The Regiment

by Michael Asher

  The TA units were superior to 22 SAS in one sense: all their officers came up through the ranks. This was a tradition that 21 SAS had adopted from the Artists’ Rifles and passed on to 23 SAS. In the early days, many ex-wartime SAS officers had reverted to trooper to serve in 21 SAS. These two Regiments remain the only units in the British army that do not have an officers’ mess: they became the true embodiment of Stirling’s ideal of a ‘classless SAS’.

  The regular Regiment fell short, because it was hampered by problems endemic to the professional officer. Good officers existed, certainly, but they were reluctant to join the SAS because it offered poor career prospects. Those who did volunteer often lacked the tact, flexibility, imagination and open-mindedness required for low-intensity operations. The fact was that such personalities were rare among army officers anyway, for the simple reason that – as psychologist Norman Dixon has demonstrated – men with these characteristics rarely seek military command.

  22 SAS might have emulated the TA Regiments and followed Stirling’s precedent of commissioning NCOs from the ranks. Although some ex-sergeants did make squadron commander, they had to be commissioned in their parent units before 22 SAS would accept them. Eventually, a system of promoting NCOs was introduced, but since they were debarred from service in sabre squadrons, the changes were self-defeating – a commission became more a reward for service than an advantage to the Regiment. Feudal taboos died hard, even in 22 SAS.

  In spite of this, regular officers who became SAS squadron commanders were generally excellent. Troop-commanders, as Lofty Large pointed out, were ‘a different kettle of fish’. ‘Mostly they were too young and inexperienced to be expected to cope with handling an SAS troop on operations,’ he said. ‘… The good ones tried not to get in the way … some, like Rory Walker … were brilliant and great to work with … but there were others.’3

  John Woodhouse had the sagacity to recognize the existence of this problem, and encouraged junior officers to forget their Sandhurst-conditioned ‘us-and-them’ ideas and observe the principles Jock Lewes had deduced after the first fortnight of training L Detachment. ‘In the SAS, as an officer, particularly in your first year or two,’ Woodhouse wrote to one of his troop-commanders, ‘you have got to prove your enthusiasm, your superiority in physical endurance, and your SAS skills to your men … in the SAS you will never get the devoted support of your troops until you have proved to them by your personal example that you will never spare yourself physically or in any other way …’4

  Many young officers found it hard to deal with SAS vets who lacked deference, were opinionated, self-reliant, critical and ready, as Large put it, to ‘tell [them] to go away in best Trog’s English’.5 He described one subaltern with eighteen months’ service who claimed his troop was making too much noise on night ops. He tried to lecture them on techniques of night-movement – a subject covered on boot-camp training in every military unit. Most of Large’s troop had a decade of experience behind them, much of it on ops, and some had been battlecraft instructors. ‘This particular child tried to impress us with his great superior knowledge …’ Large commented. ‘He was a great success as a bloody idiot … his … cock-ups in the man-management department made him (and us) the laughing stock of the whole squadron.’6

  The SAS was, almost by definition, a unit of individuals capable of thinking for themselves. This concept, a quiet but devastating revolution in military outlook, had originated in the wartime commandos, but had really flowered in the SAS. SAS-men were selected for this very quality – the ability to operate without orders, and without traditional military discipline. Inevitably, the Regiment became a unit where the dominant values were those of the other ranks, where officers needed to prove themselves to the men rather than vice versa.

  Stirling himself had recognized, almost from the beginning, that the real dynamo of the SAS was the ‘sergeants’ mess’. He had occasionally let in officers through the back door because he owed them favours, or because they might be able to do him one, but had otherwise relied on his sergeants to assess their quality. If senior NCOs like Almonds, Rose, Seekings or Kershaw didn’t like them, they were out.

  This tradition continued in 22 SAS. ‘A false notion exists,’ wrote Ken Connor, ‘… that [the officers] were in command of the Regiment. The truth is that it was run by the NCOs.’7 In the early 1960s, the majority of troop commanders were sergeants. If a troop officer existed, he was just one of four patrol commanders – the others might be corporals or even troopers. The idea that he might be dispensable or even an impediment to the good functioning of the Regiment was, as Connor has pointed out, ‘not one that was ever going to be popular with the average army officer’.8

  In the early sixties an exchange programme was initiated with 7 Special Forces Group in the USA. Malaya had been a triumph for small formations, high quality manpower and minimum force, but Stirling’s small-is-beautiful – the-man-is-the-Regiment – concept didn’t go down well in America, where big equalled best, and where the man was considered subordinate to the machine. US Special Forces bore little resemblance to the SAS. The ‘Green Berets’ was basically an airborne group trained along the lines of the Parachute Regiment. The main difference was that US Special Forces soldiers were linguists, many of them immigrants, and were groomed to train foreign nationals, and for large-scale ‘hearts and minds’ missions. Even in the USA they were often referred to as the ‘Peace Corps in uniform’.

  The first Green Berets officer to be seconded to 22 SAS was Captain ‘Charging Charlie’ Beckwith. He was assigned to A Squadron, commanded by Major Peter Walter MC, ex-Royal Lincolns, a former sergeant who’d distinguished himself in Malaya. His SSM was Sergeant-Major Bill ‘Gloom’ Ross MM, another Malaya legend.

  For Beckwith, it was a revelation. His experience, which included a tour on the Thai border in Malaya, left him a changed man. ‘I felt I had captured a new world,’ he wrote. ‘The American army not only needed a Special Forces capability, but an SAS one.’9 Against entrenched opposition from his own authorities, Beckwith went on to found and command Detachment Delta, or Delta Force, the SAS Regiment’s US counterpart. Delta Force, like the New Zealand SAS Squadron and the Australian SAS Regiment, was thus another, though ‘unofficial’, member of the ‘SAS Family’.

  74. ‘A battle for a man’s mind and a test of his will to win’

  When Charlie Beckwith arrived at Bradbury Lines, he had no idea how the SAS assessed, selected and trained its soldiers. His first impression was that the Regiment was ‘a group of roughnecks’. He soon found out that ‘no one gives you anything in the SAS. You have to earn it.’1 Selection, established by John Woodhouse before the US Special Forces was even founded, was the source of its excellence. ‘A great deal of rubbish has been written about Selection,’ wrote Major Peter Ratcliffe, former Para and ex-RSM of 22 SAS, ‘much of it by people who passed and want to make themselves out, wrongly, to be supermen. For although it is the toughest human proving ground in the world, Selection is not just about muscle and brawn, or even sheer endurance. It is a battle for a man’s mind and a test of his will to win.’2

  No one has ever put it better than that, except perhaps Rudyard Kipling, whose poem ‘If’ has frequently been used, suitably modified, to psych-up Selection candidates:

  If you can force your heart, and nerve, and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

  And carry on when there is nothing in you

  Except the will, which says to you ‘Hold on’,

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty-seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Then yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it,

  And what is more, you’ll be SAS, my son.

  John Woodhouse’s Selection course lasted ten days and was geared to conditions in Malaya. He was looking for soldiers who could react instantly to a contact even when mentally and physically exhausted. ‘It’s all very well being able to march, and
get from A to B,’ Woodhouse said, ‘but we had to be extremely alert for possible contacts with terrorists at any moment, and if you’re tired and your senses are dulled, you may be no good at that side of it.’3 Physical fitness was essential, but you could be very fit and still fail Selection. The SAS was not in the business of recruiting supermen. In a sense the physical torture candidates had to endure was a sideshow, a means of reducing them to a state where their mental qualities would shine through. The SAS wanted individuals who didn’t need orders, who could make their own decisions, override exhaustion and apply sound judgement even in extreme and hostile conditions. As another 22 SAS vet, Nick Downie, put it, ‘The whole SAS way of life is in the mind. It’s nothing whatever to do with being a physical superman.’4

  Woodhouse’s Selection was taken over by Dare Newell’s ‘two men and a dog’ SAS Selection Detachment, which moved the course from Snowdonia to the Brecon Beacons – a range of hills whose highest peak was Pen-y-Fan, at three thousand feet. The Beacons enjoyed some of the worst and least predictable weather conditions in the British Isles. In the 1970s and 80s so many Selection candidates suffered from hypothermia – some fatally – that the Training Wing had to introduce marker-panels to be carried on Bergens, and later a SARBE search-and-rescue-beacon.

  SAS Selection has changed in detail over the years, but the object remains the same: to select men able to keep functioning mentally when beyond their normal limits of endurance. Despite Mayne’s assertion that he could spot a potential SAS-man at a glance, attempts by military psychologists to pinpoint an ‘SAS type’ failed. There is no SAS type. Among SAS-men there are plenty of physical giants like Mayne himself, but it was soon observed on Selection that some of the strongest and fittest soldiers were the first to go down.

  Ken Connor, ex-Parachute Regiment, one of the longest-serving veterans of 22 SAS, passed Selection in 1963. He found himself among the ‘smallest and least experienced’ of the candidates; ‘they were all bigger, stronger, taller, sun-tanned and as fit as fleas,’ he recalled. Connor was astonished when, on the very first test – a nine-mile run in boots and PT-kit – twenty or thirty of them dropped out. ‘You get blokes turning up and they’re six-foot and built like brick shit-houses,’ said ‘Mac’, another 22 SAS vet. ‘And you think Jesus Christ, what am I doing here?… Then after a week … some of these big guys, they’re gone. It’s not size that counts … you’ve got to be fit, obviously, but it’s what’s in your head.’5 Jimmy Ladner, Royal Artillery, who won the MM in Malaya, passed Selection in 1957. He had a similar experience. ‘I was only five-foot-seven-and-a-half,’ he said, ‘… and … it seemed … to me the [other candidates] were all massive people … I started singing Onward Christian Soldiers on the hard parts, and I started passing all these big chaps who I was very scared of.’6

  Out on the stark hills, gymnastic or athletic ability didn’t count for much. As Lofty Large pointed out, there was only one way of training for carrying a Bergen, and that was carrying a Bergen. He noticed that many super-fit candidates from the Army Physical Training Corps went down in the first few days. ‘My theory is that they’d never really been knackered before in their lives,’ he commented. ‘Whereas being smashed out of our minds with fatigue was the norm for us lesser mortals.’7

  SAS Selection has been popularized, some would say trivialized, by Reality TV shows, but the real thing remains distinct. One of the elements missing from the simulation is the all-important aspect of motivation. What drives all successful Selection candidates is the desire to win the buff-coloured beret: more than anything else in the world, you have to want to be in. Selection is also the great leveller. Despite later claims, L Detachment had never really undergone selection. It had maintained high standards because its recruits were all trained commandos, but in later years, especially in Europe, standards had fallen. Stirling himself sometimes recruited officers on the old-school-tie basis. Since Woodhouse’s days, though – with one small hiccup – there has been no ‘back door’ to the SAS. No SAS soldier who wants to serve in a sabre-squadron, regular or TA, no matter what his rank or connections, can circumvent Selection. Pass or fail is purely on merit.

  The regular Selection course that evolved from the Woodhouse prototype lasted four weeks for regulars: for TA units the process was spread over a number of weekends, with a solid two weeks in the final phase. For regulars and TA the real ‘test phase’ lasted five days. The early Selections were run from the Para Battle School at Dering Lines in Brecon, and later directly from Bradbury Lines. For the TA, the final phase was based at Sennybridge Camp in mid-Wales. Lofty Large, who spent two years as a PSI on the Training Wing of 23 SAS, pointed out that TA Selection wasn’t an easy option. ‘Selection courses for 23 SAS … were very hard,’ he said, ‘and the pass rate was the same as for 22 SAS, ten per cent … 23 SAS has remained a well-selected SAS unit.’8

  Anyone could join the TA SAS from civvy-street, although many successful recruits were ex-regular soldiers. 22 SAS candidates had to have served for three years in another military unit or in the TA SAS, and to have at least three years left to serve. About sixty per cent of successful candidates came from the Parachute Regiment. Such was the rivalry between the two units that Paras who failed SAS Selection were in for stick when they got back home. In the eyes of the Airborne, they had failed twice: once in forsaking the ‘maroon machine’, and again for failing to show that every Para was as good as an SAS-man any day. Para Selection – ‘P’ Company – though more team-oriented, was extreme, and prepared candidates well for SAS Selection. ‘Their own training has fitted paratroopers to being pushed harder and harder,’ wrote Peter Ratcliffe, ‘and as often as not when other men drop out, the Paras are still there, rock solid and reliable.’9 Of the eleven candidates who passed Ratcliffe’s Selection in 1972, six came from the Parachute Regiment. In Robin Horsfall’s Selection seven years later, five out of the nine successful candidates were ex-Paras, one a Royal Marine, and three from line infantry battalions.

  Candidates weren’t told what to expect. No one woke them up, made sure they were at the right place at the right time, or inspected them to ascertain whether they had the correct kit. It was all up to them. If the truck left without them, it was tough luck. ‘The message was clear,’ said Ken Connor. ‘There would be no checks … no one to hold your hand … If you weren’t there it was because you didn’t want to be there … so pack your kit and piss off.’10

  In the early days the course kicked off with a series of ‘sickeners’, designed to weed out ‘passengers’. For Lofty Large, who passed Selection in 1957, it was running round the assault-course at Dering Lines, so many times that he lost count. ‘It was a piece of cake for the first ten times around,’ he recalled, ‘… then I began to notice it a bit … At the end I was … completely smashed. Some had already dropped. We were told that was just a warm up.’11 For Peter de la Billière, who had passed Selection the previous year, it was doubling up and down the slope at the back of the camp. ‘After the first two ascents and descents, my breakfast … came to rest on the hillside,’ he remembered. ‘… Dimly I saw that there was method in this apparently senseless slogging up and down … it was eliminating a few scroungers and others who had underestimated the task.’12 The ‘sickener’ exercises were dropped later, and replaced by a standard battle-fitness speed march, though with very similar results.

  The preparation phase also included exhausting PT sessions, weapon-training, map-reading and navigation instruction, followed by arduous practical tests in the hills. By the time the test-phase arrived, numbers were whittled down to only the serious contenders. What they had in front of them was five days of successively harder marches over the mountains in all weathers, carrying weapons, belt kit weighing about fifteen kilos, and Bergens weighing up to thirty kilos. The weights increased every day, and all the marches were against the clock. Among them was a ‘point-to-point’ speed march known as ‘the Fan Dance’ – a triple traverse of the highest point, Pen-y-Fan
, whose summit was almost vertical, from three different directions, in six hours. The others were self-navigating exercises on which candidates had to choose their own route and find their way by compass. The marches purposely involved steep climbs and descents, and the use of roads and bridges was forbidden on pain of failure. Some of the treks were partly at night, and were made much harder by the weather conditions – usually candidates would have to ford streams or even fast-flowing rivers. Candidates had to remain alert throughout the trek, carrying their rifles at the ready. The weight in their Bergens had to remain constant, and might be weighed at any time.

  The marches were divided into ‘legs’ with specified RVs that were quite often hard to find and sited at the most inaccessible points. They couldn’t be missed out, because there was a member of the Directing Staff – DS – at each location to check candidates off and give them the grid reference of the next RV. Candidates would have to find the reference on the map and point to it with a stalk of grass before being allowed to continue.

  During the course the DS would encourage candidates to give up, and play mind-games with them. Lofty Large remembered being pressed to have a beer at a pub he passed on the way, and candidates would frequently be pushed to accept a lift in a three-tonner – a one-way journey that ended on Platform 5 at Hereford station. Often they’d be unexpectedly handed a twenty-litre jerrycan of water to carry – as Brummy Stokes, another future RSM of 22 SAS, discovered, the water was stained red and couldn’t be tipped out. They might even have to hand over their Bergens and find another way of carrying their kit.