SAS Heroes

by Pete Scholey

  Reg also had a great sense of humour. He loved to smile – it let him show off the wonderful set of front teeth he had acquired after he lost his own when he and his old push bike had an argument with the side of a police car. He didn’t get too upset, then, when John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman, the survival training expert, and me ‘took him for a ride’ one day. We were on one of Reg’s medical refresher courses and were being taught how to apply a Thomas’ splint. This was a particularly cumbersome piece of apparatus, now much improved, but then tricky to apply and equally difficult to remove. It is used for the treatment of a broken femur and immobilizes the leg.

  Lofty and I persuaded Reg that the best way to test whether we’d done it properly was to apply the splint to Reg himself, then he could judge whether it was correctly secured. That done, we sprinkled red ink liberally over the bandages, bundled Reg into a Land Rover and deposited him a few hundred yards from camp, outside the local Post Office. His protests to the passing public fell on deaf ears and, eventually, an ambulance arrived. Fortunately, the ambulance men also had a sense of humour and brought him back to camp. This was in the days when security in the camp was not so stringent and we could come and go at will. At the time it was put down to ‘the boys having fun’; nowadays it would probably spark ‘an incident’.

  As well as training the medics in camp, Reg accompanied the squadrons on operations, remaining on standby at base to give advice in the event of a soldier sustaining a serious injury, the treatment of which required his expertise, even if it was only over the radio. My first encounter with Reg was when he was attached to D Squadron, on operations in the Radfan Mountains of Aden in 1966. He went to great lengths to ensure that the patrol medics were fully prepared to meet all eventualities in that terrain. He took great pride in the knowledge that the medics were the best-trained operatives he could put in the field and loved to hear of their experiences in putting their training into practice.

  But Reg wasn’t only an HQ advisor. He accompanied patrols in action and had successfully completed the stringent SAS Selection course. To do that you have to be a highly competent, all-round soldier. You can’t skip through Selection on the back of your medical qualifications. Reg had to slog his way through the toughest test of a soldier’s abilities the army can throw at you.

  Much has been written about the SAS over the past two decades, most of it only partially true and some of it complete fiction. SAS soldiers are not superheroes, not indestructible, not infallible. What they do have in spades is dedication and determination. Like everyone else, Reg volunteered to put himself through the test. To understand what he went through to win the right to wear the beige beret and winged dagger badge, you need to have a basic understanding of the Selection process. Whatever the myths and legends, one fact is not in dispute: the SAS is the foremost military unit in the world, an elite force respected and feared in equal measure. Reg wanted to be part of that elite.

  Over 60 years ago, the founder of the SAS, Colonel David Stirling, laid down the principles under which the Regiment still operates:

  From the start, the SAS Regiment has had some firmly held tenets, from which we must never depart. They are:

  • The unrelenting pursuit of excellence.

  • Maintaining the highest standard of discipline in all aspects of the daily life of the SAS soldier ... a high standard of self-discipline in each soldier is the only effective foundation of Regimental discipline. Commitment to the SAS pursuit of excellence becomes a sham if any single one of the disciplinary standards is allowed to slip.

  • The SAS brooks no sense of class ... we share with the Brigade of Guards a deep respect for quality, but we have an entirely different outlook. We believe, as did the ancient Greeks who originated the word ‘aristocracy’, that every man with the right attitude and talents, regardless of birth or riches, has the capacity in his own lifetime for reaching that status in its true sense ... all ranks in the SAS are of ‘one company’, in which a sense of class is both alien and ludicrous.

  • Humility and humour: both these virtues are indispensable in the everyday life of officers and men – particularly in the case of the SAS, which is often regarded as an elite Regiment. Without frequent recourse to humour and humility, our special status could cause resentment in other units of the British Army and an unbecoming conceit and big-headedness in our own soldiers.

  Reg lived up to those principles as well as any man I have ever met. He didn’t have the best start in life. He almost fell to enemy fire at a time when he had barely learned to walk. A German bomber offloaded its deadly cargo over his home during World War II, and two-year-old Reg was shoved under the kitchen table by his mother just as the bomb struck. His mother’s quick thinking saved Reg ... sadly, she died in the explosion. I guess that’s something else Reg and I had in common – I was pulled out from under a wardrobe when our house in Brighton was hit.

  When Reg grew up, cared for by adoptive parents, he decided to join the army but did not enlist, as so many of us as youngsters imagined doing, in a unit where he could see himself charging around firing a Bren gun from the hip. He did not join to become the next John Wayne or Audie Murphy. He joined to become a nurse in the Medical Corps. Every SAS soldier is a volunteer and anyone in the armed forces can apply, including men from the RAF and the Royal Navy. The Regiment attracts the pick of men from every branch of the services, but few are chosen. You have to have been in the armed forces for at least three years, as mentioned earlier, so you have some maturity and are at least a very good basic soldier. Beyond that, the Regiment isn’t too worried about a person’s past. They’re more concerned with what he is like now and what he will be like in the future.

  The ranks coming forward can be anything from private to captain; a lot of NCOs – corporals and sergeants – give it a go, but if they pass, they drop to the rank of trooper. Having worked hard to become NCOs, they find themselves working even harder to become privates again.

  Reg went through Selection just a few months after I had done. The trial that we had to face hasn’t changed a great deal over the past 40 years, although modern recruits have a far better idea of what to expect than either Reg or I did. Selection consists of a three-week period of progressively severe fitness and endurance tests, designed gradually to wear you down before the final week-long series of tests, which place relentless demands on both your physical and mental capabilities. You must solve a series of daunting problems while force-marching over the Brecon Beacons by day and night, and in all weathers. In the final week you go on one march after another, each one longer than the one before and with progressively heavier kit, culminating in carrying a 55lb (25kg) Bergen and a 10lb (4.5kg) rifle. Forty years ago, Reg was simply issued with the requisite number of bricks from the SAS quartermaster’s stores; today the weight in the Bergen is made up with rather more useful items.

  When Reg first turned up for Selection he sat in the Blue Room surrounded by hardened professional soldiers in a dozen rows of ten men. The CO’s introduction ran as it always did, ‘Welcome to the Selection Course. It would be good if you all passed the course – we need the manpower. I will be fortunate if even one out of each row of you passes; it is the standard that we set, not the pass rate.’

  Unlike me, Reg did not have the benefit of the advice of ex-Para colleagues who’d passed the Selection course, served in the SAS and then returned to the Paras. They told me that it would be worth spending time on honing my cross-country navigation skills and building up my stamina for hill-walking carrying a heavy weight prior to the actual test. He didn’t have the chance, as I did, to spend his spare time in the weeks leading up to Selection on build-up training. Even so, the Selection course itself was far more stressful, both physically and mentally, than I had ever imagined. How did Reg, a medic rather than a Para, manage it? He had the guts to stick it out, is the answer. He had the strength to cope with the gut-wrenching physical exhaustion, when every sinew and muscle feels like it’s on fire. He had t
he determination to keep going on those marches; he put up with the agony of realizing, on reaching the top of a precipice on hands and knees, that over the ridge lay yet another peak to climb. It would have been so easy for him to give up – no disgrace for a medic to bow out of that hell – but then came the thought that he had crossed the Rubicon, that he was closer to the end of the march than to the beginning. Then from deep inside came the stamina to carry on, the conviction that the extra strength had to be found. The reward came the next day, when his name was on the list to carry on with more of the same.

  Lofty Wiseman is quoted as saying, ‘Death is nature’s way of telling you that you have failed Selection.’ Even if nature doesn’t deliver that message, Selection is only the beginning. You go straight on to a six-month period called Continuation Training, involving training in jungle warfare, weapons and explosives, including demolition and sabotage, ground control of air, mortar and artillery fire, field first aid, combat survival and resistance to interrogation. Throughout the six months you can still be instantly removed and returned to your unit at any time.

  Continuation Training culminates in a week of combat survival, living up in the hills on your wits, and precious little else, while being pursued by ‘hunter’ forces. At the end of the week you face at least 24 hours of continuous harsh interrogation, including every bit of physical and psychological rough treatment that the Geneva Convention allows, and a bit more besides. Only after successfully coming through that – and a surprising number fail to clear that final hurdle – are the surviving recruits regarded as ready for service with the SAS. The handful from the Regiment’s Selection intake who finally become ‘badged’ as fully-fledged members of the SAS are still on probation for the first year of their service, and in the Regimental tradition whatever their rank prior to joining the SAS they all revert to the lowest rank – trooper.

  Having made it through Selection, Reg was to serve for the next 12 years with some of the most experienced and professional soldiers in the world, men who had years of special forces experience in Malaya, Borneo, Aden and a host of other places. They had set the standards and developed the techniques that made the SAS pre-eminent, but there was never any hint of complacency; every aspect of our work was under continual scrutiny and our techniques were constantly being refined and developed to keep ahead of the new threats we had to face. Reg took his responsibilities every bit as seriously. He kept abreast of the latest medical developments and applied them to his work with the Regiment. Reg also made himself aware not only of what was happening on operations, but also what was going on within the Regiment and how it affected those associated with it.

  Reg’s teaching skills were not limited to patrol medics. On his own initiative, he organized courses of first-aid training for some of the men’s wives, too. He gave instruction classes himself and arranged for them to be tested and accredited by the local St John’s Ambulance Brigade. He was an extremely caring and compassionate person. Although unmarried, he was very much aware of how our lifestyle affected those closest to us. He often went out of his way to visit the sick and wounded and extended his caring to their relatives as well.

  This caring and generous aspect of Reg’s character is well illustrated by an incident recalled by Dr Phil McCluskie, one-time medical officer to the Regiment. The two were driving along a quiet road in France in an ambulance on an exercise when they turned a corner to find glass and debris scattered all over the road. A set of skid marks led to a delivery van that had smashed into a roadside tree. Reg dashed to the cab and found the driver badly injured and barely conscious. There was no easy way to extricate the man from the mangled wreckage, nor was it advisable until the extent of his injuries could be assessed, so Reg crawled into the tangle of metal to treat the man as best he could. He cleared the van driver’s airway and supported his head as the man slipped in and out of consciousness. Reg spoke to him and tried to keep him awake, staying in the wreck of the cab until the emergency services finally arrived. Even then, when he realized that the cab would have to be cut open to free the man, he stuck to his task, giving the driver support and reassurance right up to the moment he was lifted clear of the wreck and loaded into a civilian ambulance.

  It goes without saying that any man who would fish a dead, bloated hedgehog out of a garden pond, bury the poor creature then stand to attention and salute over its grave, was something of an animal lover. Reg had many dogs over the years, including a German Shepherd called Clem and a small, grey-and-black dog called Sally of indeterminate breed. It was questionable whether Reg had adopted Sally or vice versa. On one occasion Reg had delivered a presentation to some visiting ‘Top Brass’. Several hours after they departed in the official helicopter, there was a phone call from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) enquiring if a small grey-and-black dog was known to anyone in camp. The description was instantly recognized by the telephonist – it was Sally, who had hitched a lift to London in the MOD’s helicopter. Instead of being apologetic, Reg was rather proud that she had shown such initiative.

  In 1976, Reg was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his services to the Regiment, a thoroughly deserved accolade. This was not the only official praise that he received. After leaving the Regiment in 1977, Reg went to work in Oman and when his contract there was over, he was sent a personal letter of thanks from the sultan, praising him for his work. Reg also spent some time working as a medic on oil-rigs off the coast of Norway, but when he eventually retired he returned to live in Hereford, which by then he regarded as his home. He loved the place and its people and was well-known to many in the town. Local newspapers paid him a fitting tribute when he died following a prolonged illness in January 2004.

  STAFF SERGEANT BOB PODESTA

  In the dark alley, the feeble glow from the faltering streetlight failed to dispel the inky shadows that seeped from still corners and cloaked the silent doorways. A man stood alone, waiting, leaning against a wall in the misty light, listening as the echoing click of unhurried footsteps drew ever closer. The figure of a man appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, softly illuminated yet radiating sinister intent. The wide brim of his hat cast a shadow over his face, but even in the half-light, the sharp cut of his pinstripe suit boasted an unmistakeable self-assurance. The extravagance of the wide lapels was matched by the deep cuffs at the bottom of the trouser legs that sat on immaculate spats, starkly white against the gleaming black leather shoes.

  As the figure turned to face the waiting man, the streetlight fell on the dull grey form he cradled in his arms. At 3ft (0.9m) long and with its large drum magazine slung beneath the barrel between the two pistol grips, the Thompson SMG was as distinctive as it was deadly. Without a word, the gunman opened up, filling the alleyway with a blaze of muzzle flash and a roar of automatic fire that threatened to shake the walls to pieces. The waiting man, with no time to move and nowhere to run, was flung backwards by the force of the .45-calibre rounds ripping into his body. He landed in a bloody heap, dead before he hit the ground.

  The gunman calmly turned and walked away. But this was no Mafia vendetta. This was no underworld ‘hit’ by the likes of Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, Lucky Luciano or Bugsy Siegel. The Thompson, nicknamed ‘the Chopper’, ‘the Tommy Gun’, or ‘the Chicago Typewriter’, was being handled by a real expert, but he was no cheap hoodlum. He was Bob Podesta and he’s hardly what you would imagine a ruthless gangster to be. He regularly drops by my house, drinks about a gallon of tea and eats all my biscuits! Bob, having retired from the army, had been drafted in by a TV company to work on a documentary about machine-guns. He agreed to dress up for effect when testing some of the weapons and the sight of him decked out like a 1920s racketeer nearly made me die laughing. The TV company couldn’t have chosen a better man for the job, though. Bob certainly knows his stuff, having been a soldier all of his adult life and worked with weapons of all shapes and sizes.

  When Bob first joined the army, he went into the Royal Artillery. All he had ev
er wanted to do was to be a soldier and he had been desperate to join up for years. By 1966, having finished his education, he was deemed too old for what was then known as ‘boys’ service’ and too young to join up as an adult. Eventually, he pestered the recruitment office into signing him up in November 1966, just three days after his 17th birthday. His first posting was to Germany where he became part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). During those fretful Cold War years, the BAOR was our frontline against the Soviet threat. It was no secret to anyone in the many bases and camps in West Germany that the communists just across the border in the East had more tanks and manpower than we did. The BAOR was in the unenviable position of knowing that, should the Soviets decide to invade Western Europe, the best we could hope to do with conventional weapons was to hold them up for a few days. The unit to which Bob was posted, however, the 50th Missile Regiment, packed a far stronger punch than any conventional artillery outfit. They were equipped with 8in howitzers and 25ft (7.6m) long Honest John missiles, both of which could go nuclear. In fact, the 50th Missile Regiment provided Britain’s only tactical battlefield nuclear capability, and they could deliver some terrifying ordnance. Each Honest John rocket could be armed with a nuclear warhead twice as destructive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. These were very real and very sinister ‘big boys’ toys’ capable of taking out entire cities – quite a concept for 17-year-old Gunner Podesta to try to get his head round. Of course, the army didn’t immediately put raw teenagers in charge of weapons like that, but Bob was there, training with the rest of the unit. Forty years later he was messing about dressed as a gangster with a Tommy Gun, capitalizing on his vast experience of working with the widest range of weapons in the British Army’s arsenal, from all manner of small arms and machine-guns, to its biggest, most destructive nuclear missiles.