The British Army has retreated and the mood is lighter in the Mike Coburn case. CARROLL DU CHATEAU reports.
Week two of a High Court bid to stop former SAS commando Mike Coburn from publishing a book about his experiences as a member of the Bravo Two Zero patrol, dropped behind Iraqi lines during the Gulf War, starts with a temporary lightening of atmosphere.
The screens, to protect Ministry of Defence witnesses from Britain - including one of the top 10 men in the British Army - come down.
The plain-clothed policemen with bulging armpits and earpieces disappear. The next-door courtroom, which was used as a holding pen for the men from Whitehall, is back in business as an ordinary New Zealand court. Justice Peter Salmon - who is held in enough respect by a military hierarchy accustomed to lofty British judges, to nail some admissions of procedural problems - gets his inner sanctum back.
Meanwhile, the defence witnesses, including West Aucklander Coburn, his former SAS colleagues "Mal" and Soldier W, who have flown from England for the case and who would appear to be just as vulnerable from terrorist attack as their former bosses, saunter around in their suits chatting to friends and lawyers - on both sides of the court.
Their smooth sophistication makes it hard to believe they are trained killers.
The former members of the infamous Bravo Two Zero patrol are impressive in the witness box. Their hands do not shake. Their voices do not waver.
The tanned, quietly spoken and articulate Coburn, 36, the hunky 1.92m silken-voiced Mal, and the gorilla-built Soldier W are not about to cave in to Brendan Brown QC's elegant cross-examination. For Coburn and Mal especially, who were held and tortured by the Iraqis for 48 days during the Gulf War, this is like a walk in the park.
Not just macho and fit, but highly intelligent and with thought processes seemingly more flexible than the military hierarchy who gave evidence a week earlier, they tell the story of a shambolic mission - helicoptered 300km behind enemy lines and mistakenly dropped in the middle of Iraqi Army bases carrying huge packs, which they were promptly forced to ditch, radio frequencies incorrectly set, a landscape flat as a tablecloth and Iraqis everywhere.
Worse, as they said in evidence, once they finally did get through to HQ in Saudi Arabia, requests for help were ignored. Said Coburn: "[They decided that] scuds [rockets] were more important than the patrol. In effect, we were expendable ... the request for help was considered premature."
Coburn also quoted from Chris Ryan's book The One That Got Away, which insisted that the delay "caused some soldiers back at HQ to be on the verge of mutiny."
After days and nights crawling on their bellies through dried-up river beds, fighting for their lives every kilometre of the way, the patrol was annihilated. Three men were killed, one escaped to Syria and four, including Coburn and Mal, were captured and interrogated.
Explains Coburn, in a New Zealand accent softened by a decade overseas, when the broken survivors made it back to England (Coburn dragging an ankle blasted apart by bullets, then kept raw for weeks by torturers digging into the wound with rifle butts to try to make him talk) they were told by the Commanding Officer that "he had decided not to court martial them." It was, says Coburn, "a shock" that coloured his career from then on.
As SAS patrols go, the Bravo Two Zero botch-up makes a cracking read. So good, that two of the survivors have already made millions from books and movies about it. The problem is, say Coburn and Mal under oath, their former mates distorted the facts. While Andy McNab's bestseller, Bravo Two Zero, was mildly fictitious, Ryan's effort was way off the mark.
Ryan's version, particularly,
makes Vince Phillips, who died, the scapegoat for much that went wrong.
Says Mal, a Zimbabwe-born Australian-qualified dentist: "There are sequences which are fictitious, such as the assault on the armoured vehicles in the patrol's initial engagement, and Ryan's scenes in which he personally kills people in a Rambo-like manner ... [torture] such as teeth extraction and burning with a heated spoon did not happen."
It was Coburn's disgust at his money-grubbing mates, plus the MOD's failure to contradict the lying books, that prompted him to write his own version Soldier Five (the pseudonym given to him by UN officials who interviewed him after the war to ascertain the extent of Iraqi brutality towards their POWs) to set the story right. What he did not know at the time was that the MOD would see the book, written after he had signed a confidentiality contract in October 1996, as a breach of contract - which is what this two-week case is all about.
Coburn argues that because the story has been told before, his book contains virtually no new, sensitive information. It will correct some damaging distortions and lies written about the mission. Also, because he signed the confidentiality contract under duress, his book should be allowed to go ahead, he says.
Certainly the men from Whitehall seem to have little conception of the subtleties of employment contract law. SAS soldiers were not allowed to study the confidentiality contract before signing, were refused legal advice and threatened with humiliating RTU (Return to Unit) with consequent pay cuts if they did not sign. Says Mal, who left the SAS in 1997 and flew from Britain to support his buddy in court, "Soldier Five is the first book about Bravo Two Zero which is accurate and true to fact ... It is also true to the memories of our three fellow colleagues who were killed on this mission ... is not dedicated to promoting the author above all others and spurred on by egocentricity and financial greed at the expense of former companions and the Regiment itself."
This is old stuff, he says. "The B2O incident is nearly 10 years old. It is not a fresh, sensitive operation, which I understood the contract was designed to protect."
Both men insist Coburn is not writing his book for the money. Profits will be shared with the families of deceased soldiers, surviving members of the patrol (except Ryan and McNab) and the New Zealand SAS where he had his early training.
But the authorities are steadfast. Because Coburn signed the contract, his book must be stopped. Publication could mean a deluge of new books from SAS insiders. This would make more sense if 23 had not already appeared in 1997 and 1998.
The case is hard-fought. Through their stiff-upper lip good humour, the men from Whitehall attack the defence case line by line.
They sit in the back of the court, nattily dressed, ties - often with matching handkerchiefs - firmly in place, guided by media spin-doctor Major Sean Tully.
Coburn's lawyer, Warren Templeton, who has been working "for legal aid and love" through weekends and into the night for months now, puts up a gutsy, dogged fight. Already others, who did not have the same stomach for a fight, have walked away.
A military expert retained by Templeton for the case was offered a job by the MOD and left.
Reed Publishing decided to give up the book months ago and it is unlikely another publisher will step into the fray before Justice Salmon makes his ruling, probably around four weeks after the case finishes.
Secrecy stepped up again towards the end of the week - but thankfully minus the men with guns - when the court moved into "camera" to deliberate the remaining nine highly confidential passages in Coburn's book that have the men from Whitehall worried.
The case is estimated to have already cost the British more than a million dollars - a figure that when put to Templeton brought a hasty throat clearing: "It is hard to estimate what the final figure will be," he says.
"But by the time submissions finish today it could be closer to double that."
Shields come down in commando case
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