Meet Chris Ryan, the former SAS corporal who escaped death during Bravo Two Zero mission in first Gulf War

“You’re behind a desk, your head’s down and you can’t see who’s standing next to you or crowded around you and it’s a vulnerable position to be in and that freaks me out – to the point, and this is going to sound ridiculous, where I’m having a sensory overload and in some cases someone will say ‘can you make it out to Alan, or Tom’, they’re easy names but I struggle to spell those names,” he says.

Ryan has enjoyed a successful second career as an author for more than 25 years now, following the publication in 1995 of The One That Got Away – his account of the aforementioned eight-man mission in Iraq and his escape.

This became a bestseller and he has gone on to write dozens of novels, as well as non-fiction and children’s books.

Later this month the former SAS corporal is in Yorkshire for the Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival, along with the likes of Susie Dent and Robert Harris, when he will be discussing some of the stories that have influenced his writing.

Ryan (his real name is Colin Armstrong) grew up in the North East, where his father worked on construction sites.

He didn’t enjoy school, other than maths and technical drawing, and admits he was a lazy pupil. “When I was young I didn’t realise that education was so important.”

Instead he dreamed of joining the military and travelling the world. “I always wanted to see over the horizon,” he says. He joined the Territorial SAS as a teenager.

“I saw real SAS guys, from 22 Regiment, and listening to their stories about being in the jungle and being in Africa and the Far East, I thought ‘this is definitely for me.’”

He eventually achieved his dream of being selected for the SAS in 1984, and seven years later he found himself caught up in events that changed his life.

Ryan was part of the eight-man Bravo Two Zero mission in which three soldiers died and four were captured.

Only Ryan managed to escape, trekking for hundreds of miles through enemy territory before reaching the Syrian border.

It’s an experience etched in his memory. “I lay with a guy as he died. On various days and nights I encountered close encounters with death.

“At the end I was hallucinating and I did damage to my internal organs. I drank water which burnt all my mouth that was contaminated from a chemical site,” he says.

“I lost 36lbs in body weight, my feet had open wounds and I had bed sores. There’s something training can never prep you for, to push your body to the brink.”

He remembers one moment in particular. “The first day I was on my own I was soaking wet and I crawled up into a wadi and found a north facing slope with a hollow and I got in and I was lying there freezing, doubting that I’d be able to get out of it.

"And out of nowhere I heard my mum’s voice. As a child she used to say if things get on top of you then have a good cry and let the pressure out.

"So I sat up and tried to cry but I couldn’t and then I started laughing at the stupidity of doing it and suddenly I felt the clouds and depression just leave my mind.

"I could see the fading ridge lines in the distance and I thought ‘that’s where you’re going’ and I got over it.”

It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS, for which he was awarded the Military Medal.

Ryan’s subsequent book is one of several published about the mission and precisely what happened on the ill-fated operation has been hotly disputed.

Ryan says he used a pen name because he thought he would only write one book, giving his account of the mission. However, its success spawned a literary career that flourishes to this day.

He’s a prolific writer and his latest novel, Outcast, a standalone thriller, was published during the summer.

“I like to visualise a story and plot it out so if I was to sit down with you I could tell you the story and you’d believe the story and the mission,” he says.

“For the last 20 years I haven’t been short of storylines because of what went on in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places in the world, including now Ukraine.”

Through his children’s books Ryan gives talks in schools which has made him acutely aware of the importance of encouraging youngsters to read.

“You hear some heart-breaking stories of kids that don’t have any books at home, and if a child leaves school and can’t read and can’t add up then they don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of getting a job to better themselves.”

He believes we need to tap into children’s interests. “I say to them to get a book on football or whatever is that interests them, because that’s how you hook them in. And I tell them my story about how I was lazy at school and talk about my mistakes and it seems to work.

“I meet adults now who tell me they’re reading because they read one of my books as a child and to me there is no better praise than hearing that… If you can better a child’s life in this world then you’re doing a decent job.”

An Evening With Chris Ryan, The Crown Hotel, Harrogate, October 22, 8.30pm.

For more details visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/raworths-literature-festival/