In Belize City I would frequent a number of watering holes with Baz and Cheesy who had come along to assist with the training staff. The local sport was hot-coin throwing, which should be given a special mention at a child protection group or something. In downtown Belize a lot of the bars are on the first floor so patrons can sit on balconies away from the dust of the street. The local scumbags would heat up coins whilst holding them in a pair of pliers with a Zippo lighter before tossing them into the street below. Local kids, half-starved and homeless, would run out to collect the coins. The locals would count the number of times the child would toss the coin because of its heat before they were run over by a car. There was a lot of alcohol and gambling in this sport which would have most Westerners running to complain about human rights or something. What I found crazy was the drivers would make every effort to avoid hitting all the land crabs but almost no effort to avoid a child. Baz and Cheesy just looked on and enjoyed a cold beer and filled me in on some history of jungle warfare going back to the days of the Claret Operations in Malaysia and the Far East. Having a few wets with the boys was just perfect for me, I was starting to feel accepted. Feet up, cold beer after doing something high octane was like a drug. Just fuelling up for the next high. It was addictive to be with these guys.
Belize was an interesting episode and one I won’t forget in a hurry. To plunge yourself into the mercy of a rainforest in which every living creature wants to eat you to some degree or another is nothing short of insanity. Just to stand still in the jungle is exhausting, and to do anything physically demanding is almost debilitating. The jungle is like a crawling humid sultry darkness that gets under your skin at every opportunity. The heat, humidity and sheer bloody mindedness of the jungle gets at you and can drive you literally insane. Rainforest it may be but you were always wetter on the inside from sweat than from any rain that might pour in to ruin your day. Belize jungle isn’t all enclosed dark spaces, there are large open spaces, but you quickly welcome the shade of the rainforest canopy after a few hours out in the searing heat. The jungle is disorientating, full of wonderful disease opportunities and is actually a good place to prepare before going into the desert. If you can put up with Belize, the desert is a walk in the park by comparison in my opinion. Let me assure you, there’s no real difference between light jungle and heavy jungle, it’s all fucking jungle and you have to either survive it or become part of it.
It’s such a difficult place to survive in and, like being on the ocean, can be a hard place to find something actually worth eating, plus water isn’t as available as you may think. There were a lot of lessons to be learnt in that dark cupboard of nature, and some painful ones at that. Let’s be honest, you have to wait until you’re absolutely exhausted to get any sleep as there’s no way any sane man is going to sleep voluntarily with the entire ugly bug ball crawling into every orifice you have whilst snakes are inventing their own way to attack you from above and below. Building a suspended hammock is tiresome and no defence against any jungle inhabitant.
Then there are the leeches to whom height doesn’t seem to be an obstacle, as if they just teleport onto you from nowhere. I definitely could have done without those slimy things heading toward my private bits. Black widows, bull ants, brown recluse spiders, poison dart frogs and endless sea and land snakes make for an Indiana Jones adventure that you seriously might not actually survive. Then when you allow your mind to lapse just for a second in the dusky tranquillity of the forest, it’s immediately broken by a flash of flying colour from a hummingbird that scares the shit out of you, or a howler monkey sounding like its being murdered. There’s no real training by the staff; they don’t need to do much, tell you how to deal with it all – the jungle does the training on its own and no one needs to tell you how fucking dangerous it is or what to look out for as the whole fucking place is dangerous and you need to be looking out for anything that’s moving or has the potential to move, which means it’s hungry. The staff do of course spend time teaching you how to survive in the jungle; there’s a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to finding clean water, food, how to build a shelter, when to travel and when to rest, a complete education in predators and how to use comms.
The government of Belize had graciously allowed and opened up 5,000 sq miles of jungle to the British Army for such training – bastards! The guys themselves did give up a lot of time to share some great skills, alongside the resident army staff: reconnaissance skills, working with the locals, foraging, water collecting, how to keep your fucking socks dry, the list is endless. I learnt how to paddle a canoe down mosquito-infested waterways whilst avoiding local traps, how to haul my ass out of the water up mud banks like a crocodile up a slippery earth travellator, and how to be thoroughly despondent, exhausted and on the brink of despair and share a laugh with an equally insane person standing next to you, whilst secretly ignoring your situation, simply storing the experience mentally as a living nightmare.
The end of jungle training really is a kick in your nuts. Starving, dehydrated and half mad from the lack of sleep and paranoia that something is eating you, they terminate your training by walking your ass over 50 miles of crazy terrain, which is like the Black Mountains on forest steroids, to a rendezvous point where you are greeted by the staff holding a beautiful white bunny rabbit for each trainee. Kill and eat it and you’re through and it’s home for tea and medals; if not, you do the whole walk again in reverse or it’s game over and you’re out the programme. The chances of successfully repeating the hike are almost zero, so that fucking rabbit tasted like fucking prime steak, cooked up with worm chips and some other fucking brown thing that was crunchy. Killing the bunny was enough to make grown men cry. However, it has to be said that the environment created by the people I was training with, coupled with the unpredictability of day-to-day operations in Belize, is part of what made it all so exciting and ultimately satisfying, and without that challenge I wouldn’t have remembered it as I do today.
The team was happy to celebrate my completion of the training and we enjoyed a weekend in Cartagena, Columbia, drinking too much and kicking back, followed by a week in Aruba R&R before putting our serious heads back on for the trip home. It was good bonding that needed to happen, and I was completely enamoured by being a part of the team. The sense of belonging and loyalty that grows amongst such a close-knit team when pushing the boundaries is priceless, and it’s a prelude to working together under fire in theatre. It’s a drug – you just want more and more. You can’t package it or build an individual course, it has to happen over time, a lot of time together, through various adversities, be it in military roles, private lives or just personal experiences shared to become more familiar with each other to the point of assimilation. You can’t do it nine-to-five, you have to eat, sleep and shit together, do life together until you become brothers, sharing all your shit bits as well as all your skills and attributes. The bond that is created is tested of course, but you know it won’t break because you would rather die than fail your brother. We were all becoming brothers.
It’s always the good things you remember the most, and the exercises, training and fun times we had as a group before we finally deployed were awesome, to say the least. We spent endless days going over protocol, procedures, lost-contact drills, rendezvous methodology, navigation exercises and of course my briefings of the people we would ultimately be dealing with and the Steering Group’s demands and mission statements. At weekends we would either head off home or be involved with other ops, but I remember one weekend the guys had arranged for an R&R weekend over to the Channel Islands and they had commandeered a Mk 5 LCU, or landing craft. The landing craft was well and truly loaded up with beer, beer, more beer, BBQ meat by the ton and some more beer. It was signed off as a diving and canoeing expedition but that definitely translated into a fun weekend. Once loaded up we departed from Poole on a Friday lunchtime and headed across the Channel. I was I/C of the engines, which to be honest I hadn’t got a clue a
bout, and Pierre took the helm as skipper. We had a reasonable crossing of around six hours, then spent Friday afternoon and evening anchored in a bay called Le Dos d’Ane. It was a beautiful bay with high-sided cliffs offering plenty of shelter from any weather but totally secluded to allow us to enjoy some privacy whilst we were let loose to enjoy ourselves.
Before the first beers were open we all opted to go diving together and catch lobster. Sark is famous for its lobster and the local fishermen sell it straight to the local restaurants. We had the whole sea garden at our disposal. We simply lowered the landing ramp down to water level and stepped off into an undersea supermarket. I was loving every minute of it. Cheesy was like a fucking sea lion and came up with a dozen good-sized lobsters within 15 mins and a full net bag of scallops. I think the rest of us just looked on in amazement at the seafood platter that Cheesy was singlehandedly putting together.
I loved the diving. I don’t hold any qualification, the lads taught me in a swimming pool and then in Studland Bay, usually in the evenings to get used to swimming in the dark. It was nothing compared to the crystal-clear waters of the Channel Islands, which offered such an amazing experience and created such fond memories. We lit a fire on the beach and ate and drank the night away as friends away from the demands of the military. Time in Sark didn’t count for anything that night, the clock had been turned off, the time was free. We were like family wrapped up in our comfort blanket of each other’s good company and safety, the outside world banished from our private function.
We sailed the next morning and made the tide into Guernsey, which is a good thing as there is a tidal drop of about 33ft – that’s about 10m! So, we berthed alongside and Pierre remained on board whilst the guys took me out on my first real piss-up with them. I don’t remember fuck all after the first few hours, and I must have had an amazing evening because I woke up in the hospital the next morning to a very disgruntled nurse who threw the local newspaper at me after she had completed her checks. Apparently, I had been rescued by the fire brigade in the early hours of the morning from the mud down in the harbour.
Not really aware of the tidal drop, I had simply stumbled back to the boat expecting to find it as I had left it alongside the jetty in town. Of course, the tide had gone out and our little landing ship was sitting on the mud 10m below the jetty. Too pissed to realise, I had stepped off the jetty, fallen, bounced off the fibreglass canopy and then down into the mud. Pierre later described it to me like he had watched a sack of spuds fall off the jetty which bounced off the boat and into the mud. Unfortunately, the tide was on the turn and I was unconscious and about to drown where I lay. Fire brigade, big fuss, and now there I was the next morning in the hospital with a very sore shoulder that had been dislocated from the fall. What a headache!
I made it back on board that Sunday to get us back across the Channel to Poole. Fucking engine problems on the way over and I had a fire on the port engine caused by the shaft brake inadvertently locking onto the V drive, which was glowing red hot when a split injector pipe decided to spray diesel right onto the red-hot brake disk. There was an instant fire with a beautiful arc of flame back to the engine following the jet of high-pressure fuel from the holed injector pipe. I had to shut it all down in a hurry and then I fucked around with it for a few hours and was about to give up when Pierre commented that unless it was fixed soon and the port engine was back on line we would be back in Guernsey in four hours as we were doing four knots into a six-knot tide and going backwards. The weather was getting up to about a force 4 to 5 so we were going backwards, and fucking landing craft are shit in a swell – they roll around like a sick cow because they are flat-bottomed.
I looked like a chimney sweep having dealt with the fire, leaving the engine room completely sooted out from all the thick black smoke. I was totally exhausted and still a little high from the pain relief given to me for my shoulder and strangely wasn’t too worried or even overly concerned at the mess the boat was in. I managed to fix the whole thing up and get it running again, which saved the day. We arrived in Poole in the early hours of Tuesday to a very upset engineer who ran the boats threatening to have my neck in a noose for all the damage caused, not that any of it had been my fault, plus I had spent my own money fixing issues that had arisen on the voyage over. We were a day late getting back after suffering all manner of setbacks, including the weather, and various people weren’t too happy, but that’s life. We did our best and got shit sorted.
To escape the whole military upset I had caused in the normal running of the hard and RM Poole, including that very upset boats chief and his disgruntled repair team, the guys had arranged for me to go out and complete the remainder of their training package, including the infamous ‘fox and hounds’ hunt. Cheesy wanted to do it with me all the way, which I thought was cool; I think he wanted to go deeper into my psyche, get into my brain perhaps – who was this guy and what’s he like when everything has gone to shit? So, I was off again for a month away being crazy with the unit and it all sounded like a bit of a laugh. I think the lifeblood of the SBS is to be tasked, and if they’re not tasked they will task themselves in order to remain at their peak, so I don’t think there was ever a time when we didn’t have something to do, and if there was spare time it was filled pretty quickly, and the guys wanted nothing more than to accompany me, push me and train me at every opportunity. I do suspect that at first it was all self-preservation – they had to support me in my missions for the Steering Group – but by training me to their standards I wouldn’t be such a dead weight in the field; they didn’t want an intelligence operative passenger, they wanted an integrated team member with multiple skills. Sure, they had their own agendas and self-interests. As did I.
Three memories come to mind during that last few months before we deployed: the dark room which I thought was just a piss-take at my expense but was actually an introduction to room entry & clearing; and then there was the fox and hounds hunt; and finally the submarine insertion and Arctic training.
The Dark Room
The dark room was/is an exercise for gaining access into a room containing hostiles and friendlies, engaging the right targets and covering all angles, all in a matter of seconds, and is a demanding challenge. The dark room is a building within a hangar. Think Iranian Embassy siege 1980 and you’re along the right train of thought. The building is a two-storey house with walkways around each level and escape doors. Room entry is always done in teams, with each member given a specific arc of fire and path through a room. When room clearing, each operator must not only shoot the terrorist but must avoid hitting hostages or other team members. This requires extreme levels of concentration and discipline, which is why the techniques are practised over and over until they become second nature.
Looking back, it was just a test of one’s nerve, and of course it’s always funny when I look back. Basically, the staff asked me to sit on a stool and not move. This guy asked me this about a dozen times, emphasising the need to remain on the stool. Stay still and whatever happens do not get off the stool, repeated and repeated again. Blindfolded, doors closed on the house, then you just sit and wait patiently on a stool in a dark room. How hard could it be? Then all fucking hell breaks loose, thunder flashes, endless release of ammunition, smoke grenades, tear gas, completely deaf at the end of it, but still holding on to that fucking stool. Eyes and nose streaming, snot everywhere from the gas, then the lights go on. Blindfold removed and the double safety doors are opened to a rugby line-up of the lads all in black with their respirators on, laughing their tits off at you. They were laughing because as soon as I stood up I felt the shit run down my leg. Everyone shits themselves apparently. I smiled and laughed my way to the shithouse to get changed, passing all the staff and simply whispering, “Didn’t get off the fucking stool though, did I?” Then I swapped positions and became a siege team member with some other poor cunt sitting on the stool, and so it went on.
Fox and Hounds
There are many
scenarios, and I’ve played a hound a few times, but for my first experience I was put out on Dartmoor late at night, dropped off by Land Rover, me and Cheesy with bags over our heads, then kneeled down in the mud at the side of a track, bags removed and then the tie wraps from our hands cut. I had nothing but a plastic mac, no shoes or any clothing, and Cheesy had a blanket and was bollock naked. I laughed at Cheesy, I remember him laughing and saying, “Let’s see if you’re laughing this time tomorrow.” Now, we had about an eight-hour head start on the RM detachment that were the hounds. There were at least 20 of them out hunting us two idiots, not much of a contest really. Wasn’t long before it rained and we were struggling not having any footwear. We stuck to following a stream for about four to six hours and did well to get to a farm that would otherwise have been hidden had we not followed the stream as it was in a depression in the landscape surrounded by tall mature pine trees.
Carefully we broke in and stole enough clothing to give us a fighting chance to make it to an extraction point that we had memorised prior to the exercise. Now, I’m sure the occupiers of this farm were well used to people breaking in and being part of the military exercises in the area and were hopefully well compensated. The farmer and his wife just sat on their settee and offered us a cup of tea and asked us to make sure we closed any gates. What the fuck?! None of this shit phased me in any way; my time at DECAF was training enough, especially having been a runner for the BUL’s. So, I had a better chance than most of succeeding, plus there was no way Cheesy was gonna allow himself to be caught early days – he had a reputation to maintain. Usually it’s all over within 8-12 hours. Cheesy and I managed 38 hours and 42 minutes of being out on the moors.
The Steering Group Page 22