There were three SAS patrols that fateful January 1991 morning: Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero (Andy McNab) and Bravo Three Zero. It was the opening hours of the Gulf War and the SAS were flown deep behind enemy lines to hunt down Saddam’s Scud missiles. Somehow we'd been spotted, though I couldn't for the life of me imagine how. My mind started racing. This is not a book of self congratulatory glory written for the sake of it. It is an account of one one the pivotal moments in world history. Des Powell is clearly an extraordinary man as are those who he served with, he comes across in the book as a person of honour and integrity, a b c Taylor, Peter (10 February 2002). "BRAVO TWO ZERO A Question of Betrayal". BBC News . Retrieved 25 October 2011. And generate a lot of questions about the mission and what happened to the other two patrols, knowing the ill-fated Bravo Two patrol story.

Peter Ratcliffe (The SAS's Regimental Sergeant Major at the time of the patrol) wrote Eye of the Storm ( ISBN 1930983018), which refers to the controversy surrounding the differing accounts of the patrol in some detail. The book was released in 2000. Both Mitchell's and Armstrong's earlier accounts were critiqued by SAS reserve veteran Michael Asher in The Real Bravo Two Zero ( ISBN 0-304-36554-8). In 2001, Asher followed the original path of the patrol, interviewing local Iraqis who witnessed the events. The book was released in 2002. Even as warnings came in that McNab's patrol was on the run, Bravo Three Zero remained undetected - the furthest Coalition forces behind Iraqi lines. Slipping through enemy positions, a string of targets were taken out. But with the desert turning bitter and snow starting to fall, they were forced to fight a running battle against the elements as much as the enemy.The SAS selection training is in three parts. The first part is the hill phase and the navigation tabs. The middle part is the jungle phase and the last part is the escape and evasion phase. So over six months is split into three phases. The most difficult one, I think that most guys find it also, is the middle phase, the jungle. So on selection, because the jungle is such a harsh environment, they keep that as a tester. A guy named Paul Hughes introduced Damien and me. He was talking to me one day in his garden and he asked me, what have you been involved in? I only just managed to mention Bravo 30 and I didn’t even tell him the story. I just mentioned it. He got in touch with Damien and mentioned to Damien about me. And then one day Paul said we’re going to have a meeting with Damien Lewis, and I said, who is Damien Lewis? When we met it, Damien said that the story was interesting because he didn’t know that there were three patrols, Bravo One, Two and Three. Damien approached me and said that he’d like to write the story. Was I willing? And that is really how it came about. This hit me hard. If an SAS legend like Baz Matthews had been taken out, when serving as part of a squadron-size force, what chance did we stand?

We were in the middle of a dark, snowbound wilderness hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, and the last thing we wanted was to start flashing torches.

This year is the 80th anniversary year of the SAS and 30 years since the first Gulf War and deployment of Bravo Three Zero behind enemy lines in the Iraq desert.