The reunion in Manchester was the highlight of the trip as far as my crew and I are concerned. It was a great honour to meet you all. The only down side is that I was unable to spend as much time with various people as I wanted to.  Most of my time was spent conducting interviews rather than just taking time to sit down, have a beer and being able to talk to the many people I now consider friends.

It has taken me 13 months to get the Limbang documentary project off the ground and it's been a long up- hill battle. Many a time I felt I was going no where and considered  giving up. If it had not been for the help and encouragement I received from my co producer Nick Van der Bijk and Peter Down, I would have chucked in the towel a long time ago. I'm pleased I listened to them.

We now have half the programme in the can. The second half will (hopefully) be completed early next year when we visit Limbang,  taking a few veterans with us. My only concern is how to fit the whole story into just 1 hour. At this point I feel we have a 3 hour programme on our hands. If you are intrested in returning to Limbang next year, please drop me a line.

Many of you have asked when will the progamme be aired ? This is a hard question to answer. At this moment in time we have not sold the series to a major broadcaster. But there is interest and I have every faith in my distributor selling the programme soon. Since the programme will be sold on the international market, it's sad to say but unless Channel 4/5 or the BBC pick up the programme it may not air in the UK. If this is the case I'm contemplating the idea of perhaps premiering the programme on it's completion at the Royal Marine Museum Portsmouth. This would be a special evening to which all of you would be invited to view the end product. This would be a great honour for me, after all, I made the programme for you guys.

There are so many people to thank I don't know where to start. Thanks  so much to all of you who took time out of your lives to allow my crew and myself to visit you at your homes and various locations to conduct interviews. Thank you also to everyone who took time on the Saturday while I dragged them away from the reunion to do a quick interview. Every one was very understanding  and patient about the difficulties encounted while filming interviews and everyone seemed comfortable with my crew who were hand picked because they showed great interest in the story and people. Both Damiam and Bill were overwhelmed to meet all of you.  Without your approval and trust Brush Fire Films would not be able to make this programme. Below are a few pictures taken during the filming in the UK

A big thank you to all of you who kindly brought your images to the reunion for us to scan. It has always been a great concern to us that there is very little archival footage of the raid but that is no longer a concern. During our trip to the UK we scanned over 1,000 images. I was a little worried to find out on the Sunday morning that we had failed to ask some of you if you had brought images. This is a failure on our part (I was just so busy) If you did bring images, or have images that would be helpful to us, please drop me a line and I will arrange to have the images scanned by our producer in the UK.

A very special thank you to Peter Down  who has given me help and encouragement throughout the project, thanks mate I owe you big time.

A big thanks also to Brian Downey who better stop calling me fatty Spirit because he won't be going to Limbang next year if he keeps that up !

I will keep you all posted on developments and we will of course keep the web site running with all the news.

Let me end by saying this. When I was about 16 years old (many years ago) I picked a book in my local library called 'The History of the Royal Marines" Flicking through the pages I came across the Cueno painting of  Limbang. I was fascinated with the picture as I had never heard of the Limbang operation (I no longer call it a "raid" after being corrected by Sir Jeremy Moore who quite rightly stated "It was not a raid, we attacked and STAYED") I never dreamed that 20 years after first seeing the Cueno painting that I would not only meet most of the people involved, but I can now class many of you as very close friends.

It is a honour and a privilege to know  you all

Martin Spirit
Brush Fire Films
Dallas
Texas