SAS sergeant Vince Phillips, who died on the infamous Gulf War mission Bravo Two Zero, has been vindicated by a new book.

The champion marathon runner from Walcot was criticised in best-selling accounts of the mission published in the 1990s.

They said mistakes made by Sgt Phillips, 36, compromised the patrol and even suggested he was a coward.

But a new book about the most famous mission in special forces history tells a different story.

The Real Bravo Two Zero, by SAS veteran Michael Asher, retraces the steps of the eight-man patrol and comes to some startling conclusions.

He finds major discrepancies between the two survivors' accounts: Bravo Two Zero, by Andy McNab, and The One that Got Away, by Chris Ryan.

And he finds that the allegations made against Vince Phillips don't stand up.

The conclusion he comes to is simple: Vince Phillips was not a coward and he did not com-promise the patrol.

If anything he suggests McNab and Ryan deserve criticism for breaking the SAS code of honour, denigrating a fallen comrade and for exaggerating their exploits to boost sales of their respective books.

For Vince's brothers Jeff and Steve and his mother Veronica the publication of Michael Asher's book helps bring to a close a devastating episode for the family.

Jeff, a former soldier himself, said: "At long last the truth is coming out that Vince was not a coward.

"After the way he was portrayed within those books, especially by Ryan, we can now see that Vince was used as a scapegoat for all the mistakes.

Chris Ryan's book was particularly critical of Vince and Jeff, 44, is still angry at the way his brother was portrayed.

He said: "I don't call him a soldier after the pain and hurt he's put my family through for the last 11 years. It has been hell.

"We've had people come up to us in the pub or in the street and say, 'Your brother screwed up there didn't he?'

"Now we know that's not true.

"We've had a hell of a last 11 years and it's nice to know now that Vince's reputation is being restored."

Vince's father Jim was a staunch supporter of his son and campaigned tirelessly to restore his good name. But he died of cancer in 2000 aged 67 and never saw his wish fulfilled.

BRAVO Two Zero was the codename of an eight-man SAS patrol which dropped behind enemy lines in January 1991 on a mission to destroy Iraqi Scud missile launchers.

Three men died, including Vince Phillips who suffered hypother-mia.

Four others were captured and only one escaped.

Sgt Phillips left a wife and two children as well as his parents and brothers in Swindon.

Michael Asher interviewed eye-witnesses in Iraq and retraced the steps of the patrol using McNab and Ryan's books as reference points.

He found that McNab and Ryan appear to have exaggerated the level of engagement with the enemy.

They reported taking out tanks with rocket launchers, mowing down hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and killing men with their bare hands.

But none of these exploits were mentioned by the pair in their official debriefings to their Regimental Sgt Major Peter Ratcliffe who was interviewed by Asher.

Things started going wrong for Bravo Two Zero when commun-ication equipment failed to work.

The decision was made to abort the mission and go back to a pre-arranged helicopter pick-up point.

But after being detected by the enemy the SAS men were forced to try to fight their way out of the country on foot at the mercy of both freezing winter desert conditions and overwhelming enemy numbers.

According to Chris Ryan in The One that Got Away, Vince Phillips caused the patrol to be detected by a shepherd boy because he broke cover.

Ten years on Asher has incredibly tracked down the shepherd concerned who is convinced that he did not see the patrol.

Their position was given away later by a local farmer driving a bulldozer.

McNab blames Vince for the split of the patrol into groups of three and five, three days into the mission.

He says he failed to pass a message to halt along the line because he was in a "numbed" condition.

But Asher puts the blame for this back onto McNab who, as patrol leader, should have passed the message on.

He also points out that McNab could have avoided the split if he had followed the normal procedure of arranging an emergency rendez-vous point.

Most importantly for the Phillips family Asher finds no evidence for Ryan's denigration of his fallen comrade.

Chris Ryan's depiction of Vince as indecisive and cowardly is dismissed in the book by other surviving members of the patrol.

'Stan', who was one of the last to see Vince alive, said: "What gives me the greatest pain is how Vince's death was written about by Chris Ryan.

"Any one of us could have dropped first, it just happened to be Vince."

And another survivor, referred to as 'Dinger', said: "Vince did not compromise the patrol or behave in the manner portrayed".

Vince died when, suffering from advanced hypothermia, he some-how became separated from his two patrol mates as they marched through a blizzard in the freezing desert night.

Ryan was in charge of the three who were separated from McNab's group.

Asher believes that Ryan misrepresented Vince because he felt guilty for not doing more to prevent his comrade's death.

He writes: "Could it be that Ryan felt so deeply guilty . . . that when it came to writing his book he was compelled to try to persuade his readers, and perhaps even himself, that he was not really responsible for what happened to Vince?"

The truth may remain a mystery while Chris Ryan hides behind the cloak of anonymity which he did not afford his dead comrade.

Both Chris Ryan and Andy McNab are pseudonyms.

In recent months Swindon's outgoing mayor David Cox has been campaigning for a new war memorial to be built dedicated to the memory of men such as Vince Phillips.

It would contain the names of all the borough's war dead since 1914 but is especially intended for the benefit of those who have died in conflicts since 1945 and have no memorial.

Thanks to Michael Asher there is a memorial to Vince on the wind-swept desert plain where he fell on that freezing January night.

Asher is convinced he has found the spot where Vince died and interviewed the Iraqis who found his body.

He marked the spot by building a cairn of stones and burying a can of Guinness Vince's favourite tipple.

Asher said he was initially unsure about how the local Bedouins would react to him building a memorial to one of their enemies.

But when he asked their permission one of them said: "He deserves it. He was a very brave man to come here from his own country.

"They were all brave. They were real men, those soldiers, to have endured the conditions here in winter heroes every one."

>bullet/>The Real Bravo Two Zero is published by Cassell, price £16.99.

It is the subject of a documentary to be screened on Channel Four in the week beginning May 20.