The Mammoth Book of Secrets of the SAS & Elite Forces

by Jon E. Lewis

  Denial of opportunity

  Aggressive patrolling prevents the enemy laying his mines. The effects of patrols can be increased with night vision aids and sentry or scout dogs. In addition, sensors can be used on major routes and areas where enemy mining is heavy; sensors can alert quick reaction forces to move in on the threatened area, or can be used to bring fire on the enemy. However, US forces in Vietnam never really found an answer to local guerillas mining the roads – the infantry manpower needed for intensive patrolling was seldom available. South African forces were painfully aware how easy it is to mine isolated roads near their borders and have developed mine resistant vehicles designed to survive anti-tank mines.

  Detection

  The best way of detecting mines is by direct vision combined with a knowledge of minelaying methods. On the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, if you understand how to plant mines properly you will have a much better grasp of mine detection. Sweep teams made up of trained observers, men with electronic detectors, and probers have proved highly effective, but security forces must be deployed to the flanks and rear of sweep teams to avoid ambush. Mine and tunnel dogs have been used with success to detect booby traps, trip wires, unexploded ordnance, punji pits and arms caches, as well as enemy troops. These dogs should be used with other detection systems not as a single system.

  Denial of material

  The enemy may rely on captured material for this conduct of mine warfare. This is especially true in guerilla warfare; in Vietnam, many Viet Cong booby traps used captured American ordnance. VC sappers were also known to infiltrate American perimeters protected with Claymore mines and reverse them so that they exploded in the wrong direction. Strict measures must be taken to deny the enemy all materials which can be used for mine warfare.

  Intelligence

  There must be a complete system for reporting mine incidents. Analysis of reports may be combined with communication intelligence sources. The purpose is to reveal areas of heavy mining by the enemy as well as the types of mines and firing devices used.

  Training

  Proper training reduces casualties from mines and booby traps. Intensive unit-level training should be conducted on how the enemy emplaces and camouflages these weapons.

  Protective measures

  These measures may include the wearing of body armour and helmets by sweep teams, sandbagging the flooring of vehicles and requiring the occupants to keep their arms and legs inside. In the South African Army it was a chargeable offence not to be strapped into your harness when riding in a Buffel-type APC. Soldiers on foot must avoid bunching up at the site of a mine detonation; the enemy may have placed other mines to take advantage of this natural tendency.

  Detection and search

  Detection of mines is an action performed by soldiers in all phases of combat; search is a more deliberate action taken by single soldiers, teams or small units to locate mines or mine-fields. The following techniques are recommended for both.

  1 Do not wear sunglasses; with them you are less able to detect tripwires and camouflage.

  2 Be alert for tripwires in these places:

  • across trails

  • on the shoulders of roads at likely ambush sites

  • near known or suspected anti-tank or anti-vehicle mines

  • across the best route through dense plant growth

  • in villages and on roads or paths into them

  • in and around likely helicopter landing sites

  • in approaches to enemy positions

  • at bridges, fords and ditches

  • across rice paddy dikes

  3 Check anything that might conceal a mine or its triggering device:

  • mud smears, grass, sticks, dirt

  • signs of road repair, for example new covering or paving, ditch and drainage work

  • tyremarks, skidmarks or ruts

  4 Be alert for signs that might belong to mark or point to hidden mines:

  • signs on trees, posts or stakes, or signs painted on the road. Most are small and not easy to spot

  • marks other than signs, for instance sticks or stones placed in a line, clumps of grass placed at intervals. Look for patterns not present in nature.

  • wires leading away from the side of a road; they may be command firing wires

  • odd items in trees, branches or bushes; they may be explosive grenades, mortar rounds or artillery shells

  • odd features in the ground, for instance wilting plant camouflage

  5 Watch the civilians. They may know where local mines are, so see where they don’t go – for instance, one side of the road or certain buildings.

  6 Be careful of any equipment left behind by, or belonging to the enemy; it may be booby trapped.

  Old ruts in the road are dangerous; stay out of them. Here the pressure of a vehicle’s tyres pulls the wire connected to the pins of the grenades. The grenades explode, setting off the main charges. Note the mine on the right by the side of the road, where troops are likely to try and take cover during an ambush.

  Electrical detonation: the weight of a vehicle (or man, depending on how the mine is set) presses two metal plates together. This completes the electrical circuit, detonating the mine.

  7 Listen for the sound of a delayed fuse device. If you think you hear one get down – fast.

  8 Do not use any metal object as a probe; the metal can close the circuit between contacts. Use sharpened wooden sticks. When feeling for trip-wires, use a lightweight stick.

  9 Use scout dog teams to detect booby traps.

  10 Check all entrances (to buildings, caves, tunnels etc) for booby traps, and search the approaches and surrounding area for anti-personnel mines.

  11 If you find an anti-tank mine, inspect by eye and probe for anti-handling devices.

  12 Remember that the enemy can use command detonated mines. Search and clear road shoulders and surrounding areas before other mine-clearing work. Make sure you cover all potential firing positions and remove any wires and booby traps. Buried firing wires can be exposed and cut by single-toothed rooters running along 10 to 50 metres from the road. Protect the clearing party with security forces

  If mines are laid in a group they will usually be in a logical pattern. This may be dictated by the ground, but will often follow a fixed formula. These three patterns of mine-laying were widely used during the Rhodesian war. They use the minimum number of their precious mines to give the best chance of hitting a vehicle.

  Note the invariable habit of planting most of the mines in the ruts worn in the road. Despite all warnings it is very easy to follow the smoother route of old tracks and become another victim. Remember that when actually following another vehicle, the reverse is true and you are obviously safest by following the leading vehicle’s exact route.

  Probing

  Probing is a way of detecting mines by piercing the earth with a sharp but non-metallic object e.g. a pointed stick. It is slow and hard work but is probably the most reliable way to find mines. When probing follow this procedure:

  1 Move on your hands and knees or stay prone. Look and feel upward and forward for tripwires or pressure prongs. Keep your sleeves rolled up and remove watches and rings – your sense of touch must be at its keenest.

  2 After looking and feeling the ground, probe every five centimetres across a one-metre frontage. Press the probe gently into the ground at an angle of less than 45 degrees from horizontal. Never push the probe straight down or you may detonate a pressure mine.

  3 If the probe won’t go in freely, the soil must be picked away with the tip of the probe and the loose earth or stones removed by hand.

  4 If you touch a solid object, stop probing, remove the earth by hand and check it out.

  5 If you find a mine, remove just enough of the surrounding soil to see what type it is. Then report it.

  6 As you probe your way forward, the cleared lane must be marked for the following troops and mines you have loca
ted must be clearly signposted.

  Caution: If you know or suspect the enemy is using magnetically influenced fuses, make sure no-one is carrying anything made of iron or steel in the vicinity of the mines. This means no steel helmets, bayonets, rifles etc.

  NAVIGATION

  As a special forces soldier, you will be expected to operate in the most remote and inaccessible regions of the world: this means being able to navigate with pinpoint accuracy under the most arduous circumstances. Although you are equipped with the most up to date satellite navigation and communication equipment, you must still be able to operate with the most basic navigational aids: a compass, map, altimeter and watch.

  FOREST NAVIGATION

  Forest navigation is probably the most difficult, because your visibility is minimal and your path is obstructed. If you don’t keep an accurate record of your precise location, you will soon get hopelessly lost, particularly in tropical rain forests. Under other navigational circumstances you are able to travel safely as long as you can recognize the prominent landmarks, but when you can only see trees and bushes it is all too easy to wander off course.

  The Hollywood image of a forest navigation is of cutting a trail through the tangled undergrowth with a machete in one hand and a compass in the other. This had nothing to do with reality; the last thing any forest traveller wants to do is to “cut a trail”.

  Most forests are honeycombed with a complex network of unmapped tracks and trails. Although they may not seem to lead to your destination, using them will almost certainly make your journey far quicker and easier. If you have a choice of two trails to follow, and if you know precisely where you are, follow the path that points in what is the nearest to the right direction. By recording the bearings and distances between bends in the path, you will be able to plot its course on your map.

  Continue this process until you are as near to your estimation as the trails will take you. You may now have to march on a direct bearing to your destination, cutting a trail. Better still, you could “aim off” so that you intersect an easily recognisable land feature such as a road, railway or river that will lead directly to your target. If you are using a river, make sure you know which direction the river flows: it is not always obvious.

  Surveying your path

  Surveying a path is not difficult. You just need two pieces of information; direction and distance. Direction is obtained by using your compass to sight down the trail to the next bend adjusting your magnetic bearing to a grid bearing, and plotting a line from your known position. To work out distance, you now walk down the trail to the point at which you sighted counting your paces. When you reach your sighting, compare the pace totals of your team and take an average. This is called “bracketing”. An experienced team will already know the relationship of their paces to distance, in varying terrain, having worked this out during training.

  Another way of determining distance travelled is to estimate your speed of travel: speed = distance divided by time. By checking the time it takes you to pass between two identifiable land features and dividing this by the distance you have travelled (taken from the map), you will know your current speed. Update and revise this as often as possible, and make allowances for terrain changes. If, for example your speed is estimated at 4km/h and you have been walking at approximately that speed for 2½ hours, you will have travelled 10 km (distance = speed multiplied by time).

  When bust cutting in secondary growth it is very difficult to keep walking exactly on a bearing. In really difficult country it may be necessary to use improvised survey poles.

  With pole A in the ground a man is sent forward to the limit of visibility with pole B. Using the compass, the man with pole B is told to move left to right until he is on the bearing.

  Pole A is then moved forward and either set in position using a forward bearing from pole B or a “back” bearing taken from pole A to pole B.

  The most accurate way to establish your distance is to use both of the above methods. As commander, estimate your speed of travel while two of your team act as pace counters by notching a stick every 50 paces.

  Trail cutting

  Trail cutting means keeping a straight course. Accuracy is vitally important: if you are 4° off course, after three km you can be up to 250 metres off course – more than enough to miss your objective. By cutting two saplings and stripping the bark off them you can improvise two surveying poles. Use these to set your course by, and you should be able to navigate with pinpoint accuracy. Simply set the poles 20 metres apart in line with your intended direction of travel, so that they act as a visual guide for the trail you are cutting. As the trail progresses, leapfrog your rear pole forward, setting it in position by a back bearing to the remaining pole.

  Navigating around obstacles

  While walking on a bearing you may come across obstacles such as lakes, swamps, crevasses and ravines. To avoid these there are two techniques which will enable you to maintain your course.

  1 Avoidance by landmark: If there is an easily identifiable landmark within easy reach you can walk to it and take a fresh bearing from this point to your objective. If you are confident of your ability to judge distance you can avoid travelling all the way to the landmark.

  2 Boxing: Walking three sides of a box around the obstacle. By counting paces and walking a right-angled box you should be able to resume your correct course.

  In tropical climax forest it is likely that you will come across obstacles not marked on the map that are impossible or very difficult to traverse. When you are walking on a compass bearing you cannot expect to walk around obstacles and maintain direction. Even at the end of a leg as short as 1000 metres, if you are only 30 mils out you will be at least 30 metres out at the other end – certainly enough to get you lost in close country. You have two choices; either box around the obstacles or pick a landmark from the map and plan a new route from that.

  ALPINE NAVIGATION

  Another field of operations common to the special forces soldier is the mountain and Arctic environment. Navigation in these areas follows all the basic rules, but there are other considerations: probably the most hazardous is glacier navigation. Wherever possible, gain high ground before crossing glaciers so that you can scout a route through the ice falls.

  Glaciers are basically huge rivers of ice. Their rate of flow is determined by their mass and the slope of the underlying rock. They usually consist of two parts; the lower glacier, which is free of snow in the summer and often referred to as the dry glacier and the upper glacier, covered in snow all year round with the snow packed down to form the glacier ice itself. This is often called the wet glacier.

  Crevasse dangers

  Although the ice is plastic at its surface, it cracks as it passes over rises in its underlying rock or at the outside of bends that it flows around. These cracks are called crevasses. In most cases it is possible to predict where these will occur by studying the contours of your map. “Lurkers” crevasses which occur in predictable locations are caused by flows in the ice.

  The most dangerous part of the glacier is the upper or “wet” glacier as snow can obliterate the crevasses, often forming bridges across them. Whenever you cross “wet” glaciers you should always be roped together.

  CREVASSE FORMATION

  Crevasses are formed wherever there is an irregularity in the underlying rock. In some areas you will be able to predict from your map where they will be, and the larger crevasses or crevasse zones may themselves be marked. But remember, the glacier is a system in motion, constantly changing, so you cannot rely on the mapped safe routes.

  Flowing water

  As a general rule, where you can see water flowing across the surface of the glacier the danger of crevasses is minimal. This is because water will disappear down the first available crack or crevasse; so where you can see the water there can be few cracks.

  Fixing your position

  To gain an accurate fix on your position when crossing glaciers, yo
u use a combination of information:

  1 First measure the aspect of your position, by taking a bearing at 90° from your position to the direction in which the glacier is moving. By comparing this to the contour lines on your map you should be able to estimate your approximate location.

  2 Secondly, take an altitude reading from your altimeter. This will enable you to gain a precise fix on your location. Remember to set your altimeter to the correct height each time you pass a spot height, as its reading will vary with the barometric changes of local weather conditions. If overnight you seem to gain height, it indicates a loss of pressure and therefore that bad weather is imminent. If, on the other hand, you lose height, the pressure indicates good weather imminent.

  NAVIGATION WITHOUT INSTRUMENTS

  As the truck brakes hard and your “rookie” guard drops his cigarette, you take the chance to make a bid for freedom, vaulting the tailgate and running like a fox, looking for cover. After an hour you slump into the shade of a yew tree and look back. You can’t see any sign of your pursuers, but they’re there somewhere. You must put as much ground between them and you as possible.

  You were in the truck for about two hours, travelling at about 50 mph, so at the worst you’re 100 miles behind the lines and probably much less. You could be back at HQ in a week. But your escape map and compass were taken when you were searched!

  The mental map

  No matter what your job is – running the field kitchen or leading the raiding party – make sure you know the geographical features of the location!

  1 Where are the major rivers, and in which direction do they flow?

  2 What are the local hills called and in which direction do they extend?