Speed was the crucial factor in the freeing of six British soldiers held hostage in Sierra Leone yesterday, which cost the life of one member of the British rescue force. The generals and strategists who had planned the mission knew that if the British troops failed to overpower the rebels swiftly and brutally, the lives of the hostages would almost certainly be lost. The first glimpse of a helicopter could have caused the notoriously volatile West Side Boys to start executing hostages.
Within 20 minutes of the mission starting, the seven hostages were in a helicopter being whisked back to the safety of a British ship anchored off Freetown. Their colleagues - including members of the Parachute Regiment, backed up by the SAS - spent another 70 minutes in sporadic but fierce exchanges.
An hour and half after the helicopters had first swooped on the twin rebel camps, deep inland in the Occra Hills, the battle was over. At least 17, and possibly as many as 25, West Side Boys, including three women, were killed. Fifteen men, including their leader "Brigadier" Foday Kallay, and three women were taken prisoner and handed over to the Sierra Leone police.
But the British also suffered significant casualties. One paratrooper was dead, one was seriously injured and 11 suffered less severe wounds.
Despite the deaths, military chiefs hailed the mission a success, but critics believe that it throws up more questions than it answers - wider questions about the precise mission of the British troops in Sierra Leone and, more specifically, exactly what the captured troops were doing in a rebel-held area.
The problems facing the planners of the rescue were legion. One defence chief said it was the "most complex" mission carried out by British troops for years.
After it was over, on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Sir Percivale, the six hostages from the Royal Irish Regiment were able to shower, receive medical treatment and phone their relieved relatives. One of them told his wife that he had been driven to start smoking while in captivity. Conditions had been difficult. They were dirty and exhausted. When they were first captured they were treated badly and must have feared a return to this harsh treatment as they came to know the negotiations were not progressing. In preliminary debriefings they said they had been very worried that they were going to be killed.
Over the next days and weeks the operation will be dissected in detail. But key among the issues which has to be addressed is exactly what 11 British soldiers were doing in "bandit territory".
The army has consistently said that the men - who included a major, a captain and a regimental sergeant major - were on an authorised mission to liaise with Jordanian peacekeepers in the town of Masiaka. But that statement implies that their decision to turn off the main road to Masiaka and head into the hills was not authorised, which leaves open the possibility that they were on an intelligence gathering mission that the army wanted to keep from the UN - or they decided to go of their own accord.
Monika Unsworth adds from Belfast: The Commander of the Royal Irish Regiment in Northern Ireland, Col Stewart Douglas, yesterday said he was delighted at the release of six of the regiment's soldiers as well as of their Sierra Leone liaison officer.
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, described the military operation as "courageous and very necessary".