Why would the SBS use the two-man canoes in their poster nowadays, I wondered? I imagined they were a little out of date. I would eventually find out the answer for myself after spending weeks in them, often several days at a time without once getting out – cooking, eating, sleeping and evacuating from them. They can quickly be broken down and packed into bags then carried hundreds of miles to be reassembled. They move silently, can take tremendous punishment, be parachuted out of aircraft, launched from submarines in minutes, carry several hundred pounds of equipment such as explosives and are easily repaired. A heavy machine-gun can be mounted on the front and fired whilst on the move, and it can even accommodate a light mortar, positioned and fired from in between the two canoeists. They can be rigged with a sail for long sea crossings, some have been rigged with small engines, and they can carry a passenger in between the canoeists, a technique used for dropping off spies and agents during the war. Made of wood and canvas, there is still nothing to compare with them in today’s hi-tech world.
Throughout my regular commando training there were wild rumours, many of them ridiculous, about that most mysterious, élite group known as the SBS. Some suggested they were the government’s top secret hit squad, others that they did not exist at all. There was always some noddy declaring how he intended joining them as soon as he had completed the minimum requirement of three years in a commando unit. The ones who bragged about it never seemed to carry out their boast. As for me it was not even a fleeting daydream. The SBS were out of my thoughts as soon as I walked away from the poster. In three years, which was the length of service I had signed up for, I planned to be back in civvy street and looking for a career. Before I joined up I did not altogether disagree with the popularly negative view that most civvies seemed to have of the military, and especially of soldiers – ‘Join the Army, go to distant countries, meet new and exciting people, and kill them’ was a well-known T-shirt slogan. I was in the Marines to get what I could out of them and then leave, and if a war happened along in those three years the excitement might be an added bonus. But the more I learned and the harder the commando course became, the more I experienced a growing appreciation for the soldier’s life. When it comes to pay, promotion, education, pension, job security and being ordered about, the military offers a freer and kinder existence than most corporations. And only a few civilians can turn up to work on any given morning to find they are off on an another adventure somewhere in the world. The one drawback is longevity. Most soldiers find themselves on the street after twenty-two years, having to carve out another life. But that’s a worry for the old soldier, not the young one.
A few days after receiving my green beret I met the Personnel Selection Officer (PSO), whose job it is to plan the first step in a new Marine’s career. His task is to balance the manpower within the corps by distributing new recruits to the various units, and also maintain a flow of apprentices to the various administrative and support departments, such as cooks, drivers, mechanics, carpenters or illustrators. The PSO noted in my file that I had worked in a Mayfair hotel as a ledger clerk. He thought that was an excellent background for an administrative clerk. What? I said to myself. A pen-pusher? I baulked. He sounded like a car salesman as he explained how the corps was short on clerks and that there were great advantages to be had in becoming one. For instance, if I wanted to be a sportsman I would have loads of time off to train, and promotion was quick and guaranteed. I grew concerned as I listened, even a little panicked. Now that they owned my life, could they actually force me into any career they wanted?
I whipped myself to a rigid attention – I was still essentially a noddy – and blurted out, ‘I want to be a fighting Marine. I didn’t join up to be an office boy, sir!’
He was unmoved. Of course no one wanted to be a clerk; no one who wanted to be a real soldier, anyway. But he had quotas that had to be filled and was used to having to hard-sell this particular berth. He insisted I would be a soldier as well as a clerk. Clerks, he maintained, did everything regular Marines did, even parachute courses. He asked me to look at being a clerk as an added responsibility, on top of being a soldier. I suddenly saw myself charging up a beach, gun in hand, carrying a large desk on my back.
In an effort to convey how much of a soldier I wanted to be and how little of a clerk, I declared, ‘I want to join the SBS one day, sir!’
I could see the letters, SBS, hanging there in front of me like large slabs of concrete challenging me to eat them. The thought of joining the SBS had never entered my head before that moment. I had daydreamed about it a little, just like everyone else who saw the posters or heard the exaggerated stories about the squadron. But I had never for a second thought seriously about joining them.
The PSO scoffed at my outburst and explained what I already knew, that I required a minimum of three years as a regular Marine Commando before I could even think of applying for the lofty heights of the SBS. But he went on smoothly to suggest I could become a clerk then apply to join the SBS after three years, but that, of course, would require signing on for the full twenty-two. At the time I did not know I had the choice of flatly refusing the posting, but he never even hinted at that, letting me think it was as good as an order. However, I could not bring myself to buy his package and so he finally sighed and told me to go away and take a few days to at least consider it.
As I left the office I was confused and depressed. I didn’t want to be a shiny-arse. I decided my primary goal was to get myself into a regular commando unit, and not as a clerk. Surely they could not force me.
Later that evening, my troop was meeting down at a local pub as part of an end-of-training farewell bash. In a few days most of us would bomb-burst to the various commando units which at that time were 40 and 42 in Plymouth, 41 in Malta and 45 in Arbroath, unless any of us got a draft to a Royal Navy ship or a career course, such as a cook or clerk: then we would be off to one of many training establishments to learn the necessary skills. I was not particularly close to any of the other recruits, even after six months of arduous training in which teamwork was encouraged as the key to success and survival. But the hardship and attrition had created a unique bond between us.
One of the lads had organised a competition for that evening and we had all chipped in a pound towards the winning prize, which was a candle-lit dinner for two. The winner would be the man who turned up with the ugliest date. The entrants would be judged by the whole troop. The lad who won, or lost, depending on how you look at it, was the smallest in the troop, weighing in at around nine stone. He entered the pub with a broad grin, holding the hand of a nineteen-stone, no-neck behemoth in a flowery dress. She had no idea what was going on and smiled sweetly while everyone applauded them as the undisputed winners. The lad had spotted her at a bus-stop in Exmouth on his way to the pub and wooed her to come and have a pint. The poor girl looked around at the sea of ghoulish, laughing faces and her smile faded as she realised what it was about. She was not amused. Her huge, blubbery arm must have weighed only a little less than her date when it hit him with the force of a sledgehammer, after which he needed to be taken to the sick-bay with a suspected fractured jaw. We found out later that the lady was a notoriously proficient bouncer in a nightclub in Exeter.
The following day I was called back to the PSO’s office. It looked like he wasn’t even going to give me the full few days to think about it. I was aware I might eventually lose the fight but I had prepared a detailed argument nevertheless – a speech on wanting to be the best I could be and all that crap. I was OK at thinking up speeches in my head, but when it came to actually making them they always turned to fudge. I was rehearsing it over and over inmy mind as Iapproachedthe HQbuilding, when I spotted Corporal Jakers walking up the main drag of the camp towards the main gate carrying his backpack and kitbags. He looked like he had all his belongings and was leaving, having obviously got himself a draft somewhere. I adjusted my brand-new green beret on my head, called a ‘flight deck’ at that stage, because it was still a little rigid and stuck up on one side (the trick was to soak the new beret and put it on wet, adjusting it to perfection, then keep it on until dry), straightened my uniform and called out to him.
‘Where’re you off to, Corporal Jakers?’ I said, thinking he would be different towards me now that I was a Marine.
He glanced at me long enough to recognise me, and said, ‘Fuck off and talk to me when you’re a man.’
I should have expected a comment like that from him. Mister Angry, we called him. As I watched him disappear up the road, I wondered if I would ever bump into the bastard again.
I gathered myself, had a last few seconds of anti-clerk speech rehearsal, and entered the PSO’s office, but before I got a chance to open my mouth what he said shut me up completely.
‘Due to a sudden shortage of manpower, I’ve been informed that the SBS is allowing a handful of recruits fresh out of basic training to attempt the selection course. It’s some kind of experiment, and one I don’t approve of, I must say.’
He did not look pleased, but it was the PSO’s job to fill the slots presented to him and that is what he now had to do.
‘Since you have declared your desire to join the SBS, you’re to report to Royal Marines, Poole and attend an acquaint. If you pass that you’ll attend the SBS selection course the following month.’
It was not until I left the office that it fully sank in and I went into something of a mild shock. By the time I was walking back down the main drag it had turned into a kind of euphoria. But as the day wore on and the realities of what I had got myself into set in, I became worried. After six months of ball-busting Royal Marines commando training I was, almost immediately, to attend probably the hardest special forces selection course in the world, equal in content and intensity to SAS selection, but including extensive diving and sea-canoeing, both conducted in wintry and stormy weather conditions.
I did wonder what he meant by, ‘Due to a sudden shortage of manpower.’ Had something terrible happened?
The reason, I was to find out later, was connected to the news article I’d read on the train to Deal six months earlier. When oil platforms had started appearing in the North Sea, pumping vast amounts of wealth into the country, the SBS, aware that the platforms were a target for terrorists, had evolved ways of assaulting and recapturing them in case one was hijacked and its crew held hostage. No other country’s special forces had yet considered the threat or were doing anything serious about it. The SBS had had to start from scratch, and it was a great way to help put the unit on the map.
The platforms were enormous, exposed and in the middle of nowhere, difficult to get to without being seen and in seas which averaged near storm conditions seven out of every eight days of the year. You had to be an expert diver, a fearless climber, have the stamina of an athlete, and sport a fair-sized set of nuts before you even got on to the lowest deck a hundred feet above the water to pull out your gun and become a soldier. That’s why they are called special forces. When SBS operatives first surfaced from beneath those terrible swells, they defied driving winds, rain and sometimes snow and ice to climb the immense, razor-sharp, barnacle-covered, slippery, towering steel structures armed to the teeth. But the oil platform executives did not see them as a potential rescue force, only a pool of
Resource
s from which they could recruit much-needed divers. The executives were propositioning the SBS members even before they had caught their breaths, offering them irresistible wages. In a short time the SBS lost over twenty per cent of its operatives. The Navy reacted by increasing diving pay, which was then followed by special forces pay. It still did not compete with the oil companies, but it reduced the flow to a trickle, and one of mostly older members on their way outside soon anyway.
This exodus from the SBS of those mainly older operatives did have a positive side. British Special Forces is a dynamic organisation, growing more high-tech each year. Twenty years ago, when a special forces operative went out into the field, he carried equipment no more than a few hundred pounds in value, the most expensive items being a pair of binoculars, a rifle, camera, his diving equipment, a canoe and a Morse code radio set. Today the same operative can expect to carry equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Night-viewing aids, satellite navigation systems, laser-guided weapon-sighting systems, satellite communicators with secure and coded signals and microwave wireless surveillance systems. Add to that list mini-submarines, high-speed surface craft and other specialised vehicles and delivery systems, all operated by SBS ranks themselves, and the value of the equipment entrusted to a single SBS operative zooms into the multi-millions. The squadron was going to need not just tough men with high physical and mental stamina, but educated men with the technical awareness to operate and understand these new sophisticated systems.
When I revealed to my squaddies that I was on my way to attend an SBS acquaint, instead of mocking me, to my surprise two of them, Andy and Dave, both tough and intelligent young men, went directly to the PSO and put themselves forward for the course. Looking back, Andy and Dave were far from ordinary as regular Marines. They were well-educated, Andy had a degree, and both were articulate in speech and sophisticated in manner and dress. So much so that out of uniform they were often mistaken for young officers in training. I never asked either of them why they were not.
A week later I trudged out of CTC carrying my kitbag and suitcase, having added a few uniforms to my worldly possessions, and headed for Poole. I had a weekend’s leave, but I didn’t want to go home to London and my father. I didn’t want him to know I was attending an SBS selection course either, not that it would have meant anything to him. He had been a soldier himself, in the Second World War, a conscript, but he knew nothing about soldiering today. I decided to send him a postcard when I got to Poole just to say hello. Poole was not far away, but I took the whole weekend getting there, catching buses and stopping off at a couple of coastal bed-and-breakfast places on the way. I was more unsure of my future than ever, but for some reason the world was starting to look quite a beautiful place to me.