[morse1001]

Unscratched - Maj Phil Ashby QGM RM.

The Major was a UN Observer serving Sierra Leone helping with the ceasefire between the RUF rebels and the central government.

However, most of the book is taken up by the story of his various escapades while mountain climbing and when he was in Cambridge, climbing various buildings. There is a also a section about his time trying to row around the Island of Spitsbergen.

There is also a description of his time in training as an officer, then as a Mountain Leader wth the Mountain cadre. this is a specialist branch of the service and one which matches the exploits of the SBS and SAS in their training.

When he covers the period as a UNMO, we start to get interested. The country had been ravaged by a war which mainly centred over who controlled the diamond mines, the civil war had been going on for years until a UN brokered peace deal was signed by both sides and the UN moved in.

Ashby describes his dealing with the various factions in the country and they all seemed to be fulled on drink and drugs. They also appeared to be very young, some as younf as twelve years old and carrying aloaded weapon! he descrbes going through various rebel checkpoints where the commander was a teenager!

Part of the peace plan was for the disarming of the factions and Ashby was left in command of a camp, with orders to specifically not to start a civil war! The cam was especially set up to house and educate those rebels who came forward to be disarmed. they had an incentive of a 300USD grant, if they turned their weapons in.

Ashby, disarmed ten rebels and welcomed them into the camp and that is when the action started. The local rebel leader heard of the ten and brought his forces down to the camp to get them to return. The ten hearing the commotion, escaped into the sourounding jungle!

The rebals formed a cordon around the camp and set about a campaign of harrassement. the camp was defened by some members of the kenyan army, but they had very little inthe way of weapons and ammo, having only one hundred rounds for each solider! They had to defend the camp and protect the five UNMOs based at the camp.

The rebels began their campaign by attacking the local population and as Ashby says, he could heard the screams in the building the UNMO were using. the rebels also hacked of various parts of bodies and threw them near to the Kenyan positions.

Since the rebel leader had declared that he would do a "Somalia" and drag the naked bodies of the UNMO around the town, the UNMO decided to use their military skills, Ashby had been a jungle warfare instructor in Belize, and escape.

They packed their kit and rations and escaped out of the camp. They worked their way out of the town and into the countryside. But as both Ashby and a fellow UNMO had both just recovering from Malaria and typhiod respectively, it was hard going. Also, the other three who were a RN Nuclear Engineer, a army major and a Kiwi major had not ben in the jungle before which caused problems.

They finally made it to a UN camp which was manned by Ghanians and was itself under seige by the rebels. But by managing to get in contact with the UNHQ in Freetown, a RAF Chinnock came and took them back to Freetown.