Operation Certain Death

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Not wishing to appear in anyway ungracious or churlish, and recognising that I would not be flying for another 12 hours, I duly accepted his kind offer and sat in bed enjoying a pint of lager. All that was required now was to cross-deck to HMS Invincible and kill yet more time waiting for darkness and the moment of launch. After medical checks, the soldiers, who had been held for 17 days, were allowed to telephone their families and then rejoined their battalion in Freetown. The planning group decided that the overland approach would not allow troops to enter the village undetected, largely due to the West Side Boys' roadblocks on the road into the village, and that insertion from Rokel Creek was not feasible for large numbers of troops due to the sandbanks and powerful currents in the river.

We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and improve our understanding of you. Although Richard's part of the mission was successful, overall it failed because the Special Forces team encountered a difficulty on the ground that prevented them from completing their task. At least twenty-five West Side Boys were killed in the assault, as was one British soldier, while eighteen West Side Boys—including the gang's leader, Foday Kallay—were taken prisoner and later transferred to the custody of the Sierra Leone Police. Their fortified base was hidden deep in the West African jungle, its barricades adorned with severed heads on spikes. Dorman of King's College London suggested that the fate of the wider British operation in Sierra Leone depended heavily on the success or failure of Operation Barras and that, had the British forces been defeated, the United Kingdom would have been forced to withdraw all its forces from Sierra Leone.This, then is the untold, epic story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two: the rescue by the SAS of British Forces who were being held captive by the guerrilla gang, The West Side Boys, in the Sierra Leone jungle. Tim Collins, late of the Royal Irish Regiment, was serving as operations officer under the DSF during Barras. But once the fight was over, he had sipped a cup of tea and a second counter-attack repelled at the edge of the village, Phil said he finally calmed down. There were also concerns that the West Side Boys might move further inland, and either kill the soldiers or move them to a location from which it would be more difficult for British forces to extract them. Around the time that the five soldiers were released, two negotiators from the SAS joined Fordham's negotiating team.

This is the point in the operation where dog sees rabbit, and dog is most definitely going to go for it. The risks of Operation Barras were acknowledged by the MoD and by officers involved in the planning and the assault. Two days later, on 31 August, five of the eleven hostages were released in exchange for a satellite telephone and medical supplies. The capture of the Royal Irish patrol had undermined the confidence of the Sierra Leonean population in the British operation, which they hoped would help to bring an end to the country's civil war, and embarrassed the British government, which had been critical of similar previous incidents involving UNAMSIL personnel.I couldn't believe it, I said to him 'No, we're from the British ship in the port,' and he said, 'There is no British ship in the port, please get into my car,' and he drove us into base. As the helicopters approached, the SAS observation team at Gberi Bana engaged West Side Boys in the vicinity of the captives to prevent any gang members from attempting to kill them before the area was secured. The village was completely secure by 08:00 and the paras secured the approaches with Claymore mines and mortars positioned to prevent a counter-attack, while a detachment destroyed the remaining vehicles and heavy weapons including the Bedford lorry which had blocked the Royal Irish patrol. Some four hundred heavily armed renegades were not only bloodthirsty—they were drink-and-drugs crazed. Featuring extensive interviews with survivors, this gritty, blow-by-blow account of the bloody battle that brought an end to ten years of Africa’s most brutal civil war is “as good as any thriller I have ever read.