Fighting In & Around Vehicles

CASE STUDY

TRAGIC LESSONS LEARNED IN FIGHTING IN & AROUND VEHICLES

By Neil M Davis

This case study covers the harrowing events that took place in March 1988 when two British corporals were ambushed by a mob while in their vehicles and beaten and brutally killed by the IRA in Northern Ireland.

The tragic and infamous incident that lead to the soldiers’ deaths at the hands of an enraged mob become known as the “corporal killings.”

If you haven’t heard of the incident I am talking about, then brace yourself for what you will read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporals_killings

TRAINING IN WAYS THAT MATTER

Despite the horrific nature of the events, the purpose of this article is to debunk the view of the "...you must do this...you must never do that...just avoid the area..." flagpole that so many training providers pin their colors to. This article will try and explain why that kind of advice might not always work in order to encourage people to get their head out their ass and start delivering training that addresses real-life incidents and not some version of what they "think" happens in these situations.

And even more recently to this incident, there has been an influx of posts and articles questioning the need for or the application of, fighting in, around or from vehicles. Some have been well written and constructive - most have been written with an elementary Sesame Street approach to that situation with absolutely no concept of the realities of such an incident. One person even stated that this type of situation never happens -Ihope he's reading this.

SOME CAVEATS

So, before I start dissecting this properly, it is important for me to add context to this incident: 1. They should NOT have been there. Someone fucked up.

2. They were not UKSF/Undercover soldiers.

3. They weren't trained to deal with this situation.

4. One of them had a "stove-pipe" and couldn't/didn't know how to, clear it quickly.

5. The funeral cortege were on high alert of "attack", due to two other incidents that were the catalyst for this one happening and that are important to factor in, in order to understand how quickly a situationally aware, suspicious and violent mob, can turn on you:

• 06 March 1988 -OP FLAVIOUS (UKSF kill three PIRA terrorists in Gibraltar)

• 16 Mar 1988 -AUDA terrorist attacked the funeral of the three PIRA terrorists killed in Gibraltar, during OP FLAVIOUS.

However tragic and avoidable, the fact remains that they "were" there, and, from a training perspective ONLY, there is little to be gained from lamenting about that cock-up or whose cock-up it was. Whether they should've been there or not, doesn't alter the fact that sometimes, shit just happens - it's either your fault, someone else's fault or it's just bad luck. However, regardless of this, you still need to have "options" of response - who or what's to blame can be discussed/argued/dissected later - getting out of the shit that you've found yourself in, is what matters.

DISSECTING THE DEADLY SCENARIO FOR LESSONS

So, let’s assess the available options:

Driving Through

They physically couldn't - so that's that idea is pretty useless.

Reverse Out

They tried unsuccessfully and were immediately blocked in by other vehicles. (Having had so many people speak to me about this incident over the years, many have opined that, had they been trained properly (in defensive driving), they might have been able to chuck in a J-turn. This MIGHT be true ,but having seen the full, unedited video of this incident, I doubt they would have gotten very far, even with a successful J-turn.

So... you can't drive through, and you can't reverse out - now what? According to some people, if neither of those options work, then you've somehow done something wrong - who cares? You still need to get out of it.

One of the most staggering, surprising and influential aspects of this incident, was how quickly the crowd surrounded their vehicle - forget about having that Condor cigar moment, where you have the luxury of making a decision - time is NOT your friend and any decision you do make, needs to be executed with instantaneous and scorched earth commitment. It doesn't have to be pretty; gunfights are messy and training must reflect that messiness.

“ So... you can't drive through, and you can't reverse out - now what? According to some people, if neither of those options work, then you've somehow done something wrong - who cares? You still need to get out of it. ”

MINDSET OVER METHODS & MANUALS… ALWAYS!

The most difficult thing to train-in/ overcome (in my experience) is mindset. How do you train-in the correct mindset for dealing with what must've been going through the minds of Howes and Woods, inside that vehicle? How do you train-out/overcome being frozen with fear? How do you train-out/ overcome the ever-present, conscience-on-your-shouldersecond-guessing-voices-in-yourhead of your decision-making process, under a situation like this? Frantically thinking about what to do - being caught in the terrifying surrealness of a situation that has just escalated to cataclysmic proportions, in the space of a few seconds. Not quite believing that it's actually happening to you.

My answer to that, from an instructional point of view, is, I have no fucking idea -Ican only reference my own experiences and then use those experiences to form training content, in the hope that it'll make sense to them/add context for them/hit home how crazy situations like this are. So, that they MIGHT be better prepared to deal with them, should they find themselves in one of those "...how the fuck did THIS happen..?" situations.

You should NOT be building training content from a manual, YouTube video or what YOU think would work, based on your best mate's cousin's sister's boyfriend, who was "in the military" for 6 years, but doesn't wanna talk about...coz...you know...it's secret and...well...people are watching him - you know the kind, I'm sure.

If a crowd has surrounded your vehicle and you cannot drive through/reverse out - what then? The time it took for this crowd to pull the guys from their vehicle was seconds - just seconds. There are no good options here – NONE. And it is mindset that is going to help give you the strength to make the most life changing and difficult decision you will probably ever make. Nothing short of a "... fuck everyone…" approach and not giving a second thought to the consequences of what you're about to do will work.

The current plethora of scientific algorithms that are constantly thrown around about what you must and must not do are exhausting. How do you "manage space" when you have a crowd like this around your vehicle? Give me a drill. In fact, show me one drill that addresses this, and I'll show you someone who has never experienced it. There is no one "drill"... All you can plan/train for is a messy, ugly, and entirely "… in the moment…" application of a response option - aresponse option that you may never use again, because no two situations are ever the same.

Waving your firearm around, as a de-escalation method doesn't work (not that I should need to reference this incident to prove that). If you draw it - use it and use it until (a) you are no longer able to. Or (b) until you have created sufficient time/space to bail and run (not that this would have necessarily worked for Howes and Woods either, by virtue of the hostility of the neighborhood they were in - but it MIGHT have given them more of a chance).

If a crowd has surrounded your vehicle and you cannot drive through/reverse out and you have to bail - what door(s) do you bail from? Do you bail from different doors? Or the same door or even the same side of the vehicle? I can't answer that for you because that will only be decided when something like this happens. All I'm doing here is deep-diving this incident, in order to suggest "options" of response. You have to have more options than the usual suspects preaching their unrealistic Sunday sermon of "... drive through/reverse out..."

Training for fighting in, from and around vehicles has got to be based on worst case scenario and it doesn't get much worse than this horrendous example.

PARTING THOUGHTS

To clarify -Iam a huge advocate of the drive through/reverse out option, but I don't base any of our "practical" course content on that single response option because the reality, chaos and unpredictability of a streetscene environment is completely different to a skid-pan or airfield. And, in the event that you cannot drive through/reverse out, you still need "options.” But these options have got to be based on "something" - they cannot simply be pulled from thin air because you think they'll work.

Fighting in, from and around vehicles is chaotic, messy, and confusing and if I could give some examples of how easily that confusion manifests itself, it is this: At what point do you/can you, decide to go noisy/initiate the contact? Do you wait/hold off, to see if the situation improves? (I held off/bottled it once and it almost ended badly for me - that was my mindset-change-wake-upcall moment.) How do you know when to bail? Who else is in your vehicle that you are responsible for? What kit/equipment, in your vehicle do you need to take with you? Who grabs it? This is a sore point with me, as too many people carry too much shit that they don't need and spread it around inside their vehicle like they're arranging their office desk. Once you bail, and you go noisy, how do you physically identify the other people in your team, in amongst a crowd of running, panicking, people?

How do you communicate with the other members of your team, when you cannot physically see them because of other vehicles, buildings, obstacles? All that needs to be trained in.

Our training is by no means perfect because there are no perfect options. Truth is they all might suck as much as the next one. Our training is not pretty or choreographed - it is messy and fluid. But what our training IS - is that's it's based on horrible, shitty realities of horrible shitty incidents.

Our Hard Extraction Level 1 - 3 and our Personal Defense (Vehicles) courses, respectively, address these horrible, shitty realities.

Rigidity of thought and the rigid application of "drills" should be avoided at all costs. Both will kill you dead.

CAVEAT -It gives me no pleasure whatsoever, to use the Howes & Woods incident of 19 March 1988, in Northern Ireland, for explanatory purposes and for anyone that knew them personally. I hope I do not cause upset or offense by using, what happened to these guys, as a means to debunk some of the nonsensical statements being opined surrounding this kind of training and the face-palming offerings being delivered by some training providers in this subject.

Neil Davis was an undercover soldier with a British intelligence gathering organization in Northern Ireland and went on to work in a similar capacity in other parts of the world, before establishing Go Noisy, with his partner, Tsarina Youhnovska, in 2018.

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