Standing by her man: she who dares wins

The wife of former SAS trooper Mike Coburn opens up to CARROLL DU CHATEAU about their long battle for justice

When Sue Coburn met the cute, 26-year-old New Zealander in a Hereford nightclub in 1990, she never thought she would end up on the other side of the world battling the British Ministry of Defence on his behalf.

That battle ended this week when an Auckland judge threw out an attempt to stop him publishing a book about his Gulf War experiences.

Hereford, then base for the Special Air Service, was known throughout Britain for its elite soldiers. Women from all over the country who were interested in exciting, James Bond-style men moved there to meet them.

"The place was full of very fine, very eligible bachelors - like a town full of your best rugby players," says Sue. "They were super-fit, ruggedly handsome and really nice people."

For her, out on the town from her nearby home, Mike Coburn with his offbeat humour, deep principles and New Zealand accent was unusual enough to catch her eye.

"I'd never been interested in an Army guy before," she says with a smile. "And although he told me he was a rugby player, that didn't fool me because I knew the guy with him and he was a regiment man."

They dated "but not dated, dated." Then Coburn disappeared.

The next time Sue met her husband-to-be, he was on crutches, his foot smashed to pulp by a bullet taken as a member of the eight-man Bravo Two Zero squad dropped behind Iraqi lines in the Gulf War.

But, typically, that didn't stop her.

After a year of major operations on his foot, which still aches incessantly, months of physio to eliminate his limp and a diagnosis that he would never return to the paratroops, they were married in the beautiful little Army chapel at Hereford in September 1992.

As is usual in the SAS, Coburn's movements were stringently monitored by the Ministry of Defence.

"He wasn't allowed to be married in uniform, though I would have liked that. We weren't allowed to photograph the wedding - that had to be done the following Monday at a studio," says Sue. "And, of course, he had to ask permission before he could move in with me."

Next, as all dutiful soldiers' wives do, Sue took over family responsibilities while Coburn returned to modified service. She was not allowed to know where he was going, what he was doing, how long he would be away - only when the assignment ended did she learn how long he would be home.

"The very first question you ask when they walk in the door is, 'How long are you home for?' Then, from that moment on, you prepare yourself for the goodbye."

Meanwhile, she restored the old shack they bought on the outskirts of the base into the charming farmhouse it had once been. Over the next five years, in between having three daughters and with Coburn arriving home bruised and exhausted after various missions, Sue retrained as a fitness instructor.

The couple also became increasingly disillusioned by the wave of publicity about the Bravo Two Zero mission. Coburn remembered a grim, botched affair that had claimed three mates and nearly killed him.

Only one soldier, Chris Ryan, had escaped to Syria. The rest, including Coburn and quasi-mission leader Andy McNab, were captured and tortured so savagely by the Iraqis that the United Nations has offered compensation.

McNab's version of events, however, glamorised the mission, invented some of the more spectacular events and glossed over bungled Ministry of Defence management. But it made a great yarn. His book, Bravo Two Zero, sold millions.

Chris Ryan's effort, The One That Got Away, was even more fictionalised, distorting the roles of patrol members. While Ryan himself became a hero, the three men who gave up their lives during the hellish escapade - and could not defend their reputations - were blamed for much that went wrong.

Says Sue, "All three remaining guys were fed up with these books. It was spiralling out of control ... ridiculous." Added to that, McNab deliberately cut Coburn out of any discussion about what happened during the mission.

Eventually the misinformation ate away at their morale. In 1997, five months after being obliged to sign a confidentiality contract or lose his job, Coburn left the SAS in disgust at the Defence Ministry's attitude - including the fact that his commanding officer had considered court martialling the survivors.

By then both original books had sold millions of copies and had been turned into television movies. Coburn decided to write his own version of events. His motive: to set the record straight, especially for the family of Vince Phillips, whose character had been assassinated.

However, when Coburn's publishers sent the manuscript of his book, Soldier 5, to the British and New Zealand SAS for vetting, the couple's whole world caved in.

Sue, aged 32, sits in the large basket chair at her sunny West Auckland home, lithe and fit as a blue-eyed cat, amethyst stud in her navel, rose tattoo above her left breast, and tells how it happened.

"The English publisher [Hodder and Stoughton] was called into Whitehall. They had to agree not to publish and were put under a confidentiality contract so they couldn't tell us what happened in the meeting. We didn't know what was wrong, what was happening.

"Reed [the New Zealand publisher] was contacted by an English official and the same thing happened. They were also put under a confidentiality contract and couldn't talk to us."

Next, when the Coburns hired a respected English lawyer, Peter Scandrett, to sort the situation, the same thing happened.

"He gets called to a meeting at Whitehall - although I offered to go, they didn't want me there - and guess what? He gets put under a confidentiality contract. So now our lawyer - whom we owe £25,000 - doesn't talk to us. He's still under that contract."

As Sue says, "I hadn't expected - or wanted - an ordinary life, but this was ridiculous ... Their whole angle in the UK was to try to financially ruin us - that's the story Mike heard while we were still there. Basically they cut everyone from around us.

"Imagine how Mike feels after having a gun put to his head for these people, having his foot smashed so it never stops aching, yet they didn't respect him enough to sit down and have a conversation with him."

Such is the power of the Defence Ministry in Britain that it was not until April 1999, when the Coburns packed up their daughters, then aged 4, 6 and 10, and moved home to New Zealand, that they could find anyone to take their case.

"Actually, it was while Mike was over here earlier that someone put him on to Warren Templeton," says Sue. "And he's been brilliant."

For six months Templeton meticulously worked on the case through nights and weekends, roping in contract law and human rights specialists, including Grant Illingworth, experts from Auckland University Law School - even Coburn's Bravo Two Zero SAS buddy "Mal," who arrived from London to give evidence and ended up typing evidence too.

"Basically, we had to sign over the equity in the house to legal aid," says Sue. "That's just what you do, though it would be hard starting again after 10 years of marriage."

They are certainly not in it for the money. The Coburns plan to share profits from Soldier 5 with the families of those who died during the mission, the three survivors (excluding Ryan and McNab who didn't share the millions made from their books) and the New Zealand SAS association.

Despite the battle with the ministry, support at soldier level, says Sue, is amazing. For the past month since the hearing, with Mike in North Africa working on the hard-core "security circuit" with other former SAS men, she has been flooded with e-mails, cards and letters.

She stands in the kitchen in her sunfrock, kids' lunchboxes on the bench, doling out yoghurt and apples like any New Zealand mother, and speaks from the heart: "The Kiwi spirit embraced us - especially Warren [Templeton] and the team of people who came together to help him.

"They showed Mike that there were people who believed in him and respected him - not just in a professional sense, but in a friendship sense, too. When you're up against something so big and don't know what's going on, it's so difficult.

"I don't know of anywhere else in the world where people would come together to help like this."

This lady's not for breaking. Throughout the hearing Sue kept up her aerobics classes with her own particular brand of humour, telling men who show interest that she is married to a man who kills people for a living.

"What? That's a joke, right?"

"Not really."