BOOK REVIEW / A soldier decorated, but not decorous: Bravo Two Zero - Andy McNab: Bantam, pounds 14.99

THERE is a particular British weakness for tales of heroic failure, all the better if the disaster in question is military. Traditionally, the Dunkirk spirit of these ripping yarns was exemplified by the officer class. But Bravo Two Zero is the tale of a Special Air Service patrol in the Gulf War which was most definitely a failure, despite the heroism of its members.

In recent years the rank and file of the SAS has become a kind of monastic order dedicated to certain working class values, in which men suchas Sergeant Andy McNab (a pseudonym) are venerated. The sergeant exhibits both the good and bad traits of this secret military brotherhood: a skilled, intuitive soldier, outstandingly fit and often funny, he also avoids inconvenient facts or emotions, never thinks about his violence and shows military judgement which, hindsight suggests, was often flawed.

Sgt McNab's mission was plagued by cock-ups. They had not been informed that it would be cold; they were landed by helicopter too close to Iraqi units; they had been given the wrong frequencies for their radio and the terrain was too exposed. Little wonder that another patrol commander took one look at the part of western Iraq in which they were meant to operate and ordered his men straight back to Saudi Arabia.

It is clear that Sgt McNab should have done the same. Instead, the author's eight-man section ended up supplying three of the four SAS soldiers who died in action during the Gulf war, and four of the five captured. Only one managed the 300km trek to the sanctuary of Syria.

In the course of trying to escape, there were a number of searing firefights, well described by Sgt McNab. Previously learnt drills, he explains, 'all go to rat shit when you're actually under fire . . . you want to make the biggest hole possible to hide in. You'd get your spoon out and start digging if it would help.'

However many Iraqis they killed - the author makes an uncheckable and slightly suspect claim of 250 enemy casualties - not a single Iraqi life was taken in the fulfilment of Bravo Two Zero's actual orders. Other SAS veterans tell me it was an observation mission, although the author claims it was more ambitious than that. All their killing and the suffering they endured were part of their struggle to survive, irrelevant to the wider war.

Sgt McNab is a master of the non-stop grot and heavy irony in the face of danger which distinguish the British squaddies' sense of humour. Shortly after he and another member of Bravo Two Zero are captured and are being driven to another jail by the Iraqis, Mr McNab tells us, 'one of the blokes in front farted. It was an outrageous, really putrid bastard. That's nice, I thought, on top of everything else I've now got to chew somebody else's shit.' His comrade Dinger inhales 'as deeply as if he was on the seafront at Yarmouth' and says: 'Lovely, good stuff'. If I'd been as deep in the stuff as Andy and Dinger, I would have prized very highly their ability to carry on laughing.

After eight days of suffering, Sgt McNab gave in and told the Iraqis much of what they wanted to know. It's apparent that one of the main reasons he did not do so earlier was that he did not want to seem weak in the eyes of his mate Dinger, who was 'much harder than me'.

Wisely, the author does not repeat claims made that other SAS sections succeeded in destroying several Scud missiles: the evidence of United Nations teams suggests they failed completely in this task. Sgt McNab received the Distinguished Conduct Medal, part of the shower of decorations for the SAS in general and his patrol in particular. Evidently they did not get them for results, rather for the heroic way in which they killed when the odds were against them and endured their suffering in Iraqi jails.

Bravo Two Zero is a fable of the modern British hero, a man who would walk tall into any local. Being hard, keeping a sense of humour and making fun of foreigners are the attributes he prizes: the purpose and consequences of the violence appear almost irrelevant.