HEROES!
Miracle escape of the new Rorke’s Drift Paras: Cut-off, surrounded and outnumbered – the incredible untold story of the 88 British soldiers who spent 56 days holding off 500 Taliban fighters… and survived
A mix of 88 soldiers from the Paratroopers and Royal Irish regiments held out against 500 Taliban soldiers for almost two months in the remote outpost of Musa Qala in Afghanistan (pictured main, left inset). Although some fell, such as Lance Corporal Jon Hetherington (right inset), the unit’s near miraculous survival has been described as a latter day Rorke’s Drift, evocative of the 1879 siege in which 140 British soldiers held off a Zulu force of 3,000, later immortalised in the blockbuster film starring Michael Caine. Yet today their heroism remains little known, not least because the Ministry of Defence has never permitted the full story of what happened there ten years ago this month to be told.