head

# Between her thighs

# She said, Marine You're...way too high... #

Dan didn't say anything about coming back down.

Only said to the top of the slope, go.

Swallow dive.

MUFFLED SHOUTS

Up top, quickly.

Go across the snow.

Right, nice straight line to the top.

I want you to repeat after me...

..for what we're about to receive...

ALL: For what we're about to receive.

..we are truly grateful...

ALL: We are truly grateful.

..now roll down the slope.

Yoo-hoo!

Argh!

Get him! Get him!

Argh!

'As viewers of earlier programmes may recall,

'the Cadre on occasions are no great respecters of rank.

'Not for the first time, Sergeant Mac McLean gets the full treatment.'

One, two...

Thank you, boys!

Three!

Come on, then, quickly, get yourselves inside!

MUFFLED SPEECH

'So, the icemen have finally arrived.

'Next week, more winter sports of a Baroque nature,

'and back to square one for Corporal Craig.'