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Auction: 17002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 357

14 INTELLIGENCE COMPANY:If Ian Fleming's 'James Bond' exists anywhere today, he is to be found within the ranks of 14 Company. Highly trained in skills including lock-picking, advanced weapon handling, covert surveillance and infra-red photography, a typical 'Operator' has at his or her disposal an arsenal of techniques and weapons unmatched in any other theatre. No other U.K. government or military agency is so comprehensively trained, armed and equipped to undertake individually, or in flexible teams, the wide variety of covert intelligence-gathering tasks that are required by a democracy in pursuit of the terrorist. As a precaution against capture, Operators never learn the true identity of any of their colleagues. Male and female volunteers are drawn from all ranks of the three services. The selection process and subsequent training course are the most physically, intellectually and emotionally demanding anywhere in the world.'The Operators: Inside 14 Intelligence Company - The Army's Top Secret Elite, by James Rennie, refers.BRIXMIS:'The [BRIXMIS] Tour N.C.O. was Sergeant Tony Haw, Green Howards and the Tour Driver was, I think, Corporal Tony Parkinson, R.C.T. We were watching the Soviet ACRV-2 artillery observation vehicle from about one kilometre away when it suddenly 'fired' its range-finding laser at us and we were illuminated by the reflection off the car's windows. We immediately put down our binoculars and cameras because we knew that these types of ruby lasers could burn holes in camera shutters and in eyeballs. Fortunately the morning was slightly foggy and this probably reduced the risk to us. In any case, Technical Intelligence Army, the Defence Intelligence Staff's technical experts, came rushing out to Berlin to ask us about this incident.'Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (PHP), refers; www.php.isn.ethz.ch, by permission of the Centre for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the National Security Archive at the George Washington University on behalf of the PHP network.The unique and remarkable 'Special Ops' Northern Ireland Q.G.M. and 'Iron Curtain' B.E.M. group of seven awarded to Warrant Officer Class 1 A. R. Haw, The Green Howards, a member of 14 Intelligence Company and the Cold War spy mission BRIXMISA veteran of six tours of regular duty in Northern Ireland in 1970-75, he was awarded the Q.G.M. for his subsequent - highly sensitive - undercover work in 14 Intelligence Company. As an S.A.S. trained plain clothes operative - likely armed with a Walter PPK in an ankle holster - he worked closely with members of the Special Forces on covert surveillance duties at the height of the Troubles in the mid-to-late 70s: the ultimate price paid by several of his compromised colleagues in the same period - Nairac, G.C. among them - serves as a reminder of the extraordinary risks faced by 14 Int.'s operatives and to the shocking nature of their potential fateThe story behind Haw's subsequent award of the B.E.M. might equally have been taken from the pages of one of Ian Fleming's 'James Bond' adventures: instead - and proving that fact is often stranger than fiction - it appears in Tony Geraghty's factual account of Britain's most daring Cold War spy mission BRIXMIS. As part of a three-man team, Haw penetrated a Soviet tank gunnery range in East Germany on May Day 1981 and came away with photographs of the interior of a 'shiny sample of the new T-64 Tank': an American operative who later undertook a similar operation for the T-80 Tank was shot deadQueen's Gallantry Medal (24111168 Cpl. Anthony R. Haw, Green Howards), in its Royal Mint case of issue; British Empire Medal (Military), E.II.R. (24111168 Sergeant Anthony R. Haw, Q.G.M., Green Howards), officially impressed naming on pre-prepared ground; Accumulated Campaign Service Medal (24111168 Cpl. A. R. Haw, Green Howard

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