So the plan
They wanted an assessment of what
So they could
And that was what Maggie wanted.
She wanted an early liberation.
Of course, the cause of the trouble
So we knew there were scrap
We knew that there was some military,
And they wanted to know
what the full size was.
So the SAS bless'em,
they said that they wanted to go 2000
and they were going to walk about five
And then they were going to observe
They wanted to go in the dark
and they wanted this to go together.
So we thought about this and we said, No
and we have no way
So we said we weren't going to go in
in the dark,
And off we went.
Wessex 3 Ian Stanley in the front Mike
And we got
And and Ian went in.
He landed.
Mike Tidd over shot.
He went round and I landed second.
And then Mike was behind me
blowing an absolute hooley.
These roughy-toughy SAS and their white
and they were just down by the aircraft
we're going
And then it cleared again,
and we got back
to mother, weather still still really bad.
I mean, the winds up
And we immediately went on to search
these guys are not going to survive
If not today, certainly by tomorrow.
And sure enough, they managed to walk
They had big fissures in the in the snow.
And they were in in huge wind strength
Following morning effectively a mayday.
If we're not off by lunchtime,
Funny old thing.
And at that stage Mike Tidd and Andy
and Ian Georgeson went single pilot.
We've been single part of the day before.
They they crewed in with the two crewmen
and myself
And the story then I clearly wasn't
I wasn't flying but this they they
And two attempts
landed on and embarked the the troopers.
And then, of course, Mike Tidd took off.
Exactly as he'd done the day before
He took off.
And as soon as he took off, it fogged.
No visibility on the ground whatsoever.
Just complete white.
And he flared the aircraft
and it tipped over on its left side.
By this stage, the other aircraft
weather cleared again.
They could see he'd crashed.
So I'm on now
I say, okay, you know,
Everybody's okay.
We got the message.
Everybody is okay,
and we're going to split the load
So what they did
not know that none of the troopers
One had got a gash under his own.
I think he'd made it with his rifle
But the crewmen were fine.
Pilots. The pilot was fine.
Crew man was fine.
Troopers were fine. Split the load,
and Ian and Stanley and Ian Georgeson
Experienced briefed,
They got airborne.
And when they came in again
back into fog and
and was able
And then he remembers the Wessex
And as he started to lower the lever,
And guess what?
Boom,
smash itself to pieces.
Same situation shuts the engine down.
And again, everybody's fine.
One trooper damaged his other
his rifle, and Ian Stanley sort of saw
I could see that everybody was okay.
He came back
and you know the end of the story is
that Wessex 3 then went back again
and got the remaining people
