by Rusty Firmin
Meanwhile, I’d been picked up immediately for the 29 Commando football team and managed to score a hat-trick in my first match against a navy side, and not long afterwards I was selected to play for the army for the first time. This was a real honour for me, but 145 Battery weren’t so pleased: the amount of time I was away playing football meant I was pretty much a part-time soldier as far as they were concerned. I wasn’t too bothered: I was being paid whether I was in uniform or playing football.
At the back end of 1974 we were scheduled to go over to Northern Ireland for a tour in either Armagh or Crossmaglen. I was looking forward to this as it would be a change from my previous experience in Belfast but before we began the training package, I was summoned to see the battery sergeant major. I was trying to work out what I’d done wrong. I’d made a big effort at 29 Commando to maintain my self-discipline and I’d managed to avoid all forms of trouble, so I didn’t think it could be disciplinary but, at the back of my mind, I wondered if it was related to football. I was right.
‘What am I going to do with you, Rusty?’ the battery sergeant major asked.
‘I don’t know sir, what have I done wrong?’
‘Nothing, mate, but the issue is that you’re never here. You’re doing your job part-time and that can’t work. You’re well liked and you do a good job when you’re not playing football but we need more than we can get from you.’
I was wondering where this was going, and he told me.
‘We’ve decided to move you over to Training Wing in HQ Battery. You’re a fit guy and you’ll make a good Commando instructor. I don’t want to lose you but a couple of years over there will give you some stability and you can make a contribution when you aren’t away playing.’
I wasn’t sure about this, but I wasn’t in a position to argue.
‘Right sir, when do I start?’
‘As soon as you can get yourself across there.’
I knew this would be another crossroads in my career. Working in Training Wing I knew there was no chance of being promoted to sergeant for two years and I was disappointed not to be going to Northern Ireland with my mates, but I felt that if I did a good job there, then maybe other paths might open up. My role would be helping to run the beat-up for the Commando course – the same course I’d done just a year before – and I thought: Why not, I can handle this.
It turned out to be a good job. One of the more memorable occasions happened on the very first course I was involved in. We had the squad of trainees out doing the Citadel run and I was in full instructor mode, shouting and beasting the guys to give it their all when a little old lady ran towards me and started shouting that I was a bully and started thrashing at me with her umbrella. I was almost crying with laughter as this continued and even the trainees could see the funny side of it as we left her behind, still screaming at me.
One of my best mates in 29 Commando was a REME vehicle mechanic known as ‘DJ’. He was there on attachment but one day he came up to me and told me he wanted to have a crack at the Commando course and would I help him?
‘Sure, mate,’ I said, ‘but you’ll have to really throw yourself into it: I won’t be doing you any favours.’ This wasn’t a problem for him and we cracked on. DJ was a really good swimmer but not much of a runner or walker at that time, but he knuckled down, worked extremely hard and passed the Commando course at the first attempt.
Over the next couple of years we became really close friends, socialising together at weekends and even going on holiday to the South of France together one leave period. Another guy I got very friendly with was Jim Cowling, who worked with me as one of the Commando instructors. DJ was eventually posted out of HQ Battery and up to Arbroath and I lost touch with him for a while but there were plenty of good guys around to take his place.
In between Commando courses we got leave and for one of these I travelled up to Birmingham with Stu F and spent some time working for his brother’s building company, constructing a school playground. I didn’t mind the hard work but the best aspect was that we were getting paid by both the army and Stu’s brother. When I got back I was telling Jim Cowling about this and we decided to buy ourselves a van and start up a window cleaning round which we could do in our spare time. The van set us back £40 but we didn’t have any ladders, and we decided that we would ‘borrow’ the regimental fire ladders that were hung on the wall of the guardroom.
We were in the process of loading the ladders onto our van when Charlie E, another lad from HQ Battery, appeared. He asked what we were doing and, when we’d told him, asked if he could join us in the window cleaning. I decided to set him a test:
‘Let’s see if you can get the ladders up against the wall to our accommodation,’ I said, pointing to our windows which were on the second storey.
Charlie picked up the ladders and tried to extend them by standing them up and pushing the extending section upwards. He was doing quite well until a gust of wind caught the ladder, ripped it from his hands and sent it crashing down across a line of parked cars, causing more than a little damage. Charlie did a runner back to the accommodation whilst we quickly scooped the ladders up and got them on the van. He had failed the window cleaners’ selection and didn’t join us on the round.
We’d been cleaning windows for about a week when Punchy Murray, a Scot who ran the guardroom as provost sergeant, noticed that the ladders had gone. He went berserk issuing a series of blood-curdling threats against Jim and me, so the ladders had to be returned and our dreams of window cleaning riches put on hold for the time being, which was a shame really.
Instead of cleaning windows, I volunteered for the military parachuting course at Brize Norton and was accepted. Paratroopers have to pass ‘P-Company’ before they get to actually jump but passing the Commando course also qualifies you for parachuting so I wouldn’t have to do it. As things turned out, I really enjoyed it, although the first jump, out of a balloon at Weston-on-the-Green, was a bit nerve-wracking. This wasn’t because I was scared but because I simply didn’t know what to expect. In fact, it went well, though I did discover that forgetting to take the keys out of your pocket before you jump can leave you with some really spectacular bruises. After eight jumps, including a night descent from a C-130 transport aircraft, I was awarded my wings and proudly sewed them on to my uniforms.
By now I’d instructed on three or four Commando courses but I still wasn’t sure that this was how I wanted to spend the next few years and I began to look around for alternatives. I was getting on for 26 and I began to think that I should take a look at SAS selection. A friend had attempted the course and failed a couple of years earlier and had told me how difficult it was, but there was another guy in the 29 Commando, ‘Evil Steve’ who was maybe ten years older than I was, who had been in the SAS for several years, and I had several long chats with him about it. I also asked the staff sergeant who ran Training Wing what he thought, and he was quite positive: ‘You’re certainly fit enough, if you steer clear of injury,’ was his view.
I asked him if I would be able to take time off between courses to go and train in the Brecon Beacons and he promised me that he would look into it.
It was the spring of 1976 when I put my application in to attempt selection and I decided to give myself a full year to get ready for it, aiming for the summer selection course in 1977. For summer leave I took myself off to the Brecon Beacons and spent my time running up and down the hills. It was a scorching hot summer – one of the hottest on record – and by the time I returned to Plymouth I looked like a racing snake. Chatting with Stu F, he had decided that he would volunteer along with me and I was really pleased: it would be good to have a training partner.
For the next few months we continued with our normal routine of running Commando courses, and Stu and I worked together to build up our strength and endurance which, because of our job, was already at a very high level. One evening, after one of the courses had dispersed, I came back from a boozy night in Plymouth and deci
ded to let off a thunderflash in the accommodation. I’d found it in my kit at the end of the course and should have handed it back in, but I hadn’t. I struck the igniter and stuck it in one of the lockers, and it went off with a hell of a BANG! Which obviously woke everyone up but also brought the Regimental Police staff – led by Punchy – to see what was happening. Punchy was really angry but apart from the noise and some damage to the locker nobody was harmed. He was good about it and let me off with a warning but I thought afterwards: What a fucking stupid thing to do! If I was going to pass selection, I couldn’t afford to be involved in any controversies and I resolved to get serious.
From New Year 1977 onwards, Stu and I really got stuck into training. I was due to report to Bradbury Lines barracks in Hereford, headquarters of 22 SAS Regiment, in July and I tried not to waste a single day when there might be an opportunity to improve my fitness.
At the beginning of the May Bank Holiday weekend I was sitting in the launderette at the bottom of the hill, waiting for the wash cycle to finish on my belt kit and webbing, when I got a real bolt from the blue. The door opened and DJ walked in. I hadn’t seen him since he was posted to Arbroath nearly 18 months before.
‘Fuck me, what are you doing here?’ I asked him.
‘Thought I’d come down and look you up.’
‘What, from Arbroath?’
‘No mate, I’ve moved on. I’m at Hereford now. I did selection last summer. I’m in B Squadron.’
This was a real turn up for the books. There was another guy with him who he introduced as Mick R, also from B Squadron.
‘Come on, Rusty, let’s go and have a drink.’
‘Yeah, great idea. I’ve just got to finish this lot,’ I indicated my laundry. ‘Then I’ll come and join you. Where shall we meet?’
‘No, not here, in Hereford. Better class of pub there. Leave your grundies for the service wash: it’ll be done when you get back.’
I thought this over for about two seconds.
‘Great, right let’s go!’
I asked the woman in the launderette to take over my washing and we jumped into DJ’s white MGB Roadster and took off. I literally had what I was standing up in.
It turned out to be a fantastic weekend. I stayed in the old wooden B Squadron basha* and we went out drinking at the SAS haunts: the Ulu Bar; the Grapes; the Pippin; the Booth Hall; and various others. More importantly, I got to meet a lot of the guys from the squadron and some from the wider regiment. Taking in their long hair, their sideburns and their generally chilled-out attitude I was thinking: This is for me, this is what I really want to do.
*‘Basha’ was the term for a jungle shelter from the Regiment’s Malaya days. It had become the slang term for the barrack blocks the SAS lived in.
One thing had been worrying me about going to the SAS. I knew that if I passed selection I would lose my bombardier rank and have to start at the bottom all over again. I had wondered whether I could stick that, but this weekend told me it would be worth it and that serving with these men would more than make up for losing a couple of stripes.
On the Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, DJ dropped me off at Hereford station and I made my way back down to Plymouth, pausing only to pick up my neatly washed and folded gear from the launderette.
Now I was a man on a mission.
CHAPTER FIVE
SELECTION
My job running the Commando course pre-selection meant that I was fit but I knew from talking with DJ and the other lads that fitness on its own wasn’t going to get me through SAS selection. Specific preparation was required.
There were two selections every year and I was booked on the summer course, starting in July. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. In the winter, the grass and vegetation on the hills have usually died back a bit and the going is faster underfoot, and you don’t have to worry so much about dehydration or heat injury; on the other hand the weather can be terrible and much more of the walking takes place in darkness, mist and cloud which means your navigation has to be spot on.
In the summer, you have to contend with grass that can be knee-high or worse, which really does slow you down, and you need to carry more water to make sure that you don’t dehydrate, as happened to a couple of the lads doing reserve selection a year or so back. So it’s swings and roundabouts but the July course worked for me and that’s what I was going for.
Stu F and I had both booked three weeks’ leave before selection started and we’d decided that we would spend the whole period in the hills getting ourselves ready. In mid-June, with my last pre-Commando course over and done with, I handed in all my Commando gear to the stores, packed the rest of my kit into the back of my car and drove with Stu directly to the Brecon Beacons.
If you’ve never been to the Beacons, they’re a range of bleak, bare-arse hills in South Wales, about 40 miles from the old SAS barracks in the suburbs of the city of Hereford. The highest point is Pen-y-Fan, also known as ‘The Fan,’ which tops out at 886 metres (just under 3,000 feet) but it’s not really the height which is important: more the sheer ruggedness of the terrain. There are few trees and little shelter on the hills, which are covered by boulders, occasional rocky outcrops, dry-stone walls and sheep.
At the bottom of Pen-y-Fan on the main A470 road is a derelict youth hostel called the Storey Arms but importantly, from our point of view, there’s a small wood and a car park, and this was where we planned to set up our base for the next three weeks. It occurred to me then that I was in an ideal position to give selection my best shot. I’d broken up with my girlfriend in Plymouth, I’d lost contact with my family in Carlisle and I was able to completely focus on what, I hoped, was going to be the next six months or so.
The plan was that Stu and I would get out on the mountains every day, pushing ourselves as hard as we could across country, and getting ourselves completely familiar with the lie of the land. For equipment, we carried army-issue bergan rucksacks, loaded down with useful gear: sleeping bags, spare clothes, food and water (and a couple of cans of cider each too) rather than pointless dead-weight like bricks. But we had enough spare gear in our cars to add extra weight when we needed to: there was no point in cheating.
On about the second or third day we were there, we got to the top of Pen-y-Fan only to find another group of SAS hopefuls taking a breather and, lo and behold, there was my mate John McAleese with a couple of lads from 59 Commando Squadron in Arbroath. After we’d made our introductions to each other, we had a bit of a chat and decided that we would team up together and try to make the most of the next few weeks.
It was hot that June and for a while I thought about wearing shorts while out on the hills but I decided against it. I needed to wear exactly the same kit I would have on selection itself and if I tried to make anything easier now, it would just be harder when the real test was on.
Our daily training routine was pretty standard. We would get up each day at about 7.30am and wash, get a bite to eat and pack our tents and unnecessary kit into the boots of our cars. Next we would head off to spend most of the rest of the day pushing ourselves over the hills on routes we had worked out together the night before; then we would rendezvous back at the car park in the late afternoon or early evening, having got the necessary miles under our belts.
Once we’d all met up again, a couple of us would take off for Brecon or Cefn Coed to buy food and beer whilst the rest got the tents pitched and the campsite sorted out. Once we’d eaten, worked out the plan for the next day and downed a few cans of beer, we’d crash out in the tents for the night, ready to go again the next morning.
Throughout this training stage, we kept bumping into others on the hills who were doing much the same thing. One was a Parachute (Para) corporal called Yorkie who seriously told me that the reason he was on selection was that 22 SAS needed him for their rugby team. I smiled and nodded my head, all the while thinking: What an arrogant tosser!
On the Friday before selection kicked off we took the
decision as a group to wind the training down and give our bodies a chance to recover over the weekend before the fun started. That afternoon we all drove over to Hereford and checked in at the guardroom at Bradbury Lines and, once we’d been ticked off the list of selection candidates, we went over to the Training Wing basha, stowed our kit, got showered and changed and then headed into town for beer and food.
It wasn’t long before I tracked down DJ and several of his mates in one of the many pubs in town and a great night ensued. It turned out that there was a vibrant SAS groupie culture in Hereford and some of the girls there knew a lot more about selection than I did. If I’d been round Pen-y-Fan 20 times in the last three weeks, some of these girls had been round the block a damn sight more often. By about 10.30pm, my beer goggles were firmly attached and some of them began to look quite attractive. I had to firmly remind myself that now was not a good time to be thinking about relationships, or one-night stands for that matter, and I managed to avoid any entanglements.
Saturday night was a bit quieter and by Sunday the rest of the selection candidates were beginning to arrive on camp. We still went out for a couple of beers in the evening but it was time to get serious now so none of us went for it and we soon headed back for an early night.
The first Monday morning of selection will stay with me for the rest of my life. In March 1977, the army, in one of its occasional outbursts of sheer stupidity, had decided to disband 16 Para Brigade, the last remaining airborne formation, and replace it with ‘6th Field Force’, which was a brigade-sized light-role infantry formation with a limited, single battalion-group parachute capability. As a result, a lot of the airborne units had lost their airborne role and there were hundreds of pissed-off paras getting used to life in what were, essentially, ‘crap-hat’* units. As a result, summer 1977 SAS selection was an unusually large course, crammed with disillusioned Paras. Typical of these was Pete Morrison, alias ‘the Mink’ or ‘Minky’, who’d been in the Para Ordnance Heavy Drop Company and who became one of my closest friends over the years that followed. Of course, there was the usual assortment of volunteers from the rest of the army as well.