GULF WAR II: DROPPED INTO HELL

FOR Britain's military top brass it was the moment they had dreaded. Beamed around the world was the unmistakable image of a captured SAS jeep surrounded by dancing Iraqi troops jubilantly firing their AK 47s in the air.

Then came the reassurances from the stern faces of senior officers - briefed to offer the barest of explanations to a waiting world.

Yes, a small number of British special forces had been extracted from the desert. There were no casualties and no one missing, we were told.

Today, at the end of the war, we can reveal that two SAS soldiers from the mission WERE missing in action for 72 hours, being relentlessly hunted day and night across the desert by Iraqi death squads.

In a near mirror-image of the ill-fated Bravo Two Zero mission during the first Gulf War in which three SAS soldiers died, the men had to draw on their highly-skilled training and incredible bravery to survive against all the odds before being dramatically rescued.

The two heroes are both known only by their nicknames - "Big", who is only 5ft 7in tall, and "Monty", the spitting image of the hero of El-Alamein. They were caught in a crisis that was to test every ounce of their endurance as they battled hunger, thirst, exhaustion and fear.

It is a remarkable story of heroism - but also of an embarrassing military blunder which has led to deep and possibly lasting divisions between British and American special forces.

It began on March 26, Day Six of the war, as 16 men from the SAS's Air Troop detachment clambered aboard an American C-130 aircraft.

At the time British forces were in the process of taking Umm Qasr, approaching Basra while the Americans headed towards Baghdad.

The SAS patrol's mission was to parachute into the desert 100 miles south west of the city of Mosul and, acting on US intelligence, probe the Republican Guard defences.

They were to call in an RAF Chinook helicopter which would drop them four Land Rovers - "pinkies" - armed with machine guns. US special forces command insisted that intelligence gathered from satellites and unmanned predator drones reported no troops in the drop zone. The intelligence was wrong.

Last night an SAS insider said: "We hated having to rely solely on US intelligence."

The error proved disastrous. Within hours of moving northwards towards Mosul the 16 troops - drawn from B and D SAS squadrons - were taken by surprise by a 50-strong Iraqi force and four members of the patrol were caught away from their Land Rover.

As their comrades returned fire the men were left stranded. Two were picked up safely - but Big and Monty, unable to cover themselves, had to flee into the desert.

It was the beginning of a nightmare three days for the soldiers who were trailed mercilessly by Saddam's fanatical hitmen.

Meanwhile their comrades powered into the desert in their pinkies to an emergency rendezvous point and called for help, before being flown out of the desert. The two men's jeep was captured by the Iraqis and driven to Mosul and the waiting cameras of al Jazeera.

The soldiers were now privately listed as Missing In Action. Publicly, desperate to protect the men from Saddam Hussein, the MoD insisted all troops were accounted for.

Equipped with M16 rifles, pistols and knives, the two soldiers began fighting a series of running nightime battles in an effort to break free from Iraqi forces. Using a traditional SAS method known as "shoot and scoot" they lay down heavy fire followed by swift withdrawal into the night - leaving the enemy disorientated.

An SAS insider said: "It is one of the things the SAS do best. By hitting the enemy with a fearsome amount of fire they believe they are tackling a larger force than they think."

It had not been the first mission that Big and Monty had been on together. They trained in Belize and Oman and served in the same squadron in Afghanistan.

They realised that their one chance of escape was to make their way towards the deserts in west Iraq hundreds of miles away - the farther away from Mosul, the fewer enemy forces.

By day they struggled to remain hidden. Being in the desert presented profound problems - mostly flat, it offered pitiful cover. It was only at night that they dared to move on. Stopping only briefly to plot their progress with E and E (escape and evasion) maps and a hi-tech global positioning system (GPS), they travelled a total of 60 miles in 72 hours.

They lived off minimal cold army rations. Each had three pints of water and had to discipline themselves to a small daily ration.

Meanwhile, their abandoned pinkie made its guest appearance on TV sets worldwide and military chiefs back in Britain waited for the dreaded news that the men had been captured or killed by the Iraqis.

By the end of the second night they were nearing the end of their physical endurance.

Finally, on their third night, the pair decided to use their SARBE communication equipment - a search and rescue beacon which sends out an electronic signal revealing their position which can be picked up by Coalition forces. Later, crouching in the darkness, the two men heard a distant sound they had hoped and prayed for - the whirring sound of a Chinook.

A medical officer tended to them as the aircraft sped to the command centre at a secret location where they were taken to a field hospital to be checked and allowed to rest before their debriefing.

Shortly, both men will fly back to Britain and return to their headquarters in Hereford. But it will not be to a hero's welcome. Already there is an inquiry into how they came to leave behind valuable equipment - which as well as the jeep included a quad bike and rockets.

The episode is set to go down as a sorry one - part of a conflict being dubbed by the SAS as "what war?" because of the unglamorous tasks given to British special forces.

Along with this there is bitterness that it was US intelligence that let down the Mosul mission which made the SAS appear amateur.

Last night an SAS source said: "This is the kind of cock-up you get when you work from US intelligence. We got poor tasks in Iraq, there were no scuds or weapons of mass destruction for us to find in the desert and we got ordered to drop into an area that was enemy- controlled. We just did the backroom stuff and nearly lost two guys in the process.

"The Regiment is far better off working on its own tasks, not getting what the Americans don't fancy because it is not a glory job."

In a twist that will not be lost on the black humour of SAS soldiers, it was the Iraqi's Minister of Information dubbed "Comical Ali" who perhaps for the first time accurately summed up the situation.

With a characteristic, dismissive wave of his arms he said: "Amazingly the Americans have pushed the British to do that. They pushed them ahead as an experiment. It is very tragic for the British."

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