The following day in the squadron lines, the sergeant major’s office wallah found me packing away the now clean and repaired canoes, and said I was to report to his boss in the headquarters building.
Young operatives were rarely called to see the sergeant major personally. I assumed I was to be reprimanded for some indiscretion. It would not be the first time I had been hauled in for a slap on the wrist. No one ever accused me of being the best-dressed soldier on camp and I had, on occasion, neglected to salute a regular (non-SBS) officer. This was not because of any disrespect. Due to the nature of the work, the relationship between officers and men in the SBS is less strict than in regular units. Where low profile is the order of the day, it would look odd if one long-haired man walked up to another in the street, saluted, remained at attention and continually addressed him as ‘sir’. Officers and men often spent weeks working closely together and first names were the norm, although this familiarity was discouraged when we were back in camp and under the watchful eye of the regular officers.
By now I had my own digs in Poole and had settled into the fast-paced lifestyle of the SBS where there was no such thing as routine. Our hair was generally long because of low-profile operational requirements and we rarely wore uniforms (which irritated conventional ruperts). An operative could expect to spend more than half the year abroad, far removed from conventional forces and their influences. I had never served in a regular regiment and therefore probably found it easier than most to lose sight of uniform dress standards, and I had completely lost the habit of leaping to attention when addressed by an officer as regulars usually do.
The squadron was occasionally asked to join the rest of the camp and turn out for full blues parades (number one uniform) for visiting dignitaries, but was kept out of sight as much as possible for fear it might cause embarrassment. The commanding officer during my first few years as an SC rate (Swimmer Canoeist is our official Navy job description) was Rom. He was one of our finest field officers, well-respected and liked, innovative and far-sighted and credited with pioneering many of the maritime anti-terrorist procedures used worldwide today. He was also the main force behind getting the squadron into Northern Ireland with the SAS. He was one of those officers who put the SBS before the rest of the corps, believing they could play an even greater role in conventional and specialist operations in the future. As an officer cadet he was head of his batch, and later on achieved a high pass grade at staff college when many, if not most, officers usually failed the exam. He was tipped to make the big time, but his career undoubtedly suffered because of his passion for the SBS and he left the corps shortly after the end of his command, only having reached the rank of major. It’s an indication of the nepotism that is still rife amongst senior members of the British military, where the old-boy network rather than ability gets you to the top.
On the parade ground, Rom was not at home at all. On my first blues parade, as he led the squadron on a march past a group of dignitaries on a podium, he threw one spur as he approached, and the other as he took their salute, and then he nearly lost his sword as we marched out of sight. The camp’s (non-SBS) commanding officer could only roll his eyes as he took the salute. The SAS didn’t have to do march-past parades for visiting dignitaries. They were so out of practice they would have been tripping over themselves worse than us.
It was the fast-paced lifestyle of the SBS and my devotion to field-craft and not parade skills that contributed to my seemingly laid-back manner. I had been away from the SBS for nearly the whole of that year and actually spent three of those months with the British bobsleigh team. I might as well have been a civvy during that period. The commanding officer at the time, the one after Rom, was a bobsleigh enthusiast and, as I was a bit of a sprinter, he asked me if I’d like to have a go as a brake-man. A brake-man is the one at the back of the bob, four-and two-man, who pushes for all he’s worth then jumps in last, does little else on the run but get his head down, and is responsible for applying the brakes after the finish. On one occasion I didn’t brake soon enough which resulted in us crashing through the bales of straw beyond the finishing line, causing several spectators to scramble for their lives. I was surprised that an SBS rate could be spared for such a jolly, but the corps has always shown keenness in supporting sports, and members of the SBS, even today, get involved in events such as cross-Atlantic rowing or Iron-man triathlons. Bobsleighing was a lark, but after a couple of months and several crashes as a brake-man, one memorable one with a novice driver that left me sailing through the finishing line alone on my back at 50 mph and without the bob, I decided to give driving one a shot – at least I would be master of my own destiny. After a two-week course in Igles at Berchtesgaden in Austria, I had my first race – a series of four runs down the Olympic course.
As the SBS did not have a bobsleigh and the Navy bobs had headed off for a race in Switzerland with the rest of the team, I asked an officer from the Tank Regiment, who was taking some advanced driver training lessons from the Austrian team coach, if I could borrow his for the race. Most of the ruperts I met who drove or braked for the bobsleigh team were quite hooray and snobbish. But I found them amusing. The tank officer reluctantly lent me his two-man bob along with his brake-man, who had just arrived – a captain from his regiment he had talked into coming over to give it a go. He asked me to please be careful with his bob, and not to go too fast and unnerve his new brake-man, who was completely virgin to the sport and had not even been down a run yet. I said I would be careful, but I was intent on winning the novice race and that meant pulling out all the stops. I was actually coming second overall in the competition when, on my final run, I tipped the bob on its side on the last series of bends. The brake-man got his head (helmeted of course) jammed between the bob and the ice for several yards and judging by his screams it must have hurt. I managed to throw my weight over on the last bend which put the bob upright again and we sailed through the finishing line more or less in one piece. The bob’s shell was badly damaged and the new brake-man took the first train home. The tank officer was furious with me, shouting and raving that it would take days to repair the bob, and where was he going to find another brake-man? The season was coming to an end anyway, so with no bob or crew I packed up and made my way back to Poole.
Bobsleighing was OK, but I was looking forward to getting back to a job altogether more exciting and dangerous.
I entered the sergeant major’s office, expecting nothing less than a bollocking, and stood there waiting for it.
He glanced up at me from his desk and handed me a piece of paper. I read it. I was not to be reprimanded. These were marching orders. A ripple of excitement ran through me. They had called for me.
‘You’ve got ten days to sort out your affairs before you leave. That means phone, gas, electricity bills and mortgage, etcetera. I don’t want to be bothered by anything civvy regarding you. Nobody will be able to contact you. You got a steady girlfriend?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Don’t take your car. You’ll be given a train pass. Take nothing other than what’s on that list. Make sure you have nothing with your name or anyone else’s on it – no address book, letters, bank cards – nothing that can be connected to you – don’t forget to take Mummy’s name tags off your socks and skiddies. You’ll carry your Navy ID card only, which will be taken from you when you arrive. No one will know you’re SBS. If anyone asks what your parent unit is tell ’em to fuck off and then keep your eye on ’em. Got it?’
‘Sir.’
‘Do you have an idea where you’re going, lad?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Then keep it to yourself. The location is secret. It’s volunteer only. And remember this. Not one single SBS operative has ever been anything short of exemplary in that unit. You bloody well ought to be. No one else you’ll meet there will have a quarter of your skills and training.’
‘Sir.’
‘Good luck . . . Oh, and a bit of advice. By the time you get there have a new first name. Never tell anyone your real name, your surname, got it? Your buddy may get captured alive one day and tortured, and you’ll always be having to look over your shoulder.’
That was it – short and sweet. I was on my way to begin a four-month long course that would prepare me for two years in Northern Ireland with the 14th Intelligence Detachment.
I arrived at the location known as ‘Camp One’ in civvies and carrying a suitcase with a change of civvy clothes, PT kit and dhobi bag. The camp was in the countryside, and I had walked from the bus stop half a mile along a deserted country lane that ran through a wood. The sign outside the dowdy, concrete entrance simply read: ‘MOD PROPERTY’. The camp looked as if it had been abandoned decades ago. That was not far from the truth. It had been built during the last war and had been occupied by an American fighting unit. It was demobbed in the fifties and since then maintained on a basic level by a skeleton crew.
Inside the bramble-covered perimeter were several rows of old, single-storey barrack blocks and administration buildings. A lone cigarette-smoking sentry, standing in a fragile modern kiosk just about big enough for him, watched me walk in through the main entrance. Before I reached him he pointed towards the entrance to a brick building not far away. Apart from the sentry there was no other sign of life. The motley camp felt like a ghost town.
When I entered the building I found life, of a sort. I was met by several stone-faced members of the Army Intelligence Corps who communicated their needs to me with the bare minimum of words. They checked my papers and ID and passed me on through into the processing system. I was ushered into another room with little fuss and no conversation, where my suitcase contents were turned out and closely inspected. My dhobi bag, PT kit and spare underwear were handed back to me and the rest put back into my case, which was labelled and put to one side. I was stripped virtually naked, and after my clothes were searched they were put into a bag and placed with my case. After a cursory inspection by a doctor, I was handed a bundle of old Army fatigues, socks and boots. As soon as I was dressed I was led across the camp to a large barrack block that contained about thirty beds with a metal locker beside each one. Several other recruits were quietly making their beds. The atmosphere was solemn and filled with uncertainty, the familiar atmosphere of a selection course and one I knew so well by now. This would be my third in as many years.
I had no idea how many people would be on this course, but I had heard the pass rate was as low as the SAS selection. By now I had a solid confidence in myself when it came to this sort of thing. It was not a case of whether I could make the final cut, but how high a grade I could pass by. As I finished making my bed we were ordered to assemble outside. I put my few belongings in my cupboard and followed the others outside.
I walked out of the grot and up a narrow footpath between the buildings. It led on to a rugged parade ground that had long-established weeds and tufts of grass growing from cracks all over it. The camp had been modernised very little in fifty years and I could imagine the American regiment billeted here gathered on parade in full equipment prior to leaving it for the last time on their way to the D-Day invasions.
Mustered on the parade ground were over a hundred volunteers, dressed in fatigues like me, hoping to be selected for undercover operations in Northern Ireland. The recruits were from all walks of military life, not only the Army and Marines, but the Navy and Air Force. Fit, fat, thin, old and nerdy, confident and nervous. For this job an operative was not required to be super-fit or even svelte. In fact, the less he looked like a soldier the better. But an operative was required to be intelligent, have a high degree of mental stamina, be able to operate technical devices, and use a pistol and MP5 to extremely high standards (after the four-month selection course, a 14 Int operative had a higher standard of semi-automatic pistol-handling than most SBS and SAS members). He had to be able to drive a car at high speeds, alone, at night, along unfamiliar country roads while reading a coded map by torchlight, give accurate, coded grid references over a concealed radio system (a hand had to be freed to press the hidden ‘talk’ button) and receive and decode other operatives’ grid locations, all while in pursuit of an enemy vehicle – and be prepared at any time to react to an attack. None of these requirements, I was to discover, were in the least bit exaggerated.
While the senior instructor gave us a welcome talk, I glanced around at some of the others and suddenly recognised one of the faces. It was Arthur, an SBS operative who had joined the squadron a year before me, who was in the photograph I found in the grot the day I arrived in Poole, wearing the sack clothing as he boarded a landing craft after a week’s survival course. We had never had a conversation before but we recognised each other. He was a similar build to me and was reputed to be a high-quality operative. He gave me a surreptitious wink. It turned out there were three of us from the SBS on the selection course, the third being Sal, who had completed the selection course after mine. We didn’t talk openly to each other for the first few weeks, to disguise any prior relationship. Sal was to be the first SBS member not to complete the 14 Int selection course in our history, but for an unusual reason.
The first two weeks of the course was, as usual with special forces, devoted to a vigorous weeding-out of the no-hopers. The focus of this selection, endurance-wise, was predominantly mental. A technique for achieving acceptable results in a short time is to impose long hours of physical discomfort and little or no sleep, then, at the height of exhaustion, to apply extreme trauma, followed immediately by problem-solving under pressure. This was to be the pattern for the next two weeks. Mental stamina is dependent on physical fitness, so a swift wearing-down of both was required to kick things off.