Spotted this browsing for Chrimbo pressies.
Not sure how much, if any, publicity the Bravo Two Zero books (BTZ and The one that got away) got stateside when they came out, but this is yet another account from a patrol member supposedly “breaking silence to set the record straight”.
However the main reason stated was to vindicate one of the Patrol Members who died who’d been specifically singled out as being to blame for their initial compromise by Ryan in TOTGA (good awful book and film) which struck me as odd, it was common knowledge in the rest of the army 10 years ago that Ryan’s name especially was muck in Hereford not so much for writing the book (which was bad enough) but for blaming those who’d died a) for getting them compromised and b) for basically being bad soldiers generally. It’s also been at least widely reported in the media that no-one “in the know” was especially happy with Ryan’s account of proceedings.
From the actual account of the patrol, there is very little setting the record straight truth be told. There is not much difference in any of the three accounts up until the point the patrol separates nor between McNab’s and Coburn’s afterwards, though Coburn’s style of writing is a lot more mature and arguably readable as a result than McNab’s which always struck me as not far off reading Sven Hassel.
The other side of it was a bit more interesting especially the detail of the legal fun and games involved in getting the book released to begin with.
***spoiler, ok its not a novel but some might prefer to read his actual account ****
[color=white]The remaining revelation is that they were essentially deliberately “abandoned” even when it was clear they’d been compromised. McNab and Ryan admit to the radio frequency screwup, but nothing else. Coburn brings a lot more interesting information to light about why, even after they had established some form of contact, nothing active was done to attempt to rescue them and I can only assume it was this that stirred the hornet’s nest in the MOD legal department when the manuscript was submitted…[/color]