Uncle Paul´s Cain History Page

By Paul Cummings

A Brief History Of Cain

I have been asked to write a brief history of Benjamin Matthew Cain. The easy option would be for me to start in 1988, when he arrived in England and took up the name, but I will begin my story much earlier to help you understand his family background and hence something of the man himself. I will briefly recount notable events in his father’s family, then his mother’s and finally Cain’s own life.

Our story really begins in 1475 when William of Andover is made the first Duke of Hampshire. He was one of the very first non-royal dukedoms created. The Hampshire family swiftly became the largest private landowners in Hampshire, in 1620 careful management of both their estates and their political relationships with the crown had enabled them to quietly become the owner of more land than the crown. The riches of the Hampshire dukedom continued to grow. In 1725 work begun on Hampshire castle not far from Salisbury, which, with several major refurbishments, remains the family seat to this day.

In the 19^th century, the dukedom was served by four dukes who gradually took their relationship with the crown in the shape of the redoubtable Queen Victoria much closer. This culminated in marriage between Edward, the 23^rd Duke, and Princess ???, the Queen’s daughter. In 1899, their eldest son Albert was born. In 1916, at the height of the Great War and aged only 17, Albert, Marquess of Winchester, was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards regiment. Albert was physically and big man with piercing iron-grey eyes. He was gifted with a good understanding of modern warfare and great personal bravery. These skills endeared him to his men and coupled with his close relationship with his cousin, King George the 5^th, ensured his rapid rise through the junior officer ranks. In 1918, just a month before the Armistice, Albert’s first son, George was born to the wife he married during a break for the war in Christmas 1917. After the war, Albert continued in the army. He was one of the first senior officers to really appreciate the advantages of armour on the battlefield and pushed strongly for the Guards to become an armoured regiment. In 1937, at the age of 38, his father died and he became the 24^th Duke of Hampshire. He foresaw the war with Germany and declined to retire from the army, entrusting the running of the family’s business to his younger brother.

In 1946, General Albert Hampshire, the 24^th Duke, retired from the army to concentrate on the family business. They were historically a land based family, owning vast amounts of land both in Hampshire and also in London and scattered around the rest of the country. Albert saw that much of the land he owned was used for farming, so he expanded into transport and food processing, which proved very profitable in the post war years.

George, Marquess of Winchester, was not the same man as his father. Where his father was tough and ruthless, George was sensitive and diplomatic. In the autumn of 1937, George began a degree in politics at Cambridge University. In his second year, he met a young Norwegian princess by the name of Ingrid. She was a tall, headstrong woman, but surprisingly took to the gentle George and they married when she graduated in 1941. She was the iron fist in her husband’s velvet glove and together they formed a devastating partnership in the British Foreign Office circles that George travelled in having started work for them upon his graduation. In time he became ambassador to Norway and finally ambassador to Japan for twenty years. It was here that his son met and later married Akiko Yamamoto, the beautiful young niece of the ageing Emperor Hirohito.

In 1960, the Geroge’s son, Edward Hampshire, started a small import-export business in Japan. This became part of the Hampshire Corporation and swiftly grew. Edward was a good businessman and his fluent Japanese gave him a great edge in dealing with Japanese companies. It was this that caused him first to come to the attention of the Yamamotos and finally young Akiko.

Akiko Yamamoto’s family is much less well known than the Hampshires for one very good reason, they are one of the foremost ninjitsu families in Japan. Akiko’s mother was the princess Itami, who married the shadowy Mitsunari Yamamoto in 1946. Little was really known about Mitsunari Yamamoto. What was known was that his family were very rich. They ran a number of businesses that were heavily involved in building and shipping before the second world war. During the war, the Yamamotos produced much of Japan’s arms, especially merchant and military ships. After the war, this expertise focused on Japan’s merchant fleet and re-focused onto the early days of electronics. Where the transport side of the business and Yamamoto bank provided good growth, Yamamoto Electronics expanded exponentially. From consumer needs they expanded into consumer luxuries and then into computers and finally microchip-based electronic toys. With what appeared to be great foresight, everything the Yamamotos touched turned to gold and they became one of the great industrial giants of the second half of the 20^th Century.

Nobody paid much attention to the shadowy side of their business. With so many trained ninjas in the family, they were able to manipulate the markets very strongly. They were one of the few corporations not to have suffered from the curse of the Yakuza or Japanese mafia. The Yamamotos refused to deal with the Yakuza. A number of senior figures on both sides were killed in the ensuing war. Eventually, the number of senior yakuza bosses found dead in their beds forced them to negotiate with the Yamamotos. Yamamoto became a Yakuza-free corporation, although at great cost to them. Politicians, especially those linked with MITI, the Japanese ministry of trade, understood the advantages of aligning themselves with the Yamamotos and often provided just the edge that they needed to make their great advances in the business world.

When Mitsunari became head of the Yamamoto Corporation, he gradually changed the way the companies were run. Where as before they had used information and intimidation to gain their competitive edge, Mitsunari created vast research and development teams. These were a huge initial drain on Yamamoto funds, but soon became a great source of new products for them. In turn, the Mitsunari’s personal fortune rose and rose. By the year 2000 he was worth more than $10 billion, making him one of the world’s richest men.

In 1966, Mitsunari’s eldest daughter married a dashing young Englishman named Edward Hampshire, the son of the British Ambassador. Two years later the first of their five sons, James, was born. Two years after that, the twins Benjamin and Charles were born. Both were early developers who were able to walk before they were a year old. Although identical to his fractionally younger brother, Benjamin Hampshire soon proved to have a very different personality. Where Charles would try to do things just well enough, Benjamin gave his heart and soul to everything he did.

Unlike their elder brother, James, and their younger brother, William, Benjamin and Charles did not look like a pure European retaining the jet black hair of their mother with what appeared to be a perpetual tan and the hint of a slant to their eyes. Their eyes were a deep hazel rather than their mother’s dark brown or their father’s blue / brown mix. This racial mix was again confused by their youngest brother Andrew, known as Ando, and only sister Yukio, who both could pass for pure Japanese.

At the age of five, Benjamin followed his elder brother and began to study karate and judo, the first of many martial arts he would study. He proved to have tremendous natural ability and quickly progressed. In an effort to ensure that her sons grew up to be well-balanced adults, Akiko insisted that all of her children studied both the martial arts and oriental medicine.

Although they were in a privileged position within Japanese society, Edward and Akiko’s children occasionally suffered from spiteful xenophobia that is endemic in Japan. On one memorable occasion, James, who was thirteen at the time, was bullied by four older Japanese boys over his non-Japanese looks. Benjamin said nothing at the time, but re-doubled his martial arts training. Four months later, he found the four boys responsible. All four were admitted to hospital. They were sixteen at the time where Benjamin was just twelve.

When Benjamin was approaching thirteen, his grandfather George, retired from the Foreign Office and returned with his wife to England, to help his father, the Duke, running the Hampshire estates and businesses. Benjamin missed them greatly, especially his grandmother, who he was very close to, even to the extent of taking lessons in Norwegian to converse with her in her native language, despite her speaking English with barely a trace of Scandinavian accent.

Every year, the Edward brought his family back to England to visit. Benjamin loved these trips as he would spend hours with the old Duke, who told him stories about the wars he had fought in. It was here that it is assume that Benjamin got his ambition to join the army. This is partially true, but it was both the SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy in 1980 and the Falklands War in 1982 that convinced him that he wanted to join the SAS. This was to become a driving point for Benjamin during the rest of his school life in Japan.

At eighteen, Benjamin left Japan to enter Cambridge University to study Japanese in the autumn of 1988. Benjamin spent the summer staying with his grandparents and great grandfather at Hampshire Castle in England. It was at this time that Benjamin selected the surname Cain for himself. He had understood, correctly, the advantages the Hampshire name had given his great grandfather in the army and was determined that he would succeed or fail by his own name. He also dropped his third forename of St John as being too likely to give away his upbringing and family.

So it was that Benjamin Matthew Cain went off to university in a black Volkswagen Golf that he bought in preference to the BMW M635CSi that his great grandfather had bought him when he first came to England. Cain was determined to stand out for the quality of his work rather than his family’s pre-eminance.

There was one thing he did use his family for: He persuaded his great grandfather to use his influence to secure an invitation to join Selection for the 21^st SAS Regiment.. The 21^st are one of two territorial army SAS regiments. Normally, someone must serve in another TA regiment or a full-time regiment before applying for selection, but under exceptional circumstances, a candidate can be invited to attend Selection without previous military training. Cain had already planned his career: He was going to join the 21^st SAS as a TA officer until he completed his studies then take Selection into the full time 22^nd SAS Regiment. He had correctly worked out that that was the only route where he would be able to stay in the SAS, as an officer, instead of being restricted to two three year tours. All officers from the rest of the professional army were restricted to the two tours and the second only available if offered by the SAS, unlike enlisted men who could serve until aged forty.

Having spoken and written in Japanese all his life, Cain found his course reasonably easy, which gave him extra time to spend on his martial arts studies and the frequent drives down the M11 for his SAS Selection training and then further training once he was commissioned. During his time at Cambridge, Cain was a committed member of both the karate and aikido clubs. He represented both Cambridge and Great Britain in many karate competitions including becoming Karate Union of Great Britain kata and kumite champion all three years.

He graduated in 1991 with a first class honours degree, having been given special dispensation to skip the obligatory year in Japan. Once free from his studies, Cain spent as much time as possible on his career in the TA. Under encouragement from his commanding officer, Lieutenant Benjamin Cain entered the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and duly won a gold medal in the rapid fire pistol shooting. Cain volunteered for every course available to men of the 21 SAS, so that he ended up working nearly full time for the Regiment. This, along with his excellent achievements and attitude, lead to his promotion to Captain in 1994. Cain immediately applied for 22^nd SAS Regiment and attended Winter Selection in late 1994. After completing all parts of Selection for a second time, he was made commander of Mobility Troop of D Squadron. Cain had now arrived where he wanted to be. He bought a large estate outside Hereford and set about disguising it so that it appeared all he owned was a small house on the estate.

Whilst in 21 SAS, he nearly came to grief as a twenty three year old lieutenant: 21 SAS were on an exercise with the regular special forces. The SAS men joined up with 2^nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, the notorious 2 Para, for the exercise. Tensions were high between the SAS, who were seen as just another group playing at being soldiers by 2 Para, and the paras, who were regarded as semi-house trained illiterates by the SAS men. One of the paras would not accept the authority of the young Cain and privately tried to make him see his position in the food chain. Cain broke the young para’s pride and quite a bit of his body. Sixteen paras decided that they had to deal with this and hunted Cain that night. Cain took the fight to them and put fourteen in hospital before he decided to end things. The only official report of the incident was on the paras, who were disciplined for fighting.

After passing Selection to 22 SAS, Cain swiftly became a respected troop commander. He joined Mobility Troop of D Squadron. Very soon he got to grips with the basics of Mobility Troop’s method of insertion, which was mainly by mechanised means. He impressed the men under his command by taking a great interest in the mechanical side of their job, which meant they were able to fix cars and motorcycles with often little more than a pair of pliers and piece of wire. He also passed his medical and language skills courses. Not surprisingly as he had studied oriental medicine since he was five and was bilingual English-Japanese, also growing up speaking good Norwegian and French.

In the summer of 1996, Guatemala invaded Belize. The government of Belize appealed to Britain for help. D Squadron of the SAS were flown in immediately to shore up the country whilst a task force was put together. D Squadron was divided up into troops and then into smaller units. Cain was in charge of two four-man patrols deep in the jungle. Their mission was to delay the advancing Guatemalan army as much as possible. Due to a complete cock-up in intelligence, Cain and his men were dropped well beyond the front line into Guatemalan held territory. Surrounded immediately by hostile troops, they held off a concentrated attack by over a thousand Guatemalan soldiers for three days. Eventually, Cain and two others were the only ones left alive. Running low on ammunition, they had to leave their fortified position and try to make their way back through the jungle to safety. The two remaining troopers were both injured, so Cain had to help each of them move. For eleven days and nights he helped first one then the other to edge forward through the Guatemalan held land.

Eventually they made their way to an emergency rendezvous point and were rescued by helicopter. At the point of his great success in successfully rescuing his colleagues, Cain collapsed, delirious from lack of food, water and sleep. When he regained conciousness, he was informed that he was to wind the Victoria Cross for his bravery. True to his nature though, his first comments were about the colleagues he had brought out alive.

The manpower required to attack Cain’s position and then hunt for him had brought invaluable breathing space for the British government and a great morale defeat for Guatemala. 1 Para and 42 Commando arrived soon after and the tide of the advance was turned. The poorly equipped and trained Guatemalan was largely destroyed in what became a massacre by the well-trained and aggressive paratroopers and marines.

A few months later, Cain was transferred to take over Air Troop of B squadron. He successfully completed his parachute course, but never really enjoyed parachuting. He was then sent to Northern Ireland to work for the 14^th Intelligence Section (the Det). Here he proved to be an exceptional undercover operator, which lead to massive losses by the PIRA’s South Armagh Brigade. Due to his success, the PIRA put a contract out on him and tried several times to kill him themselves. Being the country’s only serving VC, the politicians decided that they couldn’t afford to lose Cain to the PIRA, so he was promoted to Major and quietly given a posting to join Mossad in Israel for a year.

Fighting the war that Mossad was involved with on a daily basis, Cain honed his skills even more. When he returned to Hereford, he was offered permanent protection. Cain obviously refused this as it would be the death of his career, but he negociated a licence by the Home Office to permanently carry firearms for his own protection from the PIRA. He returned to Hereford in the training wing and spent four months passing on his skills before there came the vacancy to take over as OC of G Squadron.

In September 2001, Cain completed his collection by becoming OC of A Squadron and so becoming the only officer to serve in all four sabre squadrons.

The first episode of the Cain saga takes up the story from December 2001.

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