Phil Ashby | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Philip James Conyers Ashby |
| Born | 29 April 1970 Helensburgh, Scotland |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Service/ |  Royal Marines |
| Years of service | 1988–2000 |
| Rank | Major |
| Battles/wars | Sierra Leone |
| Awards | Queen's Gallantry Medal |
Philip James Conyers Ashby QGM (born 29 April 1970) is a former Royal Marines commando officer, notable for his escape and evasion in the jungles of Sierra Leone in 2000.
Ashby was brought up in Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, the son of a Royal Navy officer based at HMNB Clyde, and educated at Glenalmond College on a scholarship. While in school he started rock climbing. [1]
Ashby joined the Royal Marines and was commissioned a week shy of his eighteenth birthday. He read engineering at Pembroke College, Cambridge on an armed forces bursary. Later on in his career he trained as a mountain leader and was also a jungle warfare instructor.
In May 2000, Ashby was deployed to Sierra Leone as a military observer with the UN peacekeeping forces stationed there, tasked with disarming the rebel fighters from the Revolutionary United Front led by Augustine Gbao. However, the situation became hostile and the house where Ashby and two fellow British officers and a New Zealand officer surrounded and effectively trapped in the house. After a narrow escape, they sought refuge at the Kenyan army outpost where they helped defend the camp against several days of attacks. Eventually a decision was taken to escape through the jungle. Fighting dehydration and hunger, the four men survived close encounters with the enemy and, assisted by local tribesmen, were eventually rescued by the British Army. [2] [3] After returning, Ashby was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. [4] The story of his escape is narrated in one episode of the documentary series Banged Up Abroad . His escape is also documented by the War historian Mark Felton. War Stories with Mark Felton You Tube Channel; 'Death & Diamonds: SAS & Paras Raid Sierra Leone 2000' (2020) [5]
Ashby's autobiography, entitled both Unscathed: Escape from Sierra Leone and Against All Odds: Escape from Sierra Leone was published in 2003. He has also written for other publications including The Sunday Times , The Daily Mail and The Lancet . Ashby is an IFMGA-certified mountain guide and runs his own consultancy.
In September 2000, he learned that he had contracted a parasite from his time in Sierra Leone; it had entered his spine and left him paralysed from the waist down, although he has since made a full recovery. [6]
He and his wife have two daughters.
During climbing seasons, he is usually based at the French Alps. [7]
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It shares its southeastern border with Liberia, and the northern half of the nation is surrounded by Guinea. Covering a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi), Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with diverse environments ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. Freetown is the capital and largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are subdivided into 16 districts.
Sierra Leone first became inhabited by indigenous African peoples at least 2,500 years ago. The Limba were the first tribe known to inhabit Sierra Leone. The dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the region from other West African cultures, and it became a refuge for peoples escaping violence and jihads. Sierra Leone was named by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who mapped the region in 1462. The Freetown estuary provided a good natural harbour for ships to shelter and replenish drinking water, and gained more international attention as coastal and trans-Atlantic trade supplanted trans-Saharan trade.
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor is a Liberian former politician and convicted war criminal who served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003 as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure.
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a rebel group that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, beginning in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later transformed into a political party, which still exists today. The three most senior surviving leaders, Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao, were convicted in February 2009 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Helensburgh is an affluent coastal town on the north side of the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, situated at the mouth of the Gareloch. Historically in Dunbartonshire, it became part of Argyll and Bute following local government reorganisation in 1996.
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as the 3rd President of Sierra Leone, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992.
Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh, OOR, OBE was a Sierra Leonean politician and military officer who served as the second President of Sierra Leone from November 1985 to 29 April 1992.
The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone from 1999 to 2006. It was created by the United Nations Security Council in October 1999 to help with the implementation of the Lomé Peace Accord, an agreement intended to end the Sierra Leonean civil war. UNAMSIL expanded in size several times in 2000 and 2001. It concluded its mandate at the end of 2005, the Security Council having declared that its mission was complete.
Operation Barras was a British Army operation that took place in Sierra Leone on 10 September 2000, during the late stages of the nation's civil war. The operation aimed to release five British soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment and their Sierra Leone Army (SLA) liaison officer, who were being held by a militia group known as the "West Side Boys". The soldiers were part of a patrol that was returning from a visit to Jordanian peacekeepers attached to the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) at Masiaka on 25 August 2000 when they turned off the main road and down a track towards the village of Magbeni. There the patrol of twelve men was overwhelmed by a large number of heavily armed rebels, taken prisoner, and transported to Gberi Bana on the opposite side of Rokel Creek.
The West Side Boys, also known as the West Side Niggaz or the West Side Junglers, were an armed group in Sierra Leone, sometimes described as a splinter faction of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council.
The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloping the country. It left over 50,000 dead.
Black Loyalists were people of African descent who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. In particular, the term refers to men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom.
Thomas Peters, born Thomas Potters, was a veteran of the Black Pioneers, fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. A Black Loyalist, he was resettled in Nova Scotia, where he became a politician and one of the "Founding Fathers" of the nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Peters was among a group of influential Black Canadians who pressed the Crown to fulfill its commitment for land grants in Nova Scotia. Later they recruited African-American settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonisation of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century.
The Hut Tax War of 1898 was a resistance in the newly annexed Protectorate of Sierra Leone to a new tax imposed by the colonial governor. The British had established the Protectorate to demonstrate their dominion over the territory to other European powers following the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The tax constituted a major burden on residents of the Protectorate; 24 indigenous chiefs had signed a petition against it, explaining its adverse effects on their societies, to no avail. The immediate catalyst for hostilities was an attempt by British colonial officials to arrest the Temne chief Bai Bureh, a general and war strategist, on the basis of rumours. Although often depicted as the chief who initiated an armed resistance in the North in 1898, late 20th-century sources suggest he was unfairly identified by the colonial government as a primary instigator, with the government's hostile actions provoking the war. Later that year, resistance arose in the south by the leading Mende.
Alan Blackshaw OBE was an English mountaineer, skier and civil servant who was President of the Alpine Club from 2001 to 2004 and President of the Ski Club of Great Britain from 1997 to 2003.
The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone on 7 May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "Operational Reconnaissance and Liaison Team" (ORLT) to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked the road connecting Freetown to the country's main airport, Lungi. The next day, British soldiers began to secure the airport and other areas essential to an evacuation. The majority of those who wished to leave were evacuated within the first two days of the operation, but many chose to stay following the arrival of British forces.
Peter Alfred Penfold was a British diplomat who was the youngest governor of the British Virgin Islands and was High Commissioner to the Republic of Sierra Leone. His career began in 1963, when he joined the Foreign Service as a clerical officer. Two years into his career, he was posted to the British embassy in Bonn, West Germany, and two years after that to Nigeria. From 1970 to 1972, Penfold served as a "floater" in Latin America, filling in as necessary for staff at British missions in the region. He served in Mexico during the 1970 football world cup, and on St Vincent, where he was responsible for organising an evacuation after a volcanic eruption. After Latin America, Penfold briefly served in Canberra, before returning to London to take a post in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). He earned early promotion to second secretary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was responsible for reporting on the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Eritrean War of Independence and was still in the country during the revolution, in which the pro-Western emperor was overthrown. After completing his tour in Ethiopia, Penfold served as information officer in Port of Spain and then as first secretary in the West Africa Department of the FCO.
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Lieutenant General Andrew Sean David Harrison, is a senior officer in the British Army who serves as the Deputy Commander of United Nations Command in South Korea and the Colonel Commandant of the Parachute Regiment.
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