On film, what makes the SAS truly special Sunday Herald Sun, Australia Sep 21, 2014 25 JUST when the families of the secretive soldiers in the Special Air Service Regiment thought they could relax, here they go again. Over the last week the quiet men from Australia’s special forces have returned to Frontierland, where Wild West meets murderous Middle East. As if 10 years of Afghanistan wasn’t enough. The good thing about having served in Afghanistan is that they know what to expect in Iraq, Syria or anywhere else they’re ordered to put themselves in harm’s way. They’re back where every pedestrian (especially kids) or car could be a suicide bomb primed to kill them. Where everyone in uniform carries guns everywhere they go — service pistols strapped to hip or thigh, assault rifles slung as nonchalantly as public servants and politicians carry briefcases in Canberra. Once again, they will have a gun at hand when they eat and when they go to the shower huts and next to their bunks at night. Every other country fancies it has the best special forces troops, which is no surprise. But as our elite force returns to the killing grounds, it seems clear they really are among the best in the world — and that’s not just Aussie bravado. Even the Americans say so and no one argues. The accolades flowed after Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2002, when the Australian SAS Regiment had done what it does best, in this case fighting alongside United States forces in a valley full of predictably fanatical but surprisingly well-armed al-Qaeda guerillas. What should have been a textbook operation teetered on the edge of disaster. The eerie moonscape of the Shahi Kot Valley almost became Death Valley. The Pentagon read the battle wrong but the Australian special forces on the ground got their bit right. There were only 100 of them but the men the Yanks had joked about as Steve Irwin “crocodile hunters” punched above their weight. Afterwards, a former US Secretary of State, Richard Armitage — himself an ex-special forces soldier — was blunt. He told a journalist: “The Australian SAS are s--t-hot and our people love to work with them.” His countryman, LieutenantGeneral Frank Hagenbeck, delivered a similar message: “The Australian SAS displayed those kinds of things that make them elite, in my view, of small-unit infantrymen throughout the world … that’s autonomy, independence, tenacity.” They call themselves “the Regiment”, which tells you something. There are plenty of regiments but this is the regiment. But it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, only 15 years after being born in secrecy in 1957, the Australian SAS came close to fading into irrelevance. In Vietnam the Vietcong called them Ma Rung — the “phantoms of the jungle” — and later said they were the only troops they feared. But the Defence chiefs in Canberra didn’t all share the enemy’s hard-won respect for the dark and deadly arts of intelligent guerilla warfare. The SAS survived after Vietnam but seemed doomed to be an oddball offshoot of the regular army, tolerated but not appreciated. Apart from anything else, it was separated from the military hierarchy by the Nullarbor: its headquarters were Campbell Barracks in suburban Perth, whereas almost everything else in uniform was then in the eastern states. But when the SAS went to East Timor after the Indonesian withdrawal in 1999 it was what military historian Bruce Horsfield calls a “turning point” that would transform his regimental history into “a retelling of the ugly duckling story”. Now retired, Horsfield is old enough to have taken on something easier than making the definitive documentary history of the SAS. He started on the epic task in the mid-1990s and is still soldiering on. The question is: can he include the latest twist and produce the final four episodes of his 11-hour project? The task has consumed him — and far too much of his money — over almost 20 years. As with many of the men whose service he has documented, appearances are deceptive. Horsfield is quiet and slightly built. It’s mildly surprising that he is a seasoned lecturer and a film maker. Even more surprising is that he was once in the special forces himself — he trained as a commando for four years because it seemed “adventurous” and glamorous. “I fancied myself in that green beret,” he says, smiling at his 18-yearold self, a skinny kid from Newcastle who went on to make some 350 parachute jumps and do the dangerous diving and canoeing missions that commandos have to do. Horsfield’s army time helped him gain the trust of Vietnam veterans so that he could make the acclaimed documentary Long Tan: the true story, about the 1966 Vietnam War battle. It impressed someone in the SAS. After the documentary was released in 1993 he got a call from a former SAS officer suggesting he make a documentary about “the Regiment”. “Otherwise I would never have approached the special forces, because of the secrecy,” Horsfield confesses. But someone won approval for the idea. He also gained an influential patron for the project in Maj. Gen. Michael Jeffery, future Governor-General. WITHOUT Jeffery’s backing, it would have fallen over. The “9-11” outrage in 2001 was a massive interruption, because the regiment was in a state of constant alert for years afterwards. But Horsfield kept going. Among his supporters is Bill Gray, one-time Herald reporter and one of the rare Vietnam-era conscripts asked to train for the SAS alongside regular army volunteers. Gray ended up fighting in Vietnam in one of the five-man units that did the dangerous patrol work. Now he’s fighting to help Horsfield finish his mission to record the history of the regiment. After thousands of hours, Horsfield has completed two seasons of seven episodes and is working on four one-hour episodes to round out the third and final season. Canberra’s decision to send the regiment back “in country” this month means he has a postscript to add. He has had unique access to former and serving SAS members, including modern-day heroes Ben Roberts-Smith and Mark Donaldson (pictured left). The calibre of the men in front of the camera shows up in the thoughtful things they say. One of them, Lt Col Ric Bosi, said: “The intangible value of this documentary is it captures the essence of military service, what Samuel Johnson called ‘the dignity of danger’, with real men telling real stories.” Which is great. But unless the RSL or the Defence Department or the Australian War Memorial or a philanthropist — or all of the above — give it a leg-up, this remarkable series won’t be finished the way it deserves to be. Diggers carry their wounded. Bruce Horsfield’s brave project is almost home safe but needs a hand to get over the line.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 06:21:19 +0000
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