The right British stuff

What more is there to say about the Chiang Rai cave rescue? Surely it has all been covered in the endless repetitions of the TV current affairs shows and news web sites. Now it’s mission accomplished, a great success, despite the sad loss of a life. The Wild Boars and their coach are safe and well, the rescue team have dispersed, and a Hollywood production company have already sent researchers to Chiang Rai to start work on a movie.

But I’d like to add something that I haven’t seen in the media coverage. It’s something that I believe says a lot about the way our view of real-life events has been affected by what we see on TV. So let’s go back to the moment when the British “A-Team” of cave dive experts arrived in Thailand. This was obviously a big moment for the Thai media. They sent camera crews to record the arrival of the three foreigners at the airport, then at the caves. It was hot news on TV, as public interest in the plight of the Wild Boars began to consume the country.

From what I heard from friends and acquaintances, not everyone was impressed by what they saw. Many seemed distinctly underwhelmed by the news footage. In fact, I detected a general air of disappointment. Because the three men arriving at the airport in Chiang Rai, the foreign saviours who would rescue the boys, did not look like what people had expected. They did not look like the kind of action hero who would be able to battle through the flooded caves and pluck the boys from their underground prison.

So who did we expect to turn up ready for mission impossible? Maybe we expected screen tough guys, men who were more like the action heroes who appear daily in the American movies and TV series that dominate much of the Thai media. In this fictional world the Navy Seals, Swat teams, and Special Ops are all straight from central casting. You’d recognise the look: 30-something, chiselled features, biceps and shoulder muscles rippling under their military gear, and regulation six-packs on view whenever the tee-shirts come off.

But the three men who we saw arriving at the scene looked nothing like that. More than one Thai friend commented that they looked old — maybe too old for the job. And yes, when we checked we found their ages were 47, 56 and 70. In fact these experts looked like any other average guy who you’d meet in an English high street, or down the pub. They were, in a word, understated. They lacked the can-do attitude, the piercing gaze, the tough-guy swagger. They were just three ordinary looking middle-aged men.

It turned out that they were all hobbyists turned world experts, in the long tradition of British adventurers. They all had day-jobs, and had learned their skills close to home — in the caves of Derbyshire, Wales and the English West Country. They had become the world’s best at what they did, leading dangerous cave rescue missions all over the globe. But the screen images showed none of this.

And of course, soon after they took on the leadership of the rescue team, we all found out that they were exactly the right people for the job. They did indeed have the right stuff. Within days, two of them had penetrated the cave system and found the boys and their coach. They then helped set up the rescue mission — and the rest is history.

Now the movie industry is taking the first steps in making a blockbuster feature film about what happened in Chiang Rai. I wonder who they will cast in the roles of the real-life “A-Team”? Three unassuming ordinary blokes? Or muscular tough-guys with the standard action hero look? We’ll see soon enough.

So what might we learn from all this? As I write this piece I am left wondering how much our view of the world is shaped by the screen versions of reality that fill our lives. How often do we dismiss what we see around us, or in the mirror, because it does not live up to some ideal look? Someone is too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too ordinary to fit the role. But real heroes will probably not look like Hollywood’s version of superman and superwoman. The people who show true courage and resilience, who face great peril and succeed against all the odds, will most likely look, well, just ordinary. Like the Chiang Rai “A-Team”. Our lived experience, the real world, is far more subtle and unexpected than the “reality” we see on our screens.

And that’s one lesson from the Tham Luang cave rescue story that I reckon is well worth learning.

ALAN HANCOCK