Life Under Fire

by Jason Fox

  While I didn’t think my inner strength was 100 per cent hereditary – even though physical power, speed and size can be passed on genetically – there was definitely an interesting lineage in my family that might at least explain why I’d moved towards the extremes of conflict. Both my dad’s parents were involved in the military: my granddad was in the Royal Corps of Signals, while my gran was in the Women’s RAF. On Mum’s side, Granddad was in the Royal Navy, which he joined at the age of fifteen so he could serve in World War Two, where he was an engineer. (He must have fudged his application somehow, because he wasn’t legally allowed to sign up until he was eighteen.) That sense of adventure was passed on and my dad eventually served with the Royal Marines. The stories he told me when I was a kid gave me an idea of what life would be like if I decided to sign up. Meanwhile, Mum was pro-military, having worked in the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Nobody in the Fox family was surprised when both my brother and I decided to get involved in the scrappier end of life.

  I imagine that emotional strength wasn’t immediately obvious in either of us because nobody is born resilient. None of us instinctively knows from birth how to dig deep for mental endurance, or has the confidence to forge ahead through adversity when we’re a little kid. I cried, hid and threw tantrums like every other toddler. But as I grew older, I learned that some of us become tougher than others because resilience is developed through experience. One bunch of kids might go on to live as fighters, able to cope in tough circumstances; others wilt as soon as life takes a nasty turn. But in both groups, their resilience – or lack of it – has come about as a direct response to past experiences and life-events, and what those episodes have taught them. So while DNA might give some people a head start when it comes to developing physical fortitude, there’s nothing to stop anybody from creating a strong mindset.

  Resilience certainly isn’t just about physical power. Some of the fittest and strongest people I’ve known have downed tools whenever life has taken a rough turn. I also have friends who barely went to the gym but who became incredibly determined when presented with an emotional battle, able to push forward no matter what was happening. My grit, which was probably triggered as a kid somehow, developed through experience and specific training techniques in the military. In the Special Forces I learned to manage fear, emotional breakdown, pain in hostile environments and the horrors of war. I was forced to summon resolve during intense gun battles while negotiating the full spectrum of emotions – good and bad – because the alternative was to quit and die. For years, I felt comfortable in uncomfortable situations. I thrived in events that would have crushed most people, and work was a ten-year roller coaster of physical and mental extremes.

  As an operator it was important to be resolute in three areas. Firstly, I had to be physically strong to cope with the challenges that a war zone might throw at me. I needed to move quickly while carrying heavy equipment and weaponry. Sometimes I was asked to climb on to fast-moving enemy ships, or to fast-rope out of a helicopter on to a target. Stamina was vital when moving in and out of high-stress operations, night after night, for days and weeks and months on end where I often worked having only grabbed a few hours’ kip. Thanks to my training I was able to operate in the harshest of environments, and a lot of them were bloody horrible.

  Mental resilience was also important. I often had to think on my feet in scary situations: spotting an escape route while bullets zipped about my head often made the difference between a successful resolution to a minor conflict or defeat; talking to angry and armed civilians rather than pointing a weapon in their direction was the best way to avoid a scrap. Despite what some people might believe, bloody gunfights aren’t the default setting for an operator. (Though we are trained to excel in those situations.) Instead, I learned techniques such as ‘the Grey Man’, in which we blended into any situation by altering our actions and appearance. I know of some operators who even dressed up as homeless people on surveillance ops. Psychological resilience was vital to succeed in those roles.

  The third and final component to being combat-primed was to show emotional intelligence. I wasn’t a blunt instrument, immune to hurt and happiness, and a whole range of feelings could strike a person when they were operating in an area of conflict, a million miles away from home. I saw mates badly wounded – some of them survived, others didn’t. The ones that were lucky enough to see another day discovered that their lives had been changed beyond repair and they never worked in the military again. In those grim moments I learned that grief had to be compartmentalized. It was no good wallowing in sadness or self-pity in the immediate aftermath of a friend dying in battle, not when a split second of distraction might mean that I was the next person being zipped into a body bag.

  Sometimes a different type of grief dented an operator, especially when they were talking to people at home, when it was all too easy to become upended by an argument with a partner or to feel sad when missing the kids. I told myself that I’d only deal with the heavier feelings of life when I went on leave, because to do otherwise might have got me killed. The ability to turn emotions on and off was a skill that people in my position would often rely upon in tricky situations.

  But I wasn’t psychologically bulletproof.

  My line of work meant that I experienced more emotional stress than most, especially during the intense gun battles that happened all too frequently. For years I was pitched into close combat where I saw people shot and blown to bits. I witnessed the impacts of war on civilian men, women and children, and later became ravaged by the fallout from our work. It was impossible to forget the mental scrapbook of war: the faces of innocent kids haunted me, their expressions frozen with shock after witnessing an outburst of hardcore violence. I became detached, depressed and stripped of any love for a job that had once defined who I was. My military mojo disappeared, my rage intensified. Weirdly, I was still able to physically function under pressure, even though my nerves had been shot through. For the first time in my career, though, I experienced real fear, but at no point did my psychological state endanger me or my teammates. The biggest problem was that my emotions were ragged.

  Once I’d poured out my story to a military psychiatric nurse in 2011 – as detailed in my book Battle Scars – I was eventually diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struck off from a job that had once given me kudos and identity. I hit my lowest point. My life was crushed by depression, by an overwhelming loss of self and by mind-numbing medication. Suicide seemed to be the only way out, but I pulled myself back from the brink. Later, my recovery from PTSD became an exercise in psychological endurance as I worked through a combination of counselling and personal rediscovery, learning painful lessons along the way. During my darkest moments I was encouraged by my therapist to think more like a kid by living only in the here and now: the past was done, the future was out of my control; I had to take one day at a time. Working in the moment helped me to refocus while the failures from my past became lessons, experiences to grow from. I was twisted all out of shape, for sure, but I didn’t break – not fully. So if you want to talk about hitting rock bottom and surviving, I’ve got all the experience in the world.

  And I came through because of resilience.

  Thanks to my ingrained strength, I later found a new drive by working on TV shows such as SAS: Who Dares Wins, Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos and The Final Mission: Foxy’s War. On those programmes I was placed in dangerous situations where I needed mental clarity to remain calm under pressure. Negotiating the full spectrum of emotions, good and bad, and managing my mental health became vital tools during moments of self-defence and productivity, as I built a new career for myself. Meanwhile, the psychological techniques I’d developed during my time as an operator still served me, both in and out of danger.

  Throughout my recovery I learned that everybody has the potential to build fortitude – to differing degrees. Even if an individual believes they’re short on grit or inca
pable of summoning actions of confidence and bravery in difficult situations, the truth is this: everybody can become resilient. Everybody can self-determine. Anyone can walk across their personal deadly ground and survive. All of us face internal conflict, both at home and work, even at play. Sometimes pressure threatens to crush us mentally. Emotional turbulence can overwhelm the mind until we feel unable to cope. Some of us might be struggling to overcome an intimidating personal challenge such as our first-ever 10K run or marathon. Others could be dealing with the death of a loved one, with addiction, divorce or debilitating illness. Then there are the millions of people coping with financial stress and unwanted behaviours. The consequence of failing to handle these internal wars can be catastrophic. Men’s mental health is in crisis. The damning research from the Office for National Statistics tells us that in the UK around 17 blokes out of every 100,000 kill themselves in what has become a modern epidemic of mental ill health. While the women’s rate is lower, at just over 5 deaths per 100,000, they are now twice as likely to suffer from anxiety disorders as males.

  Life Under Fire: How to Build Inner Strength and Thrive Under Pressure lays down the techniques we all need in order to become more resilient in life and to discover the quality that’s so important within the elite soldier: inner grit. It’s very easy in books of this kind to talk about kicking down physical barriers and punching through glass ceilings. While those ideas will be dealt with across the forthcoming pages, I won’t be telling you how to smash out one hundred pull-ups or the best way to nail a job interview. (Though you’ll find inspirational techniques that might help.) Rather, this book is a pathfinder for locating mental and emotional strength while harnessing the desire and bravery to become stronger on a number of different levels.

  From a career of intense stress and the experience of turning my shattered life around, I’ve learned how to overcome the toughest of internal conflicts. My challenges arguably began with the Selection process, where tests of soldiering and especially educational moments were set out in phases. Life Under Fire aims to tread a similar route: yes, the book can be read from cover to cover, but every chapter, or phase, within it can also be used as a standalone reference – a break glass in case of emergency option in sketchy situations when support or motivation is required. If used correctly, the lessons delivered here should help you to recognize and overcome your weaknesses by presenting new ways to structure your thinking. Elsewhere, the book breaks down key components in building mental endurance and inner strength. A series of instructional guidelines will help you to put into practice some of the theories I’ve learned, which, in times of stress, will provide the resources needed to calm the mind and operate successfully. Finally, I’ll detail the warning signs to look out for when approaching rock bottom, before explaining the best ways to call in reinforcements and make your escape.

  Life Under Fire isn’t a bulletproof vest, a layer of impenetrable armour designed to shield you entirely from the shitshow in your day-to-day life. It won’t help you to reach an unimaginable level of superhumanity either. Instead, the theories and techniques presented here reveal interesting ways of pushing ahead in situations when the thought of taking another step might seem impossible. It explains new methods for rising up again after failure while emerging a stronger person. It locates the thought processes and practices required in order to become fortified, braver and so much harder to break.

  My experiences have taught me that life can be a war zone, so we should all prepare accordingly.

  This book will show you how.

  Part One

  * * *

  THE BATTLE MIND HOW TO FIND RESILIENCE

  Author’s Note

  Life Under Fire is split into two parts. The first, ‘The Battle Mind’, delivers the background required to develop resilient thought. When the action kicks off for real, Part Two, ‘By Strength and Guile’, is there to impart some of the procedures and practices required for ensuring success. Every chapter within them is an individual phase of learning designed to instil resilience and inform tactical thinking. In many ways, each chapter mirrors the experience of development endured by a lot of elite operators from when they first enter the regular military: this begins with a period of Basic Training and is followed by the introduction of increasingly advanced manoeuvres and strategies throughout an individual’s career until the more expert and experienced soldiers undergo Selection and join the Special Forces.

  During my time in the military it became apparent that five key factors needed to be in place if I were to be resolute about surviving: purpose, experience, the existence of a brotherhood, self-awareness, and honesty and acceptance of a bad situation were vital tools in my armoury. I applied them as follows.

  1) Purpose: While at war, my cause was fighting the good fight. I told myself that I was keeping bad people from training other bad people who wanted to commit atrocities in places where my friends and family might be at risk.

  2) Experience: This was the mental fuel that told me I could handle any situation, even if I’d never previously been in that position.

  3) Brotherhood: I was helped through some sketchy moments with the knowledge that everybody around me was highly skilled, motivated and willing to take a bullet for me if an operation took an ugly turn.

  4) Self-awareness: I had a clear understanding of where my breaking point was and had learned how I could move past it, which allowed me to function effectively, for longer.

  5) Honesty and acceptance of a bad situation: I acknowledged when I was in a bad place and tried to react positively, without pessimism or negative thought. It became the quickest way to get the job done. Meanwhile, denial was a destructive enemy.

  These five factors became my building blocks of resilience, the fundamental steps I took to ensure a robust state of mind as I moved into elite military service. I’ll detail them all in Part One of the book and with the right level of Basic Training they will provide the foundations for fortitude. All the processes can be applied to any situation or challenge, and by implementing a little planning or psychological rewiring you’ll find that each step can be integrated fairly easily into your life.

  It’s important to know that each building block is equally valuable and that the list doesn’t necessarily have to be implemented in the order set out here. But by working through all the stages you’ll soon develop the skills to negotiate any event that requires a resilient mindset.

  PHASE ONE

  Basic Training: The Commando Spirit

  Resilience: what is it?

  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s the ability to return quickly from illness, change or misfortune. Premier League managers might describe it as ‘bouncebackability’ – the desire to get back up after a heavy defeat or bad luck. But in the military we think of it as Not Quitting, of pushing on to the end, which is a vital asset in combat. Military operators with high levels of resilience survive in gun battles. They lead in desperate situations. They’re able to think on their feet with only a few moments to plan and then execute those plans effectively. They deal with periods of physical and emotional discomfort and they function expertly even when the end isn’t in sight.

  Resilience is the heartbeat of everything we do in the military, especially at the specialist level where there’s very little room for error or mental weakness. Resilience is what keeps an individual going when bad shit happens. Without it, there’s every chance a soldier might flap or spin out at the worst possible moment, such as in the heat of a gunfight, when sharp minds and bravery are required. In a situation of that nature, a less resilient person becomes a liability. They might die as a result, or quit when their teammates need them to stay strong. Even worse, as the weakest link in the chain, it’s possible they might also cause others to be killed and the implications of their failures are huge. If troops on the ground can’t execute the tasks at hand, the smaller conflicts and bigger battles are given away until, eventually, the war is lost.

 
; The only way to reduce the odds of failure is to instil as much resilience as possible in every man and woman working through their military training. That process begins on the very first minute of the very first day of service.

  It takes a fair bit of physical and psychological pain to become resilient. The long-distance swimmer hoping to cross the English Channel will have to face some mega-honking training sessions if they’re to succeed. A first-time parent might endure countless sleepless nights, moments of crippling self-doubt and bouts of depression. Elsewhere, the owner of a start-up business can receive rejections, criticism and any number of financial hits. But whenever the pain arrives – the aching muscles, the screaming baby, the horrific tax bill – there are always two basic choices.

  1) Quit.

  2) Get up and crack on.

  I’ve learned through my experiences, in and out of the military, that every blow leaves a wound. But every wound forms a scar. Every scar acts as a reminder that the pain, no matter how awful, is temporary and that progress has always followed whenever I’ve pressed ahead, regardless of how scared or hurt I was. That’s the nuts and bolts of resilience. Only by enduring those painful training sessions can the wannabe long-distance swimmer reach the physical levels required to swim the English Channel. By coping with the tears and tantrums, the first-time parent learns how to better survive those difficult early months should they later go for kids two and three, as well as the years that follow. And through financial struggle, the start-up entrepreneur understands how to see their vision through to the end.

  In the military I took a lot of psychological and physical hits. I have a lot of scars. And each one left me stronger than before.