Sierra Leone: Deliver A Blow: The True SAS Story of Operation Barras

During the bloody civil war of Sierra Leone during the late 1990s and early 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had splintered from the regular Sierra Leone Army. The RUF committed numerous atrocities across the country, maiming men, women and children with amputations, capturing children to use as soldiers and women whom they would rape or force marry. It wasn't long before another splinter group, who called themselves the West Side Boys, emerged, and this lot were even more terrifying and ruthless than the RUF. The United Nations sent a peacekeeping force to try and stem the flow of blood the vicious rebel-faction death squads were causing with their frequent attacks on the capital city, Freetown. The West Side Boys operated out of the Occra Hills and had control of the surrounding area, and in the past they had captured, raped and murdered a number of peace-keeping forces, journalists and religious missionaries with an inordinate amount of savagery.
In September of 2000, the crew went a step too far and captured a British Army patrol that had ventured into their territory. The rebels held the soldiers captive in one of their two camps deep into the jungle that were split by the Rokel Creek river. While the hostages were beaten, psychologically and physically tortured, they lived in fear of being slaughtered on a daily basis. Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair – possibly insulted by the rebels’ actions – sent in the UK’s Special Forces version of “Magic Dust” to make the problem go away. The SAS were deployed and tasked with; firstly rescuing the British hostages, and were then under orders to “Deliver a blow!” to the West Side Boys.
As far as our soldier, Dean Reagan, was concerned, this meant only one thing: kill every single one of the rebel soldiers. Kill them all: every one of them. The initial draft of this book was SAS: First Man Through The Door, which was banned by the MoD due to Vinnie Keane's first person narrative.
Drawn from interviews with soldiers and from former members of the West Side Boys who were involved in the battle, this book provides a first hand narrative that allows the reader into the mindsets of both sides of the skirmish: the rebel soldiers who feel they had been let down by their Government, and the British soldiers who were sent in to rescue the Irish Rangers who had been taken hostage.