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he back and shoulder, he leaned nst sandbags and kept firing. At am the 25-pounder gun fell silent. ommanding officer Captain Mike y, aged only 23, decided to run to the pit and trooper Tommy Tobin nteered to go with him. ike ordered a mortar to be fired e to the gun pit. “It could e gone seriously wrong wiped out our own men,” Roger. “But it worked - it htened the enemy back.” ike and Tommy reached pit and found Laba had n shot in the throat. A sage came across the o to Roger: “Laba is dead.” ommy’s jaw was also wn off and he died later k in Britain. “It didn’t sink at first,” admits Roger. “Adrenaline is so high, focus fully on the task ahead, there’s no time for emotion.“
Yet even at the height of battle, Roger spent time treating local casualties. A helicopter arrived to help, but came under fire and had to turn back. Then as the fighting raged, a radio message told Roger two jets BROTHERS IN ARMS Roger and Tak at battle site in 90s were on their way. “They asked, ‘How many enemy?’ I replied, ‘A f ***** g lot’.” The planes fired rockets and machine guns, and dropped 500lb bombs. One was damaged and left the battle. The other ran out of ammunition.
Roger says: “When I got back on the roof with Corporal Bob Bennett, we saw WARRIOR Roger in SAS days. Left, with shell fired at Mirbat a large troop marching towards us. We looked at each other and said, ‘Bloody hell’. It was our Zulu moment.
“I knew this could be our last half hour. I had 17 rounds left. Bob had ten.
“And that’s when pictures of my wife Pauline and daughter Natasha, only nine months old, came into my mind. I would never let the enemy take me alive – I would’ve shot myself with my last bullet.”
The sound of helicopters eventually broke through the gunfire. A 20-men back-up SAS team arrived and the Adoo started to flee. Roger says: “Years later, when I was writing my book, I spoke to someone on the other side. He told us we fought off 400 men that day.”
The choppers were loaded with dead bodies and casualties.
Roger continues: “I saw Tak walking to the helicopter to make sure Tommy got inside, even though he had four bullet holes in him.” The battle was won. Yet silence surrounded their victory.
Roger adds: “I wanted to say, ‘We have just won a war’. Yet no one knows a thing about it. All of the Mirbat survivors are still good friends – almost family.
“We have a bond that can’t be broken, and that gave us strength. The only thing we want is to see Laba properly recognised. Prince William unveiled a statue in the SAS camp at Hereford, but the public can’t see that.
“Prince Harry immediately said he’d unveil Laba’s new statue in Fiji.
“He knows Laba is an SAS legend. Maybe now we can get our government to realise the same thing and give him the posthumous Victoria Cross.”
■ SAS Operation Storm: Nine Men Against Four Hundred by Roger Cole and Richard Belfield, published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton £9.99.