I saw a rocket flying at me but I kept on firing.. it passed right between my legs; REVEALED: THE SAS HERO OF SIERRA LEONE WHO WILL BE HONOURED BY THE QUEEN.

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BULLETS scythed the air like a blizzard of red hot fire. Rockets screamed overhead and exploded, shattering concrete and brick on every side.Will Scully curled his muscular six foot body into the foetal position, wrapped his hands around his head and thought: "I'm going to die."He had been alone on the roof of the Mammy Yoko hotel for eight hours in the remorseless sun, single-handedly fighting off an attack by 250 rebel troops after last year's army coup in Sierra Leone.Over 1,000 expatriates from a rainbow of nations were huddled in the hotel praying for rescue. They had fled there from their homes when the capital, Freetown, descended into chaos.Outside in the streets rebel soldiers had been joined by crazed bushmen in an orgy of rape, looting and murder.Will had watched from his hiding place behind the parapet of the roof while the rebels butchered a young man and cut out his heart.His imagination painted vivid pictures of what they would do to the rich westerners if they stormed the hotel.Only he, a veteran of ten years in the SAS, was capable of keeping them at bay.Yet he was absolutely at the end of his tether. Dehydrated, hungry and tired beyond belief, he lay beneath the blanket of fire waiting for the end."I just thought - I'm not going to get out of this alive. I've bitten off more than I can chew here," he says."I've been shot at many times and I've shot back at people, but that moment was the most desperate I've ever had. I just didn't know where to go any more."I didn't have anything else to throw at them. There were lots of them and they were close, only 150 metres away, and I couldn't see any assistance coming from anywhere.I HAD been fine until they got this big heavy machine gun. They had got really good and seemed to know where I was."The rounds were piercing the parapet like paper."The rounds were intensifying. They were putting 50 bullets in the gun and just pulling the trigger and they were ricocheting off the air conditioning system then bouncing back towards me, pinging all over the place."I couldn't move because it was like sheets of fire coming over and rockets were coming right, left and centre and blowing everything up, showering me with bits of concrete."I couldn't imagine getting out of it. I just imagined running out of ammunition and them coming screaming through the hotel."The most bizarre things go through your mind. I thought for a second, what would it be like if they cut me up. I was just waiting for something to burn through me. I knew it would be like being hit by an express train and I was just waiting for the thump."You get a tightening feeling, right in the scrotum. That is fear."I said sorry to my kids and sorry to my wife. I thought I had better say it then before I hadn't got any more head left to say it with." While the story of British High Commissioner Peter Penfold's` role in arranging the evacuation of the westerners from the Mammy Yoko hotel after the coup last May is well known, Will's role in the drama has never been told before.The story he relates in a book he's just written called Once A Pilgrim * is one of selfless courage worthy of a Die Hard movie.His actions have deservedly won him the Queen's Gallantry Medal which will be presented to him at Buckingham Palace in July.But if they ever make a movie from his book its star should be someone like Mel Gibson, who plays men who are more than just fighting machines.For Will, 41, has been many things besides a soldier and is currently making a living as a TV actor. A friend offered him a small part in last year's cult BBC2 hit Operation Good Guys and he's about to expand his role in a new series.The London-born son of a printer, Will followed his father's trade until he joined the Territorial Army - and decided that was the life for him.He was in the SAS from 1979 to1989 and was involved in most of their well-known exploits, none of which he will talk about.Then he worked as a security consultant and war photographer. Though married to a long-suffering wife, Veronica, and with two sons, Daniel, 21, and Maxwell, six, who still live in Hereford, Will was always on the look out for adventure in the world's most dangerous spots.So he accepted a job in Sierra Leone, partly guarding geologists who were prospecting for gold and partly helping to train militia who would be loyal to the democratically-elected President Kabbah.But within days of his arrival he decided the job was not viable and was waiting for his ticket home when the army rebelled.Faced with staying in his camp in the jungle or driving to the capital, Freetown, Will typically headed straight for the action and found himself in the middle of mayhem. "I popped up right in the centre of Freetown to find all hell breaking loose. There were women screaming, women being raped, shooting, robberies, looting, bonfires in the streets, trucks screaming up and down, rockets going off," he says."So I pulled my baseball cap right down over my eyes and wandered into town."Later I was advised to join the other westerners in the Mammy Yoko and found it in complete chaos."It was quite funny really, like a movie. There were four or five hundred people in reception with all their worldly goods clustered around them."There were women and children everywhere, one woman was having an epileptic fit, a group of women were crying, men were arguing, people running in every conceivable direction and now and then the hotel manager, a short guy from Mississippi, would walk through very calmly with bits of paper in his hand while about 30 people crowded round him trying to get his attention."Feeling responsible for finding and evacuating his geologists, Will missed several chances to leave while the tension spiralled ever upwards.Several times he braved the murderous chaos in the town to fetch food for the hotel and to hire a boat to escape up the coast.SOON Will was devising a plan of action in the event of an evacuation or an attack.He recruited marshals, wrote out instructions for posting up round the hotel and organised a team of Lebanese cooks to make a meal for a thousand from the food he had fetched.At midnight everyone sat down to their first meal in two days and morale rocketed."It wasn't a case of putting myself in front of everybody," Will says. "It was just that I felt capable of doing it and others weren't."They weren't used to extreme circumstances and I was. It was a case of, if you don't do it, nobody's going to."I was supposed to be leaving at six the next morning on the boat, but I knew then I couldn't leave like a thief in the night having done all that. "I couldn't have lived with myself if people had been looking round for me and it was, 'Oh, he's gone."That wouldn't have sat right with me. I suppose it's that old adage - when the going gets tough, the tough get going."You might stand around doing nothing for years, and there will only be that one moment when you're worth your salt."That moment just happened to be in Sierra Leone for me."Before he had time to tell the geologists that he had decided to stay, it was taken out of his hands.At 5am the next morning, while he was shaving after three hours sleep, he heard the characteristic clatter of approaching gunfire.The next minute the Nigerian guards were crashing into the hotel, dragging with them three wounded and bleeding soldiersWill knew they were in for a fight.He headed for the roof to find Nigerian soldiers milling around, or fumbling with a rocket launcher or machine gun."I could see the rebel soldiers arriving in droves. Their trucks were coming up the road and they were setting up and firing at the hotel like a turkey shoot," says Will."The firing was gathering pace. They were assembling a big heavy, anti- aircraft machine gun. "More troops arrived and there was a hail of bullets and rockets coming from everywhere, once every ten seconds."It was like bonfire night, some hitting the hotel, going through the windows and causing fires, but fortunately not killing anyone."The only other westerner on the roof was Major Lincoln Jopp who couldn't join in the fighting because, as a serving officer, he would have involved the British Government in the action.So Will fired some rockets and took over the machine gun.After a couple of hours the rebels had closed the distance from 450 metres to 200 metres, sneaking through the banana plantation next to the hotel and firing their rockets right through the parapet walls. As Will and Lincoln were standing in an empty water tower on the roof, a friendly Nigerian soldier fired a rocket at the rebels - almost knocking them all out with the back blast and recoil in the enclosed space.As they shook the dust off themselves they looked up - and saw an enemy rocket heading towards them."I didn't have time to react," says Will. "I carried on firing, and when I looked down there was a big hole in the wall and my feet were covered in concrete. It had gone straight through my legs. I looked round. Lincoln had a flap of skin hanging from his head and the Nigerians were heading down the stairs."It was about 9am and from then on, Will was on his own.Crawling uncomfortably from one side of the roof to the other, he fired through drainage holes, trying to convince the rebels they were up against more than one man.As the rebels pressed closer he raced down the stairs to collect bullets from the Nigerian soldiers cowering in the stairwell."None of them would come to help.Apart from a couple of bottles of water, he had nothing to eat or drink while he sweated in the fierce midday sun.It was about 1pm when he was curled in the foetal position, waiting to die. But then a moment of calm came, and he seized it"I like handling fear. That's why I go and do the things I do. So I thought to myself, 'I'll handle this'."I suppose they had to change the belt, so I turned round and started firing again."The opportunity was there and I took it because I'm a fighter."It was another three hours before the Red Cross negotiated a ceasefire and a truck with the familiar red and white symbol came slowly down the road.Will had the truck in his sights and was within a hairsbreadth of shooting his only chance of rescue when something in his SAS-trained mind made him pause and look again."I was ultimately relieved. It was like the cavalry arriving. I am not a religious person, but I thanked God when I saw that cross.I WENT down to where everyone was sheltering in the basement, and people parted like the Red Sea."It was then I realised I must have looked like the anti-Christ. I was completely black from being blown up and I was covered in Lincoln's blood."Quickly, the expatriates were shepherded out of the Mammy Yoko and down to the beach where they spent another anxious night before helicopters from the US aircraft carrier Kearsage arrived in the morning to take them off.In the evening in the bar of the beach hotel a lot of men came to clap Will on the back and buy him a beer.He says he didn't like it."But there was one woman in her late 30s who came up to me and said, 'Thank you very much for what you did.'"I was really moved. It meant much more to me than all the back slapping."Amazingly, Will's involvement with Sierra Leone didn't end with the evacuation.Over the following weeks he ran many operations by helicopter and boat to bring out more westerners and once got shipwrecked and had to swim six kilometres to shore.I asked him if he he was afraid that one day he might find he has used up every one of his nine lives."Oh, well," he told me, "I prefer to LIVE them all before they're gone."*Once A Pilgrim by Will Scully is published by Headline, priced pounds 14.99. To order the book at a special price of pounds 12.99 (p&p free) call Bookpoint on 01235 827750 quoting reference 50SCULLY.