SAS and Elite Forces Guide Prisoner of War Escape & Evasion: How To Survive Behind Enemy Lines From The World's Elite Military Units - Softcover

Mcnab, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0762779896 ISBN 13: 9780762779895

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2012

Synopsis

The POW How To Escape Handbook covers everything you need to know about making a successful return to friendly territory. Beginning from the point where a combatant finds himself or herself trapped in enemy territory, the book offers useful tips and solid advice on how to evade capture and, if that fails, how to escape. Key topics include the will to survive; handling stress in captivity; escape techniques; survival in a variety of environments, including urban, rural, jungle and desert; how to forage for food; tracking and how to cover your tracks; navigation, with or without a map; and seeking recovery by friendly forces. The book also includes a number of real life accounts of POW escape from World War II (including The Great Escape story and Colditz), the Vietnam War (Dieter Dengler, with others, escaping from Laos), the Balkans, Iraq (Thomas Hamill in 2004) and Afghanistan.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Chris McNab is an experienced specialist in wilderness survival techniques. He has published over 20 books including How to Survive Anything, Anywhere, Special Forces Endurance Techniques, First Aid Survival Manual, Military Survival Handbook and SAS and Elite Forces Guide: Wilderness Survival.. McNab has also acted as an editorial consultant on several other survival titles. In his home country of Wales, UK, he provides instruction on wilderness hunting techniques.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

CHAPTER 1 HIDING AND EVADING

Although most modern forces instruct their personnel in what to do if they are taken prisoner, obviously it is far more advisable to avoid capture in the first place. The conditions in which soldiers are likely to fall prisoner change according to the nature of the conflict. During major set-piece battles, such as those that occurred in World War II, soldiers are most exposed to capture en masse when their unit is outmanoeuvred or outfought by the enemy. In June 1941, for example, some 287,000 Soviet soldiers became prisoners after they were encircled by the German Army Group Centre during the battle of Bialystok–Minsk, just one of several major disasters that threatened to overwhelm the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Although no post-1945 conflict has matched World War II for its scale of prisoners of war (POWs), wars such as the Indochina War (1945–54), Vietnam War (1963–75), Indo-Pakistan War (1971), Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) and the 1991 Gulf War have all seen substantial prisoner counts following conventional engagements.

In the context of modern counter-insurgency warfare, more individual threats to liberty have arisen. Terrorist factions and insurgent groups can extract considerable publicity from the capture of one enemy soldier. On Sunday 25 June 2006, Corporal Gilad Shalit of the Armor Corps, Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was kidnapped by members of Palestinian Hamas organization, following a raid on an Israeli outpost in the southern Gaza Strip (two other IDF soldiers were killed, and three wounded). At the time of the writing (2011), Shalit is still in captivity, his vulnerable position used as a political bargaining chip in the troubled region. Some insurgent groups are far more ruthless in their approach to prisoners. Just nine days before the Shalit incident, for example, a US checkpoint in Youssifiyah, Iraq, was attacked by Islamic militants. One US soldier was killed and two others taken prisoner – Pfc Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc Thomas L. Tucker, 25. Three days later, the bodies of both men were discovered, having been tortured and then beheaded.

Such appalling crimes, and a litany of others, illustrate how critical kidnap awareness training has become for modern soldiers. Such training focuses on key techniques and tactical policies to reduce the chances of being taken prisoner.

Basic Precautions

For regular military units conducting patrols, manning checkpoints or outposts, mounting small-unit raids and performing general peacekeeping duties, there are common ingredients in many hostage-taking situations:

· Travelling vulnerable routes – Highways, roads and streets are common locations for kidnaps, as they are ideal for establishing unexpected road blocks or for launching ambushes against isolated convoys or vehicles.

· Getting lost – Small units can became lost within major urban zones or remote rural areas, primarily through navigational errors or having to follow detours because of unexpected obstructions or difficult terrain.

· Isolation – Soldiers manning outposts or checkpoints might be too few in number to make a convincing defence if attacked, and are sometimes isolated from reinforcements.

· Dangerous areas – Kidnappings and ambushes (the latter in themselves can lead to opportunistic kidnappings) are often concentrated within known areas where the rule of law or a military presence is weak.

· Deception – Kidnappings can sometimes involve people known to the hostages; certain individuals can feign friendship, while at the same time leading soldiers into compromising situations.

Special forces soldiers, in their common role as VIP bodyguards, are all too aware of these factors, and so have developed a rigorous set of tactical behaviours that dramatically lessen the chances of being kidnapped in the first place. We will look at some of these rules now, before turning to explore in detail the fundamental techniques of concealment and evasion.

Iraq Kidnapping, 2007

On 29 May 2007 in Baghdad, at 1150hrs (local time), five British nationals were kidnapped by Iraqi militants. The kidnapping set alarm bells ringing amongst the security community. It did not occur on an isolated rural road, but in the Finance Ministry building in east Baghdad. Nor were the victims all amateurs – four of them were ex-military working as bodyguards and security personnel (the other man was a local IT consultant). Eyewitness accounts revealed that the militants arrived in force – possibly up to 100 men – most dressed in police and military uniforms and carrying valid documentation (they were led by what appeared to be a police major). They entered the building, bursting into a lecture room and shouting ‘Where are the foreigners?' Once a group of Westerners were identified, they were overwhelmed, bundled into a van and taken away for a long period of captivity. The four security guards were eventually executed, while the IT consultant was freed after a long period in captivity. A sixth man, another IT consultant, avoided kidnapping by hiding under floorboards during the initial attack.

Vary your route, vary your times

Insurgents and terrorist groups thrive on predictability. If, for example, they know that a military supply convoy travels along a main road between two cities every weekday morning at 0830–0930hrs, they are able to plan and coordinate the most efficient attack possible, based on days of observational intelligence. For this reason, in contested areas foot patrols or vehicular units have to vary their routes and times of travel on a daily basis, and avoid forming any regular patterns of movement. Local intelligence is important in all route planning. Any route should avoid areas with significant threat levels, especially those with known heavy concentrations of enemy forces. (Unless, obviously, the mission is to clear those areas of the enemy.) If a particularly dangerous route has to be taken, a unit needs to make sure that it has the offensive firepower to handle itself in an attack.

Know your route

Getting lost is one of the most dangerous outcomes for a small unit in enemy-dominated territory. Preparation is vital for preventing this situation. Each member of the patrol, but obviously team leaders (officers and NCOs), should have a sound grasp of the area of operations (AO), including all its major and minor roads, bridges, rivers and streams, natural features and centres of habitation. The soldiers should also be able to identify several major landmarks against which they can orient themselves if lost. If, for example, they know that a particular river runs on an east–west orientation, it can form a general guide to their axis of patrol. Similarly, understanding sun navigation (see Chapter 7) will provide a celestial hint when a wrong turn has been taken. Most importantly, vehicular units should not blindly follow satellite navigation systems, but should always read GPS information in tandem with good maps and prior knowledge.

Move carefully, keep moving

Ambushes and kidnapping attempts tend to be launched in predictable locations. These include:

· Places were a road narrows between natural or urban features

· Around sharp bends (the bend limits visibility around the corner, where a roadblock or improvised obstacle could be set up)

· Isolated outposts

· Footpaths and trails that channel a patrol along a predictable route

· Difficult terrain, such as mountains or woodland, which can disperse the members of a patrol

· Any urban zone, which provides insurgents with familiar attack and escape routes, and which limits vehicular manoeuvres in response

· Bridges, fords and any other controlled crossing points.

The common thread running through this list is ambushes often occur where a unit has to follow a fixed route of travel through a confined or dispersing space, with limited options for manoeuvring out of trouble should the worst occur.

Yet sensible precautions can help to mitigate the threat somewhat (although in dangerous regions it can never be removed entirely). When approaching sharp bends or corners in a vehicle or on foot, slow down and swing out wide to give you a direct line of observation around the corner before turning. If you spot a roadblock or suspicious-looking obstruction, pull back and find a different route. Check your surroundings carefully. Are there any individuals or groups watching your movements from a distance? Are they talking into a mobile phone, or filming with a video camera? Such could be innocent actions, but the individual might be acting as a coordinating observer for an ambush, relaying instructions about your movements to the main ambush group. Does a road or track seem to be littered with strategically placed obstacles, as if channelling your direction of travel to a certain point? In an urban zone or village, does everything seem suspiciously quiet? Insurgents will often inform local people to keep themselves off the streets when an attack is planned, and soldiers note that an absence of children is particularly concerning.

Typical responses to such ominous signs are:

· Increased vigilance – Scan your eyes constantly across your surroundings, looking carefully at windows, street corners, the roofs of buildings, ditches, areas of vegetation and anywhere else figures could be hiding or waiting.

· Preparation – Prepare to defend yourself. Weapons should be loaded and ready to fire, presented in the direction of likely threats. Make sure you are wearing any available body army and your helmet, and that your comrades are doing likewise.

· Find another route – Take a different route if possible, as long as you know exactly where you are going and the new direction doesn't increase the threat levels. Choose routes that give you good open fields of fire and plenty of escape options.

· Keep moving – A moving target is much harder to ambush than a static target. Keep moving at a steady pace through the danger area, and if an ambush is sprung get out of the ‘kill zone' as fast as possible while applying suppressive firepower.

Know your friends

As the feature on p.? above indicates, kidnappers can come in the guise of official or even friendly personnel. At some point, local people have to be trusted to build relationships, and a soldier must never fall into the alienating trap of thinking everyone is a threat. There are, however, some precautions a soldier can take when working with unknown individuals.

First, try to make sure that everyone is properly vetted. This means looking into his or her personal and family background to check for any previous connections with known insurgency groups or leaders. Try to find out if he has any significant financial concerns – insurgent recruiters can use the offer of money as a simple recruiting tool. Be cautious if very little information can be found; does this mean that he has been recruited from outside the area?

Second, observe his behaviour on a daily basis. Does he appear hostile, or ask frequent unwarranted questions about your whereabouts or future plans? Have you ever seen him taking photographs (either on a camera or a mobile phone) of key military installations and hardware, or disappearing at strange moments to talk on his phone. Such behaviours can have legitimate explanations, but they might also put your on alert, and prompt you for further intelligence on the individual, or even his redeployment away from sensitive AOs. Finally, make sure that he has correct paperwork. Even if the document appears authentic and correct, occasionally do spot checks on the holder to see if it throws up any anomalies against databases or other records. Don't bend any of these rules for females – in many conflicts, flirtatious female insurgents have been used to infiltrate the trust of soldiers.

Also be very alert if you see unusually large gatherings of people. Many soldiers have been kidnapped during episodes of social unrest, such as riots, when they become separated from colleagues. Get reinforcements or remove yourself from the area whenever you see such groups gathering, unless you are specifically directed to disperse them.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0762779896
• ISBN 13: 9780762779895
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320