REAL WORLD EVENT

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Occra Hills, Sierra Leone—September 10, 2000: British soldiers battle through the merciless West African landscape, where heavily armed rebels hold six troops hostage.

"Welcome to Sierra Leone.
If you cannot help us please do not corrupt us."
-The official greeting posted at the Freetown airport

Early in May 2000, a civil war peace agreement in Sierra Leone falls apart in light of a horrifying event: hundreds of UN peacekeepers are taken hostage by anti-government fighters from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). By the month's end, nearly all of the UN soldiers are released, but four are believed to have been killed at the hands of the RUF. British soldiers are called to intervene in the troubled West African country.

Three months later, 11 British soldiers and a Sierra Leonean officer, last known to be some 47 miles east of Freetown, are missing. The situation turns desperate when their whereabouts are revealed: The men have been captured by one of the fiercest rebel groups plaguing Sierra Leone, the West Side Boys.

Infamous for their mass killing and revolting crimes against villagers like raping children and setting citizens on fire, the West Side Boys have an illustrious calling card: mass mutilation. Using machetes, the West Side Boys indiscriminately cut off the hands, arms or feet of civilians they encounter. Until the kidnapping, the rebels were recognized in Sierra Leone as a ruthless, illiterate gang with operations aimed largely at attacking unarmed men, women and children.

So the abduction of a dozen seasoned military troops is a surprising—and chilling—accomplishment.

Demands are made for releasing their victims alive: All of the West Side Boys' supporters are to be released from jail, and Sierra Leone's peace agreement is to be revised at the rebels' discretion. In addition, the West Side Boys will represent an official sect in the country's army.

The terms are flatly rejected.

Relatives of the West Side Boys make an impassioned plea to the rebels to release their captives and recognize the enormity of the situation. The talks are deemed mildly successful when the next day, the kidnappers release five Britons. But the gang keeps six soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment and one Sierra Leonean officer imprisoned. Soon thereafter, the West Side Boys terminate all communication with government authorities.

Without knowing the welfare of its soldiers, Britain refuses to sit idly. The army develops one of the most gripping strategies in military history, one that involves an infestation of snipers, covert helicopter infiltrations, and a firestorm of Special Ops.

Split down the middle by Rokel Creek, the rebels' villages of Geri Bana and Magbeni are targeted. In Geri Bana, the prisoners are confined to mud and bamboo huts in the swampy south bank, where they are swarmed by mosquitoes and bounded by rebels. They are forced to take part in mock executions; performances the West Side Boys promise are a foreshadowing of events to come.

Two Chinooks release paratroopers that quickly penetrate the jungle south of Magbeni, where most of the rebels are located. Meanwhile, Special Air Service troops and paratroopers from a third Chinook land across the river and infiltrate the huts in Geri Bana in search of their comrades.

For 90 historic minutes, battles rage throughout the jungle and within the surrounding villages. The calculated attack has surprised the enemy, but the West Side Boys are heavily armed and dominant in their knowledge of the landscape. It takes all the advanced weaponry and spectacular military tactics of the British to battle the army of cold-blooded rebels who have made a life of localized mayhem and murder. Kidnapping the British soldiers is their crowning achievement, and now, they have nothing to lose.