Authors: Peter Ratcliffe
A
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almost all the world knows nowadays, there are four squadrons in 22 Special Air Service Regiment, and four troops in each squadron: Air, Boat, Mountain and Mobility Troops. Their titles are pretty much self explanatory, but there are refinements within their areas of specialization that ought to be mentioned.
Air Troop are the free-fall parachuting experts. They specialize in high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) descents, an effective means of arriving in their designated area of operations without the enemy on the ground being alerted by the presence of a low-flying aircraft. At night, they will leave the aircraft at 25,000 feet and breathe oxygen from cylinders on their chest packs, only opening their parachutes when they are 4,000 feet above the ground. During a daylight jump from the same altitude they will shave another 1,000 feet off the height at which they open their chutes, bringing them in from around 3,000 feet. From that height they are down and in position before an enemy, even assuming he has seen them, has had time to blink. When all four troops of a squadron are jumping at night, Air Troop jump at lower altitude, say around 13,000 feet. They will then mark out the landing strip for the squadron while the pilot circles. All badged members of the SAS are trained parachutists, but the Air Troops are the experts. Soldiers are, however, expected to learn all the disciplines, so that no one will find himself at a loss working with a troop that specializes in something other than his own area of expertise.
Boat Troop’s role is mainly that of getting a squadron of men ashore from surface ships, using Gemini rubber inflatables powered by outboard motors. They are all expert scuba divers and go sub-surface for reconnaissance work. Among them are a number of highly skilled underwater demolition men; they have to be extremely skilful, because explosions underwater are the most dangerous of all.
Mobility Troop use specially adapted long-wheelbase Land Rovers which fairly bristle with weaponry. These are supplemented by a number of motorcycles, which are used for reconnaissance, communication between vehicles on the move, and to scout suitable routes for the troop or squadron. Every member of the troop has to be able to ride a motorcycle as well as drive a Land Rover, and all have some training as mechanics. But among the men of Mobility Troop are skilled mechanics who have completed special training enabling them to strip and repair the Land Rovers and bikes in the most appalling situations. No matter where, no matter what the problem, these guys can fix it, by feel and in pitch dark, if necessary. Beyond that, everyone is trained in driving or riding, for long periods if needed, in terrain and conditions that would defeat a mule, and also in driving at night using passive night goggles (PNGs), since an SAS patrol on a clandestine mission cannot use lights.
One of the main roles of Mountain Troop is to get an entire squadron up a cliff or other obstacle by means of a fixed climb. They go first, free climbing the cliff or rockface and fixing clamps and rope-anchor points into the surface so that the squadron can follow. Training on Mount Everest and other peaks in the Himalayas, in the high Andes of South America and the Swiss and French Alps, they are all expert mountaineers and skiers. They are taught to operate in the very worst of weather conditions, and during whiteouts will burrow into deep snow holes for survival until the blizzard has passed. Some of them took part in the 1976 British expedition to Everest, and again in the expedition of 1984, during which one member of the Regiment was killed in an avalanche. As will be seen, in the liberation of South Georgia in 1982 D Squadron’s Mountain Troop was to be tested to the limit.
Once he has been assigned to a troop, an SAS man tends to stay there. Under certain circumstances, however, a man will cross-train between disciplines, making him double- or even multi-skilled, and thus even more valuable to the Regiment. It should be said, though, that it sometimes doesn’t work out that way – as it certainly didn’t with me and freefalling.
I was a staff sergeant when I tried it. After two or three hours’ ground training, we climbed aboard an RAF C-130, the famous transport aircraft generally known as the Hercules, and one squadron of which is permanently assigned to special operations, mainly by the SAS. At 13,000 feet the tailgate opened and I launched myself up the loading ramp. The RAF instructor who would jump with me was enormously experienced. One minute he was looking into my eyes and giving me the thumbs up, and the next we were both falling through the sky. Then he was suddenly close behind me as we hurtled down, adjusting my leg straps.
I have already confessed that I don’t like heights, and I now discovered that I was the worst freefaller ever to take to the sky. I was flipped on to my back so many times I began to feel like a pancake. Whenever I managed to correct my position, I’d start spinning and then be flipped the other way.
Any movement you make with your hands or legs while freefalling at 120 miles an hour causes a reaction. To show you what I mean, if you put your hand out of the sunroof of a car travelling at 80 miles an hour, the wind pressure will slam it backwards against the rear edge of the aperture. Now imagine doing 120 miles an hour – 176 feet per second – with your entire body feeling the force. The slightest movement unbalances you. Though others get the hang of freefalling soon enough – and many of them come to love it – I was never able to sort myself out, with the result that I was completely useless at it.
I did eight jumps in about four days, after which the instructor told me that I was not only a danger to myself, I was a danger to other people in the sky as well. To be honest, his words were music to my ears, because it meant there was not much chance of them ever using me for freefall.
Three years later, during exercises in Jordan, I used to amuse myself by joshing Air Troop about their having to be crazy to like jumping out of aircraft. In return, they poked fun at my almost legendary lack of freefall prowess. It was all good-natured stuff – except that, one day, they suddenly asked me if I was going to jump with them the next morning. They had reckoned that I would say, ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers’ and simply walk away. Only I didn’t. To their surprise – and mine – I said ‘Yes.’ I immediately regretted it, but having put my pride on the line, I had no option but to go through with it.
There was worse to come. John, the parachute-jump instructor and himself an expert freefaller, told me that I’d be using a square-shaped parachute for the jump; ‘It’s all we’ve got with us,’ he said. I had only jumped before using the standard large round chutes. With them you always got a canopy. You might get twists, and they didn’t steer very well, but they’d always get you down. The square parachutes were highly steerable, and thus far more useful to men trying to land in a precise location, but if you got twists in the cords you had to cut the chute away by pulling two clips on your shoulders, then go back into freefall and pull your reserve.
Having had all this explained to me by John, I was definitely having second thoughts. Seeing this, he simply said, ‘OK. I’ll pin you.’ What he meant was that, when the time came for me to jump, he would stand on the tailgate of the aircraft with his back to the exit. I would stand facing and holding on to him. Then he would step off and I would fall forward and go into the freefall position. He would therefore be able to keep me stable while I was doing whatever I had to do to try to maintain my position. Then, when we got to 3,500 feet, he would let me go as I pulled the chute, and that would ensure a full canopy.
Once again pride overtook me, however. Grateful as I was for his help, I heard myself saying, ‘Tell you what John, why don’t I just jump on my own? Otherwise they’ll all take the piss out of me. Then you come and pin me straight away and get me stable.’ Not really being aware of my utter ineptitude, he agreed, so we went and did a bit of training on the ground for an hour because I hadn’t done any freefall for three years.
The next morning, I strapped on my parachute and all the other paraphernalia, wondering, not for the first time, what I’d let myself in for. Air Troop had twelve men jumping that day from 13,000 feet. I was to go first, followed by John and the rest of the guys. After a nervous eternity, the tailgate opened. The red light came on, then green, and I launched myself forward, twisting in the air to get into the right freefall position. But I immediately became unstable. Flipped over and over by the airstream, I tossed every which way as I tried to get stable.
Where the hell was John? He was supposed to be coming to get me. I couldn’t see him or anyone else. The ground and the sky whirled upside-down or right-way-up, and I was hurtling towards the earth like a rag doll slung from the roof of a tower block. Terrified? That’s a polite understatement for the way I felt. I had an altimeter on my wrist and the bloody thing was clocking off the decreasing height as the earth rushed towards me. Where the hell was John?
Seconds into the jump and I was all over the sky, desperately trying to get stable. It was hopeless, completely beyond my abilities. One second I was dropping head first, the next I was on my back looking towards Heaven. And, at that moment, metaphorically speaking, Heaven seemed far, far too close.
At 4,000 feet I pulled the handle. Bang! The chute opened, the harness slamming into me with a breath-stopping jerk. I’d got a canopy, thank God. I could survive this, I thought, if I didn’t try to do anything clever. I told myself just to leave everything alone. Not to touch a thing. To do nothing. Just land.
And I did.
At the debriefing afterwards, the guys said that as soon as I left the tailgate I went so badly unstable that they couldn’t get near me. Apparently the whole troop had tried to catch me, but I was dropping like a stone, faster than anyone could manage in controlled freefall. Eventually, however, they did manage to close up, and though I saw no one, one of the troop, Stan, who could ‘fly’ in freefall like a bird, actually zoomed in and managed to grab me. I didn’t see him or feel anything, but it was he who stabilized me. It was then that I pulled the handle, felt the shock as the chute opened and saw the canopy above me. By then Stan had whirled away, and I thought it was just good fortune that had ensured that my parachute had deployed safely. Hearing the others at the debriefing, and reflecting on what might have been, confirmed me in my view that I can do without freefalling. It is a view that I hold to this day.
Soon after being badged, a candidate knows which squadron he is going to, because those are the ones with vacancies. In the case of my intake, five of us had been assigned to D Squadron, which had two vacancies in Mobility Troop and three in Boat Troop. We had been told to sort out among ourselves which troop we wanted to go to. All of us wanted to go into Mobility Troop. Partly we fancied ourselves at the wheel of a heavily armed vehicle, belting across country, but mainly none of us liked the idea of working for most of the time in cold water.
On arrival at D Squadron, we were called, in alphabetical order, into the office of the then squadron commander, Major Bruce Niven. Since my surname begins with R, I was fourth down the list. And naturally, the first two in to see the Boss had expressed a preference for Mobility Troop. Looking up from his paperwork, the OC said, ‘Right, Ratcliffe. You’re going to Boat Troop.’ I’d known this was what he would say, but I thought I‘d have a stab at getting him to change his mind. Standing doggedly in front of his desk, I told him somewhat nervously that I’d rather go to Mobility Troop.
‘You’ll go where there is a vacancy, and the vacancy is in Boat Troop,’ was the predictable reply. I didn’t move. ‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I can’t stand water.’ Major Niven looked at me quizzically and asked if I was scared of water. ‘I’m not
scared
of water, sir. It’s just that I’m not very confident in it.’
For some reason this must have struck a chord with the OC, with the result that Denis, one of the guys who had been in his office before me, was switched from Mobility and sent to Boat Troop instead of me. So that was how I came to be assigned to Mobility Troop, riding on the Land Rovers while Denis did the swimming. It was a useful lesson in the fact that in the SAS you make your own luck. But although I’d got my way, I’d stitched Denis up, and he never forgave me for it.
When a man is badged into the Regiment, he finds himself in a different career structure. For the first year he will keep the rank he came in with, and is paid accordingly by his previous regiment or unit. After that year, he reverts and becomes a trooper although, as an incentive to stay, he will be paid the same as a corporal in an ordinary unit; as a corporal, he will be paid the same as a sergeant. Thereafter, he cannot attain the rank of sergeant until he has served with the Regiment for a minimum of seven years. Once such men are promoted to sergeant, however, we think of them as the engine room of the SAS, important cogs in the machinery that drives the Regiment forward. But there is a long way to go before they reach that stage of their careers.
At any time in his first four years with the SAS, a man will either be returned to his original unit or fully accepted into the Regiment. This means, in effect, that he has four years in which to prove himself. His assessment papers are signed by his squadron commander and passed to Regimental Headquarters (RHQ), where they are countersigned by the Regimental Sergeant-Major, who adds a pen portrait of the man being assessed. From there, they go to the adjutant, 2IC, and finally to the CO. If they all agree and sign the papers without reservations, then the soldier under assessment will continue in the SAS.
Flaws in a man are usually first spotted by his squadron commander or squadron sergeant-major, mainly because they see him every day of the week. If the flaws are serious – or serious in the Regiment’s eyes, at least – he will be called in and told that he is not being recommended for a career in the SAS. Eventually, he will be summoned to the CO’s office and informed that he is not up to the standard required and that he is to be returned to his original unit.