Soldier Five – The Real Truth About the Bravo Two Zero Mission is the third book about the Bravo Two Zero mission during the Gulf War to have been written by a member of the eight-man patrol involved.
It is published under the pseudonym "Mike Coburn",Moss, Stephen "Mission: the truth" The Guardian, March 12, 2004 but the author is the member referred to as "Mark the Kiwi" in other accounts.
It is more critical of the command structure than other accounts had been and the book was only published after a lengthy and expensive series of court battles, and by court order the resulting royalties go to the UK Ministry of Defence.Bone, Alistair "A ridge too far", The Listener March 6–12 2004
Plot Originally a member of the New Zealand SAS, after traveling to England and passing SAS selection in the winter of 1990, "Mike Coburn" is assigned to A Squadron of 22nd Special Air Service Regiment and begins training on desert vehicle tactics in preparation for insertion behind Iraqi enemy lines in the Gulf War. However, on arrival at the United Arab Emirates regimental mounting base Coburn and fellow A Squadron member Sergeant Vincent Phillips are transferred to B Squadron, who are understrength after committing men to an in-theater hostage rescue team. After being tasked with a special reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines in the Anbar Province of western Iraq, the eight-man patrol (commanded by Sergeant "Andy McNab") are instructed by the Commanding Officer of B Squadron to E&E into Syria if they get cut off from headquarters, and that the CIA had prepared safe houses across the border where they could find shelter. They are also instructed that in the event of capture they are to claim they are part of a combat Search and Rescue team looking for downed pilots. The patrol is informed the mission's primary goal is to locate and then call in airstrikes on Scud missile launchers, with a secondary objective of sabotaging Iraqi military fiber optic cables.
After being dropped off by Chinook helicopter approximately 30 kilometres to the west of Haditha, the patrol move their supplies into a dried up river bed just before dawn to wait until the following night before patrolling the surrounding area, however the next morning they observe S60 triple A anti-aircraft guns along with troops about 800 meters to the north of their position. The patrol also discover their PRC-319 military radio isn't working, and decide to return to their drop off point for emergency pick up that night as per their lost comms procedure. However, they are discovered by a shepherd an hour before sundown and are fired on by Iraqi troops and an armoured personnel carrier from distance as they escape the wadi system. The patrol return suppressive fire from their Minimis and M16/M203s, and abandon their supplies of food, water, and ammunition, retreating into the desert as darkness falls. When efforts to contact AWACS via emergency TACBE radios fail, the patrol head south towards their emergency RV in the hope search and rescue helicopters will pick up their signal.
After waiting for an hour at the emergency RV without contacting any helicopters, the patrol head north towards the Syrian border, where they witness several launches of Scud missiles in their immediate area. While exfiltrating north-west towards the border, the patrol gets split into two groups while McNab attempts to contact an overhead Coalition fighter jet using a TACBE communicator. The patrol continues towards the border, hiding during the day and moving only at night to avoid detection. With the cold weather worsening and his remaining patrol members starting to suffer from hypothermia, McNab decides to hijack a civilian vehicle to drive the remaining distance to the frontier before the next morning. The group are discovered at a vehicle security checkpoint close to the border and run off into the desert after a brief exchange of gunfire. Several more skirmishes occur between the patrol and Iraq military units around the outskirts of Al-Karābilah, before the patrol is split again after walking into an ambush by dug in Iraqi troops. Coburn and McNab run out of ammunition and dump their weapons in the Euphrates river, before attempting to crawl through a network of Iraqi fox holes undetected. After being fired upon again McNab escapes back towards the river while Coburn manages to crawl away without being spotted, before finally being captured Iraqi military an hour before dawn after being shot in the ankle.
Coburn is then taken to a local army camp, where he is interrogated and beaten, before being handed over to Iraqi military intelligence and moved to a military hospital on the outskirts of Baghdad for surgery on his gunshot wounds. Coburn tells his captors the pre-prepared cover story that he was part of a Combat Search and Rescue team who got stranded after their helicopter made an emergency landing, however the Iraq's allege he is part of the commando team who engaged in the earlier firefight against troops near Haditha. After weeks of mistreatment, the interrogators reveal that other members of the patrol have been captured and list off their names, as well as detailing how they were inserted by Chinook (which was heard by nearby Iraqi military personnel) on a mission to call in airstrikes on Scud launchers and sabotage Iraqi military fiber optic cables. Realizing the Iraqi's knew everything, Coburn admits to being a member of the SAS tasked with the mission they are describing. Coburn is then moved to a prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, and is eventually released soon after the end of the Gulf War.
Reuniting with the surviving patrol members in Cyprus after debriefing sessions at RAF Akrotiri, Coburn learns that Sergeant Vincent Phillips, Trooper Bob Consiglio and Trooper Steven Lane are all missing in action. While Corporal "Chris Ryan" managed to escape over the border to Syria, the remaining patrol members ("Andy McNab", Lance Corporal "Dinger" and Trooper "Stan") were all captured by the Iraqi military. A few days later the men are called into a meeting with the SAS commanding officer at Stirling Lines to discuss their failed mission. When the men ask why a rescue team did not attempt to pick them up, they are told they were given the wrong military radio frequencies and the only garbled message received by SAS headquarters in Saudi Arabia requesting extraction mentioned "compromised" and "S60 triple A", thus it was decided not to risk sending helicopters so close to anti aircraft artillery. When Coburn retorts that their emergency RV was well outside of the range of the S60's they are bluntly informed that the regiment's priority was to prevent further Scud missile launches and thus were willing to sacrifice the Bravo Two Zero patrol in order to conserve the available Chinooks for the four other SAS half squadrons operating behind enemy lines.
Differences in accounts by patrol members Several literary accounts had been published regarding the mission, most prominently the 1993 'Bravo Two Zero' book by patrol commander "Andy McNab". In the prologue of the Soldier Five book, Coburn states that he and the other members of the actual Bravo Two Zero patrol who remained in the SAS grew frustrated at the narrative of what happened being distorted while they were unable to publicly comment due to legal restraints. Despite being alongside McNab the entire time up until a couple of hours before he was captured on the Iraqi side of the border near Abu Kamal, several significant differences between the men's recollections have been recorded, such as: