Descent into Chaos: The Doomed Expedition to Low's Gully

In early March 1994, five members of a British Army expedition emerged from Low's Gully, a five mile long hell hole falling away from Mount Kinabalu in the jungle of Borneo. However, the achievement of the five - mostly fit and able young British non-commissioned officers - in being the first to conquer Low's Gully was overshadowed by the fact that the other five members of their team - two relatively old and senior British officers and three young novice Chinese storemen and guards - were apparently still lost in the gully. What had gone wrong and why had the group broken the golden rule for such expeditions - never split up?
The rescue attempt by Malaysian and British servicemen and local people became a daily feature in the newspapers and on television. Then the five, seemingly against the odds, were found alive and reasonably well. Shortly afterwards, one of the officers sold his story to the Daily Mail and publicly blamed the members of the first group to emerge for the debacle; these claims were repeated in a book, SOS, subsequently written by the two officers. Yet the findings of the Board of Inquiry into the incident went against the officers, the Board taking the view that the leader's judgement and leadership were flawed.
Richard Connaughton's search for the truth behind this bizarre story took him around the United Kingdom and to Sabah, Eastern Malaysia. The result is this, the first balanced account of what became the notorious debacle of the Low's Gully expedition.