Ranulph Fiennes - Killer Elite

It was getting lighter. The going was flat in place of the tortuous climbing to date. There was now a well-used hilltop path underfoot from which most of the snow had been blown. Previously he had struggled up a steep, tussocked hillside through kneedeep drifts. The path was one he had often used and led west along the ridge of the Brecons, dropping into a sheltered pass at Bwlch y Fan. He had only to continue at a pace consistent with maintaining his body heat and all would soon be well.

Fight the drowsiness… All will soon be well. He repeated this to himself and concentrated on the track to his immediate front. Always a little farther… Always a little farther.

A few other students still persevered and, over the next hour, two or three noticed Kealy’s stumbling westerly progress. Knowing who he was, their own flagging morale was greatly boosted. If Major Kealy DSO, SAS veteran and hero, was finding the going hard then they must be pretty damn tough to be en route still. One or two offered him help, gloves, a foul-weather jacket. He tripped on a rock and bruised his knees slightly. After a short rest to recover, he shook himself and carried on. He was damned if he would give in or accept help. He flung away the spare gloves and the jacket.

If things did get too bad he would remove one or two of the bricks that he carried to make up the statutory fifty-five-pound bergen weight. But he was sure he would get his second wind back before such a step became necessary. He estimated that some 1,000 yards up the track, which headed WNW, he would slow down to negotiate the ridgeline bottleneck of the Bwlch y Ddwyallt and join the well-trodden tourist path from the Pentwyn Rescue Post.

By 8 a.m. he felt the leaden weight of inertia begin to lighten, and slowly, as his blood-sugar level eased back to normal, his brain was again fed with the sugar it required.

The wind howled by in powerful, horizontal waves but Kealy knew he would be fine unless he stopped to rest. He jammed his cloth hat down, its flaps covering his ears. His bergen covered his back and his waist. Things were on the upswing.

As Kealy passed by two small ponds, de Villiers glimpsed through the hood of his heavy windbreaker a solitary Day-Glo-tipped metal pole propped up by a pile of loose rocks. Reaching into his inner pocket, he produced a compact Motorola walkie-talkie. He estimated arrival within the next twenty minutes. At 8:30 a.m., in conditions of mist and lashing sleet, Kealy was halted by a large man in an orange parka. Standing astride the track, the man shouted, “Please help, my wife is dying. She is blue with cold.”

The one thing Kealy had no desire to do was to stop, even briefly. He was going well now, savoring the gradual withdrawal of the leaden miasma he had fought against since Carn Pica. But he was at heart quite unable to turn down a cry for help. Swearing to himself, he nodded to the man and gestured for him to lead on.

Some thirty yards through the mist to the side of the track and half hidden by a shallow depression was a four-man igloo tent in Army camouflage colors. Here the man stopped. Kealy shrugged off his bergen, automatically feeling for the first-aid pouch that hung over his backside between the water-bottle containers. In the dim light of the tent Kealy perceived two men sitting back, wearing the orange waterproof parkas. Both smiled at him. The man who had stopped him outside was bent over a fourth person inside a sleeping bag.

As Kealy carefully wiped his eyes with his hands, for he still had trouble with his contact lenses, he felt a hardness pressed against the small of his back.

“Do nothing stupid, Major Kealy. We are armed and you are in no fit state to cause trouble. Simply lie back against the wall of the tent and look into the light.”

Kealy did as he was told, half wondering if Lofty and his staff had added a new and unexpected twist to the trainees’ endurance test. He screwed up his eyes against the bright light that shone in his face. He heard a soft, mechanical whirr as of a cine camera.

After the accusations were over, along with Kealy’s bemused denials, his arms were pinioned, his shirt and windbreaker peeled back and a hypodermic needle inserted into the fold of soft skin under his armpit. Within seconds he lost consciousness as the insulin surged through his veins, and the Tadnams men, helped by de Villiers, eased his body out of the tent.

Taking great care with their footprints, de Villiers and one other man carried Kealy to the side of the track and maneuvered his limp arms into the bergen’s shoulder straps. Propping him into a half-sitting, half-lying position against the bergen, they removed his hat and placed his rifle some distance away as though discarded. The other two men removed the bleeper, packed up the tent, leaving no signs of its presence, and all four then headed along the footpath to Pencelli.

Now that Kealy was motionless, his body began to lose heat rapidly through convection, conduction, radiation and evaporation. Quite when he died is open to doubt.

At close to 9 a.m. two trainees found his body. One, a captain, thought he felt a faint pulse but could not be certain. They did the best they could and Signaler Simon Maylor spent many hours pressed body-to-body against Kealy inside a survival bag within a hastily fashioned snow hole.

Twenty hours later improved conditions allowed a helicopter to land. Kealy’s body was airlifted to Brecon Hospital Mortuary for an autopsy. All signs of chlorpropamide and excess insulin had long since dispersed within his bloodstream.

There were those among Kealy’s friends who found it hard to believe that a fit and experienced mountain man such as he could have died in such circumstances, but since there was no other possible explanation, even the canniest of SAS staffers agreed that “anyone can die of hypothermia in such conditions.” That was the obvious answer. There could have been no foul play, for there was no one with any motive. Far from it, Kealy was a friend to all who knew him.

The Brecon coroner, Trevor Evans, discussed the matter with the Chief Constable of the South Powys Division and reiterated on several occasions that he felt the SAS should be more careful with their trainees.

Mike Kealy’s grieving parents remained baffled. They knew their son, a man of enormous common sense and practicality, would have removed bricks from his bergen long before he reached the stage of lying down and giving up. “Anyone can die of hypothermia,” they were told by sympathetic old friends. But they knew Mike was not “anyone.”

The media learned of the tragedy, and the angle they took to explain the conundrum of so experienced a man simply lying down to die was as unfortunate as it was sensational.

Sun: SAS hero Major Mike Kealy lost his last battle… a desperate attempt to show he was still as tough as his young recruits.

Western Mail: SAS major died trying to outdo recruits.

Daily Telegraph: SAS hero died in snow trying to prove fitness.

Kealy’s close friend Major Tony Shaw concluded, “He was an experienced hillwalker who knew the risks well. He had instructed soldiers and knew the effects of hypothermia and how to avoid them. He looked at this test purely in subjective but positive terms: he wore light clothes to avoid overheating and to increase his speed. When he realized he had miscalculated it was too late, but he could not give up and walk off the hill. Once he had decided to undertake the task, it was in his nature that nothing would be allowed to stop him.”

The greatest irony was that Mike Kealy did not lose his last battle against the elements. He won because of his doggedness, and lost his life because of his innate kindness.

Major Kealy’s obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph-The Times was on strike-on February 6, 1979. Tony Shaw wrote of him, “He stands as a memorial to all that is courageous and honest. We do not often see his like. He will be sadly missed.”