Nick Downie, who has died of Covid-19 in South Africa aged 74, was a former SAS soldier widely regarded as one of the world’s best combat cameramen.
Downie had been a professional soldier for six years, three-and-a-half of them in the SAS, and also fought as an irregular alongside Bedouins in the Sultanate of Oman against Marxist-led insurgents from 1972 to 1974, and with Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Second Iraqi – Kurdish War (1974-75).
From 1971 the SAS were involved in suppressing the Dhofar Rebellion, a clandestine war in Oman against communist-backed insurgents from South Yemen. Downie was sent to Oman as a trooper, but after a while decided to buy himself out to join the Sultan of Oman’s Yemeni exile Bedouin irregulars as a contract mercenary.
Promoted to sergeant, he was put in charge of a unit with orders to penetrate deep into South Yemen to carry out acts of sabotage and foment insurrection among the tribes. On one raid from their base on the edge of the Empty Quarter they captured a large fort, 80 miles across the border. After the garrison surrendered, Downie decided to blow it up “as a demonstration that we had arrived”. His calculations showed the need for 300 lb of gelignite, so he laid 1,000 lb. The fort, he recalled, “literally vanished”.
The demolition of the fort and the subsequent success of “Nick’s Guides”, a camel unit he founded, so impressed the Sultan that he wrote out a cheque for £500,000. However, disillusioned by what he saw as obstructionism by the British officer corps, Downie returned to London, though he felt vindicated when his irregulars mutinied with the aim of having him brought back as their leader.’
A soldier's tale
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