‘You’ll stay here until you get your orders and not a minute less.’
I was already starting to feel ill at the idea.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll keep you busy, son. I need a bedding storeman. I think a man of your experience can handle a job like that.’
He knew he was getting up my nose and was loving it. I could believe that when my orders did eventually come through, and with no help from him, he would hang on to them for as long as he could. I could be here for six months, and as a bedding storeman! I could see myself strangling him long before six months. The irony was, a few days earlier, aware of his feelings towards me, I had kidded about sneaking off without him seeing me. One of the other rejoins was surprised at the way the sergeant major had turned out. He had known him before and said he used to be a decent bloke. He was highly decorated, with a QGM for Aden and an MM for Borneo, plus a Mention in Dispatches from somewhere else.
He was not to be taken lightly. His achievements and his rank demanded respect if nothing else, no matter how bitter he had become.
‘Is that understood?’ he asked coldly, a few feet from me.
‘Sir.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said in the same low voice. I wasn’t some nod punk to shout his head off at. Those days were long past. I would go to cells before I did that. Perhaps I was being a prima donna and sulking because I could not leave, but he was sticking pins in me for personal reasons and that was just as bad. Fortunately, he did not push me that far. He had plenty of time to enjoy getting me worked up.
‘Take your bedding and equipment back to your grot. I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning when your new duties will be explained to you.’
I shut my mouth, picked up my gear and walked out of the building.
I stood outside to catch my breath and absorb this latest crud. Trucks of noddies in their blue berets drove by on their way to some training exercise. The camp was a hive of activity as usual. Recruits were running about and being shouted at everywhere. Five years earlier that had been me. It didn’t seem that long ago, but a lot had happened in that time. I saw the sergeant major leave the building through a far doorway and watched him march up the road. He paused to chastise a nod for some indiscretion before continuing on his way.
Six months of this, I thought to myself. I shuddered. No way. I’ll go insane.
I walked back into the store and dumped my stuff on the counter. ‘Here, mate. Hello! Would you take this, please?’
The storeman eyed me from across the room.
He got off his arse and came over to me with a look of curiosity.
‘I fort the sarn’t major said you were to stay?’
‘You must have misunderstood,’ I replied. ‘Sign this lot off me, would you?’
‘Ar dunno if ar should. Ar mean, I ’erd ’im say you were stayin’.’
‘Know what? Forget it. Don’t sign it off. Keep it for yourself. It’s a gift.’
I walked out of the building, climbed into my car and drove through the bustling training camp and out through the main gate. Technically I was going AWOL. But not in my eyes. I was headed for my unit. They could have locked me up for eighty days, I found out later. Had I known that, I might at least have made a few calls to the squadron first.
When I arrived in Poole it was as if I had never left and I was soon totally embroiled in my new team and its duties. Once more the gods looked down on me and decided I was to be left alone. I don’t doubt the sergeant major made an official complaint and tried to have me charged for insubordination and leaving a place of duty without orders, but his paperwork must have got caught up in the same SBS admin system that forgot to send me my draft orders. I never heard another word about the incident.
However, I did hear a year later that the sergeant major’s time was up and he had gone outside himself. I tried to imagine him as a civvy, sitting in a pub somewhere, staring blankly at his pint and seeing his life in flashes, as you do when you have done so many things worth remembering. It must have been even harder for him, considering he had once been a god.
Back in the SBS, I was placed into the Maritime Anti-Terrorism teams. In the three years I had been away they had advanced in the art of recapturing large ships and oil platforms. It was an exciting and innovative time. Equipment was more hi-tech and, unlike in the past, when it was bought off the shelf and adapted, much of it now was being designed and constructed for our specific needs: pressure-proof, waterproof, shock-proof, lightweight, corrosion-proof – in general, SBS proof. Weapons were more efficient – the German P11 had arrived for trials, the only truly silent weapon on the planet, electrically fired and deadly underwater at up to ten metres. Communications were smaller. Assault boats were faster and more portable and the RAF had developed better methods of dropping them into any sea in the world. Satellite technology was being integrated to improve tracking, navigation and worldwide communications. Climbing techniques were speedier. All kinds of civilian technology was being adapted to our needs. A secret group of scientists, not unlike the fictional characters led by ‘Q’ in the Bond films, was coming up with specialised weapons, explosives, knock-out gases and general gadgetry. Every member of the squadron was encouraged to find new ways to improve the skills and techniques needed to operate quickly and clandestinely in all weathers. If an operative, no matter what his level of experience, had an idea on how to improve any aspect of the job he was encouraged to submit it to our vigorous in-house research and development department, or he was given the money to go out and purchase, test and then report on it himself. There is no doubt that this unique, complex yet proficient system helped put the SBS above all others in this business.
Unlike conventional field battles, where tactics are more flexible and largely dictated by the terrain and the enemy’s deployment, special forces anti-terrorist assaults are a combination of physical might and technology working in swift syncopation, pre-planned and finely choreographed. Once initiated, they move relentlessly into the heart of the problem with precision timing, not pausing until their ultimate goal is reached. An example is the Iranian Embassy siege in London, where every soldier knew precisely where they were headed, what they were going to do when they got there, and who was not going to survive the confrontation. Special forces exercises for these types of operations, which involve several different agencies, are more accurately called rehearsals.
To add reality to these rehearsals we usually employ an enemy. On one such major SBS rehearsal against an oil platform in the North Sea utilising the Navy, Air Force and MI5 (for hi-tech surveillance), the Army provided manpower to act as terrorists on board and hold the hostages we were to rescue. What the SBS teams involved in the actual assault did not know was that the enemy was in fact going to be members of the SAS. It seemed the SAS wanted to see how we were progressing in a medium we had succeeded in keeping them away from. To make matters even worse, the SAS terrorist team was led by a senior NCO named Jenson.
It was no secret how much Jenson despised us, but it was the ‘why’ that was so curious. He was a stocky, powerfully built man in his late thirties and every bit the lone alpha wolf. He had a humourless, dark personality and from what I understand was quite disliked within the SAS itself, while at the same time being one of their most revered members.
In this business, if a man has killed another in battle, it improves his stature in the eyes of his fellow operatives. To have had more than one kill adds to that kudos. If a man notches up an unusually high number of kills, his aura can then, understandably, take on something of a demonic hue, even to us. The majority of special forces operatives go an entire career without a kill. Jenson had eighteen, the highest of any British special forces operative, and higher than any terrorist I ever heard of for individual, separate incident kills. Most of them had been accomplished through the sights of a sniper’s rifle. He was a tradesman who enjoyed his work.
I first saw the infamous Jenson on a remount exercise a few months after I first joined the SBS. This exercise was to simulate terrorists taking over a nuclear energy plant. In all there were about fifty SAS and a dozen SBS divided up into assault teams. Jenson was the overall senior NCO. The combined assault team waited in a remote section of the complex in preparation for moving forward to the contact area via underground tunnels. We all wore the familiar black assault uniforms and sat around quietly waiting for the word to go. Jenson, dressed in black the same as us, but with a personally tailored leather weapons harness, spent most of the time slowly pacing the cavernous hall like Darth Vader. The younger members of the SAS avoided his gaze. When, after a brief communication over his radio, he grunted for us to move out, we all obeyed.
I thought he disliked the SBS for the standard SAS reason – we were that other group who arrogantly reckoned themselves special too. But I later learned the deeper reason for his obsessive animosity: Jenson had begun his military career as a Royal Marine, had attempted an SBS selection and had failed it.
The Royal Marines is where Jenson learned his sniper skills (all SAS and SBS snipers are trained at the Royal Marine Commando Training Centre).
*
It was during his SBS selection that Jenson discovered his fear of being underwater in zero visibility. Claustrophobia is nothing to be ashamed of – in the SBS’s experience, on average one in seven people suffer from it, many without realising. But Jenson took the failure personally. Determined to make it into special forces, he set his sights on the SAS. Typically of Jenson, not about to risk failing with the only other worthwhile special forces unit, he sneaked up on to the Brecon Beacons one night and built himself a hide. The Beacons are where the SAS hold their selection courses and Jenson’s plan was to spy on them. But his hide was discovered and he was brought in for questioning.
When he explained why he was watching them they were impressed and allowed him to join a selection course. He did well and quickly rose through the ranks. Jenson’s boner for the SBS never diminished over the years and he has, no doubt, contributed to much of the SAS’s negativity towards us.
Had we been told that Jenson was going to be on the oil platform as head of the enemy it would have come more as a warning. Jenson could not openly screw with the rehearsal, but he would do what he could to make us look bad. There was conflict ahead for someone. Whoever ran into him was going to have to treat him as a terrorist, as well as deal with his reputation.
Even if we had known about the SAS being on board, we had more important things to worry about. As we arrived in the North Sea, a huge storm was building nicely.
There are many ways to get a large team clandestinely aboard a huge oil platform. One method the SBS was trying was to climb up and get on to it from the water. There are disadvantages to all approaches. Certain aircraft can be spotted miles away and the hostages killed and the rig blown up before a team can land on it. Some surface boats are also impractical for similar reasons. Approaching a rig from underwater is one of the most difficult techniques. During storms and in a sea known for its fierce rip-tides it is highly dangerous for a submarine to maintain a position close to an oil platform that has a sub-surface web of ropes and cables and many other unknown hazards emanating from it. One practical method is to release the teams a distance from the platform where they can swim to the legs under cover of swell and darkness.
Twenty of us were to assault the rig that night. Our mission was to neutralise the terrorists and rescue the hostages, while at the same time securing the deck for sixty Royal Marines who would rope down from helicopters and then operate directly under our control to dominate and secure the rest of the platform.
The method of releasing several teams at a time from a submarine chamber, E&RE style, was virtually
passé
by now, and for this kind of work, too time-consuming anyway. The SBS needed the ability to release four to six times that number in one go. For security reasons I cannot describe the new methods, but the old ones were just as hair-raising.
The O-class sub, had a raised flat deck called the casing that ran the length of the sub on either side of the conning tower. Between the casing and the actual cigar-shaped skin of the sub was a gap about four to five feet deep. This hollow area was laced with all manner of pipes and bracings and large pockets of space which could be used for storage. The top of the casing deck was made up of large plates that could be unbolted and removed. For our purpose, a number of these plates were removed at the rear of the sub, between the conning tower and the props, to expose a trench long enough to accommodate several teams of squatting men. Breathing umbilicals were fitted, one for each man and a couple of spares, and a brass hammer on a line for communicating with the crew inside. It has always been my experience that no matter how technologically advanced we got, there was always a reliance on a primitive device somewhere along the line to ensure success.
We rendezvoused with the sub by helicopter beyond the range of the rig’s radar and visibility. It was close to midnight. Fully armed and equipped and wearing oxygen re-breather (bubbleless) diving sets, we all leapt into the stormy sea and swam for rope-nets the crew had temporarily attached to one side of the sub for us to scramble up. Because of the experience I had gained previously, I was the special entry man, which meant I carried certain secret devices weighing over forty pounds in addition to my regular equipment. Under the watchful eye of the captain, atop his conning tower, who was considerate enough to position the sub so we could climb it on the leeward side, we made our way along the casing and into the trench. Waves were crashing up and over the side of the sub, and two of the crew almost got washed off the casing as they fled inside the conning tower.
No effort was made to make the trench area comfortable, nor were there any straps to hold on to if it got turbulent. It was up to the individual to find a nook in the cramped, black, lidless metal coffin and hold on. Because of my extra equipment, I sat at the furthest point rear, a slightly more spacious position, and looked forward at the others in two lines down either side with their backs to the outer casing and their legs facing inwards.