The Death of the Redcaps

'Death of the Redcaps' was a documentary focusing on the violent deaths of six Royal Military Policemen on active service in Iraq in 2003. The soldiers’ deaths drew particular scrutiny in the media and Parliament because of surrounding circumstances: the failure of supplied equipment, the close proximity of a Parachute Brigade patrol who were unable to intervene, and a series of mistakes attributable to the British Army.

The duration of the documentary was 40 minutes. It was screened on BBC Two on the 10th of February, 2005. Gary Horne was both producer and director.

The research was undertaken over a six month investigation and involved original interviews to camera with eyewitnesses in Iraq, members of the deceased’s families and the acquisition of restricted Army documents and off-the-record interviews with members of the armed forces. This diverse range of source material was investigated in order to verify evidentially a series of interpretations of the events in Iraq. The “triangulated”, verifiable interpretations developed by the researcher from the primary sources enabled a series of revelatory claims to be made that addressed: malfunctioning equipment (that was known at the time to be malfunctioning and had not been supplemented by an alternative arrangement); the failure of specific Coalition military units to observe local agreements with Iraqi civilians; the subsequent riot during in which several Iraqis were killed in shooting begun by a solider who had been involved in an uninvestigated unlawful shooting in the Kosovo conflict; the breakdown of cooperation between different military units; and dissimulation to the deceased’s families.