Former British soldier 'survived Benghazi raid thanks to his UK passport' Eventually, to Mr Jones' astonishment, the gunman told them to return to their car and drive away. "I thought we were dead," he told Massoud. Why the f--- did they let us go? His driver replied: "They came here for one reason only tonight: to kill the Americans." Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and Sean Smith, a career US foreign service officer, were both killed in a first wave of the attack, which went on for several hours. Two former US Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were later killed defending a CIA annex. Mr Jones, who writes under a pseudonym for security, was born in Wales and is a veteran of the Royal Corps of Signals, and served tours in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Kosovo, and the Falkland Islands. He has since worked as a private security contractor in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He claimed in his book, The Embassy House, that before the attack took place he repeatedly warned US officials that the compound in Benghazi was inadequately protected and would come under assault. "Every morning I wake up feeling ashamed that I am still alive while four Americans that I served with are dead," he said. I thought that my feelings of guilt would fade over time: they have not. If anything, they are getting worse, and at times the guilt is unbearable. A quick-reaction force from the nearby annex rescued five Americans, but were forced to shoot their way out before they could find Mr Stevens. The security situation at the compound - and the Obama administration's response to the attack - have led to a fierce political dispute in the 13 months since. Mr Jones described rushing to the compound after receiving a panicked telephone call from one of his guards while gunfire rung out in the background. He and Massoud drove the 15 minutes from his flat. After escaping the roadblock gunman, he said, he reached the compound and scaled its 12-foot-high wall to try to help the Libyan guards he had trained and other American officials trapped inside. He recalled fighting off one of the attackers, who had spotted him, by striking him in the head with his rifle. The butt smashed into his temple. It was a noiseless blow," he said in the book. US authorities were reported in August to have filed sealed criminal charges over the attack against several people, including Ahmed Abu Khattala, a senior figure in the Libyan Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia.