Blades

In 2017, reports emerged that Britain’s Special Air Service, the country’s most celebrated regiment, was being investigated over allegations its soldiers had executed scores of captives in Afghanistan. These unprecedented accusations led to a damning shift in perceptions of the armed forces, with soldiers widely castigated as war criminals. But these reports misrepresented the reality of the operations.

Blades lifts the lid on events in Afghanistan, detailing the heroic efforts of the Special Forces in the country for the first time and revealing how government-imposed restrictions meant the enemy’s bombmakers could not legally be shot or detained. Failed by their government and their generals, soldiers faced an agonising dilemma: obey the rules and let their colleagues be killed or enact frontier justice and face accusations of war crimes.

These events would trigger Operation Northmoor, the biggest and most sensitive UK military police investigation ever undertaken. Along the way, detectives faced a wall of silence and collusion by senior officers, with vital evidence being destroyed.

Drawing on thorough research; exclusive interviews with SAS soldiers, officers, service chiefs and senior diplomats; and decades of experience as the Daily Mail’s defence and diplomacy editor, Mark Nicol offers a nuanced analysis and a vital corrective to false reporting on Afghanistan. Ultimately, Blades is an unflinching account of profound heroism in the face of state interference and a long-overdue defence of those who proudly protected their country.

Mark Nicol is the only journalist to have interviewed an SAS soldier who pulled the trigger on these operations. He is also the only journalist to have given evidence at the Independent Inquiry Relating to Afghanistan. Nicol was born into an SAS family and during his journalistic career as the Mail’s defence and diplomacy editor, he has covered the Special Forces for twenty-five years. His previous books include Ultimate Risk (Macmillan, 2003), Last Round (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2005), Condor Blues (Mainstream, 2007) and Iraq (Mainstream, 2008). 

Mark is a television commentator on defence issues and has lectured at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He is a married father of four and lives in west London.