FORMER SAS SOLDIER SAVED HOSTAGES – AND HELPED GIVE PRINCESS NEW HAIR-DO
ROBIN HORSFALL was just 23 when he shot and killed one of the leading terrorists inside the Iranian Embassy in London. It was 43 years ago – May 1, 1980 – when six gunmen occupied the embassy in Kensington and threatened to blow up the building and the 20 hostages held inside unless their demands were met.
It was one of the most famous counter-terrorism operations in British history and after a tense siege lasting six days the crisis was resolved when the building was stormed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in front of the world’s media.
As the young Robin went in, gripping his MP-5 in both hands, he remembered “walking forward into the fire-fight, the fear under control, my commitment to the task complete in the knowledge that I was ready, that I was the best man for the job”. Moments later he shot four rounds into the chest of a terrorist and watched as he “crumpled up like a bundle of rags and died”.
Speaking from his home in Mountain Ash in the Cynon Valley, Robin said: “I was 23 and the kids we killed were maybe 26 or 27. When you look at them now as an old man you see them as the young men they were. I don’t celebrate that we killed them. I celebrate that we saved 19 lives that day.”
To see Robin relaxed at home, aged 66, is at great odds with the image of a career soldier. This is a man who joined the Army aged just 15, then served in 2 Para in Northern Ireland during the mid-1970s before joining the SAS.
He’s also written a book, Fighting Scared, chronicling his personal odyssey from boy-soldier to paratrooper. Now he gets up to make egg and soldiers for breakfast for his wife Heather.
Why he chose Mountain Ash is one of my first questions.
It simply boils down to money, he said. He and Heather – who have four children – wanted to move back to the UK after living in Prague and needed a mortgage. But their age meant this was particularly difficult and so they came to Mountain Ash where property is cheaper, the air is clear, and their daughter is near (she lives in Blaenavon).
“Mountain Ash is what we could afford,” said Robin, adding that the Welsh mountains have always been his “playground”.
“I love the mountains and being amongst them.”
These days Robin is most likely to be found writing poetry. He is also a regular on the corporate speaking stage and said he turned down Jeremy Vine, who wanted his views on the events in Sudan, the day before. Although he left the SAS while still in his 20s, Robin continued to work – firstly as Dodi Al-Fayed’s bodyguard and then fighting as a mercenary in Sri Lanka in 1985 and Mozambique in 1990. In between he acted as bodyguard to Rafic Hariri, who was destined to become Prime Minister of Lebanon.
In 1992 he started to teach martial arts and for 20 years taught thousands of children karate in southwest London – building the largest independent children’s karate group in Europe. But he broke his neck while demonstrating a karate move to a class of kids. He knew he’d cracked something there and then but even so he finished the lesson before taking himself off to hospital. It was only weeks later, still in pain, that he went back for an X-ray and they diagnosed a fracture.
Told he’d live with a weak neck for the rest of his life, Robin embarked on an English degree at Surrey University aged 56.
He said: “I loved reading and I loved words. The power that comes from words is enormous. You can kill people with words. You can love people with words.”
It was challenging going to university, he admitted. But he desperately wanted a degree so he could say he’d got one.
“I just wanted to tell myself that I can do it as well,” he said.
His early life was not a happy one – something he chronicles in his book. He was bullied at school and suffered physical abuse at the hands of his stepfather.
“He stole my voice,” Robin said.
As a result he went from being a promising 11-year-old schoolboy to the “school delinquent” by his teenage years.
“I’ve got my voice back over time,” he added.
Robin couldn’t leave school quickly enough and he joined the Army at 15.
“The benefits of age are experience and wisdom,” Robin said, explaining why he thought it was important to show his weaknesses during his public talks.
“I show them my vulnerabilities. It’s not about how hard I am. Then you open the floor up to a Q&A. The audience are far more confident to share their thoughts after that.”
Robin met Heather aged 21 while training with the SAS in Hereford. His mum had died when she was just 37 and Robin had “little trust in human beings”.
Heather said: “I was in a bar where all the soldiers went. He came over and told me I had to come over ‘because I couldn’t resist your beautiful smile.’
“He was very gallant and he gave me his taxi because mine didn’t turn up and he ran the eight miles back to his place. I saw him on the following Friday and that was it.”
They have recently celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary.
The 1980 SAS assault was “absolutely like the drills that we practised for so long and so hard” but no-one trained them how to cope in civvy street, which would eventually come back to haunt Robin in later life.
After the embassy siege Robin returned to Hereford and went to a cabaret-style evening and joined in with the party.
“We all sat around the table that night and no-one knew what they had done apart from us,” said Heather. “Nor what they had all achieved.” But other events have happier memories attached, such as the time Princess Diana was very nearly injured during one training exercise in 1982.
Robin said: “She helped us with a drill outdoors. She was going to drive a vehicle up to the building for us and we were going to assault the building. This was with blank ammunition. She wound the window down to get some fresh air and one of the pyrotechnics set light to her hair.
“Me and one of the other guys put the smouldering hair out by patting it and hitting her around the head. It was fine but she had to go and get another hairdo. She took it very well. She was adorable – really lovely. Charles was a little bit bewildered at the time. But she was OK – her skin wasn’t burned and the guys reacted very quickly.
“The following day she had this pageboy haircut with the sides trimmed down. Diana’s new hairstyle was all over the national press – how amazing it was – and women all over the world went and copied it. Nobody told them it was courtesy of the SAS.”
What sets Robin’s story apart is the raw honesty in the way he writes and tells it. He is only too aware of both the external struggles and his own internal growth along the way.
He was 27 when he left the SAS and found himself on “the circuit” where he was hired for private work. That’s how he found work as Dodi Al-Fayed’s bodyguard – a “boring” 12 months
hanging around London which made him look elsewhere. With four kids and a mortgage it was the need for money that drove Robin to become a mercenary in Mozambique.
Despite being a veteran of the Falklands War and Northern Ireland during the Troubles it was his experiences witnessing death and starvation in the Mozambique civil war that most disturbed him and left him with “psychological injuries”.
“I’d done 15 months of African war and you don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I was at home with the kids and I was earning good money.”
But Heather said: “He was a different person.”
After five years on the circuit she “put her foot down” because she didn’t want him to continue risking his life.
Meeting him at the train station after four months away Heather could see a change in Robin.
“I just knew there was something wrong as soon as he got off the train,” she said.
“He should’ve talked more about the things he’d seen and done. I only found out when I read it in his book.”
His book – which still sells around 100 copies a week – didn’t immediately impress Heather who told her husband it was “s***”. It was only once he’d started including his feelings that it came alive.
Robin’s enemies were not just terrorists – he fought the institutionalised brutality of the Parachute Regiment and his own inner demons too. He could have written a “Rambo-style” account but by revealing painful truths and recalling the differences between officers who expect you to be ready to die for them, and those who actually want you to get killed so they can win a medal, it’s so much more than that.
Robin said: “There were times I was crying on the paper. You bring up things that you’ve been holding on to for a very long time.”
He has had counselling to help him through the dark times where he finally came to a realisation: “I can’t change the world but I can change myself. The only thing you have power in the world to change is yourself. That was the path back.”
By drawing on his own experiences Robin believes he has an important message for any youngster.
“By me showing what I’ve achieved and showing them it’s not their fault that’s powerful.”
Robin may have brushed with death on countless occasions in his military career but it was his own health battle that perhaps had the biggest impact.
He was diagnosed with bladder cancer while living in Prague and had a major operation to remove his bladder. He now lives with a stoma bag.
“When you have been someone who is so active all your life and having that taken away from you is hard,” he said.
His fondest memory is camping with his kids in the Black Mountains.
“Just watching the moon come up with a big cup of hot chocolate and a fire burning... It’s all about family more than anything else.”
Robin will be giving a two-hour presentation, A Night With SAS Veteran Robin Horsfall, at Abercwmboi Rugby Club tonight at 6pm in aid of Cancer Research and St Davids Hospice in Brecon.