When Mike finally went down he stayed down. There was blood everywhere. It was a fucking mess. Applause went up from a dozen intelligence ruperts who had brought chairs and drinks into the gym to watch the show. A medical orderly hurried to inspect Mike – there was always a medic just in case. Someone was untying my bloody gloves for the next pair as I looked down at Mike lying with his eyes closed. I did not feel glorious. The medic checked his breathing passage was clear and wiped the blood from his eyes then gave the referee a thumbs-up. It looked worse than it was. I understood the necessity of aggression training, but I was not convinced this particular technique was a positive one. I certainly did not see it as entertainment for the ten nobbers sitting applauding behind me. I plonked down on to the survivors’ bench while Mike was taken away on a stretcher and the next pair was brought into the ring. I looked around at other members of the camp staff crowded in the main entrance – cooks, drivers, clerks, storemen – all trying to get a good look at the blood-sport. We’re all savages at bottom.
Mike was stitched back up and recovered enough to stay on the course. He made it through to the end and eventually became a 14 Int operations officer.
Camp One lasted two weeks and by the end of it less than fifty per cent of the recruits remained. The heaviest culling phase was over. From here on a gradual attrition would reduce the numbers. Recruits would fail if they could not master all of the many essential skills.
Wearing our own clothes and carrying the suitcases we arrived with, we climbed aboard a coach and drove out through the gates of Camp One. We were headed for a secret training base in Wales where those who completed the course would spend the next three and a half months.
Apart from runs every morning before breakfast and the occasional visit to the assault course, there were no demanding physical hardships at Camp Two – not compared to SBS selection, anyway. A stress-free environment was required for learning the skills needed to operate undercover in Northern Ireland – there was stress enough in that. The skills included fast driving, pistol-and sub-machine-gun-handling, map-reading, field-craft for placing and managing OPs, operating cameras and other technical equipment, and surveillance techniques by car and on foot. It was unlike SBS or SAS selection in many ways, the most important difference being that once a recruit passed through the gruelling process to test toughness and aptitude in the SBS, he then joined a team and settled in to learn specific skills as and when required. However, a 14 Int operative, on completion of the selection course, went directly into operational service. A new operator had to learn the tricks of the trade whilst involved in live operations on the ground. It is impossible to teach all the realities of the job in a classroom. This meant the early days in Northern Ireland for a new operative were the most dangerous. Our selection course learned that lesson the hard way.
The surveillance phase of the course was of an exceptionally high standard. Northern Ireland was one of the most difficult and dangerous places in the world to carry out surveillance, especially when working alone. The American CIA regularly send their operatives over (to Germany usually) to be trained by British special forces in the art of urban and rural surveillance.
The reasons for the difficulty are straightforward. A British undercover operative could not arrive as a stranger in an Irish community sympathetic to the cause and expect to go unnoticed, let alone be accepted. The IRA’s vigilance was extreme. Operatives could not do something as simple as hang around in bars for instance, not in ‘hard’ areas. Depending on how hostile the area was, passing through even once would alert suspicion. Twice in the same day could be suicidal. An operative could not take a room or apartment or get a job, as some novelists have suggested, not if he was English, anyway. The risks were too great. Anyone who came under the IRA’s gaze in suspicious circumstances was lifted and questioned. That person remained a prisoner until the IRA were positive of their claimed identity, and even then, mistakes were made and innocents were executed as spies. The IRA were quite capable of setting traps for undercover operatives. If a member of the IRA suspected he was being watched, any subversive activity he was associated with was normally cancelled. However, there were times when the IRA pretended to maintain an operation in the hope of luring operatives into a trap.
The IRA, inevitably, caught on to many of the surveillance techniques used against them. We had to keep finding new ways of doing the same job. As in all aspects of warfare, if you don’t constantly change and improve you will be defeated by those who do. The IRA are the world’s most effective and intelligent terrorist group, and this is due in no small way to the quality of their enemy. In the early days, operatives worked in teams for safety. When the IRA warned its sympathisers to look out for groups of strangers, more experienced operatives were sent out on their own. Soon it became difficult for anyone to work in pairs in cars and on foot and so every operative, including new inexperienced ones straight from the farm, were expected to go solo. It was not long before the IRA began to warn their people not to ignore lone males passing through their areas, either.
If the Intelligence Detachments were to maintain the initiative they had to become more hi-tech, rely more on electronic surveillance, and improve their methods of blending in. Better technology was always arriving. To assist with the blending in a request was put into London for female operatives.
The Military Reaction Force (MRF), the precursor to 14 Int, had used females in undercover operations in Northern Ireland in the sixties and early seventies, but it was a different game now. Not that it was less dangerous then. More than one MRF woman came close to losing her life. These days the players are wiser and the strategies more complex. MRF’s females were trained only in fast driving and weapon handling. If undercover women were to be brought into the current conflict they would have to have the same intense training as the men.
It was at Camp Two during my course that we were joined by the first women ever to be trained for the 14 Int undercover detachment.
I had personally experienced the need for undercover women on my combined SBS/SAS Northern Ireland tour a couple of years earlier. I spent a night parked in a dark side-street in a small town with an SBS buddy, Bonzo, who thought we would draw little or no attention if he wore a long, dark wig in the hope we would be taken for a couple engaged in the national pastime. We were waiting to pick up a team conducting a recce not far away. We sat shoulder to shoulder, Bonzo scratching his head now and then because the wig made him itch. There was a row of houses opposite us and the lights went out, one by one, as the night drew on and people went to bed.
We had been there a couple of hours when Bonzo suddenly became alert and, without moving anything other than a finger to indicate said, ‘Someone’s watching us.’
‘Where?’ I asked, moving only my eyes.
‘Straight ahead – first floor – face in the window.’
Sure enough there was the face looking right at us. We surreptitiously gave a 360-degree scan to see if anyone was creeping up on us. It was clear.
‘What shall we do?’ Bonzo asked.
‘Let’s stick it out a little longer. They can’t see any details.’
‘Yeah, but they can see we’ve been doing fuck all.’
‘There’s nothing I can do about that, Bonzo, old pal.’
‘Put your arm around me,’ Bonzo said.
I did. We snuggled closer. The face continued to watch us. Bonzo rested his head gently on my shoulder and we sat there cuddled up for what seemed an age. The face was relentless.
‘This is fuckin’ ridiculous,’ Bonzo said finally.
‘We’re going to have to play it out,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well you might be all nice an’ comfortable but I ain’t spendin’ the rest of the fuckin’ night sat like this.’
I didn’t want to move location because we were perfectly situated for the pick-up and our other options were unattractive.
Bonzo sat up. ‘Right. That’s it.’
‘What are you gonna do?’
‘I’m gonna get out and take a piss and get a closer look. It’s probably a fuckin’ cat.’ At that, Bonzo climbed out.
‘Bonzo?’ I whispered after him.
He stuck his head back in. ‘What?’
‘You’ll really get ’em wondering if you stand there with your shlong out and take a piss. You’re the babe, remember?’
Bonzo realised and got back in. I climbed out and took a piss while I craned to see who was watching us. I got back in and put my arm around Bonzo and rested his head back against my shoulder.
‘We’re OK,’ I said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s a vase.’
The problems preparing women for this kind of work were physical, political, emotional and male. Men behave differently, worse still, unpredictably, around women.
The problem for Army Intelligence was to find enough women who could qualify to begin the selection course. Bear in mind Army Intelligence was limited to recruiting solely from within the armed forces. Women with the qualities suited for undercover work against ruthless terrorists in potentially lethal situations, where they are expected to kill if need be, do not generally share the more mundane ambitions of those who join a military that at the time offered them exclusively administrative careers. Another concern was, would the kind of women who could make it through the tough selection process resemble the gender enough, which was, after all, the whole point (Hollywood film studios were not running selection). And then there was the monthly emotional cycle from which some women suffer more than others. Special forces, an all-male organisation at that time, was going to have to invent a sensitivity to the female psyche in preparing them for a front-line role. The selection process was going to have to be considerate to women until it found its feet, which would not happen until it got feedback from the fruits of its efforts and when experienced female operatives returned from the field to become instructors. The political implications of women in the front line are obvious, but won’t be closely scrutinised until we lose one in combat.
The powers-that-be decided to spare the women the rigours of the men’s Camp One and give them a lighter version of their own. When the genders were introduced to each other for the first week of Camp Two, one problem became glaringly obvious. There were twenty of them, and a couple of them were quite cute. We were going to spend over three months working closely together with little time off, not even weekends. Under these conditions it was likely that romantic attachments would form. In an effort to control this, we were warned in no uncertain terms that if anyone was caught in a compromising situation with any of the girls it would result in both parties being immediately RTUed. That was enough to cause most to adhere to the warning as law. But some saw it as something of a challenge. One couple ignored the warning entirely. Romance, or more accurately lust, bloomed immediately they met and they started a sexual relationship virtually the first day they went out alone together on an orientation drive. The DS were slow to pick up on the relationship at first and those who eventually did suspect kept it quiet from the command staff in the hope that the couple would have the sense to be more discreet. As far as the DS were concerned, they were there to prepare us for an important job and not to run a boarding school. If we wanted to take the risk, it was up to us. I don’t doubt the temptation whiffed past one or two of the DS themselves. Another probable reason the DS were not bothered about the non-fraternisation decree was because it came from the unit sergeant major, who was non-SAS and a bit of a wanker. If a couple was going to get kicked off the course for bonking, he was going to have to catch them himself, which was what eventually happened.
We were allowed the use of a recreation room during the few evenings we did not work. It had a simple bar consisting of soft drinks and a keg of beer. Naturally, it was noted how much individuals consumed. Most of us took advantage of the rare evenings off. Some watched the crackly television, others caught up with the newspapers or sat around chatting. The love-birds were always there, usually sitting apart so as not to arouse suspicion, but they would always leave within a minute or so of each other, stretching and yawning with the excuse that they were tired and heading off to hit the hay. The pantomime was so obvious to those of us on the course we would roll our eyes at each other. Their favourite rendezvous was in the field behind the bashers, where they would indulge in carnal activities against a large oak tree in shadows beyond the security lights.
The sergeant major rarely mixed with us – as he had never been an operative, his job being purely administrative. He was a narcissistic Tom Jones look-alike who styled his hair and sideburns like the famous singer (he was Welsh to boot) and wore gold necklaces, rings and bracelets (dress regulations were civilian for everyone in the unit). Unlike many of the DS, he had no idea about the couple’s tryst and just happened to be taking his dopey black Labrador for an evening stroll. It was the dog who drew his attention to the couple behind the tree. Shocked and disgusted, he immediately ordered the couple to be RTUed.
The sergeant major’s non-fraternisation edict came under suspicion when the woman later accused him of jealousy because he had fancied her himself from the beginning. He denied it, but admitted she had suggested, during a formal meeting in his office when she first arrived, that he was in with a chance. Her RTUed lover was Sal from the SBS. I later learned she was an Army major and the daughter of a prominent politician.
I was one of those who saw ensnaring one of the girls as a challenge. Being an SBS operative I was advanced in many of the skills required of the course, having gained experience working undercover on my previous special forces tour, and because of that I was chosen as senior operations officer for the final week-long exercise, a surveillance operation against an IRA ASU (all SAS troopers) who were planning a bombing campaign. This role required that I remain in the control room to plan and coordinate the operation as it developed.