Major Phil Ashby

Phil Ashby is a genuine hero, while serving in the Royal Marines he volunteered for a 6-month tour with the United Nations as a Peace Keeper in war-torn Sierra Leone. Rebel forces brought the mission to a violent and bloody end when they restarted the country's civil war, turning on the UN's representatives, torturing and butchering them and taking over 500 hostages. Phil and other UN workers found themselves in the middle of this ambush and surrounded in a small compound. After four days of physical and psychological bombardment, including throwing the blood-stained uniforms of fellow UN workers over the walls they realised there was no hope of rescue. Phil came up with an escape plan and they escaped using no weapons, no water and no food. Phil led them all to safety, through some of the world's toughest jungle terrain for which he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. On his return to Britain, he discovered he was paralysed from the waist down from a virus lodged in his spinal cord. He has recovered now to the knee but has had to re qualify as a Mountain Leader and learn to climb with no feeling in his feet. Born and brought up on the West Coast of Scotland, Phil was Commissioned into The Royal Marines at just seventeen and a half, making him the youngest officer in HM Armed Forces.

He has climbed all over the world and survived an epic 2-man rowing expedition in the Arctic Ocean. He holds the World Record for the first -and only - human powered circumnavigation of the polar island of SpitsBergen. One thousand miles of rowing through ice floes for eight weeks in a 17-foot, open-topped wooden boat. He survived becoming trapped in the pack ice, a polar bear attack, hurricane force winds and capsizing in icy water. After a further fifteen months of Royal Marines officer training in 1992, Phil won the Commando medal for 'Leadership, Unselfishness, Cheerfulness, Determination and Courage'. In 1995 Phil was selected to join the elite Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre, completing eleven months of arduous Mountain Leader training, the longest and hardest infantry course in the British Armed Forces. He is also a qualified Jungle Warfare instructor. He has served in command of Royal Marines around the world from the mountains of Alaska and Norway to the jungles of Brunei and Belize. He was promoted to Major at the age of 28, making him the youngest officer of that rank in the British Armed Forces. He has a Master's Degree in Defence Technology from Cambridge University. Phil's story was dramatised in the documentary series for Bravo 'Banged Up Abroad' he has was featured in BBC TV's 'SAS-Survival Secrets' and he helped lead an expedition of youngsters for Children's BBC TV's award winning 'Serious Arctic'.