face of heavy opposition.
Memories of Merville, Arnhem and Suez still colour the Para ethos. New recruits might not know the name of the last prime minister but one, but by the time they finish their training they will be fluent in the history of the regiment. This pride in the past provides a reservoir of spiritual strength to draw on in hard times. ‘We are here to uphold something that has gone before,’ said John Hardy, the 3 Para RSM. In nasty moments in Helmand, when fortitude was flagging, he would remind his men that their performance was under scrutiny, asking them, ‘The blokes who went through the war, through Arnhem – what would they think?’
The path to the Parachute Regiment is long and hard and strewn with obstacles. After an initial three-day selection, would-be paratroopers begin six months’ basic training at the army training centre at Catterick, a sprawl of brick blocks, plonked down in the rolling farmland of North Yorkshire. Inside its gates someone, somewhere always seems to be barking a command. No one walks and everyone marches. A surprising number are hobbling, poling themselves along on crutches. The chances are they are Para candidates whose limbs have failed to withstand the rigours of the course.
The training washes out the unfit and the unsuited. The final selection, for officers and men, is made at Pegasus Company – known as ‘P’ Company. It is designed to sort out whether or not you have the Para DNA. It is a rite of passage that those who have endured still talk about with pained awe years afterwards. It is above all a test of determination. ‘The thing about P Company, which is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t done it, is that it’s not really a physical test, it’s a mental test,’ said Captain Hugo Farmer, who won a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in Helmand. ‘If you want it and you are determined enough, you will pass it. You have to have a reasonable degree of fitness, obviously, or you will fail early on. But it is people who are mentally tough that are wanted. That’s the most imporant thing.’
P Company lasts three weeks. The first two are taken up with daily battle marches with kit, squad runs and intensive circuit training sessions designed to physically exhaust candidates before the final ‘Test Week’ begins. This starts with a stint on the Trainasium – an aerial assault course over high, narrow walkways and a tower built out of scaffolding and wood. Candidates are ordered to do an ‘illusion jump’, which means running along a plank suspended 30 feet up and launching themselves at a cargo net 15 feet away. In this way, the instructors test whether the candidate can handle heights. It also tells them whether he will throw himself from a height without question. ‘It takes quite a lot to run up to the end of the plank and launch yourself off not knowing whether you will make that net or, if you do, if you will bounce off,’ remembered one survivor.
This is followed by a 10-mile battle march carrying full kit and weapon. The next day starts with a 2-mile steeplechase and three circuits of an assault course. Then comes the log race in which teams compete to carry a telegraph-pole-sized piece of timber over a difficult cross-country course. Anyone who fails to keep up can expect to flunk the course. Day Three begins with a 2-mile best-effort run with kit. The afternoon is given over to ‘milling’. This involves two candidates standing toe to toe, slugging it out for sixty seconds. The fighters are not allowed to defend themselves, only punch. They wear heavy, 16oz gloves and protective headgear, but many still finish the bout spattered in blood.
The candidates get the weekend off to recover. When they return, they are sent off on a 20-mile endurance march with full kit, weapon and helmet. The course ends with another cross-country race. This time the teams carry a ‘casualty’ on a stretcher. About half of those who try fail P Company. Many drop out through injury. Women have attempted it, but none has yet passed.
The successful candidates go next to RAF Brize Norton, where they undertake eight increasingly difficult parachute jumps, the last made in full kit at night-time.
Parts of the selection process seem at first glance to be anachronistic and out of tune with what is required of a modern professional army. ‘Milling’ is a term that dates back to the days of bare-knuckle prizefighting, and the Paras is the only regiment in the British Army to practise it. Arriving on the battlefield by parachute is almost as bizarre nowadays as turning up on a horse. The Paras, however, have an almost mystical belief in the value of jumping. They tried to get permission for a classic parachute drop operation in Helmand. The idea was rejected by higher authority as charming, but impractical.
Their loyalty to these habits is based on the belief that they have an intangible worth far greater than their apparent practicality. ‘When you are on the log race and and you have got 200 metres to go and you are absolutely knackered you do not give up,’ said Lieutenant Andy Mallet, an accountancy executive in his former life. ‘If anything you go faster. When you are in the ring and you are milling someone and they are bigger than you, you don’t give up, you keep milling. It’s that ethos that nobody else has.’
The final test of courage and commitment is the jump. At the end of training ‘your initial reaction is to do whatever you are asked, so when you are standing in the door of the aircraft and you see the green light go on and you are given “green on – go”, you go. It’s that principle that we take forward in everything we do.’
Jumping in the Parachute Regiment is not the same as sports parachuting. It involves, according to Stuart Tootal, throwing yourself ‘out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft at night with a heavy container of equipment often weighing upwards of a hundred pounds strapped to your legs, with another eighty or so people trying to leave the same aircraft … the hazards of doing that are quite significant’.
Whatever its tactical limitations in southern Afghanistan, Tootal felt that the psychological bolstering parachuting provided was a great preparation for what the Paras would face there. The nerves experienced waiting at Bastion to lift off to what might well be a ‘hot’ landing zone struck him as very similar to the low hum of dread that preceded a difficult jump. ‘Parachuting doesn’t allow you to conquer fear, but the experience of doing difficult parachute descents does give you a familiarity with managing it. Lots of people said that and I felt it myself. Regardless of what happened, I was fairly convinced, based on my experiences of parachuting, that I would do the right thing.’
Climbing out of the back of a Chinook into a Taliban ambush, ‘you might be thinking of the implications of being killed or wounded, but I think the biggest concern is how you’re going to perform. Are you going to freeze?’
The ‘green on – go’ reflex was the cure for that. ‘It doesn’t matter if we haven’t parachuted for years in an operational environment … it’s what that training experience gives you – the type of soldier it breeds.’
The toughness of the training and the ruthlessness of the selection create some marked characteristics. One is an intense feeling of camaraderie that blows down social barriers. Class and background seem unimportant. There is a feeling of communal concern and mutuality that is hard to find in life beyond the barrack walls.
Surviving the process, making the cut, also encourages feelings of superiority. Paras love being Paras. ‘They are the best at what they do,’ said Andy Mallet. ‘It doesn’t matter what anybody else says. I know, having served with the Third Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, we are the best regiment in the army without a shadow of a doubt.’
‘You have got the Guards regiments which are hundreds of years old, which can hark back to Waterloo, but that doesn’t matter,’ said Captain Nick French, the Mortar Platoon commander. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to you. We can hark back to victories in the Second World War, Suez, Northern Ireland, the Falkands. Instead of talking about history, the blokes make history. That is why we are so proud. We have proved ourselves time and time again as opposed to relying on some mystique that was created at Waterloo. That’s why the blokes are so fiercely proud of who they are.’
Private
