Satire:b Major B.S. completes Omission Impossible

Major B.S. completes Omission Impossible

Adventure tour supremo Major Jeremy Billycock-Smythe promised to get his
chums out of a prisoner of war camp in the former Soviet republic of
Chechnya. Yesterday he delivered.

"Um, there were some minor hitches," he admitted during an emotional press conference.

"But as you can see," he said, looking around at the beaming faces behind
him," we have rescued 12 very happy people."

The rescue was a mission of mercy by Major Billycock-Smythe, a former
British SAS officer and the principal of Trojan Travel Tours, with volunteers from other Australian travel agencies.

On August 22 last year, Major Billycock-Smythe "oh do call me Major BS, old boy, everyone does" announced that his adventure travel firm was offering guided tank tours to battlefields around the world, starting with Chechnya.
Unfortunately, the first intake of war-zone tourists were all captured and
put into a prisoner-of-war camp.
Major BS, who headed the tour, escaped and flew to Australia where he has since been involved in several other misadventures, including getting a party of tourists lost in the Nullabor Desert.

Early last month, however, Major BS appeared at a press conference in
Sydney , wearing jungle fatigues and camouflage paint, and announced that he was planning to go back in and rescue the captured people in Chechnya.

"I take my duty of care very seriously," he said, watery eyed. "Those
people might have started out as paying clients but we developed a great camaraderie on the battlefield. They became my chums and they trusted me. I owe them this."
He brought with him to that press conference a letter smuggled out of a
prisoner-of-war camp by an international aid worker.
It was from one of the captured tourists and outlined the filth and squalor the captured tourists tolerated daily, the deprivation they suffered, the
lack of food in their camp and the scarcity of clean drinking water,
sanitary products and medicine.
Written with a smuggled eye-liner and obviously scrawled desperately, it
finished up with: "Please get us out. Someone. Anyone. Please. Oh God, please."

"How could I ignore that?" Major BS asked yesterday at the same press
conference venue. "It just made us want to try harder. It made us put our
lives on the line."

Major BS, at six foot two, is an imposing figure who has fought in six wars on three continents.
Admittedly, all were as a mercenary, after he left the SAS in strained
circumstances which he refuses to discuss — and the sides which employed him lost all six times but he puts those defeats down to other people's incompetence, not his own.

He whipped his travel agent guerillas into shape at a secret location at
Darling Harbour in Sydney.
"I have never led such a motivated, dedicated and enthusiastic group of
people," Major B.S. said yesterday.
"Some cynics have said they did it for the frequent flyer points and the
shopping haven stopover on the way there, but I know differently.
"I know the sacrifices they made. They put those prisoners ahead of
themselves and ahead of their own families."

He grimaced.

"I have I tell you, it was hard. Very hard.

"The cynics said it couldn't be done. They said it was Mission Impossible.

"But we showed them. We did it. I am sooo proud of my colleagues.

"Our number-one problem was that we had to complete the whole operation in the dark.

"We had to pinpoint the camp in the dark, get in there in the dark by
cutting through razor wire and digging tunnels through mud, grab our people
and get out of there in the dark, all the while covering our tracks without
being detected.

"You have no idea how hard that was. How dirty it was."

He grimaced again.

"And as I said, there were some hitches.
"Well, two actually.

"Firstly, in our confusion in the dark, we went to the wrong camp.

"Secondly, not knowing we were confused, we rescued the wrong people."

He turned again to the smiling faces behind him.

"Um, I have absolutely no idea who these people are," he said. "I just know they are 12 very happy people."

©August 22, 2001 John Martin. All Rights Reserved

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