SAS: Who Dares Wins Jason Fox, Colin Maclachlan, Ant Middleton, Steve Parmenter, Matthew Ollie Olle (Image: Channel 4)
BEAR GRYLLS? He’s a “boy scout” mucking around on the side of a mountain. And Ant Middleton? He “gives the wrong impression of what special forces operators really are about”. That’s the view of Anders M Hansen, a retired lieutenant colonel turned thriller writer who prefers to be more circumspect than the showier TV counterparts he’s just skewered.
In fact, as good as his word, the former high-ranking officer declines to name any of the global trouble spots where he was deployed with the Danish special forces.
Instead, he trusts the readers of his adrenaline-pumping books to spot when he is writing with the benefit of cold, hard experience, whether that’s describing continent-spanning espionage or a hostage rescue as in his crime thriller King’s Gambit, recently translated into English for the first time, more of which later.
“My writing is fiction,” says Hansen about his books featuring his protagonist Holger Berg. “But I am trying to do my utmost to use the inspiration of what I have seen and turn it into thrilling and exciting stories. People ask me if Holger Berg is me, but even though he is former special forces, and a lawyer like me, he is not me.”
Ever since the Iranian Embassy Siege in April 1980 first propelled the SAS to global fame, interest in special forces has been growing. A host of books, films and TV shows have cashed in on their reputation as the world’s best soldiers.
Yet many, including Hansen, believe the cost to the Regiment has been profound.
Still working as a “connector on the global security scene”, Hansen speaks with authority when he describes how the unsubtle “monetisation” of a special forces career, by the likes of Grylls, Middleton and Brave Two Zero author Andy McNab inevitably leads to division with the majority of special forces veterans who refuse to repudiate their vow of silence.
“They were part of a brotherhood of veterans, but the second they started monetising their experiences, they were out of that, they were no longer welcome,” the 63-year-old continues. “Now they must have sleepless nights trying to justify themselves. Maybe they can look at their bank accounts and try to fool themselves. But they have lost that brotherhood. They have traded something truly unique, that was strong and real, for money, which might be there one day and gone the next.”
Don’t miss…
Anders Hansen EXPRESS INTERVIEW Feature – ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR THIS INTERVIEW ‘Please do not use t (Image: Anders Hansen)
Grylls is currently enjoying terrific success with Celebrity Bear Hunt on .
But while he “has made a name for himself as an action hero jumping out of aeroplanes and helicopters, and with his latest series he is marketing himself as an SAS man, in reality he was a reservist,” Hansen adds.
“Most people would associate him with the full-time professional force. But I think it’s unnecessary for him to do that because he made a name for himself independently of that. Some of the things he does on his series are what you do when you are a boy scout, it is just playing. So why he constantly has to use the SAS reference, I just don’t know.”
As for Afghanistan veteran Ant Middleton, of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, he says: “I have nothing against him as person, But instead of just being Ant Middleton, and saying he has had a career and can pass on skills, he is again using the special forces as a brand he shouldn’t be using.
“My problem is that it gives the population and decision makers the wrong impression of who people in the special forces are. I think that is very dangerous.”
The cost is not only personal, Hansen maintains, fracturing ties between “celebrity soldiers” and their former comrades, but it has a worrying impact on the public’s perception of warfighting, and could even be having an impact on the current appetite to comb over yesterday’s battles.
Just look at the controversial investigations into alleged war crimes in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan in which legions of lawyers don’t hesitate to opine on the legal niceties of decades-old combat decisions in a bid for compensation or a favourable ruling.
“The granulated facts don’t fit into 350 pages or a 45-minute episode. Every single operation is based on a political mandate and the chain of command is meticulous, ensuring approval from the highest level before anything can happen,” he explains.
“When you have a lot of people that claim to reflect what special forces do, I think it becomes dangerous. It becomes dangerous when people degrade that complexity, the very, very demanding things you must perform on a daily basis, the split-second decisions on life and death of that of themselves and their mates. A lot of the work is very boring, very tough, and it is not about blazing guns and abseiling off buildings. I just find it sad that these TV stars have to constantly use the special forces name.”
When gunmen from Iran’s Arab minority shot two of their nineteen hostages held at the Iranian Embass (Image: Getty Images)
Having operated in the shadows for years, Hansen doesn’t give up personal information readily. And he certainly won’t give up the secrets of his previous career under arms, preferring to allow his writing to be informed by his wealth of experience, albeit indirectly.
Born in Copenhagen and now living in London, he was knighted with the Order of Dannebrog by the Queen of Denmark as recognition for his charitable work.
Copenhagen is often the setting of novels as is the case with his latest, King’s Gambit, in which Holger Berg is pulled into a dangerous political game when a Danish soldier is taken hostage by Islamist terrorists.
Hansen’s informed writing has won him praise from esteemed writers. And to quote one admirer, Freddie Forsyth, also a master of combining political intrigue with a veil of suspenseful fiction, the reality of Hansen’s experiences are evident even if they do lie just beneath the surface.
“Now and again a new thriller writer comes on to the market of whom one knows that there cannot be a shadow of doubt over the authenticity of what you are about to read,” the Day of the Jackal author wrote.
Damien Lewis, author The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, has called Hansen “the real deal,” saying that the “the tactics, techniques and tradecraft” with which his books are littered are “to die for”.
Yet Hansen maintains his fiction serves a different reality to ‘tell all’ books and TV shows which he argues “risk unnecessarily stigmatising the public image of special forces personnel [which] we should never allow that to happen. I say let’s have more exciting fiction and avoid framing those who do difficult things in very complex situations”.
Quick to point out the dangers of monetising the work of the SAS, he warns: “The decisions that troops are asked to take are very complex and it takes years and years of hard training to be a fully-fledged member of the special forces. So people should not look at characters like Bear and Ant and think they know what they are, how they should behave whether in Afghanistan or Northern Ireland.
“These shows make the layman think that he can understand the mindset of a special forces operator when he is in that situation. And that in turn encourages dangerous armchair judgments from people who think that they understand how the special forces operate and that they could have done it better in a given situation.”
King’s Gambit by Anders M Hansen (Biteback, £10.99) is out now
Ends