British cave heroes: our story
DUO TELL HOW THEY SAVED SEVEN OF THE TRAPPED THAI BOYS – AND WERE JUST MOMENTS FROM DEATH We warned plan to leave boys in cave until after monsoon would end in certain death We knew we could get them all out... but didn’t think they would all survive
‘WE’LL get them all out, but there’s a good chance some will die.’
That was the grim warning by British cave diver Jason Mallinson and his colleagues to the Thai authorities as they prepared to rescue 12 frightened and weakened schoolboys trapped two and a half miles deep inside a dark, flooded cave.
But it was thanks to their incredible courage and skill this gloomy prophecy never materialised.
Before Mallinson’s arrival at Tham Luang in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province where the boys were trapped inside the vast cave system, the authorities had been considering leaving the football team and their coach there for months.
But with monsoon rains looming, the boys’ health deteriorating and oxygen levels in the cave dropping, it soon became clear there was just one option – a daring rescue mission which was to captivate the world and involved more than 1,000 rescuers, including Thai Navy SEALs, teams from around the world and scores of volunteers.
Today, for the first time, Jason, 50, and fellow cave diver 35-yearold Chris Jewell – who between them rescued seven of the 12 boys – give their compelling account of the high-risk mission, revealing just how close it came to disaster, despite meticulous planning. In their astonishing and brutally honest account, much of which debunks the official line and previous reports, the cave divers tell how:
Plans to leave the boys in the cave until the end of the four-month monsoon season would have ended in certain death;
An attempt to lay an oxygen pipe was never completed, making a dive rescue inevitable;
On his final run, Jewell, while guiding a boy to safety, lost his grip on the rope guideline for four terrifying minutes in zero visibility;
The safety and equipment protocols of the Thai Navy SEALs were ‘completely wrong’ for cave diving and the tragic death of one of them made the authorities realise they were ‘out of their depth’.
Trapped by floodwater for more than two weeks deep inside a network of fetid caves, the 12 boys aged between 11 and 16 of the Wild Boars football team, plus their coach, were found alive nine days into their ordeal – sparking the huge international operation to bring them out alive. As the world held its breath, the final three agonising days of the drama saw the boys – reportedly sedated on ketamine to calm them for the extraction – emerging one by one, and the operation hailed as ‘a miracle’.
But those modest miracle workers shrug off any talk of their own courage. They have nonetheless been thrust into the limelight and their inspiring story is one of rare bravery in an unforgiving environment where few would willingly venture. And they are acutely aware that they were entrusted with the gravest responsibility – the lives of children.
Father-of-one Mallinson, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was swaying high up on a power station chimney in Scunthorpe, carrying out his day job as a self-employed rope access worker, when he received a text message which was his call-out to attend the ‘most difficult cave rescue ever attempted’.
A cave diver for nearly 30 years, he is on the British Cave Rescue Council’s list of experts to summon in the event of emergency both in the UK and globally.
Together with Jewell, he was asked to go to Thailand to join cavediving colleagues Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, who discovered the boys and their coach on Monday, July 2.
Once in Thailand, Mallinson and Jewell’s first mission on Friday, July 6, was to familiarise themselves with the ‘sumps’ – the six long treacherous underwater sections totalling more than a kilometre, often with narrow ‘choke points’ presenting a deadly hazard to the boys’ escape.
The other vital job was to test the failing oxygen quality in ‘cavern nine’ where the boys were being looked after by their coach and four Royal Thai Navy SEALs.
Tragically, another former SEAL, Saman Gunan, who volunteered to help the operation, had died in a diving accident in the tunnels the day before Mallinson and Jewell’s arrival. On entering the cavern where the boys, dressed in T-shirts and shorts, were huddling together on a muddy shelf, it was obvious to Mallinson immediately that the air quality was poor.
‘You only had to try to do something physical like pulling yourself out of the water up the steep muddy slope and it was a real strain because of the thinness of the air – you’d be panting and sweating much more than normal. It’s a bit like being at high altitude,’ he said.
Carrying an underwater notebook, Mallinson decided that writing short messages home would boost the boys’ spirits – and bring encouragement for their desperate parents outside. After taking the air readings in the cave and using a finger pulse oxymeter to analyse
‘The thin air made everything a strain’ ‘It could be the last time anyone sees these kids’
the oxygen level in each boy’s blood, it was time for Mallinson and Jewell to leave them.
Despite the jokey banter they had developed with them, Mallinson could not avoid darker thoughts.
‘When I looked around the cave, a voice in the back of my mind was telling me this could be the last time anyone sees these kids,’ he said. ‘Chris and I exchanged glances and I thought they are in a