Читать книгу Secret War in Arabia - Shaun Clarke, Shaun Clarke - Страница 6

‘Badged!’ Trooper Phil Ricketts said, proudly holding up his beige beret to re-examine the SAS winged-dagger badge stitched to it the previous day by his wife, Maggie. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

‘Believe it, you bleedin’ probationer,’ said Trooper ‘Gumboot’ Gillis, who was wearing his own brand-new badged beret. ‘You earned it, mate. We all did!’

‘I’m surprised I actually made it,’ said Andrew Winston, a huge black Barbadian, glancing around the crowded Paludrine Club and clearly proud to be allowed into it at last, ‘particularly as I almost gave up once or twice.’

‘We probably all thought about it,’ said Tom Purvis, ‘but that’s all we did. Otherwise we wouldn’t be drinking in here.’ He glanced around the noisy, smoky recreation room of 22 SAS Regiment. ‘We’re here because, although we may have thought about it, we didn’t actually give up.’

‘I thought about it once,’ Ricketts said. ‘I’ll have to admit that. Once – only once.’

He had done so during that final, awful night on the summit of Pen-y-fan. At other times during the 26 weeks of relentless physical and mental testing, he had wondered what he was doing there and if it was all worth it. But only that once had the thought of actually giving up crossed his mind – in the middle of that dark, stormy night in the Brecon Beacons, where, for one brief, despairing moment, he thought he had reached the end of his tether.

Even now, he could only look back on the rigours of Initial Selection, ‘Sickeners One and Two’, Continuation Training, Combat Training and, finally, the parachute course, with a feeling of disbelief that he had actually undergone it and lived to tell the tale. He had arrived at the SAS camp of Bradbury Lines, in the Hereford suburb of Redhill, in the full expectation that he was in for a rough time, but nothing had quite prepared him for just how rough it actually turned out to be.

‘What you are about to undergo,’ the Squadron Commander, Major Greenaway, had informed over a hundred recruits that first morning as they sat before him on rows of hard seats in the training wing theatre, or Blue Room, of Bradbury Lines, ‘is the most rigorous form of testing ever devised for healthy men. No matter how good you believe yourselves to be as soldiers – and if you didn’t think you were good, you wouldn’t be here now – you will find yourselves tested to the very limits of your endurance. Our selection process offers no mercy. You can fail at any point over the 26 weeks. Some will fail on the first day, some on the very last. If you are failed, you will find yourselves standing on Platform Four of Redhill Station, being RTU’d.’ A few of the listening men glanced at each other, but no one dared say a word. ‘There is no appeal,’ Greenaway continued. ‘Only a small number of you will manage to complete the course successfully – a very small number. Let that simple, brutal truth be your bible from this moment on.’

It was indeed a brutal truth, as Ricketts was to discover from the moment the briefing ended and the men were rushed from the Blue Room – passing under a sign reading ‘For many are called but few are chosen’ – to the Quartermaster’s stores to be kitted out with a bergen backpack, sleeping bag, webbed belts, a wet-weather poncho, water bottles, a heavy prismatic compass, a brew kit, three 24-hour ration packs and Ordnance Survey maps of the Brecon Beacons and Elan Valley, where the first three-day trial, known as Sickener One, would take place.

Once kitted out, they hurried from the QM’s stores to the armoury, where they were supplied with primitive Lee Enfield 303 rifles. Allocated their beds, or ‘bashas’, in the barracks of the training wing, they were allowed to drop their kit off in the ‘spider’ – an eight-legged dormitory area – and have a good lunch in the cookhouse. Immediately after that, the harsh selection process began.

‘Christ,’ Gumboot said, placing his pint glass on the table and licking his wet lips, ‘it seems a lot longer than it was. Only six months! It seems like six years.’

Ricketts remembered it only too well. The few days leading up to Sickener One were filled with rigorous weapons training and arduous runs, fully kitted, across the deceptively gentle hills of the Herefordshire countryside, each one longer and tougher than the one before, and all of them leading to a final slog up an ever-steeper gradient that tortured lungs and muscles.

The first of the crap-hats, or failures, were weeded out during those runs and humiliatingly RTU’d, or returned to their original unit. Those remaining, now fully aware of just how many failures there would be, instinctively drew into themselves, not wanting to become too friendly with those likely to soon suffer the same fate.

‘And to think,’ Tom Purvis said, shaking his head from side to side in wonder, ‘that at the time we thought nothing could be worse than Sickener One!’

‘It’s helpful not to know too much,’ Jock McGregor said.

‘It sure is, man,’ big Andrew added, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘If we’d known that Sickener One was just kids’ stuff compared to what was coming, we’d never have stuck it out for the rest.’

It was a greatly reduced number of SAS aspirants from various British Army regiments who had awakened in the early hours of a Saturday morning, showered, shaved, pulled on their olive-green uniforms, or OGs, picked up their rifles and dauntingly heavy bergens, then hurried out to the waiting four-ton Bedford trucks. After being driven north along the A470, they were eventually dropped off in the Elan Valley, in the Cambrian Mountains of mid-Wales. An area of murderously steep hills and towering ridges, it had been chosen for its difficult, dangerous terrain and harsh weather as the perfect testing ground for Sickener One. This gruelling three-day endurance test is based on hiking and climbing while humping a heavily packed bergen and weapons, then repeatedly ‘cross-graining the bukits’.

Derived from the Malay – Malaysia was where the exercise was first practised – this last expression means going from one summit or trig point to another by hiking up and down the steep, sometimes sheer hills rather than taking the easy route around them. It takes place in the most rugged terrain and the foulest weather imaginable, including fierce wind, rain or blinding fog. Each conquered summit is followed by another, and the slightest sign of reluctance on the part of the climber is met by a shower of abuse from a member of the directing staff (DS), or – a psychological killer – by the softly spoken suggestion that the candidate might find it more sensible to give up and return to the waiting Bedfords.

Those taking this advice seriously were instantly failed and placed on RTU, never to be given the chance to try again. This happened to many during the three days of Sickener One.

Those who survived the first day, even though exhausted and disorientated, then had to basha down at the most recent RV, or rendezvous, no matter how hostile the terrain. Invariably, when they did so, they were frozen and wet, often with swollen feet and shoulders blistered by the bergen. They were then forced to spend the night in the same appalling weather, eating 24-hour rations heated on portable hexamine stoves, drinking tea boiled on the same, before bedding down in sleeping bags protected from the elements only by waterproof ponchos.

Given the filthy, windy weather – for which that time of the year had been deliberately chosen – few of the men got much sleep and the next day, even wearier than before, they not only cross-grained more bukits, but were faced with the dreaded entrail ditch, filled with stagnant water and rotting sheep’s innards, standing in for the blood and bone of butchered humans. The candidates had to crawl through this vile mess on their bellies, face down, holding their rifles horizontally – it was known as the ‘leopard crawl’ – ignoring the stench, trying not to swallow any of the mess, though certainly swallowing their own bile when they brought it up. Failure to get through the entrail ditch was an RTU offence which further reduced the number of aspirants.

‘I fucking dreaded that,’ Tom said, lighting a cigarette and puffing smoke. ‘It was only the thought of Platform Four that kept me going when things got rough.’

‘Right,’ said Bill Raglan, who was born and bred in Pensett, in the West Midlands, and had little education but a lot of intelligence. Bill’s face was badly scarred from the many fights he had been in before the regular Army channelled his excess energy in a more positive direction. ‘Can you imagine the humiliation, standing there with the other rejects? Then having to go back to your old regiment with your tail between your legs. That kept me going all right!’

At dawn, after a second night of sleeping out in frozen, rainswept open country, numb from the cold and with their outfits still stinking from their encounter with the entrail ditch, they had been ordered to wade across a swollen, dangerously fast river, holding their rifles above their heads as the water reached their chests. One man refused to cross and was instantly failed; another was swept away, rescued and then likewise failed. While both men were escorted to the waiting Bedfords, the others, though still wet and exhausted from contending with the river, were forced to carry one of their DS supervisors, complete with his bergen and weapons, between them on a stretcher for what should have been the last mile of the hike. However, when told at the end of that most killing of final legs that the Bedfords had gone and they would have to hike the last ten miles – in short, that they had been conned – some of them lost their temper with their supervisors, while others simply sat down wearily and called it a day.

The latter were failed and placed on RTU. A few more were lost on that draining ten miles, leaving a greatly reduced, less optimistic group to go on to the torments of Sickener Two.

‘I mean, you can’t believe what those fuckers will dream up for you, can you?’ Jock asked rhetorically, really speaking to himself in a daze of disbelief as he thought back on all he had been through. ‘You get through Sickener One, thinking you’re Superman, then they promptly make you feel like a dog turd with Sickener Two. Those bastards sure have their talents!’

In fact, between the two exercises there had been more days of relentless grind in the shape of long runs, map-reading, survival and weapons training, and psychological testing. Then the dreaded first day of Sickener Two finally arrived, beginning with the horror of the Skirrid mountain, which rises 1640 feet above the gently rolling fields of Llanfihangel and is surmounted by a trig point ideal for map-reading. Naturally, for the SAS, the only way to the top was by foot, with the usual full complement of packed bergen, heavy webbing and weapons.

In addition, the route specially chosen by the DS for the exercise carefully avoided the gentler slopes and forced the candidates up the nearly vertical side. As part of the tests, each man had to take his turn at leading the others up the sheer face to the summit, using his Silvas compass, then guiding them back down without mistakes. This procedure was repeated many times throughout the long day, until each man had taken his turn as leader and all of them were suffering agonies of body and mind.

Some collapsed, some got lost through being dazed, and others simply dropped out in despair, while those remaining went on to week three. For this the teams were split up and each man was tested alone, with the runs becoming longer, the mountain routes steeper and the bergens packed more heavily every day until they became back-breaking loads. Added to this was an ever more relentless psychological onslaught, designed to test mental stamina, and including cruel psychological ploys such as last-minute changes of plan and awakenings at unexpected times of the day or night. On top of all this, even more brutal, unexpected physical endurance tests were introduced just as the men reached maximum exhaustion or disorientation.

The climax of this week of hell on earth was a repeated cross-graining of the peaks of the Pen-y-fan, at 2906 feet the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons, one day after the other, each hike longer than the previous one, with extra weight being added to the bergens each time. On even the highest peak, the DS was liable to leap out of nowhere, and hurl a volley of questions at the exhausted, often dazed applicant, who, if he failed to supply an answer, would be sent back down in disgrace, bound for Platform Four.

By the fifth day of the third week, after a final, relentlessly punishing, 40 miles solo cross-graining of the bukits, known as the ‘Fan Dance’ – across icy rivers, peat bogs, pools of stagnant water and fields of fern; up sandstone paths and sheer ridges, in driving rain and blinding fog, carrying a 45lb bergen, as well as water bottles and heavy webbing – most of the candidates had been weeded out. In the end, under two dozen of the original hundred-odd men were deemed to have passed Initial Selection and allowed to go on to Continuation Training.

Phil Ricketts was one of them. He had had his moment of doubt on the summit of Pen-y-fan, when in a state of complete exhaustion, cold and hungry, whipped by the wind, feeling more alone than he had ever done before, he wanted to scream his protest and give up and go back down. But instead he endured and went on to do the rest of the nightmarish exercise and return to the RV by the selected route. He felt good when he finished and was applauded by his stern instructors.

Given a weekend break, Ricketts spent it with his wife in Wood Green, North London, where Maggie lived with her parents during his many absences from home. Even in the regular Army, he had never felt as fit as he was after Initial Selection, and he made love to Maggie, to whom he had only been married a year, with a passion that took her breath away. As they were to find out later, their first child, Anna, was conceived during that happy two days.

‘You remember that first weekend break we got?’ Ricketts asked his mates. ‘Immediately after passing Initial Selection? What did you guys do that weekend?’

‘I went back to Brixton,’ Andrew said, ‘to see my white Daddy and black Mammy, then screw my Scandinavian girlfriend. It was well worth the journey, believe me.

‘I banged a whore in King’s Cross,’ Jock said without emotion.

‘Bill and I shared a hired car and drove back to the Midlands,’ said Tom. ‘Though my folks come from Wolverhampton they’re now living in Smethwick, which isn’t too far from where Bill lives, in Pensett. So since neither of us were keen to spend too much time with our families, we drove between the two towns, having a pint here, another pint there, and gradually getting pissed as newts.’

‘I can hardly remember the drive back,’ Bill said with a broad grin, ‘so I like to think we only made it because of our SAS training. Who dares wins, and so on.’

‘And you, Gumboot?’ Ricketts asked. ‘Did you go and see your wife?’

‘No,’ Gumboot answered, puffing smoke and sipping his beer at the same time.

‘But you’d only been married six months,’ Ricketts said.

‘Six months too fucking long,’ Gumboot said. ‘Got her pregnant, didn’t I? Besides, we only had one weekend, which leaves no time to go all the way to Devon and back.’

‘You could have travelled on Friday night and come back on Sunday,’ Andrew pointed out.

‘OK, I’ll admit it,’ Gumboot said pugnaciously. ‘I didn’t want to spend my free weekend with a bloody bean bag, so I slipped into London. I’m amazed I didn’t run into Jock, since I had a few pints in King’s Cross on Saturday evening.’

‘I probably saw you and avoided you,’ Jock replied, ‘I can be fussy at times.’

‘Up yours, mate.’ Gumboot swallowed some more beer, wiped his lips, and grinned mischievously. ‘Ah, well, it was only a weekend – and over all too soon.’

On that, at least, they all agreed.

When they had returned to Hereford that Monday morning, some with blinding hangovers, others simply sleepless, they had been flung with merciless efficiency into their fourteen weeks of Continuation Training, learning all the skills required to be a member of the basic SAS operational unit: the four-man patrol. These skills included weapons handling, combat and survival, reconnaissance, signals, demolitions, camouflage and concealment, resistance to interrogation, and first aid. Continuation Training was followed by jungle training and a static-line parachute course, bringing the complete programme up to six months.

Though Ricketts and the others had all come from regular Army, Royal Navy, RAF or Territorial Army regiments, and were therefore already fully trained soldiers, none of them was prepared for the amount of extra training they had to undergo with the SAS, even after the rigours of Initial Selection.

Weapons training covered everything in the SAS arsenal, including use of the standard-issue British semi-automatic Browning FN 9mm high-power handgun, the 9mm Walther PPK handgun, the M16 assault rifle, the self-loading semi-automatic rifle, or SLR, the Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine-gun, the MILAN anti-tank weapon, various mortars and a wide range of ‘enemy’ weapons, such as the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle.

In combat and survival training they were taught the standard operating procedures, or SOPs, for how to move tactically across country by day or night, how to set up and maintain observation posts, or OPs, and how to operate deep behind enemy lines. This led naturally to signals training, covering Morse code, special codes and call-sign systems, the operation of thirty kinds of SAS radio, recognition of radio ‘black spots’, the setting-up of standard and makeshift antennas, and the procedure for calling in artillery fire and air strikes.

As one of the main reasons for being behind enemy lines is the disruption of enemy communications and transportation, as well as general sabotage, particularly against Military Supply Routes, or MSRs, this phase of their training also included lessons in demolition skills and techniques, particularly the use of explosives such as TNT, dynamite, Semtex, Composition C3 and C4 plastic explosive, or PE, Amatol, Pentolite and Ednatol. Special emphasis was laid on the proper placement of charges to destroy various kinds of bridge: cantilever, spandrel arch, continuous-span truss and suspension.

Many jokes were made about the fact that those lessons led directly to instruction in first aid, including relatively advanced medical skills such as setting up an intravenous drip, how to administer drugs, both orally and with injections, and the basics of casualty handling and care.

This phase of Continuation Training culminated in escape and evasion (E&E) and Resistance to Interrogation (RTI) exercises. E&E began with a week of theory on how to live off the land by constructing makeshift shelters from branches, leaves and other local vegetation, and sangars, or semicircular shelters built from stones, and by catching and cooking wild animals. (Repeated jokes about rat stew, Ricketts recalled, had raised a few queasy laughs.) Those theories were then put into practice when the men were dropped off, alone, in some remote region, usually with no more than their clothing and a wristwatch, knife and box of matches, with orders to make their way back to a specified RV without either becoming lost or getting caught by the enthusiastic Parachute Regiment troopers sent out to find them.

Those caught were hooded, bound, thrown into the Paras’ trucks and delivered to the interrogation centre run by the Joint Services Interrogation Unit and members of 22 SAS Training Wing, where various physical and mental torments were used to make them break down and reveal more than their rank, name, serial number and date of birth. Those who did so were failed even at that late stage in the course. Those who managed to remain sane and silent went on to undertake jungle-warfare training and the parachute course.

‘For me,’ Bill said, ‘that was the best bit of all. I loved it in the jungle. I mean, even though it was tough all I could think of was how I’d come all the way from the Stevens and Williams Glassworks to the jungles of fucking Malaysia. I was in heaven, I tell you.’

‘It wasn’t Malaysia,’ Andrew corrected him. ‘It was just close to there. It’s the only British dependency inhabited by Malays that didn’t join the Federation of Malaysia.’

‘He’s so fucking educated,’ Gumboot said, ‘you’d never think he’d been up a tree. What the fuck’s the difference? It was jungle, wasn’t it? That’s why you couldn’t possibly fail there, mate. You must have felt right at home.’

‘My family, comes from Barbados,’ Andrew said, flashing Gumboot a big smile, ‘where they have rum and molasses and white beaches. No jungle there, Gumboot.’

‘Anyway,’ Tom said, looking as solemn as always, ‘I agree with Bill. I was a lot more relaxed when we went there. It was too late to fail, I thought.’

‘So did some others,’ Jock reminded them, ‘and the poor bastards failed. One even failed during the parachute course. Can you fucking believe it?’

‘That would have killed me,’ Ricketts said. ‘I mean, to be RTU’d at that stage. I would have opened a vein.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Andrew said.

Jungle-warfare training was a six-week course in Brunei, the British-protected sultanate of North-West Borneo, forming an enclave with Sarawak, Malaysia, where the SAS was reborn after World War Two and where it learnt so many of its skills and tactics; There the candidates were sent on four-man patrols through the jungle, some lasting almost a fortnight. During that time they had to carry out a number of operational tasks, including constructing a jungle basha, killing and eating wildlife, including snakes, without being bitten or poisoned, and living on local flora and fauna. Most importantly, they had to show that they could navigate and move accurately in the restricted visibility of the jungle. Failure in any of these tasks resulted in an even more cruel, last-minute, RTU.

Those who returned successfully from Brunei did so knowing that they had only one hurdle left: a four-week course at the No 1 Parachute Training School at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, where Parachute Jump Instructors, or PJIs, taught them the characteristics of PX1 Mk 4, PX1 Mk 5 and PR7 (reserve) parachutes, then supervised them on eight parachute jumps. The first of these was from a static balloon, but the others were from RAF C-130 Hercules aircraft, some from a high altitude, some from a low altitude, most by day, a few by night, and at least one while the aircraft was being put through a series of manoeuvres designed to shake up and disorientate the parachutists just before they jumped out. Those who made this final leap successfully had passed the whole course.

The men drinking around this table in the Paludrine Club had all just done that.

‘I still don’t believe it,’ Andrew mused, ‘but here we all are: in a Sabre Squadron at last. I think that’s reason enough for another drink.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Jock said, going off to the bar for another round.

Once badged, the successful candidates were divided between the four Sabre Squadrons, with those around this table going to Squadron B, where they would spend their probationary first year. They were also allowed into the Paludrine Club to celebrate their success and get to know each other as they had not been able to, or feared to, during the past six months of relentless training and testing.

‘So,’ Gumboot said, raising his glass when Jock had set down the fresh round of drinks. ‘Here’s to all of us, lads.’

They touched their glasses together and drank deeply, trying not to look too proud.