by Rusty Firmin
After two nights in Stanley we headed back to the airfield to catch a C-130 flight back to Ascension. We’d been told that we should be home in less than 24 hours and that sounded good to me. I reckoned that my wife Alison probably hadn’t noticed I’d gone, that Mark being still only three and a half months old wouldn’t have missed me much either but Sabre, my German Shepherd, was sure to give me a warm welcome: he would have been missing our ten-mile runs in the Herefordshire countryside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BACK TO WORK
1982–85
Coming back from the Falklands there was an air of disappointment around B Squadron. We’d gone down south to fight a war but the best that any of us had managed was watching the Argentine garrison fling down their weapons and quit. Meanwhile, we’d lost our squadron commander, sacked by Brigadier de la Billière, and were still being led by Major C who was supposed to be second-in-command of the Regiment as a whole.
And, of course, the Regiment as a whole had suffered its greatest loss since World War II. There were funerals and wakes to attend while we went about the mundane business of sorting out kit and identifying what had been lost when our squadron and personal gear had been so carelessly dropped into the South Atlantic. For most of us, this meant replacing more or less every useful piece of combat kit and clothing we had accumulated over years of service.
But life has to go on. The Falklands War was over but the world was no more peaceful. The IRA were still on the rampage in Northern Ireland, international terrorism had not gone away, Iran and Iraq were at each other’s throats in the Middle East and looming against it all was the Cold War, which was still in full swing in Europe and across the world. Which meant we had to resume our routine of training and deployments.
I’d been back a few weeks when I was summoned to the squadron office to be told that I was being put on the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing’s ‘VIP protection and bodyguarding’ course. Well, that cheered me up. Of all the courses the Regiment has to offer, this one is the most sought after by SAS soldiers. The reasons are purely mercenary. There was, is and always will be a well-paid future on the private security circuit for soldiers leaving the Regiment but this is one of the best qualifications you can have to persuade private security companies to take an interest in you. I was no different to anyone else in the Regiment. I knew my soldiering career couldn’t last for ever and I’d heard all the stories about life after the SAS. For the right man there were good jobs, paying excellent money and working for great employers: basically, the world was your oyster. When I hung up my boots, I wanted some of that.
The course itself was six weeks, and like most of the other training we did, it was very intense, with long days and more than a few nights too. There was quite a lot of theoretical material to assimilate but lots of practical hands-on stuff too, and that’s what I really enjoyed. In the early part of the course, the different skills were broken down into their component parts, so we did a lot of medical training, ‘dry’ weapon training, vehicle escort drills, foot drills, anti-ambush drills and the like. Every morning there would be a written test on what we learned in the days before and then, as the course went on, we began to put it all together in a series of exercises. There were 12 of us on the course and by the end we were functioning as a team and were able to fulfil the course requirement, which was to provide a well drilled three-car protection team. At that time, the normal form was a one- or two-car protection detail which we regarded as a low-to-medium level of security. With an eye on the future, I put a lot of effort into the course and was pleased to receive one of the two ‘A’ grades which were given out on this particular course.
After the close protection training, the next course was a complete change. B Squadron was due to deploy to Oman to take part in Exercise Sandy Wanderer and, as one of the patrol medics, it would be my job to provide medical care in some of the remote villages and Bedouin camps we would visit, as part of our ‘hearts and minds’ role. Consequently I needed to be able to communicate with the locals. The powers that be in B Squadron decided that what I needed was to do a colloquial Arabic course.
I had mixed feelings about this. I’m not the most academically minded individual and I knew it was going to be three months of really hard work. On the other hand, the Regiment had two education officers specifically there to teach languages so I wouldn’t have to go to the Army School of Languages at Beaconsfield, which meant I should get three months living at home with my wife and son.
I wasn’t wrong about the hard work. The course was Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm every day. In the evenings we got homework, mostly revising what we’d learned that day and learning new vocabulary for the next day – often 50 or 60 new words at a time – so it was easily 12 hours hard work a day. What worried me was that if I fell behind on the course, I wasn’t clever enough to catch up, so I really needed to put my nose to the grindstone.
I tried to strike a balance between family and work during this time. I wanted to put weekends aside for my son but my routine every day didn’t allow much time for the family on weekdays. I would get home around 6pm for supper and would have time to see Mark and to take Sabre for a walk, but then I would have to lock myself away to do my homework and this really pissed Alison off. She was constantly on my back about everything and it seemed I could do nothing right. I could see her point of view, of course, but I was a professional soldier and this was what I had to do.
You really needed a sense of humour plus to get through these courses. I didn’t find learning words particularly difficult but the grammar was something else. I also knew, because there were some really fluent Arabic speakers in the squadron, that I still might not be able to communicate with the Omanis as there are so many different Arabic dialects. Even so, I persevered with it and managed to pass, which pleased me no end although it was undoubtedly a relief to get it finished. I had to take my hat off to the education officers: some of these guys could speak 11 languages fluently. Having said that, if they’d had to strip down a machine gun and name the parts, they’d have been fucked.
So as a newly qualified colloquial Arabist, I deployed out to Oman with the squadron. This was where, a decade before, 12 members of B Squadron had held off around 300 Communist ‘Adoo’ in the seaside town of Mirbat. My friends Snapper and Tak had both been there, and Tak had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal – the second highest award in the British Armed Forces – for his part in the action, firing an old 25-pounder at the enemy despite severe wounds.
Over the coming weeks, we would take part in a multi-phase training and exercise programme which would bring our individual and troop skills up to speed in the desert environment. As usual, I was really looking forward to it.
The first phase of the exercise for 8 Troop involved desert patrolling in our pinkies in conjunction with the Baluchi soldiers who manned the Omani Army, and carrying out SOP training with them. When we came across the tiny villages that were dotted around the desert, it was a chance to put my medical training and colloquial Arabic into action and do some ‘hearts and minds’ work. In one village we got to, there was an old Arab guy who looked really sick. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was saying but our linguist eventually found out that the problem was toothache! I laid the guy across the front seats of the pinkie and got him to open up. His teeth looked like a row of burnt out derelict houses. I looked up at DJ who started laughing and, try as I might, I couldn’t help but join in. The guy’s breath was appalling but I got the tools of the trade out and had a bit of a poke about around the infected tooth. I thought to myself: If I try to take his tooth out, it’s going to disintegrate and he’ll be in an even worse state than he is now. Better leave it where it is. Instead, I gave him some painkillers – which have an almost magic effect on people who’ve never had them before – and we quickly moved on.
One of the great joys of training in Oman is that there is a lot of empty desert and the country isn’t short of a bob
or two to fund training exercises. This gave us the opportunity to do some ‘forward air controller’ (FAC) training, bringing in Strikemaster jets from the Sultan of Oman’s Air Force on live firing missions against targets out in the desert. After we’d been doing this a while, I got to meet some of the Rhodesian contract pilots who flew for the Sultan. These guys were about as laid back as anyone I’ve ever met and one of them took me up and gave me a chance to fly his aircraft while he sat in the back, map reading. The only ground training he gave me was to point out the handle of the ejection seat:
‘If you hear me shout eject,’ he told me, ‘pull that handle really hard, because I’m not going to be around to shout it a second time.’
He took us off and then he handed the controls over to me and we flew around over the hills and coast, and he even let me do a live firing strafing run against the targets we’d been using during the FAC training: fantastic. Before we returned to the airfield, he took the controls and took me on a low pass over the Fort at Mirbat.
Another troop exercise involved taking all our general purpose machine guns out onto a desert range to practise firing from the vehicles, shooting from the hip, fixed line sustained-fire shoots and a night shoot which lit up the desert sky with tracer.
For most of the training we were based with the squadron at Thumrait Camp. It was hot and dusty but we had good accommodation and our own bar, which even had a snooker table where Johnny Mac, DJ, Stu McVicar and I would have a beer and shoot a couple of frames at the end of the day.
As the training came to an end, we had the inevitable series of piss-ups to let off steam. The first of these was at the ‘goat farm’ where the Sultan of Oman’s Special Force officers mess was based. A lot of their officers were ex-22 SAS guys serving on contract and between us we knew most of them. They introduced us to a drink called the ‘Big Boys’ Milkshake’. God knows what was in it but it was remarkably easy to drink and did a very efficient job of getting us drunk. A coach had been organised for a sightseeing trip to Mirbat but most of the guys who made it aboard promptly fell asleep and the tour wasn’t a success.
The best was yet to come, however. The final party was a posh affair at the British Embassy which was at a beautiful location down on the seafront in Muscat. B Squadron were there, the Rhodesian pilots, some nurses and a number of dignitaries, including the ambassador himself.
Booze flowed freely and quite soon a couple of the lads had quietly conked out in deckchairs on the lawn. We decided to pick up Mel, who was one of these, and gently carried him down to the sea, where we carefully put him down in water up to his chest. Not surprisingly, he suddenly woke up, fighting mad, and began racing back towards the party guests, soaking wet. It took several of the lads to hold him back and calm him down before any damage was done.
As the evening continued, more and more of the guys were becoming the worse for wear and eventually a couple of beer cans were thrown in the general direction of the nurses, which didn’t please them at all. The grand finale came when it was already getting dark. One of the guys, who shall remain nameless, felt nature calling and in his inebriated state decided that he would slip away into the bushes for a quick shit. This was bad enough but someone decided to switch on the lights and our lone hero was then floodlit, squatting on the Embassy lawn taking a dump for all to see. The guy in question was a senior NCO and he was quickly RTU’d back to his unit for 12 months, and had to retake part of selection before he was allowed to rejoin the Regiment.
Towards the end of 1982 we moved back into the counter-terrorist team role for the first time since we had done the Iranian Embassy Siege in 1980. I volunteered for the assault team in the hope that we might get another opportunity to practise our art but sadly lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice and we weren’t called on. What we did do was spend endless hours in the Killing House, shooting hundreds of rounds into ‘Carlos the Jackal’ targets almost daily. This was interspersed with ‘options’ training on trains, ships, aircraft and even the BT Tower, should terrorists decide to strike at the British mainland again.
One part of the role was putting on demonstrations for VIP visitors. Partly this was just showing off our capability but it also had a serious purpose. Some of the visitors were prime kidnapping targets and we needed to familiarise them with what would happen when we came to rescue them.
At the back end of 1982, Prince Charles and Princess Diana came down for a visit and we put on a full demonstration for them at our training area. I was given the job of looking after Princess Diana and spent much of the day shepherding her around, whilst dressed in my assault gear and carrying a full complement of weapons and live ammunition.
The demonstration we were putting on was a building assault from three Range Rovers equipped with ladders. The guys would de-bus, scale the ladders, get inside the building and free the hostages inside. When we’d explained this, Princess Diana asked if she could drive one of the Range Rovers: well, how could I say no?
The exercise started and the three vehicles roared up to the building, with Princess Diana at the wheel of one of them. The guys de-bussed and the assault started. Unfortunately, Princess Di hadn’t fully closed her driver’s side window, and when the flash-bangs started to go off one of the little pellets – which we call screamers – came back through the window and stuck in her hair. Now these things are hot and as I watched, I could see her hair was catching fire. Shit! I quickly brushed it away and started patting at her hair to stop it burning. Whoops!
The assault continued and during the debrief at the end, Princess Diana thanked me for my quick reactions. Prince Charles and his entourage were laughing their heads off.
A second royal visit in the New Year of 1983 was from Princess Anne and again, Mr Charming was assigned to look after her during the demonstration. On this occasion we didn’t manage to set our visitor on fire but she did enjoy what she had seen.
After we’d handed over the counter-terrorist role in early 1983, our next deployment was for a squadron exercise in Cyprus. Officer Commanding B Squadron by then was Major L, who was originally from one of the Scottish infantry regiments. He was one of the best squadron commanders I came across: a real no-nonsense guy who got on well with everyone but wasn’t afraid to put his stamp on things. His bravery can be gauged by the fact that he invited the whole squadron to his wedding: that took real guts!
The plan for the exercise was fairly straightforward. We would spend a few weeks doing our own troop training at the big training area on the Akamus peninsula in the west of Cyprus, then afterwards we would do some cross-training in other troop skills, so some of us would do amphibious work with the Boat Troop, some would do some free-falling with the Air Troop, some would go climbing with the Mountain Troop and some would do vehicle work with Mobility Troop.
The first part of the training went fine and I then volunteered to go diving with 6 Troop, which was something I’d always fancied. My instructor for this was Snapper, aka ‘Soldier I’, who had started off in 8 Troop but had been RTU’d for a year after getting convicted for brawling in Hong Kong and receiving six of the best with a cane as punishment. On his return from a year’s exile with the Royal Engineers, he had been reassigned to 6 Troop and had retrained in Boat Troop skills.
Snapper took me, the complete diving novice, off to one side and helped me get into my wetsuit and flippers, weight belt and air tank; then he showed me how to clear my mask and explained that we were going to do a simple swim, playing follow the leader behind him. We hopped off the boat and straight into the sea and I just followed on after Snapper as we steadily descended. We’d got to about 40 feet down when I began to realise I wasn’t getting any air. I made a few panicky gestures at Snapper, then dropped my weight belt and shot straight to the surface.
Snapper came up right behind me.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Rusty?’
‘I couldn’t breathe,’ I told him.
‘Ha, I got you there, didn’t I?’ he said, �
��You didn’t equalise your tanks.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about: equalise my tanks? Nobody told me I had to do that.’
He half apologised and explained how to equalise the tanks so I could get air and we went back in. Was I frightened? Not really, but mainly because I didn’t have time to be: as soon as I couldn’t breathe I got the hell out of there.
Our next activity was a couple of squadron parachute jumps. The first of these was to be a water jump which is usually a bit of fun, and dressed in wetsuits, trainers and winning smiles we took off in a C-130 from Akrotiri. The idea was that the 40 or so of us would jump out in sticks of four to six from the aircraft as it made repeated passes a mile or so off one of the tourist beaches, and we would then be picked up in Gemini inflatables. No problem. We circled around for a bit and then got ready for our jumps.
Major L and the squadron headquarters team were to be first out and as they stood up to hook up, I couldn’t help but notice the aggressive-looking knife on Major L’s hip: he was really looking the part. The red light came on, then the green, and they were off! As the aircraft circled for another pass, we spotted that Major L and squadron headquarters had actually managed to miss the sea and had landed on the beach amongst the spectators. Well that was embarrassing – for them anyway. The rest of us managed to hit the water where we were supposed to.