Interview: Corporal-Major Mick Flynn, Britain's most decorated soldier on his return to Afghanistan

Published on Sunday 20 June 2010 12:01

Britain's most decorated front-line soldier is preparing to return to Afghanistan for the third time. Now 50, why does Mick Flynn keep risking his life? It's not a question he finds easy to answer

THE temperature is nudging 40C, dust and smoke from gun-fire and grenades make it almost impossible to see and the crack of bullets fills the air, drowned out only by the sound of rocket-propelled grenades exploding, and you're quickly running out of options. There was a plan but it's no use now. All you've got is fear and adrenaline and the knowledge that what you do now could make the difference between living and dying.

It is July 2006. Squadron Corporal-Major Mick Flynn and his men are in their Scimitar light tank on the dusty plains of Northern Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Their orders are to travel from Camp Bastion to Musa Qala to beat back Taleban fighters who have an allied garrison under siege. It will be dangerous, of course, but that's what D Squadron, of the Royal Armoured Corps, do; that's their job.

Only this time, things don't quite go as planned. The journey from Camp Bastion is difficult. The convoy travels off road to avoid Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) but then, with warnings of mines on the route, they have to do much of the journey sweeping on foot ahead of their vehicles in the searing heat. By the time they reach Musa Qala, they are back inside their armoured vehicles. But as they travel along a rutted road hemmed in by mud walls on either side, they realise only too late that they have driven into an ambush.

What happens next results in the deaths of three soldiers – Lance Corporal Ross Nicholls, 27, Captain Alex Eida, 29, and Lieutenant Ralph Johnson, 24 – and devastating injuries to a fourth, Trooper Martyn Compton, also 24. It also results in Flynn's second medal for bravery, the Military Cross, to add to the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross earned in 2003 in Iraq, making him the most highly decorated British front-line soldier.

The Scimitar Flynn was travelling in was hit by rocket-propelled grenade and heavy machine-gun fire. It was damaged but withstood the blast. The vehicle behind and the four soldiers in it weren't so lucky. It was hit and engulfed in flames. Flynn made the decision to go back into the ambush to find the soldiers. With his two crew, they found the bodies of the soldiers who had been killed, and Trooper Compton still clinging to life.

"When I first saw him on the ground he was totally burned black, charred," says Flynn. "I thought he was dead, I honestly did. He was gone. His leg was at an angle and, for some reason I thought I'd move his leg to straighten it. When I did he screamed. I couldn't believe it, he was alive, so then we got him out of there."

Flynn is a man with a reputation. It's not just the medals, in an army career that's spanned four decades; he's served in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan and seen more than his share of life and death situations. He's written a book, Bullet Magnet, about his experiences. In September, he will be sent to Afghanistan for the third time.

Since 2001, the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan has reached 298. Prime Minister David Cameron, who visited British troops in Helmand recently, has said he wants British soldiers out of the country when the time is right, but he also warned of further casualties over the summer as the "so-called fighting season resumes". Why would Flynn, knowing that, and knowing all he knows of combat, want to go back?

"As soon as you get there you start counting down the days," he says. "But then, when you're back here, some of us, the war junkies, can't wait to get back out on tour. It's what they enjoy."

I don't make any pretence that I understand. How could anyone not in the forces possibly comprehend? For his part, Flynn is willing to offer the best explanation he can, but there's also something in the way he speaks that acknowledges the difficulty. Later, when he tells me his wife, Shelley, doesn't want him to go back to Afghanistan, I realise it's an explanation and a response he's used to.

"It's an adrenaline rush," he says, looking slightly uncomfortable. "You can't really fix why you do it but you just want to do it."

At 50, Flynn is tall and fit-looking, but somehow he's not what I expect. What should a top-flight combat soldier (Flynn has been known by the nicknames Mad Mick and the Beast of Basra because of his tendency to end up at the centre of the action) look like? Buzz cut, barely suppressed anger-management issues? Maybe I thought he'd be full of bravado and gung-ho stories of exploits behind enemy lines. Or perhaps he'd look like someone haunted by what they've seen: brutality, destruction, death.

Flynn isn't quite any of these things. He's self-deprecating and a bit shy. The nicknames might make sense in the tabloids or in the barracks, but they don't fit here. He's quietly spoken and quick to smile and he has old-fashioned manners – he's the type of man who stands up when I do, who helps me on with my jacket. But there is, of course, something else.

His conversation roams over topics that, for most of us, are as unspeakable as they are unimaginable. He has killed in battle, he's seen colleagues burned and shot and maimed, civilians caught in the crossfire. For people who've never seen conflict, to speak to Flynn is to glimpse how a combat soldier thinks, an approach at once impressive and incomprehensible. He's a family man, devoted to his wife and three children, but he's just as devoted to the army. He's honest about war, about enjoying the fear, the "cold blooded" anger necessary to make you fight. What's less expected is that he is likeable, his lack of introspection understandable and necessary for a man who, in a few weeks' time, will be in the thick of battle.

What is perhaps even more interesting is that, for Mick Flynn, things might have been very different. Born in Neath, Wales, in 1960, he grew up in Cardiff. Growing up was tough. His father Vince worked on the roads and the first lesson he taught his son was how to handle himself in a fight. There were no hugs and kissing, no "mollycoddling" as Flynn puts it, just how to throw a decent punch and stick the head on someone without knocking yourself out.

Like plenty of other working-class boys in the mid-1970s, Flynn got into a bit of trouble. It was nothing too serious but it wasn't looking very promising. "It was either the army or prison," he says with a wry smile. The fact that it was the army was accident rather than intention. Out larking with a couple of mates, a downpour drove them to look for shelter in the army careers office.

"I had no intention of joining," he shrugs. "But once in, you become institutionalised. I was missing that security and I found it in the forces. The army straightened me out. It took me in, knocked the stuffing out of me and then it built me back up. Hopefully it brings out good qualities in you. It doesn't brainwash you, I'm still the same person, I still make my own decisions."

Stationed in Northern Ireland, he was caught up in his first skirmish, on Belfast's Falls Road, and for the first time he saw a colleague shot and killed in front of him. It was a "massive wake-up call".

After that there was the Falklands where he killed for the first time. Ask him what makes him able to cope and he doesn't hesitate. "You've got to be able to think fast and act twice as quick as you can think," he says. "It's like an instinct. I know what I've got to do."

Flynn left the army in 1993 after 15 years. Less than ten years later, he went back. At the age of 41, he entered at a lower rank, had to repeat parts of the training. It didn't matter to him. It was where he wanted to be.

When he was younger, following his own mind is what got Flynn into trouble. As he got older, it's what made him a distinguished soldier. And though his willingness to trust his own judgment has brought him into conflict with superior officers, it has also prevented him from actions that would have had catastrophic consequences. In Iraq, he was ordered to open fire on a group of armed men. Flynn disobeyed. Instinct told him the men didn't look right. As it turned out they were members of a civilian police force. "I so easily could've slaughtered nine of them," he says. "I could have machine-gunned them down."

But there have been other occasions, different decisions and very different outcomes. "I did open up on a 14-year-old kid who had an AK-47," he adds. "He was on top of a roof and he was trying to shoot one of our guys on top of the tank. That was right. If I hadn't have killed him, he would've killed one of our guys. But when we got to him he couldn't have been much more than 14." Flynn's children were around the age of the boy he killed. That must have made it even more difficult, I offer.

"You've got to put things into perspective," he says matter-of-factly. "You're there to do a job."

Flynn has three years left before he can leave the army. He says he can't wait for his time to be up, and I believe him. He's going to buy a yacht and sail round the world. But there's something that makes me think he'll miss it. He'll miss what has been, albeit with breaks, his life.

And, of course, you can't escape the poignancy of talking about leaving when there's still a six-month tour to do. Reports come in, what seems like every day, of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. If anyone knows the dangers of conflict it's Flynn, and yet he plans resolutely for his life after he finishes. It's the kind of compartmentalised thinking he's relied on throughout his career.

"If I do take the bullet, then I'm covered, my wife is sorted financially. But, of course, she'll say that's not what she wants, she wants me to get out of the army. Even after all these years. She didn't want me to go last time and she doesn't want me to go this time." He smiles. "It has a massive effect on family and it's not really fair. But I do plan to leave the army and not in a box. Not in a box."

Bullet Magnet is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 18.99

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 20 June.