The entire selection course was doubled off the parade ground in a column along a narrow road leading into the countryside that was part of the camp and out of bounds to civilians. No one spoke to each other. We were dropped off in pairs at fifty-foot intervals, given pencil and paper and ordered to remain in the same spot some thirty feet from the road, concealed in the bushes, and to maintain a log of any activity we saw. We were not told how long we would be there and were warned if we left the position for any reason we would immediately be returned to unit (RTUed). The instructors hinted we would be in position for at least two days, perhaps more.
My partner for this first exercise was an old, wiry man nicknamed Brock (because of his badger-like qualities) who, at forty-one years old, seemed too ancient to be doing active field duties, by modern military standards. He’d been in the mob for over twenty years and didn’t look as if he had many more to do before his time was up. His hair was grey, dry and curly and started several inches back from its original start-line on his forehead. He reminded me of a Cornish fisherman, a grumpy old version, as he sat opposite, looking at me somewhat suspiciously. It was the way Brock looked at everyone. I didn’t know what he was doing on this selection course and did not expect him to stay long, which was a good enough reason not to communicate with him at all. He no doubt looked upon me as some young punk and maintained his stern, silent attitude for the same reason.
With nightfall came a frost. Selection processes always overlapped the winter months when possible so the cold and rain could be taken advantage of as an added fuckfactor. The lack of clothing was deliberate. I mooched around and stuffed my jacket and trousers with as much dried grass as I could find in the limited area. Brock did the same and we competed for what little fauna there was in our patch. It itched and scratched but the duvet effect afforded us a little warmth, though not enough to allow us to sleep. The obvious thing would have been to sit close together for added warmth, but we just sat opposite each other. I would rather have been by myself than stuck with this old man. I would not have been surprised if he had been part of the test.
There was movement throughout the night, mostly the sound of a solitary person walking along the road. I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
Come morning, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw several recruits heading back along the road. They had quit and would be processed out of the camp within an hour. As on past selections, watching them made me wonder what some soldiers expected these courses to consist of when they quit at the first taste of discomfort. The Int Corps moved with clinical efficiency when a recruit quit or was ‘cancelled’. Throughout the course, sometimes in the middle of the night, a recruit would be called away for no apparent reason and never seen again, his cupboard emptied, his bedding removed and the bed-frame upended literally within minutes. It was spooky in some ways, but interesting, even satisfying to watch the population of the barrack room dwindle as the days ticked away. Army Intelligence used this early phase to do a more thorough check of our individual backgrounds. There was to be no chance taken that an IRA sympathiser might infiltrate our ranks. I wondered how many of us would be left by the end. I was determined to be one of them. Brock seemed equally determined.
I learned many months later that Brock was an Army helicopter pilot and sergeant major of his squadron. He was married with two children, but one day, at forty, he was suddenly infused with the idea of being a special forces operative. He applied for the SAS and, surprisingly, was accepted to take part in a selection course. They must have missed his age on the application form, and I am sure the DS raised a few eyebrows when he arrived. It was too demanding for him physically, and although he put up a spirited effort he had to quit during one of the long load-carrying map marches. His body could no longer take the punishment. Not one to be deterred or give in easily, he immediately applied for the 14 Int selection course. He was a tough old bastard. A fine pair we made, facing each other in a bush freezing our nuts off: one of the youngest operatives in special forces teamed up with one of the oldest soldiers in the British Army.
Come mid-morning, I saw a lone instructor walking down the road carrying a small backpack. He was in field fatigues and wore a fawn beret with a winged dagger cap badge. He left the road and cut through the brush towards our position. He called out and we stood to show ourselves. As he came over he reached into his backpack and tossed us a small tin of food each. His attitude was cold and laced with contempt – typical for Directing Staff. He knew we had no tin-opener. Having food but no way to eat it was supposed to piss us off even more.
‘Want some water?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ I said cheerfully, showing contempt for his contempt. Always take what’s offered – you never know when your next chance for sustenance will come.
He tossed me a bottle and I took a gulp. I handed it to Brock. There was something familiar about this SAS trooper. He was clean-shaven and groomed compared to the last time I had seen him.
We recognised each other about the same time. He was the trooper with whom I had shared my first ambush outside O’Sally’s farm a year and a half earlier. His demeanour changed subtly and he eased his harsh edge. Even if I was one of ‘that other lot from Poole’ I was a notch above the others, and there was nothing on this selection course that was going to crack me. He smiled slightly and nodded, the only hint he allowed that showed he recognised me.
‘Cold last night?’ he asked, trying to make some light conversation.
‘Bit,’ I said and shrugged.
He kept his voice low when he said, ‘We’re pulling you all out in a few hours.’
The information was simply professional courtesy. He knew I would stay in that bush if I had to until they carried me out. He paused as an afterthought before leaving to offer us a small army tin-opener – another show of courtesy.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I brought my own.’ I had taped a tiny Army tin-opener, a five-pound note, a miniature button compass and a book of matches to the arches of my feet before I got off the train the day I arrived. I didn’t know what to expect so I had come prepared. The wily Brock had also concealed a tin-opener on his person. Brock did not ask what all that was about between the SAS lad and me, but he gave me an even more curious look.
When Brock and I were eventually called back on to the track at midday to join the others, the column was short by some thirty recruits. I wondered how many would have been left had it snowed or rained.
We were not allowed sleep the second night, either. They kept all of us occupied with a dusk-till-dawn cross-country map-reading exercise. It was a straightforward enough circuit, but many recruits got hopelessly lost – mostly matelots and RAF personnel who had little or no previous experience of map-reading. The next day we were given initiative tests such as bridge-and raft-building using ropes, logs and oil drums, etc. The instructors wanted to assess how we worked and cooperated with each other. Late on the third night they finally let us into our beds for the first time since we’d arrived. After grabbing a quick shower, I entered the grot and slumped on my bed. Many recruits were already asleep having skipped their personal hygiene. I pulled on a clean T-shirt, shorts and socks, crawled under the crisp sheets and fell into a deep sleep the minute my head hit the pillow.
I don’t know if it was ten minutes or two hours later but suddenly all hell broke loose. Explosions went off all around – thunder-flashes erupted on or under beds while men charged through the room firing guns and yelling for us to evacuate or we’d be killed. I had woken up in the middle of a pitched battle. I was in such a deep REM-sleep, I had no idea where on earth I was and what I was doing there. I could have been in another life. I leapt from my bed and tripped and stumbled barefoot in the darkness as blinding explosions went off all around. Someone fired a magazine of blank rounds straight at me from feet away. I scrambled for the door where I crashed into other dazed and stunned men desperately trying to get away. A boot slammed into my side. Something like a rubber truncheon hit me on the head repeatedly. I burst outside into the night and, in the grip of fear and total confusion, ran full-pelt. I didn’t know or care where I was headed, I just had to get away. As I ran hard in my bare feet across the parade ground my brain started to make sense of the confusion. Once I recognised my surroundings, things quickly fell back into place. I paused between some old buildings to gather myself and get my bearings. I looked down at my bare feet and decided from then on I would sleep wearing trainers. The other grots had also been attacked and I could see and hear silhouettes running. It was several years before I fully appreciated the lesson learned that night. The experience seemed to loosen a compartment in my brain. Perhaps a similar compartment to the one a baby opens when it touches a flame for the first time. I believe it has given me an edge in similar experiences ever since. A voice boomed over loudspeakers ordering an end to the attack and for all course members to close in.
Once the course was assembled on the parade ground, we were given a minute to run back to our grots to dress, and then herded into a warm classroom, seated in comfortable seats and told to wait. It was nearly impossible not to fall asleep, even so soon after the traumatic awakening. We were told we were to be shown a film documentary and to watch it carefully. The lights went out and a 16mm black and white film flickered on a screen at the front of the room. It was an incredibly boring documentary on flower-pressing that lasted some forty minutes. Many fell asleep. I kept pinching and slapping myself in the face in an effort to stay awake. I punched my cheeks so hard I could feel the bruises the next day. When the film ended, we were handed questionnaires on its content. The point was, could you control yourself and stay alert?
Throughout the course we were secretly monitored. Having been given a task to complete, we would sometimes find ourselves alone and unsupervised. I had spotted new co-axial cable running into many of the old buildings that had no television sets and suspected they might be attached to hidden video cameras. The aim was to see how we conducted ourselves when not putting on a front in the presence of the Directing Staff. Naturally I put on a good show, just in case I was right about the cameras.
An important quality the instructors were looking for was aggression. Undercover operatives in Northern Ireland work mostly alone and far from any support. Cornered in a desperate situation, savage, controlled aggression might save our lives.
To assess each recruit’s aggression, the entire course, about sixty by the beginning of the second week, was marched into the gymnasium and ordered to strip down to shorts and trainers. A basket of well-worn boxing gloves was brought in, about ten pairs between us. We were lined up in two rows facing each other and arranged in alternating order of size. The largest recruit, named Jack, a Guardsman, I later learned, was a powerfully built man who at one time had made the Army boxing team. He had a chiselled jaw and forehead and looked like he had seen more than just a few fights. He stood at the end of one row. I was placed at the end of the other row opposite him as I was considered the next in size. We were going to mill in pairs and I was not looking forward to fighting with Jack one bit.
Milling is like boxing but without tactics or strategy which means no ducking, weaving, aiming, slacking or pausing for breath. Opponents stand toe-to-toe and at the bell slam it out like windmills until one is left standing. If someone goes down and is not unconscious he is expected to drag himself back up and continue. A referee stands close to both opponents to keep the pace going and, should either fighter attempt any of the ‘no’s above, he punches them mercilessly himself.
An overweight, gregarious Army officer beside me named John, who was suspected of lacking commitment, was ordered to swap places with me. John went pale as he took in Jack’s build and the hams that hung from the ends of his hairy, muscle-bound arms.
I studied my new opponent, Mike, another Army officer. He was a gangly, affable, public schoolboy type whose aggression the instructors also wanted to test. Mike had scar tissue around his eyes and forehead from a windscreen he had crashed through a few years earlier. It was obvious what I had to do.
The boxing ring was no more than several gym mats pushed together to form a square. The ring was made up of benches which the rest of us sat on, facing inwards. There were no ropes. If anyone was being punched out of the ring we were to push them back in for more punishment.
Jack and John’s fight was first and, as expected, lasted less than a minute. John lacked the reach and the power to take on Jack, but he did display spirit and determination, picking himself up off the floor more than once before eventually going down half-unconscious with a smashed nose. Jack gave him no quarter.
Years later, John had a near miss while he was walking the Armagh countryside acting as a regular gravel-belly troop officer. His troop was ambushed late one night and, as John led the pursuit towards the terrorists, his webbing became entangled as he tried to push through a thicket. One of the terrorists about to flee on a bicycle noticed John snared like a rabbit. He paused long enough to unload a full magazine of M16 high-velocity bullets at John from twenty feet away. John flew backwards through the hedge and the terrorist cycled away. John’s ears were ringing from the gunfire. He sat up in the bottom of a ditch and to his amazement was not dead. He felt his body for holes, certain he had been hit. He had been hit, but the only hole in his flesh was through the centre of one of his ears.
Mike and I were the next pair to mill and we stepped on to the mat and stood opposite each other as the rules were reiterated by the referee. My plan was to aim my blows at the paper-thin scar tissue on his face and rip it open.
From the instant the bell went, everything became a frenzy. I leant in and slammed ferociously at his head. I remember him hitting me in the face several times, but as in most fights, blows go unnoticed until it’s over. Within seconds, blood was splashing everywhere, sprinkling the referee and those on the benches. None of it was mine. I swung blow after haymaker at Mike, relentlessly. I was much fitter and stronger than him and making a real mess of his scar tissue. Blood flowed into Mike’s eyes, blinding him. He paused to wipe it away. I paused to let him. We were both shouted at and punched by the referee. I resumed the onslaught as Mike grew weaker and less effective. As long as Mike kept standing I kept slamming my punches home. Those were the bitter rules. I would not be doing him or myself any favours by stopping. If he wanted to do this job, he would have to show his mettle. If he was concerned about his looks he could quit. But Mike was not about to give up and the heartless referee let the fight continue. I had to show the killer instinct. It was expected of me. The instructors knew who I was by now. But being special forces had nothing to do with my enthusiasm. As I punched Mike to destruction and the blood sprayed over me it began to excite some primaeval part of me. There was something seductive about it. I’m not proud to say it but I was relishing it when Mike started to weaken. I felt in total control and was going in for the kill.