on to Continuation Training.
Phil Ricketts was one of them. He had had his moment of doubt on the summit of Pen-y-fan, when in a state of complete exhaustion, cold and hungry, whipped by the wind, feeling more alone than he had ever done before, he wanted to scream his protest and give up and go back down. But instead he endured and went on to do the rest of the nightmarish exercise and return to the RV by the selected route. He felt good when he finished and was applauded by his stern instructors.
Given a weekend break, Ricketts spent it with his wife in Wood Green, North London, where Maggie lived with her parents during his many absences from home. Even in the regular Army, he had never felt as fit as he was after Initial Selection, and he made love to Maggie, to whom he had only been married a year, with a passion that took her breath away. As they were to find out later, their first child, Anna, was conceived during that happy two days.
‘You remember that first weekend break we got?’ Ricketts asked his mates. ‘Immediately after passing Initial Selection? What did you guys do that weekend?’
‘I went back to Brixton,’ Andrew said, ‘to see my white Daddy and black Mammy, then screw my Scandinavian girlfriend. It was well worth the journey, believe me.
‘I banged a whore in King’s Cross,’ Jock said without emotion.
‘Bill and I shared a hired car and drove back to the Midlands,’ said Tom. ‘Though my folks come from Wolverhampton they’re now living in Smethwick, which isn’t too far from where Bill lives, in Pensett. So since neither of us were keen to spend too much time with our families, we drove between the two towns, having a pint here, another pint there, and gradually getting pissed as newts.’
‘I can hardly remember the drive back,’ Bill said with a broad grin, ‘so I like to think we only made it because of our SAS training. Who dares wins, and so on.’
‘And you, Gumboot?’ Ricketts asked. ‘Did you go and see your wife?’
‘No,’ Gumboot answered, puffing smoke and sipping his beer at the same time.
‘But you’d only been married six months,’ Ricketts said.
‘Six months too fucking long,’ Gumboot said. ‘Got her pregnant, didn’t I? Besides, we only had one weekend, which leaves no time to go all the way to Devon and back.’
‘You could have travelled on Friday night and come back on Sunday,’ Andrew pointed out.
‘OK, I’ll admit it,’ Gumboot said pugnaciously. ‘I didn’t want to spend my free weekend with a bloody bean bag, so I slipped into London. I’m amazed I didn’t run into Jock, since I had a few pints in King’s Cross on Saturday evening.’
‘I probably saw you and avoided you,’ Jock replied, ‘I can be fussy at times.’
‘Up yours, mate.’ Gumboot swallowed some more beer, wiped his lips, and grinned mischievously. ‘Ah, well, it was only a weekend – and over all too soon.’
On that, at least, they all agreed.
When they had returned to Hereford that Monday morning, some with blinding hangovers, others simply sleepless, they had been flung with merciless efficiency into their fourteen weeks of Continuation Training, learning all the skills required to be a member of the basic SAS operational unit: the four-man patrol. These skills included weapons handling, combat and survival, reconnaissance, signals, demolitions, camouflage and concealment, resistance to interrogation, and first aid. Continuation Training was followed by jungle training and a static-line parachute course, bringing the complete programme up to six months.
Though Ricketts and the others had all come from regular Army, Royal Navy, RAF or Territorial Army regiments, and were therefore already fully trained soldiers, none of them was prepared for the amount of extra training they had to undergo with the SAS, even after the rigours of Initial Selection.
Weapons training covered everything in the SAS arsenal, including use of the standard-issue British semi-automatic Browning FN 9mm high-power handgun, the 9mm Walther PPK handgun, the M16 assault rifle, the self-loading semi-automatic rifle, or SLR, the Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine-gun, the MILAN anti-tank weapon, various mortars and a wide range of ‘enemy’ weapons, such as the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle.
In combat and survival training they were taught the standard operating procedures, or SOPs, for how to move tactically across country by day or night, how to set up and maintain observation posts, or OPs, and how to operate deep behind enemy lines. This led naturally to signals training, covering Morse code, special codes and call-sign systems, the operation of thirty kinds of SAS radio, recognition of radio ‘black spots’, the setting-up of standard and makeshift antennas, and the procedure for calling in artillery fire and air strikes.
As one of the main reasons for being behind enemy lines is the disruption of enemy communications and transportation, as well as general sabotage, particularly against Military Supply Routes, or MSRs, this phase of their training also included lessons in demolition skills and techniques, particularly the use of explosives such as TNT, dynamite, Semtex, Composition C3 and C4 plastic explosive, or PE, Amatol, Pentolite and Ednatol. Special emphasis was laid on the proper placement of charges to destroy various kinds of bridge: cantilever, spandrel arch, continuous-span truss and suspension.
Many jokes were made about the fact that those lessons led directly to instruction in first aid, including relatively advanced medical skills such as setting up an intravenous drip, how to administer drugs, both orally and with injections, and the basics of casualty handling and care.
This phase of Continuation Training culminated in escape and evasion (E&E) and Resistance to Interrogation (RTI) exercises. E&E began with a week of theory on how to live off the land by constructing makeshift shelters from branches, leaves and other local vegetation, and sangars, or semicircular shelters built from stones, and by catching and cooking wild animals. (Repeated jokes about rat stew, Ricketts recalled, had raised a few queasy laughs.) Those theories were then put into practice when the men were dropped off, alone, in some remote region, usually with no more than their clothing and a wristwatch, knife and box of matches, with orders to make their way back to a specified RV without either becoming lost or getting caught by the enthusiastic Parachute Regiment troopers sent out to find them.
Those caught were hooded, bound, thrown into the Paras’ trucks and delivered to the interrogation centre run by the Joint Services Interrogation Unit and members of 22 SAS Training Wing, where various physical and mental torments were used to make them break down and reveal more than their rank, name, serial number and date of birth. Those who did so were failed even at that late stage in the course. Those who managed to remain sane and silent went on to undertake jungle-warfare training and the parachute course.
‘For me,’ Bill said, ‘that was the best bit of all. I loved it in the jungle. I mean, even though it was tough all I could think of was how I’d come all the way from the Stevens and Williams Glassworks to the jungles of fucking Malaysia. I was in heaven, I tell you.’
‘It wasn’t Malaysia,’ Andrew corrected him. ‘It was just close to there. It’s the only British dependency inhabited by Malays that didn’t join the Federation of Malaysia.’
‘He’s so fucking educated,’ Gumboot said, ‘you’d never think he’d been up a tree. What the fuck’s the difference? It was jungle, wasn’t it? That’s why you couldn’t possibly fail there, mate. You must have felt right at home.’
‘My family, comes from Barbados,’ Andrew
