Chris: 10yrs’ service has taken its toll on my body
dressing, injected a and settled in to wait e was severely dehyeat deal of pain. morphine, combined t of blood lost, had left a state of near-bliss. no condition to move, couldn’t remain in his much longer. were likely to sweep n. ngth, Lillico dragged all clearing located a way from the camp site. nd a good hiding spot hole beneath a fallen to it and laid up for the next day to find an ng the area. an Indonesian soldier climbed a tree overlooking Lillico’s location and began scanning the ground. Luckily, he failed to spot Geordie: the SAS man had smeared his face with mud to camouflage himself. The patrol eventually moved on.
Ashort while later, Lillico heard the whump-whump of an approaching helicopter. He knew it must be a friendly, since the Indonesian army didn’t have any choppers in service.
As the Westland Whirlwind drew closer, Lillico automatically reached for his SARBE and switched it on, ready to transmit his location to the crew. Then he hesitated. There was no way of knowing how far away the enemy patrol was by now.
If they were still close by and he signalled the helicopter to land, the Indonesians would almost certainly shoot it down.
Lillico then made a selfless, split-second calculation. There was no way he was going to risk the lives of the crew, even if it meant bleeding to death in enemy territory.
He switched the SARBE off. He remained in his pig-hole for the rest of the afternoon, drinking water from cut sections of bamboo to stave off his thirst.
In the evening, 36 hours after the initial contact, Lillico heard the chopper making another pass. Judging that enough time had passed since he’d last seen the Indonesian patrol, Lillico activated his rescue beacon and dragged his ragged body out of the ditch to make himself visible to the crew.
After some difficulty he was winched up to the cabin and escorted back across the border to the Gurkha Rifles camp before being ferried over to the hospital in Kuching.
Jock Thomson was already there, lying in the hospital bed next to his. Comparing stories, Thomson explained how he had crawled back to the emergency RV only to find that the rest of the patrol had already bugged out to the operating base at Sain to bring up reinforcements from the Gurkhas before returning to search for the two men.
He was too exhausted to go any further and hauled himself into a concealed position until he was discovered by the Gurkhas.
When they found him, Thomson was doped up to the eyeballs on meds.
He’d pumped himself with 12 syrettes of morphine – enough to kill a man.
For his selfless action in switching off his SARBE, Lillico was later awarded the Military Medal.
Jock Thomson was given a Mention in Dispatches.
■ History of the SAS by Chris
Ryan, published by Coronet, is available now (RRP £20).
Extracted by Rhian Lubin.
EVEN an SAS legend as tough as Chris Ryan is not invincible – the action man has revealed that the years are beginning to catch up with him.
Chris pushed his body to the brink during his decade in the SAS from 1984 to 1994.
And the elite-soldier-turned-author, who survived the longest-ever escape and evasion trek by a British soldier, admits that the demanding experiences have “definitely” taken years off his life.
“My age is starting to hit me now,” the 58-year-old says. “I’ve smashed in my ankle, I’ve had a pushed vertebrae from a bad free-fall accident, broken shoulders... It’s all starting to catch up with me.
“I wouldn’t change what I did. But you can’t take those kinds of knocks and bumps, and various other things, without it having a toll in later life.”
Chris spent eight gruelling days making his way nearly 200 miles through Iraq to Syria during the first Gulf War in 1991. Three of his Bravo Two Zero patrol died and four were captured.
His instinct to survive saw him drink radioactive water, which has had a huge impact on his health since.
“That contaminated water is affecting my red blood cells,” he says. “My red blood cell count is decreasing year in, year out.”
Red blood cells carry oxygen around the body, and a low count can lead to tiredness and shortness of breath.
Since leaving the SAS, Chris has become a successful author, with more than 60 books to his name, and has also worked in television – although he can be critical of it.
For instance, the experience of working on ITV drama Ultimate Force in 2002, which starred Ross Kemp, made him feel TV could be “too fake”.
And he pulls no punches when it comes to Channel 4’s hit SAS: Who Dares Wins, hosted by ex-Royal Marine Ant Middleton. He adds: “That programme, without knocking it, could be called the Krypton Factor. It’s as much like SAS selection as a theme park. There’s a lot of screaming and shouting... That’s for the infantry.”
It has been 25 years since Chris, from Rowlands Gill, in Tyne & Wear, left the SAS.
“It only hits me now and then how long it has been,” he says. “I suppose because I keep in contact with the guys, you don’t realise how fast time is going. But the SAS doesn’t leave you.”
ACTION MAN SAS legend Chris Ryan
■ Black Ops by Chris Ryan, published by Coronet, is available now (RRP £18.99).