Lucky 13 for cave heroes

I AM not ashamed to say that I wept watching Thirteen Lives, the new Hollywood film that depicts the heroic rescue of 12 young members of a Thai football team and their coach, trapped in the flooded Tham Luang cave complex.

Directed by Ron Howard, it tells the true story of the 2018 mission, led by British divers Richard Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) along with American Chris Jewell (Tom Bateman), and Australian anaesthetist Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton). Led by the Brits, the men concocted a plan to rescue the boys by knocking them out with atropine and ketamine, then floating them out ‘like packages’.

It was unethical, illegal and dangerous — a last-resort plan that could have gone terribly wrong, but went terribly right instead.

I loved these men; so determined not to be seen as heroes who risked their lives to rescue 13 strangers. What a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.