AMA Associates Limited; Territorial Army; and a Return to New Zealand, 1994–Present
Once my notice with Reliance Security was completed I became an independent security consultant and established AMA Associates Ltd. The early years were very lean as I tried to establish a client base and I spent a lot of time travelling the country doing surveys and working long hours often in obscure places. Yet, strangely, in many ways it was as if my life had gone full circle and many of the places I visited reminded me of my far-off, younger days.
Initially, I set up the company office in the house and one of the rooms was set aside for the production of training manuals and training pamphlets. I used many Special Forces colleagues whom I knew and I also worked on the grandfather principle – if I didn’t know an individual I would only employ them if they were known to somebody I knew and trusted.
As my company gained more contracts I was able with the assistance of Mick ‘Joda’ R to put in a bid for surveillance training for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Mick was former Parachute Regiment and I had first met him when I joined 3 Para in 1973. He was serving with 22 SAS at that time. He then worked with the ‘Det’ in Northern Ireland. He was the most amazing surveillance operator and he could make himself invisible in a crowd or an empty street! He is truly one of the best surveillance operatives I’ve ever worked with.
We won the contract and ran surveillance courses all over the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland for DWP field staff. I also continued to run training courses to qualify aviation staff in all aspects of aviation security as well as carrying out air cargo security assessments. Also at this stage, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) was developing a security regime for ports and ships and so I became qualified to run ship security officer and port security officer courses.
Two major tasks developed as a result of these aviation and maritime courses. The first was to prepare a security assessment for all of Egypt’s airports. I travelled the length and breadth of Egypt generally by commercial aircraft but also by railway. It was an arduous project but a most interesting experience. A number of airports were beside the most amazing archaeological ruins from Ancient Egypt. As a very small boy in Egypt I had visited the pyramids and the Cairo Museum where I stood staring, transfixed, at the skeletal feet of King Tutankhamun, which had become exposed from his shroud. I felt very fortunate indeed to be able to see these ancient wonders of the world once again.
The second was to deliver port security training courses to Sri Lankan port security executives and then to carry out an assessment of all of Sri Lanka’s ports’ security in order to have their maritime insurance liabilities re-assessed by Lloyds of London. At that time Sri Lanka was required to pay extremely high maritime insurance premiums because of the actions of the Tamil Tigers, an extremely militant and violent secessionist movement, especially their maritime attack units – the Sea Tigers. By this point the Sea Tigers had already sunk some 29 Sri Lankan naval patrol boats and even a freighter.
Once again, I was ably assisted by Mike R, my fellow troop commander in 22 SAS, in this work and we would make several trips to the country until a change in government meant a change in business relationships. Driving around Sri Lanka reminded me very much of my days growing up in the mid-1950s in Singapore and Malaya, watching immaculately dressed schoolchildren emerging from the depths of the jungle to await their school bus, just as they had decades before, and I greatly enjoyed my time there making many Sri Lankan friends along the way.
One of my most challenging early projects took place in Kiev, in Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union. I was required to carry out a security assessment for a new building project. I suspect it was going to be occupied by a Russian oligarch or a member of the Russian mafia because the level of protection was quite extraordinary, including protecting against vehicle bombs, RPG 7 rockets and snipers! I worked with Mike ‘Bugsy’ M on this project. Bugsy was former Parachute Regiment and had also served with the ‘Det’. His expertise was anti-bugging and he would make sure that no devices had been left in any of the buildings that were being constructed. Amongst the rubble disturbed when the buildings were being constructed we came across quite a few World War II artefacts, such as Wehrmacht helmets.
Kiev had a huge war memorial situated on the banks of the Dnieper River and dominating this memorial was a massive titanium statue of a woman holding a drawn sword pointed towards Moscow in ‘Mother Russia’. Each of the capitals of the countries that constituted the Soviet Union had an identical titanium statue pointing towards Moscow. The Kiev War Memorial predominately commemorated the fierce fighting that took place in Kiev and along the Dnieper during World War II. The museum certainly brought home the massive scale of the fighting that had occurred. However, there was also a section of the memorial devoted to the Russian incursion into Afghanistan. I was particularly struck by the photos of the young conscript soldiers taken in Afghanistan which could easily have been photos of young American, Australian or Kiwi soldiers such as myself, in Vietnam.
In 2001 the BP Algeria security contract in Algeria was due for renewal. This contract involved providing security teams to protect the desert drilling stations and BP’s main desert bases. Working together with former RMP Mike Lord and his company, we prepared a very competitive quote and our bid was successful.
I’ve always had an interest in visiting Algeria from reading Jean Paul Lartéguy’s books about the French Paras and ‘Le Légion’ fighting in Vietnam and Algeria – The Centurions, The Praetorians and The Bronze Drums. Similarly, it was another dangerous time to be in the capital city, Algiers, as well as in the surrounding towns. Extremists were carrying out brutal terror attacks on their own population as well as against ‘foreigners’. A specialty involved setting up a false road block, a ‘faux barrage’, disguised as the police or the army. Civilians were ambushed and murdered at these roadblocks and normally had their throats cut. This was meant to indicate that the person who is murdered is less worthy than an animal. This type of murder was called having a Kabila smile – a town where many of these killings were carried out.
Throughout the course of the work for BP I visited Algeria a number of times. It is a vast country of desert. Flying over the great tracts of gravelly sand in the vast hinterland I could see the tyre tracks and seismic explosion holes from explorations made in the 1930s clear and fresh as the day they were made.
Movement for BP personnel through Algiers was highly protected with armed guards accompanying each vehicle convoy to and from airports and into hotel grounds that were as heavily guarded as military bases. Vehicle travel was done at high speed with the locally employed guards waving pistols and AK-47s out of the car windows shouting at cars that did not move aside quickly enough. All of these locally contracted guards had their precious Ray Ban sunglasses. One day I watched with amusement when one of the security guards was shouting at a civilian car as we passed and as he looked back to give a final glower at the car’s occupants the slipstream caught his Ray Bans, which promptly took flight, to be crushed by the following vehicle. His look of despair was a picture to behold.
In Algiers and in the desert, I met a number of friends and colleagues from my military days. These included Pete McAleese, with whom I had served in South Africa and who was now providing close protection at a villa in Algiers, and ‘Minky’ M from 8 Troop, B Squadron days, who was providing security for clients in the Algiers Sofitel hotel. I guess we were all doing exactly what we were good at.
While working hard to establish my business, I continued with my Territorial Army commitments, commanding the 42 Brigade Specialist Training Team (BSTT) based in Fulwood Barracks in Preston, Lancashire. One of the international military exercises I participated in with the Territorial Army was called Partnership for Peace and it was held in Hungary. We were based in a military camp near Lake Balaton.
Historically, Lake Balaton was the location of Operation Spring Awakening. This was the last major German offensive launched during World War II and was begun in great secrecy by the Germans on 6 March 1945. They launched attacks near Lake Balaton, an area which included some of the last oil reserves still available to the Axis Forces. The operation involved many German units withdrawn from the failed Ardennes Offensive on the Western Front, including the 6th SS Panzer Army and the 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). Almost inevitably, the operation was an abject failure. Despite early gains, the operation was a perfect example of Hitler’s increasingly poor military judgement towards the end of the war. Its chief flaw was that the offensive was far too ambitious in scope, and the operation failed just ten days after its launch.
The participants in ‘Partnership for Peace’ were all NATO members. There were military units from each participating country and each of these countries had a small headquarters, commanded by a lieutenant colonel and comprising a small staff. In this exercise we worked through a number of scenarios, with each participant contributing an overview of how its national resources could be utilised and could contribute to the big picture.
Inevitably, there were some amusing incidents. It became very noticeable to everyone that the French commanding officer could barely tolerate the commanding officer of the British unit participating in the exercise – the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. This regiment’s headdress is a dark-blue beret with a white hackle with a red top. This strained atmosphere went on for a number of days until a social evening when, after a few drinks, the French commanding officer exploded, pointed to the beret and hackle of the British commanding officer and said in tones of horror and with his very own Peter Sellers accent, ‘I know the ’eeestory of your ploome!’, and stood almost trembling with passion in front of the fusilier. It seems that in the 1800s this British regiment had soundly defeated a French force and the British soldiers as they advanced over the battlefield had dipped their white hackles in the blood of dead Frenchmen. Who said time heals?
After the exercise, we were all invited to attend a number of Hungarian cultural events at a small village on the outskirts of Budapest. The Hungarians are great horsemen and we were all seated in a small wooden stand watching a terrific display of riding and individual horsemanship. As we sat there, it became increasingly obvious that a considerable fire had started in a village behind the display with flames appearing as well as great columns of black smoke. One of the British NCOs leaned over to his German counterpart and quipped, ‘Just like when you were here last time?’ He got a wry smile in return.
Following the end of the Cold War, we began to run exercises in conjunction with Russian forces, rather than casting them in the role of the enemy. In February 1996 I was selected to attend a four-week United Nations military observers (UNMO) course at the Russian Vystral Higher Military Academy in Solnechnorgorsk which was located about 44 miles north of Moscow.
The Vystral Academy is over 100 years old and is an all arms training facility. On the course were two other British officers, ten Russian officers from all three services, and two US Special Forces officers, both of whom were Russian speakers. Most of the Russians had served in Afghanistan and a number had also served in Chechnya.
The training was very detailed, but the presentation skills and equipment were dated and items such as stationery were in short supply. The weather was very, very cold – minus 20 degrees Celsius – and it brought home to me how difficult it would have been to fight in such freezing temperatures.
The directing staff was also from the three services and had served in most communist-sponsored countries in the world. The chief instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Potcharev, an army man, soon established that he and I had been serving in the town of Ongiva in Angola at the same time – but on opposite sides!
Unfortunately, one week from the end of the course I severed my Achilles tendon during a vigorous game of mini football. I was not prepared to leave the course, so I had a taped up ‘floppy foot’ for the final exercise. During this exercise our ‘opponents’ were a company of Russian paratroopers. At one stage they ‘invaded’ the UNMO base and dragged several of us down some metal stairs and into waiting BMP armoured vehicles. I could see they thought I was weak as I grimaced each time my injured Achilles tendon took a hammering. Needless to say, the day after I arrived back in the UK I was on the operating table having the tendon repaired.
At the end of the course we were formally presented with our UNMO badges and certificates, but the badges had to be collected from the bottom of a blue UN helmet which, of course, was filled with vodka!
In May 1997 I was commissioned to carry out a ‘value for money assessment’ of the US $36 million contract signed between the government of Papua New Guinea and the private military company Sandline International for the provision of military services to assist in the ‘neutralisation’ of the Bougainville Resistance Army (BRA), a secessionist movement. I was asked to carry out this task by ‘Cush’ C, a good friend and highly experienced and respected former Senior NCO in 22 SAS. Cush and I had worked together in 22 SAS and we have always been a good team. We both knew Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards officer and, in my opinion, an SAS ‘wannabe’. I also knew JN van der Bergh, a fellow paratrooper from my days in the SADF, and now a senior member of Sandline, which was a South African PMC. Spicer and Sandline had worked together in Sierra Leone providing ‘approved’ support for the embattled government there. This had caused the UK Government some embarrassment because the use by them of a PMC was not widely known.
We were tasked to carry out this assessment by a client on behalf of the government of Papua New Guinea with terms of reference provided by the Attorney General, Mr Sao R Gabi.
As part of the project we were required to analyse the ‘Top Secret’ contract signed by the government representative, the Hon CS Haiveta MP and Spicer himself, witnessed by Mr Veleiamo, Acting Deputy Secretary and JN van der Bergh respectively.
The background to this major contract was that, in 1989, local landowners had shut down the Bougainville Pangura copper mine to simultaneously protest against the environmental destruction it caused and demand independence. In 1996, with promising peace initiatives having failed to yield results, a major military offensive against the BRA having achieved little, and a national election imminent, Prime Minister Julius Chan was persuaded to agree to a covert contract with Sandline International. This contract involved Sandline personnel and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force working together in an operation called ‘Project Contravene’ designed to defeat the rebel forces and recapture Bougainville. In February 1997, the government, which had received about 44 per cent of its revenue from the copper mine, agreed to pay Sandline International US $36 million with an initial payment of $18 million.
The head of the Defence Force, Major General Jerry Singirok, was having misgivings about the political impact of such a military operation by January 1987, and, in particular, about putting defence force personnel under the command of foreign mercenaries. In February 1997 the details of ‘Project Contravene’ became public with the use of Sandline International and the dubious financial arrangements for funding the project coming under widespread condemnation both in Papua New Guinea and overseas. As a result, the project abruptly ended.
Our conclusion, after analysing and assessing the various commercial documents, was that the cost of equipment supplied by Sandline was fair and reasonable; the personnel costs were excessive; and the plan submitted by Spicer and Sandline was fundamentally flawed.
In 1999, an international arbitration commission and an Australian court ruled that the Papua New Guinea government must make the payment to Sandline. The size of the payment, and what proportion of Sandline’s US $18 million claim it represents, were not made clear.
The Papua New Guinea government has since reached a ceasefire agreement with the BRA.
Tim Spicer would later surface in Afghanistan, when his new company, Aegis Defence Services, was awarded a US $293 million contract to coordinate all the security for Iraqi reconstruction projects. Under this ‘cost-plus’ contract, the military covered all of the company’s expenses, plus a pre-determined percentage of whatever they spent, which critics said was a licence to over-bill.
In 2011, Tim Spicer and Aegis were awarded a US $497 million contract by the US State Department to assume security force operations at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan which, depending on your viewpoint, goes some way to proving either that ‘You can’t keep a good man down’ or ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time’.
In AMA I had avoided becoming involved in PMC work. I felt that it was a ‘meat market’ and most companies worked hard at obtaining operatives at the lowest price possible in order to maximise their profit. I watched as highly trained Special Forces operatives were replaced by former UK line infantry soldiers, then by Gurkhas, then by former SADF personnel and finally by commercially trained civilians. It was certainly a lucrative market but not for my company.
In December 1999 I was invited by friend and fellow Parachute Regiment officer Simon B to join a battlefield tour of Vietnam. We had served together in 3 Para. This visit was the first ever foreign battlefield tour of Vietnam sanctioned by the Vietnamese government. Also on the tour to keep a close eye on the administration was RSM Andy Gough, whom I was pleased to see again. He had been one of my NCOs in 1 Para. His inimitable good humour would prevail throughout the battlefield tour despite the best the communist officials could throw at us. I jumped at this chance to revisit Vietnam and I also enjoyed the opportunity to brief my touring colleagues on the role of the ANZAC forces in what is called the ‘American War’.
The aim of the tour was to study all the aspects of the wars in Indochina since 1945 in order to learn lessons relevant to the conduct of military operations. The tour was carried out from north to south. The French Indochina War was studied in detail at Dien Bien Phu and then we moved south to cover the American War in Hue and around Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to include ANZAC operations. We spent two days in Hanoi and visited the various war museums around the city as well as visiting the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ where US prisoners of war were imprisoned. Jane Fonda visited this prison when she was carrying out her visit to Hanoi during the War and where she earned the permanent abhorrence of Vietnam veterans, including me, and gained herself the epithet ‘Hanoi Jane’. When she met several PoWs they gave her notes to take home to their families – Fonda gave these to the North Vietnamese and her actions resulted in several US PoWs being severely beaten and tortured.
The French influence was very obvious in Hanoi with wide boulevards and lakes in the city centre. Also obvious were the B52 bomb craters around the bridges crossing the Red River and now used as duck ponds by local farmers.
While in Hanoi I was able to meet up with Neil Shrimpton with whom I had worked in Phnom Penh, Cambodia when I was involved in a demining project recce for BAe. He was now the BAe agent in Hanoi. He took me out one afternoon for a ‘special treat’. The treat involved a long ride on the back of separate mopeds to a small restaurant on the outskirts of Hanoi. At the restaurant, as an honoured guest and Vietnam War veteran, I was given the still beating heart of a cobra immersed in a glass of the cobra’s blood and fiery rice wine to consume! The cobra was eviscerated in front of me and then it was deep fried as part of the meal that followed. Some treat!
After a short 40-minute flight from Hanoi we landed at Dien Bien Phu where the French Army base was overwhelmed by the Viet Minh and surrendered on 7 May, 1954. The first thing that strikes you is the flatness of the valley bottom in which the town sits; it is completely overlooked from all sides. The airfield is in the same place but is longer than it was in 1954 and is now paved. Little has changed since the battles there although there are more houses made of concrete instead of bamboo. Many of the French hill positions such as Beatrice, Gabrielle and Elaine are still well preserved with obvious trench lines and bunkers but, interestingly, very few craters from the furious artillery bombardment they received during the battles. The hulks of the French M24 tanks and many of their guns remain where they were when the French surrendered. A difficult two-hour drive into the mountains north-west of Dien Bien Phu takes you to the Viet Minh General Giap’s headquarters hidden in thick jungle and the return journey shows just how much the surrounding hills completely dominated the French Army positions in the valley below. In the evenings of our stay I would walk around the airstrip and you could sense the spirits of the French soldiers and their allies and the Viet Minh who died there. One evening beside the airstrip I picked up a souvenir of my visit – a fist-sized shard of shrapnel that had been lying in the dirt for 45 years.
From Dien Bien Phu we travelled to Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam. We were fortunate to have with us a former US Marine Corps (USMC) officer, Tom Eagan, who had been involved with the vicious street fighting around Hue during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Hue is a built-up area astride the Perfumed River and it is dominated by its massive citadel surrounded by canals. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces took and held the citadel for 25 days and its recapture produced some of the most sustained fighting of the American War. When they captured the citadel the North Vietnamese forces massacred over 3,000 of the city’s residents who were considered ‘enemies of the people’ – these included schoolteachers, doctors and intellectuals. Their bodies were later found hastily buried in the sandhills surrounding the city. Most of the fighting in and around Hue involved the USMC with the 1st US Air Cavalry fighting in the surrounding areas as the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong tried to withdraw from the city. At one stage we walked from our hotel to the Perfumed River, a trip that took us 15 minutes – in 1968 it had taken the USMC five days to fight along the same distance. In a small museum was one of the main weapons used by the USMC for street fighting, the Ontos light tank. This vehicle carried six 106mm recoilless rifles and was, in fact, a giant multi-barrelled shotgun.
We went to Ho Chi Minh City (HMC) from Hue. HMC, or Saigon as many of the residents still call it, is much bolder and brassier than Hanoi. It still retains its air of independence despite now being communist. There is even still a Hard Rock Café there. From HMC we visited the tunnels of Cu Chi which have become a bit of a theme park with special ‘wide’ tunnels for the ‘larger’ foreign tourist. One has to respect those from both sides who fought each other in this subterranean darkness. We also set out to visit the former ANZAC fire support base, FSB Coral. The defence of Coral was over a three-week period (12 May–6 June, 1968) and although hard fought was a success for the ANZAC troops. Unfortunately, despite having several GPS and numbers of maps of that era we were not able to exactly locate where the battles had taken place. Nature had gently removed any remaining signs.
It was an interesting experience for me being back in Vietnam some 40 years after I had fought in its jungles as a young platoon commander. I did get a little tired at each museum we visited of being constantly reminded of the war crimes of ‘the US and its running dogs’ without, surprise, surprise, any mention of the barbarity of the North Vietnamese against the civilians of the South – some of which I had seen for myself. It was also tiring being regaled with the most fantastic tales of bravery and heroism by North Vietnamese soldiers (the Viet Cong were hardly mentioned).
However, the Vietnamese we met, other than officials, were friendly and helpful and very interested in our visit. It must be remembered that since fighting the French, the US and its allies, the Vietnamese have had a major war with China and they also invaded Cambodia, destroying the dreadful regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Several times Vietnamese told me that their country’s sacrifices in destroying the Khmer Rouge had never been internationally recognised.
My last view of Vietnam as we flew out of HMC’s airport, the former massive US airbase at Ton San Nhut, was a huge pile of broken transport and fighter aircraft from the ‘American War’, all lying on top of each other as though they had been swept there by a giant broom.
My Territorial Army duties as well as my full-time work kept me busy, but I also served as a local magistrate for seven years, hearing cases from the Family and Youth Courts. However, I still wanted to stretch myself mentally, so while still working I committed to completing my Master’s degree in Security Management at the University of Leicester in 1996. I had always been conscious throughout my military service and then in civilian life that I did not have tertiary education qualifications. In all honesty, I had simply not been interested after secondary school and then I became a full-time operational soldier with no time for such ‘luxuries’. Once I entered the commercial marketplace, however, I soon realised that tertiary qualifications were invaluable in convincing potential civilian employers that I was not some loud-mouthed ex-army stereotype who only got things done by abusing and pressurising his staff. I so enjoyed my Master’s that I eventually committed to pursuing a doctorate degree through the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Lancaster under the tutelage of the centre’s head, Dr Martin Edmondson. Appropriately for me, the focus of my doctorate was on the effectiveness of 22 SAS as an extension of successive British governments’ foreign and defence policies between 1950 and 2000. I successfully defended my thesis in 2005 but the subject focus caused quite a few headaches over at the Ministry of Defence and especially UK Special Forces Headquarters. When the thesis was eventually published, in the form of a book, after having gone through the torturous Ministry of Defence approval process, I was still banned from visiting any UK Special Forces locations for five years.
But Cecilia and I were simply too busy to experience any angst as a result of this decision. Any free moment we had we were travelling and exploring. We particularly enjoyed a trip down memory lane travelling through southern Africa where I celebrated my 50th birthday with a bungee jump off Victoria Falls. It was an interesting sensation, a bit like a terminal freefall, except for the spinning once the ‘bounces’ had finished. The spinning seemed to go on for a very long time despite the fact that I had my arms outstretched!
In 2000 Cecilia had been diagnosed with breast cancer and, despite periods of remission, in 2004 it had returned. We decided that this was now a good time for us to return to New Zealand and for her to have her treatment there. We had lived away since 1989 and as both our children were grown up and had moved out of home it was time for us to move on too.
I sold AMA Associates, ensuring that all my operatives had security of tenure for at least 12 months, and sold the house; and in late November 2005 Cecilia and I moved back to New Zealand to live in a house in the beautiful Marlborough Sounds which we had bought back in 2000.
I had been born in Dover but, since 1959, New Zealand had been my adopted home. Cecilia was a fourth-generation New Zealander, so she was thrilled to be home and surrounded by friends and family.
The year after we arrived was the New Zealand ‘Year of the Veteran’ – a government initiative to recognise military veterans and their service to the country. I wanted to contribute so I organised the ‘Ride of the Veterans’. This was a motorcycle odyssey around all the Returned Servicemen’s Association (RSA) clubs throughout New Zealand with the aim of collecting donations for the Vietnam Veterans’ Children’s and Grandchildren’s fund – The Wallace Foundation.
I invited Dave Barr from the United States to join me on this ride. Dave is, of course, the US Marine Vietnam and Pathfinder veteran who was severely injured during the Bush War when his vehicle went over a mine and who was rescued from the destroyed and blazing vehicle by Colonel Jan Breytenbach. Dave became a double leg amputee but rather than complain about his new disability he became a world champion for the Leonard Cheshire VC Homes for the Disabled. Dave rode his old Harley Davidson motorcycle through almost every country in the world including Siberia and China highlighting the plight of the disabled and achieving a number of Guinness World Records at the same time.
After his injury I had seen Dave again for the first time six years later when he visited Cecilia and me in the United Kingdom. He arrived at our house and said, in his southern drawl, ‘Sir, I need to apologise to you’. I asked him what for. He replied, ‘I am sorry I did not kill that terr!’ Years before, when we were on operations together in southern Angola, Dave had gone outside our patrol perimeter to answer the call of nature. He had his rifle in his left hand and a combat shovel in his right hand. Several yards out into the veldt he and a SWAPO operative caught sight of each other at exactly the same time. They then both rapidly withdrew in opposite directions as quickly as possible. When he reached the safety of our perimeter I asked him what had happened. He explained to me the circumstances and I asked, ‘Did you kill him?’ When he answered in the negative I, apparently, turned on my heels and walked away. This had been on Dave’s conscience for all these years. This man is a true warrior!
We had remained good friends ever since and it was a real pleasure to have him along for this ride. Also riding with us were two other Kiwi Vietnam veterans, John Coleman, a veteran of Whiskey 3 Company tour, and Bruce Gordon, who had served with me in Vietnam. Later in our trip we were joined by a senior member of the NZSAS. The trip was a great opportunity to visit the length and breadth of New Zealand while contributing to a worthy charity. Through the generosity of everyday men and women we were able to donate some $50,000 New Zealand dollars to the Vietnam Veterans Children’s and Grandchildren’s fund.
Riding with Dave Barr was an experience for us all. I had provided him with a 1200cc Harley Davidson Sportster and the only alteration he had to do was to add an additional strong spring on to the brake pedal to compensate for the fact that his right foot was permanently resting on this brake. We all finished this four-week journey with the greatest respect and admiration for Dave. He is the most committed and determined individual I have ever known.
Now I am back in New Zealand permanently I am able to attend our Vietnam Victor 5 Company reunions. These are held every two years. Our numbers are growing smaller, through age and illness, but we still have a relatively large cohort enhanced by many wives and families who also attend.
These reunions are always memorable with so many true, and somewhat embellished, tales of derring-do shared with much laughter! However, I always dread the moment when one of my platoon comrades-in-arms approaches me, beer in hand, and says with a wicked grin, ‘You never knew this, Boss, but ...’. I then hear about some mischievous event that took place in Vietnam of which, I am pleased to say, I was totally unaware at the time.
On our return to New Zealand Cecilia had entered the local cancer programme and started chemotherapy as her cancer was again active. Only those who have been involved with the dreadful process of hospital visits, tests, high points and inevitable low points will understand our journey. We had held each other in hospital car parks in the United Kingdom and now New Zealand as we wept together after sessions with kind but ultimately powerless medical specialists.
The following 12 months in New Zealand with my dear wife are memories that I do not wish to share but in September 2007 she died in my arms at our house in Tara Bay. Our children were with us.
In her memory I have ensured that I have not dulled my sense of adventure. In 2014 I travelled to the US to join a group of motorcycling 21 SAS ‘blades’ (operatives) who were going to travel the length of Route 66. I did not know any of them although we all had the common link of having served in 21 SAS at some point. We travelled some 2,500 miles together from Boston to Los Angeles. I had missed the ‘black’ humour of the military since returning to New Zealand and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience being part of it again. The quips, insults and having the ‘piss’ taken constantly – the caustic wit of these centurions is to be enjoyed in a way that only a soldier would understand.
I travelled the world witnessing the ordinary man, politicians, kings and princes at their best and at their worst. I have fought beside and against many exceptional soldiers. Commitment, integrity, honesty and preparedness are essential ingredients for the Universal Soldier and I have shared my journey with some of the best. The warrior, the Pilgrim who goes ‘always a little further’, is indeed a driven man but following the ‘road to Samarkand’ will always have its price. Would I do it all again? In a heartbeat!