Ex-SAS soldier Bob Shepherd has witnessed some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. He tells Lorne Jackson what it is like to leave behind decades of danger for a life of writing.
Bob Shepherd was looking for a good time, and his prospects of finding one were excellent.
He was in New York City, after all. A party town that runs on the central principle that nobody requires sleep. Where Snooze and Snore are regarded as mythological beasts, conjured up by the pillow industry to push product.
Bob also happened to be in one of NYC’s many Irish boozers. Which was ideal, since he adores music from the Emerald Isle. He’s partial to a garrulous glug of Guinness, too.
Everything was in place for a night to remember. And that’s certainly what transpired, when merriment morphed into mayhem.
Bob – a best-selling thriller writer living in rural Worcestershire – admits the bar brawl was largely his fault.
“It was my first time in New York,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Great, I’m in the Big Apple! I’m off to an Irish pub.’
“Because, y’know, over there, they all think they’re Irish, even if their family’s originally from Cornwall. Anyway, I found a pub, and at first it really was fantastic.
“I got my Guinness from the bar, and was walking away, when this guy came round with a bucket. He was like, ‘Hey, man! D’you wanna contribute to the bucket?’ I put my hand in my pocket, and said: ‘What’s it for?’
‘The IRA, man!’
“So I poured my Guinness in the bucket. And the place erupted. I got absolutely battered. My nose was broken, my lips were bleeding, my teeth loose. I was getting kicked and everything, as I was trying to work my way out of the place. When I got outside, the bouncers were kicking me as well.”
Bob shakes his head and smiles ruefully. “That was a huge awakening.”
It certainly was.
Bob had previously fought in the SAS, which explains his distaste for the IRA. However, after 20 years with the elite fighting unit, he quit at the age of 40. Once “retired” he faced even greater dangers than before.
The Irish theme bar bust-up was one such incident, where he found himself alone, without his former comrades in arms to stand alongside him during the moment of truth.
But the Big Apple brawl was as nothing compared to the many other escapades he has faced as a soldier gone solo.
Since leaving the SAS 17 years ago, Bob has been a security advisor, based in the most terrifying places on earth, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
His duty is to guide and protect diplomats, journalists and other dignitaries on visits to violent and volatile regions.
Such work places him at the heart of bloody conflicts. Seeking out Taliban chiefs in the badlands connecting Pakistan and Afghanistan. Shaking hands with national leaders, including Hamid Karzai and Yasser Arafat.
It’s a privileged perspective on a world of woes. Not surprisingly, it informs his fiction, which is co-written with wife, Patricia Sabga, a former CNN war correspondent.
The Good Jihadist, their latest novel, is out now.
A gripping read, its protagonist is former SAS Sergeant, Matt Logan, whose mission is to infiltrate a Pakistani Taliban network.
There’s plenty of derring-do, and the action and atmosphere reek of authenticity, as you would expect from a man with boots-on-the-ground experience.
It also helps that Shepherd was brought up in Scotland, where the tradition of the ripping yarn has firm roots. It was Walter Scott, after all, who turned the romantic adventure novel into a hugely popular literary form, while making himself the most celebrated writer of the age.
Later, Robert Louis Stevenson muscled up the genre, stripping it of flabby narrative, while adding cynicism and moral ambiguity.
Finally there was John Buchan, who introduced a modern twist to his thrillers, which he labelled “shockers”.
Buchan’s tall tales had a modern setting. The horses, swords and highland warriors of Scott and Stevenson were swapped for cars, guns and spies.
Now Bob (and Patricia) bring the Buchan-style shocker into the 21st century.
The form hasn’t really evolved all that much from its earlier incarnations, however.
Browse Kidnapped and you’ll be surprised how close Stevenson’s Highland freedom fighters are to Afghan natives, with their mountain homes, tribal bonds and stormy suspicion of outside authority.
Perhaps such similarities explain Bob’s fondness for the Afghan people, and his ability to make them comfortable in his presence.
“When you’re on the ground in Afghanistan, and you look like I do, a white European, you’re automatically labelled CIA.
“It doesn’t matter who you are – whether you’re a security adviser, or a journalist – you are CIA. Even if they don’t think you’re directly with the CIA, you must be working on behalf of the CIA. “With those sort of suspicions, I have lots of barriers to break down, if I want to get information from the locals.
“They’ll say, ‘Where are you from?’
“And I’ll always say I’m Scottish, because I know the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan are avid watchers of Western films. All that stuff’s pirated in the region, so they’ve seen Braveheart, and think Scotland is still like it is in the movie. That its people are being victimised by the English.
“So they’ll say, ‘Oh, Braveheart – you’re one of us! You know what it’s like to be persecuted.’ And all of a sudden I’m no longer CIA. I’m just ‘Bob from Scotland.’
“They’ll invite me in to drink green tea, then off we go, finding out what’s been going on.
“At that point, it’s not too difficult to get stories from them.
“The people in the region are very proud, which means they can’t keep a secret. If they know something, they’ve got to let you know about it, too.”
It’s an exciting life, though Bob still looks back fondly on his days with Britain’s most lauded fighting outfit.
“Of course I miss the SAS. I miss it passionately.
“That camaraderie. We were all in it together. And we would all die for each other if we had to.
“I don’t get that now. That’s lost, and I’m very much on my own. When I’m guiding a group of journalists, I trust them, and they trust me, and there’s a bit of respect there. But would they die for me? I doubt it. Would I die for them? Yeah, I would.
“Because that’s the job I’ve been sent to do, and that’s the sort of character I am.”
Bob joined up when he was 17, after running away from an abusive home in Dundee.
At first he was intent on becoming a professional footballer, and was on the books of Bristol Rovers and Swindon Town. When that didn’t work out, he joined the air force.
At only 20 years old he made the grade with the SAS, one of six applicants out of 98 competing for places.
Over the next two decades, he served in the Oman campaign, the Falklands, the Gulf War and Bosnia.
He was also one of the elite force who took part in Operation Nimrod, the dramatic storming of the Iranian Embassy in London, when 26 hostages were held by a desperate group of terrorists.
Masked SAS fighters memorably abseiled down the building, burst through windows and killed the terrorists.
Supporters of the SAS view this episode as one of the most glorious moments in its history.
That’s not how Shepherd remembers it: “There’s about 13,000 people who claim to have been on the Iranian Embassy balcony.
“Well I wasn’t on that balcony. I was up on the roof, at the back. I’m not willing to describe my actions, because there may be ‘Iranian Embassies’ of the future, so I don’t want to give away tactics.”
However, he does reveal the emotions that went through his head at the time.
“To me it was nothing. It was what we had trained for. It was just another day’s training, with live rounds. That’s all it was.
“But it was probably the worse day in the history of the SAS, because Margaret Thatcher wanted to show the world what would happen to terrorists if they came to the UK.
“And that was dreadful for our organisation. Up until then, we’d thrived on anonymity, but that high profile job put us on the world stage. And that’s not what the lads ever wanted it to be about. Before the Embassy, we could walk about town, doing our daily admin. Going to the bank, or to our solicitors. But that day, it changed for ever. We had to be hidden away, and it became far more difficult to do our job, and far more difficult to travel around.”
Bob will soon be 57, and he says a quieter life, writing adventure stories, will soon entirely replace a life acting them out.
“I’ve lived with fear from the age of four, when I would hear the smashing of doors and windows, and my mother getting thrown round the house like a rag doll, by my drunken father.
“That was fear. And that’s probably ingrained in me to this day. Fear has been my life. Now I’m living in a nice quiet place in the Midlands, not having to fear anymore. Just trying to write some wonderful stories. And I’m really enjoying that.”
The Good Jihadist is published by Simon & Schuster (£12.99) Bob
Shepherd’s blog can be viewed at www.bobshepherdauthor.com
