by Paul Bruce
We understood all of this but had little idea how we would be involved in fighting such urban terrorist activity. Most of us had originally believed we would be heading for active service in the Middle East but, as the lectures went on, more and more we realised that we might, indeed, be heading for the cauldron of Northern Ireland.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the end of our fourteen-week continuation training, we were rewarded with another leave, only this one would not be so generous – a mere 72-hour pass, hardly enough time to get home, have a bath, a meal and a drink with some mates before catching the train back to Hereford.
I decided to go home to see my parents and brothers and sisters in London as I hadn’t seen them for months. My father asked how things were going but he didn’t want to join me for a pint or talk about my training. My mother wanted me to pack in the SAS and return to the REME. At least my brothers and sisters seemed proud of the fact that I had become a member of Britain’s crack forces.
However, one incident back home showed me why SAS soldiers hide their identity and keep a low profile. I had warned my brothers never to tell anyone I had joined the SAS, so they would tell people instead that I had joined the Paras.
Unfortunately, one of my brothers had been boasting in the pub about his elder brother being a Para, and a couple of likely lads, who I had known as a teenager, decided to act tough. While I was buying drinks at the bar, one of them came up, stood beside me and deliberately trod on my foot. I just gave him a dirty look and carried on buying the beers.
‘I thought you Paras were meant to be tough,’ he said, attempting to ridicule me.
My brother saw what was happening and came steaming in, punching the guy in the face. His mates jumped in and, of course, I then had to become involved. I couldn’t see these blokes getting the better of my brother, so I pitched in. Within a minute, most of the pub was in turmoil, bottles and glasses flying everywhere and punches and boots going in. No one seemed to know who they were fighting or why, with everyone throwing punches at whoever came into reach. I grabbed hold of my brother and dragged him out of the pub, leaving the rest fighting.
I had a few words with him but, thank goodness, he had learned his lesson; he would never brag about his elder brother again. It also made me realise how careful I had to be. I knew that I would not be the most popular SAS recruit back at Hereford if I got nicked for brawling.
Back at Hereford, we packed our kit and drove to Abingdon, Oxfordshire, for parachute training. For me, this would be the best part of the entire training schedule. One reason was that, if I passed this successfully, I would be badged, awarded my SAS wings.
For the first ten days, we drove to Aldershot each day for confidence training, using the Parachute Regiment’s assault course. Para NCOs were in charge of this part of our training and they drove us hard. However, because of our endurance training, we were probably twice as tough as the great majority of Paratroopers.
Surprisingly, a couple of our lads were RTU’d from the assault course because they had never known that they suffered from vertigo. Their realisation came about when we had to make a six-foot jump from one piece of scaffolding to another with a forty-foot drop below. A safety net had been put in place, but these lads still could not make the jump. They could never become fully fledged SAS men with such a mental block.
As well as jump-training from specially built scaffolding (a mock-up of a Hercules transport plane), we also had to learn how to fold and pack a parachute correctly. We all learned this exercise quickly because we knew our very lives depended on it.
Then I had to face my first ever jump from the sky – the celebrated balloon jump. For me, this would be horrible. Having strapped on our parachutes, four of us and a Para instructor climbed into the basket, and the balloon began to climb slowly and silently into the sky. Every time I looked down, the ground seemed to be diminishing and I thought I would never make the jump.
The instructor hooked me up as I was the first in line. He opened the sliding gate on the front of the balloon’s basket and tapped me on the shoulder. I thought at that instant, ‘I’ve got to do it. I have to jump,’ although it was the last thing I wanted to do. I shut my eyes and jumped. There was an instant of terror, a fear that the ’chute wouldn’t open and then, before I realised what was happening, the parachute opened and I felt the jerk of the harness.
I shall never forget the joy of seeing the ’chute open and the feeling of weightlessness in the open air. I had somehow gone from near death to a new life – it was the next best thing in life after an orgasm. From that moment, I knew I would always be apprehensive when parachuting, always wondering if the ’chute would open, and that every time that fear would be followed by a sense of ecstatic joy when it did open and I floated down to earth in peace, quiet and serenity.
I concentrated on my landing, bending my knees as instructed and rolling over on to my side. Everything went like clockwork but I was relieved when I realised I was on terra firma once again and in one piece. In fact, so elated did I feel, and the jump seemed to be over so quickly, that all I wanted to do was go up again to relive the experience.
As a result, I was looking forward to the eight static-line jumps we would be doing over Salisbury Plain during the next three weeks. Before each and every jump, I would become nervous, knowing about everything that could go wrong, but all the jumps seemed to be over too quickly as we were only falling from 600 feet.
In between jumping, we also attended lectures designed to teach us the intricacies of parachuting into enemy territory. We knew that, if we were ever to operate behind enemy lines, the odds would favour parachuting into position rather than being choppered in. We were also taught how easy it had become for the enemy to trace, engage and shoot down aircraft over their territory and how vulnerable we would be in such circumstances. They tried to reassure us by pointing out various ways in which the enemy could be wrong-footed but, in our hearts, we realised how dicey it would be. Those lessons were not very comforting but we had to know the worst.
For our first free fall, we travelled to Brize Norton and clambered into a Hercules. Our first three jumps were up to 10,000 feet because above that level oxygen must be used. Most parachutists are encouraged to open their ’chutes after a few hundred feet but we were trained to free fall until just above 2,000 feet to safeguard against being seen by enemy forces below.
By the time we completed the course, we had become quite sophisticated parachutists. Using wing-style ’chutes, we could fly across the skies for up to 25 miles, which was great fun, and still ensure that we could land on the proverbial sixpence. A couple of times during the early part of training, I did land in trees, which was bloody uncomfortable. Fortunately, I suffered no serious damage, just cuts and bruises as punishment for misjudging the landing.
Those accidents caused much laughter and piss-taking but everyone screwed up in one way or another. Our instructors told us it was all part of the training.
The highest jump was at 26,000 feet. We were above the clouds and freezing cold as we waited for the green light to flash on, our signal to leap out of the aircraft. Floating through the clouds was an eerie experience, not knowing what we would see when we left the cloud cover.
Parachuting at night caused even more concern. A luminous patch had been sewn on to the black night ’chutes so that we could all see each other after leaving the aircraft at the rate of one man every two or three seconds. Once the first man had jumped, there would be no waiting for those following; we would simply walk along the aircraft and out into the sky. The plan was for all of us to land within a few feet of each other but, at first, that didn’t always happen. On one occasion, one bloke landed in a lake hundreds of yards from where the rest of us had come down successfully. It was an hour before we found him, soaked through and freezing cold.
From that incident, however, we all learned a valuable lesson. As the instructor pointed out: ‘If that had happened on active service, no one would ha
ve wasted time searching for the rogue parachutist. He would have been left to his own devices, for time wasted in searching for him could have put the rest of the unit at risk or screwed up the entire operation.’
Everyone was given the DZ (drop-zone) map reference so that, if, by chance, a bloke got swept off course, he knew where to rendezvous. Everyone also knew that the unit could not, and would not, wait too long before moving off.
On landing, we had to be prepared to begin fighting immediately. Three men would be designated to defend the DZ while the rest gathered the kit together. The unit leader would have to decide whether it was possible to fight their way out of trouble or consider calling up a chopper to pull the unit out.
When parachuting, we were equipped with D-rings on each shoulder, attached by webbing to a harness around the upper body. In a real emergency, when a rescue chopper could not land, the crew would throw out lines which we would hook on to the D-rings. When all four men had hooked up, the chopper would whisk us away until it was safe to land and we could clamber aboard. We practised that frequently. Sometimes it got rather hairy but it provided a great feeling of exhilaration as we were carried along above tree level for perhaps a mile or more.
Following our final successful jump at high altitude, we were all invited into the sergeants’ mess at Brize Norton for a great piss-up. After the months of grit and determination, that night was a blissful relaxation; the pints of beer came thick and fast and everyone was singing and shouting, laughing and thankful that we had finally made the grade. Many of those who had started out had fallen by the wayside but we, the select few, had somehow managed to hack it.
I had dreamed of this moment and now I had done it. It felt bloody wonderful. Part of me wanted to cry with sheer relief that the initial training was over and I could hold my head up high. Before I became too maudlin, however, I had another pint and put those thoughts behind me.
Throughout our training, we had all got on quite well together. We all realised that if we were going to pass the course we would need to remain friends, help each other when necessary and show a certain camaraderie towards each other. It seemed to me that most of us were of a certain type, quiet, even taciturn, determined and, perhaps more important, committed to the SAS.
We knew that on our return to Hereford we would receive our Para wings and would finally be officially welcomed into the SAS, the tortures of the past eight months over. We also knew, for we had been told a thousand times, that in the SAS the training never ends. Even those men who have been in the regiment for years still undergo training whenever they are not involved in active operations. In that way, SAS units are always in peak condition, their training always under review, so that they are capable of turning out on a mission within 24 hours, superbly fit, highly trained and ready for action. Unofficially, the SAS had adopted the famous Martini slogan of ‘any place, any time, anywhere’. Some suggested it should become the SAS motto.
Back at Hereford, the eight of us who had survived the rigours of the course were ordered to report to the CO. We marched in, saluted and he handed us our wings and the sand-coloured SAS beret. He also formally congratulated us and welcomed each of us in turn to the regiment. He also issued a word of warning: ‘You will find this beret harder to keep than it has been to win.’
I would never forget those words but at the time I could not comprehend that anything could be tougher than the blood and sweat I had shed gaining that SAS beret. I had not the slightest idea what the future would hold nor could I have understood at that time the enormous stress and strain the beret and wings would bring me.
We all realised, and most of us secretly hoped, that we would soon be putting everything we had learned into practice. We half-expected to find ourselves in some strange foreign country, probably somewhere in the Middle East, on active service, desperately trying to remember all we had been taught.
By July 1971, the newspapers were full of the Northern Ireland troubles. We knew that some SAS units were operating there as it had become the unofficial talk of the Hereford camp.
After a 72-hour pass, we were told to report back to Hereford. We were not surprised to be ordered to undergo an eight-mile cross-country run. It seemed that we were back at the beginning of our training course. As we hadn’t done any intensive training for several weeks, we did feel knackered. As I was about to strip off and take a shower, an SAS instructor walked in and told me to report immediately to an NCO in another hut.
I walked in to find two blokes, total strangers, dressed in civvies standing at the end of the hut and a single chair in the middle of the room. ‘Sit down.’
I obeyed, wondering what on earth this was all about.
They began questioning me, asking me what I had done over the weekend. In fact, I had decided to relax and go off on my own, armed with my binoculars, to do some serious birdwatching. I hitch-hiked to Llandovery in South Wales to study the red kites which were under threat of extinction in Britain. I had travelled down on the Saturday morning, taking a sleeping bag, living rough and eating in cafes, before returning on Monday afternoon. I had really enjoyed myself, alone, away from the army and watching these wonderful birds.
Before I had time to explain, one said, ‘We hear you have been down the pub bragging that you’re in the SAS. Is that right?’
‘No. That’s untrue,’ I said. ‘I never went to any pub over the weekend.’
They refused to believe me. They told me they had someone who would recognise me, who could identify me, who would be prepared to put me in the frame. They told me I was lying through my teeth and that this man would tell the truth.
I denied it all. I told them the guy must be mistaken. I was beginning to become angry with their accusations, angry that they would not believe what I was telling them.
They then demanded that I relate to them, in every detail, precisely where I was, how I had spent the time, where I had been staying, giving them names and places, and asked if there was anyone who could prove my word was true. I couldn’t name anyone.
Understandably, they didn’t believe me. They refused to believe that I had been totally on my own throughout the 72 hours with no one able to identify me or come forward to support my alibi. I was in a fix. I hoped these two geezers would go and find their witness so that he could disprove their allegations.
They carried on questioning me for more than an hour. I became confused because they were repeating, over and over again, the allegations which I knew to be false. Suddenly one said, ‘Fuck off out of here. We’ll be seeing you later.’
I left the hut feeling totally bemused, hoping that I had heard the last of their accusations. I had a hot shower and tried to forget about the whole business. Then I went over to the cookhouse for lunch and ran into two mates.
They told me they had just had the strangest experience and related precisely what had occurred to me too. They had been ordered to another hut and made to answer the same allegations which they, too, had vehemently denied. I told them I had undergone the same treatment.
We tried to figure out who the SAS man could be who had been in Hereford pubs bragging and shouting his mouth off. We couldn’t think that any one of us would have acted in such a way.
That evening as I sat down in the cookhouse with my tea, an SAS instructor who I knew quite well came over and whispered in my ear, ‘Whatever you do, tell them fuck all. Just tell them a load of bollocks.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Just remember what I said,’ he replied and walked off.
Now I was totally confused, wondering what the hell was going on; wondering who I had to tell ‘fuck all’ to and, more important, why. Finally, I went to bed, began to read and fell asleep still confused as to what had gone on that day.
I woke with a start, with the hut in pitch darkness and someone shaking my arm, telling me to get up. Luckily, I had gone to bed in my underpants because I was given no time to put on anything, not even a T-shirt or trousers.
They shoved a black bag made of cotton material over my head. My hands were tied with cord behind the chair and then there was silence. I tried to hear what was going on; I strained to listen in case they spoke, to give me some idea of what was happening. For all of five minutes, I was left alone with not a word or a sound coming from inside that room. My heart began to thump.
‘What was this parachute course like that you’ve just been on?’ one man asked.
Remembering what my SAS instructor had advised me, I denied I had been on a parachute course.
He said, ‘You’ve been in the SAS for eight fucking months and you haven’t been on a parachute course. That’s bollocks.’
‘I ain’t been here for eight months, I’ve only just arrived,’ I lied.
‘Bullshit,’ one replied. ‘Don’t you lie to us.’
‘I’m not lying,’ I protested.
For the next two hours, the two men kept up a relentless barrage of questions, sometimes asking me things about my life in the army which I knew to be true but which I denied vehemently to them. They even questioned me about my time in the REME, about things I had done, all of which were true. I kept wondering what the hell all this questioning was for, convinced that they still believed that I had been in a Hereford pub boasting about being a member of the SAS.