Pete Winner - Soldier 'I'

I first met Pete (or Snapper as he was called then) in 1984. I had just joined the SAS at the age of 24, and had been sent out to join the rest of B Squadron in the jungles of South East Asia.

I’d only just been introduced to the rest of the troop and was enjoying a quick brew with them under the canopy, when Snapper and four of his mates came crashing through the jungle, looking for the new boy. It didn’t take long for Snapper’s torchlight to find me, and from the residual glow of the fire we were brewing our tea on, I got a vague glimpse of him: a tall, bearded guy, with a flat face and a nose broken so badly it seemed to be heading east when he was facing north. His accent was dramatic Northern, and he stretched the last word of the sentence he spat out at me, as he and his mates loomed over me in the darkness. ‘You a fookin’ Masonnnnnn?’

Snapper was obsessed; he was sure that the Freemasons were infiltrating the Regiment. It had become a running joke – the troop had set up a ‘lodge’ in the jungle, where Snapper and his mates spent their evenings conducting spoof rituals with their trouser legs rolled up. That was my first meeting with the man who’d become Soldier ‘I’, and fortunately, I was able to reassure him that I hadn’t been sent by the Masons on any kind of secret mission. But my first impression of Snapper was that he was as mad as box of frogs, and someone I would do well to keep away from.

The next time I came across Snapper was when our squadron was back in the UK and we were in training to join the counter-terrorist team. I spent quite a lot of time with him during those months as we practised our ‘room clearing’ skills in the training building in Hereford known within the Regiment as ‘The Killing House’. The Killing House was the only place where the Regiment’s assault teams were able to fire live ammunition, and it was here where I really began to see Snapper’s skills first-hand. Of course, it turned out that there was a whole lot more to Snapper than I had first thought.

Snapper was, and is, a Regimental institution. An outstanding soldier, he was one of the SAS troopers who successfully stormed the Iranian Embassy in 1980. He also played an enormous role in the Falklands War in 1982. If that isn’t enough, Snapper was also one of the pioneers of undercover operations in Northern Ireland. He tells it all here in his remarkable book.

But perhaps Snapper’s greatest piece of soldiering took place in the battle of Mirbat, which occurred during Operation St orm – the secret war fought by the British in Oman in 1972. Over 250 well-armed Communist insurgents attacked the isolated SAS base near the coastal resort of Mirbat, and Snapper (manning the machine gun) together with eight fellow SAS soldiers, chose to fight against overwhelming odds until reinforcements arrived. If the Communists had come to dominate this area, the whole of the Western world would have been held to ransom, since over half of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuze, just off Oman in the Persian Gulf. But the nine men resisted fiercely, and pretty much won the war single-handedly. For this reason, Operation St orm remains one of the most famous actions ever carried out by the SAS, and to this day, is one of the Regiment’s proudest moments.

But Snapper’s skills don’t stop there. Many of the undercover techniques that he helped to develop are still used by the Regiment today in their anti-terrorist operations. They certainly helped me tremendously during my two years in Northern Ireland as an undercover operator.

Snapper is a true innovator, and really pushed the boundaries of soldiering within the Regiment. It was always him who would say, ‘Let’s try it a different way,’ or, ‘Hang on a minute, what if we do it like this instead?’ There’s a real creativity to the art of combat, and Snapper has it in spades. Not only during training back in Hereford, but also out in the field where it really counts. Without people like Snapper, the Regiment would not be the same professional fighting force it is today.

If it’s Regimental war stories you are after, Snapper’s are among the very best. Sure, he might have had the occasional incident of paranoia along the way, but as one of our mates, Nish, always used to say back in the jungle, ‘Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that no-one is out to get you.’

I met up with Snapper again in Kabul, in 2006. It was great to see him, even if he did make me pay for the tea. He was still as mad as a box of frogs, and had enough weapons and radios dangling off him to take on the whole of the Taliban single-handed. Nothing much had changed. But seeing him out in Afghanistan reminded me once more of the debt the British Army owes to guys like Snapper. If you think of the soldiers running around in body armour and helmets in Afghanistan today, spare a thought too for Snapper and his fellow soldiers. Apart from their weapons, the only kit they had back then was a pair of shorts and desert boots. Remarkably, they still managed to win through, and this book shows you how.

This is a book by a true soldier, who really gets what soldiering is all about – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

‘You are a time bomb, trooper, a time bomb just waiting to explode.’

The Colonel’s words were still beating in my head as I lay back on the bed. His face, bulging with anger as he roared out his verdict, floated before me. It did not matter whether I opened my eyes or closed them, he was still there, accusing, taunting, assailing my self-respect. ‘What happened yesterday was a total disgrace, a total insult to the Regiment. We cannot and will not tolerate this behaviour. You’ve had your chances but this is the last straw.’ A time bomb waiting to explode.

This was it then. The end of the road. On Colonel’s orders for the third time. That must be some kind of record. Usually Colonel’s orders meant you were finished, RTU’d, out in the cold. I was lucky. I was still serving with the SAS – at least for a little while longer, anyway. It all now hinged on the official medical reports. The Colonel seemed confident that they would provide the ammunition he needed. He had me right in the middle of his sights now. He could pull the trigger at any time.

I looked around me nervously. Ward 11 of the British Army Psychiatric Unit – the thinking man’s Belsen. Was this really the end of the line? Everything in the room was white, clinical and empty. Empty walls, empty windowsill, empty tabletops, empty cupboards. My holdall lay slumped on the floor unopened. I reached down into a side-pocket and pulled out a picture of my favourite pin-up, smoothed out the creases and wedged it into a tiny gap at the top of the bedside table. It was a relief to see the splash of colour, the bright, smiling face, the beckoning body.

I glanced out of the single window. Nothing but dreary grey London rooftops. A feeling of isolation swept over me. I turned back to the room and swung wide the cupboard doors, rattled open every drawer, gazing into the emptiness, seeking clues. There wasn’t a single trace of the previous detainee – not even a shirt button, a screwed-up ticket or the cellophane wrapper from a cigarette packet. Everything had been swept clinically clean. If only I could have found something, no matter how small, it would have given me some sense of reality, a feeling that others had passed this way before me.