Life Under Fire

by Jason Fox

  When the rollicking arrived, it was full-on. My screw-up had serious consequences and I was harshed. After the shouting had stopped, the training team informed me I was being held back. That meant I’d have to leave my mates behind and join another troop so I could retake the exercise in a couple of weeks. I was then warned that if I failed the exercise again I’d be kicked out of Basic Training. The experience was demoralizing. I became furious with myself. The implications of my actions caused me to go into a bit of a downward spiral because I knew the lads I’d been training with for months were going to pass out ahead of me and I wouldn’t get to share in that celebratory moment with them. I was gutted.

  Once I’d got over the initial disappointment, I decided to turn my negative into a positive. I was honest about my mistake; I didn’t blame others, or the situation. Instead, I got on with the work in hand because a valuable learning opportunity had been presented to me. I’d been so scarred by leaving my day sack behind that I became desperate to improve. I took meticulous care of my kit, weapon and personal belongings and I was soon a better soldier as a result. It was clear to me that being a Royal Marine was a serious business and attention to detail was vital. It was as if I could suddenly grasp what was expected of me at all times, which had probably been the intention of the training team when they’d dished out their punishment. That attitude lasted throughout my military career and left a permanent mark on me.

  Sometimes we can suffer due to an event entirely beyond our control. Redundancies happen, leaving us unemployed. Loved ones unexpectedly pass away and our daily lives change beyond recognition. Political decisions alter our day-to-day existence, sometimes in horrible ways. In those moments we have to find the positive strand that can help us to move on. As with the mistakes we make in our lives, freak occurrences, too, deliver an educational opportunity. Redundancies can open us up to different career possibilities. The death of a relative shows us new ways to care for the people around us. An unpleasant political decision might encourage us to work for change, by joining a group or volunteering for a cause.

  Taking lessons from failure or bad situations was a good way of operating successfully in war, too. As I’ve mentioned, negativity was contagious in flashpoints. People with a moody, glass-half-empty attitude rarely made it into the military elite, if ever, because pessimism or a fearful attitude in sketchy moments led to failed missions and maximum casualties. But to accept mistakes and unexpected misfortune as learning experiences was the most effective route out of trouble. It was yet another mark of the Thinking Soldier.

  PHASE SEVEN

  Self-awareness: Defeat Your Demons

  Self-awareness is everything when striving for resilience. How can we negotiate our weaknesses if we’re unsure of what they might be in the first place? And if we’re to reach our maximum potential, we need to be aware of our strengths, too. When a ruthlessly self-aware individual strives for success, they’ll have a fair idea of the emotional pitfalls to watch out for and the personal assets in their armoury – or, in other words, the tools needed to circumnavigate their vulnerabilities.

  That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of us haven’t conducted a 360-degree personal evaluation because being honest about our flaws is scary. That’s not to say it can’t be figured out, and a little graft and analysis can give everyone a deeper understanding of what makes them tick, as we discussed in Phase Six.

  Self-awareness is incredibly important because it enables us to identify and tackle some of the emotional issues that can derail us as we work towards our goals. By understanding the personal demons that can challenge us, and learning how to defeat them, we’re able to build a greater level of resilience …

  EMOTIONAL SELF-AWARENESS AND NEGATIVE THOUGHT

  We all have our strengths, but all of us have the Demon too – that hang-up, phobia or psychological roadblock that causes us to fail, make bad decisions or behave in a way that’s debilitating to ourselves and to others. The Demon might arrive as a doubting voice in the head or a surge of fear. Sometimes it takes the form of emotional paralysis and can shut us down during moments of high stress; it prevents us from functioning effectively or pushes us into losing our temper. But these negative forces are part of us – wounds from some past trauma, or an unresolved issue that nags away at our thinking, sometimes consciously, other times subconsciously. If we can understand those demons, if we can get a grasp on our true nature through self-awareness, then we can become incredibly resilient to any obstacles standing in our path.

  Just as some soldiers are able to fight through extreme pain in do-or-die events, so we all have the potential to push past the negative thoughts dragging us back. Imagine someone with an unhealthy lifestyle. They might feel unwilling to get off their arse if they’ve had an uncomfortable or embarrassing gym experience in the past. Stepping into the weights room might fill them with an intense dread. However, this is a state of mind and a situation that’s easily rectifiable through positive action. A little self-awareness regarding motivation and energy levels is important, too. To overcome their hang-ups, that particular person should think: The past is gone and I need to get a little fitter. It makes sense to attack the treadmill when I’m feeling emotionally strongest. I’m most proactive in the mornings. Let’s attack the day early on …

  These stresses are relative. The fearful gym-goer can feel just as scared as the person with a terror of heights, flying or enclosed spaces. I know about this emotional friction because negative feelings were a potential challenge for me during war, as they were for everybody I fought alongside. If it wasn’t handled correctly, fear could cause an operator to second-guess their actions; they might hesitate in a moment where speed was required. Anger was a dangerous reaction to an attack or a violent situation, and had to be suppressed. (In gun battles, hot-headedness was the worst kind of response, and people who flared up or acted without thinking were usually the first to get dropped.) Elsewhere, sadness or grief for a lost teammate might cause a person to lose focus. All of those emotions were occupational hazards in war because life was scary, situations were brutal, and friends died. The only way to operate in those scenarios was to use self-awareness as a way of controlling the controllable.

  But how?

  In my case, I handled those feelings first by accepting them as they emerged and acknowledging their presence. I then managed them rationally: if I was scared, I accepted the fear. I told myself I was frightened because an incredibly dangerous situation was kicking off. I then used the emotion to concentrate. If I became angry, I generally calmed myself with the knowledge that rational thought was imperative when working successfully in dangerous operations. Grief was compartmentalized and managed when I had time for reflection. With these processes, I became more emotionally resilient. That might sound unbelievably cold, but really there was no other option.

  Broken down, this process can be easily recalled as the three rules of basic psychological admin:

  1) Accept: Give any negative emotions the respect they deserve and acknowledge them.

  2) Understand: Remember you’re human. Sadly, feeling shit or fucking up is part of the experience sometimes.

  3) Resolve: Work out how to fix the problem and move ahead.

  Let’s take grief as a case study. I’ve been in more situations than I’d care to remember where people I knew, or cared for, were killed or seriously hurt, but with self-awareness I was able to manage my feelings and reactions.

  In the immediate aftermath of a mission where someone had been killed, as the lads squared away their kit in the equipment cage, it was easy to feel upended for a few moments. But there was no time to grieve or freak out. All of us had a job to do and the post-mission debrief went ahead as usual. Nobody would pretend that it hadn’t happened, and the death was always acknowledged by the group and the Officer Commanding; there would be a moment to reflect, and then we were expected to crack on with the next job.

  The impact was just as heavy when an ope
rator had been seriously injured. I remember seeing a teammate being dragged away by the medic during a Door-Kicking raid. He’d taken at least one round to the body and there was blood everywhere. My unit went off to continue the mission, under the impression he was dead, knowing that it wasn’t worth pressing the issue with our senior officers on the comms because, if he hadn’t been killed, plenty of people would be working to keep him alive. So what good would worrying do us? Instead, we kept our concentration on the work ahead and once we’d returned to base the next day, our Officer Commanding gave us a full update.

  ‘He’s in bad shape,’ the OC said. ‘Several litres of blood have gone through him and the prognosis isn’t great. The good news is he’s alive and they’re working to stabilize him. The bad news is his C2 vertebra has been disintegrated – his head has effectively been severed – so it’ll be a life-changing injury for the lad.’

  The news hit everyone hard, as it always did when somebody was seriously hurt or killed, but in those situations our only course of action was to control the controllable. I couldn’t break down immediately or grieve fully because there was simply no time to reflect, not like there is in a civilian environment. The rhythm of conflict rarely afforded elite soldiers a chance to emotionally process death in that way because the enemy never allowed us to rest. There was no respite and we were constantly on alert. (It’s important to understand that the processing of grief is contextual: I had to deal with it pragmatically because it was a part of my job. However, loss sometimes has the potential to become overwhelming. We’ll talk about how to handle serious emotional trauma in Phase Eleven.)

  Instead, we made sure to go through a brief period of respect at the time. If somebody was killed we took a moment to remember the good points over a ‘wet’ (the Royal Marines term for a brew). Before long, we’d be chatting about the funnier moments, where they’d screwed up or done something crazy or stupid, though it was always done with consideration and good intention. After that, we’d move on. There was no other choice. Any negative emotions towards the death such as sadness, anger, or even guilt, had to be tempered until an appropriate moment presented itself, such as when we returned home on leave or during a moment of national mourning, such as Remembrance Day, where everybody made a concerted effort to remember the lads that had been taken. That’s when I’d make sure to fully process the loss, because to bottle it up any longer might prove destructive down the line.

  This might sound emotionally unhealthy, but the alternative was to spin out of control, which wasn’t an option. That’s why death was never used by the senior command as a motivating factor on missions, especially in an environment where survival was tough enough. That style of management only caused an operator to work in a way that made life even riskier, though that’s not to say it doesn’t serve a purpose elsewhere. For example, in rugby, whenever a player is injured during a match, the remaining teammates might draw upon the incident at half time. It becomes fuel; using their colleague’s pain becomes an inspirational force. We’re going to smash this lot because they’ve just fucked up one of our lads. In those cases, turning anger into a positive energy is sometimes enough to ensure victory.

  However, in war situations there’s no place for that type of thinking. During a gunfight, I didn’t have the room for anger or vengeful thought. An operator couldn’t lose control or become reckless, taking out everybody in their way because a teammate had been shot. I had to manage my emotions. And to do so it was important to rely upon self-awareness. By understanding the thoughts and feelings that often kicked in during stressful situations, such as a gunfight, I was able to channel them effectively, with the three-step process. Firstly, I accepted and acknowledged the emotions: I was scared, angry and stressed. I then tried to understand why I was experiencing those feelings: the enemy were firing at me and there was a chance I might get killed; one of my friends was dead. Finally, I used those emotions to focus my actions: I channelled fear, anger and stress in such a way that they helped me to concentrate on my next step. People with anger management issues are unable to take those three steps, which is why they rarely make it into the military elite. In our line of work, where pride and professionalism are touchstones, there’s no place for rage.

  Don’t get me wrong – I can be an angry person sometimes and my mates will probably testify to that. Every now and then I’ll get wound up about things that should bounce off me, like a last-minute logistical change or an hour-long traffic jam. I suffered a serious sense-of-humour failure on the first day of Team Essence’s Atlantic row as the coast of Lagos in Portugal faded into the distance and the inky black of night seemed to swallow up the boat. The initial adrenaline rush of what we’d embarked upon had worn off and everybody was readying themselves for the first shift of work: each individual was expected to do two hours on the oars followed by two hours of rest, for two brutal months.

  ‘Let’s get the hot wets on first,’ I said, rubbing my hands. ‘Someone get the coffee.’

  Before our launch, each of us had been given a series of responsibilities to ready the boat for voyage. Former Royal Marine Ross Johnson was tasked with buying enough tea, coffee and hot chocolate to see us through the entire trip. As the crew readied for work, I noticed Ross bouncing around in the cabin, frantically scrabbling through our supplies. When he returned, his face was ashen.

  ‘Er, lads,’ he said nervously. ‘I’ve left the brews behind.’

  The rest of us were furious, me included, and for a minute I worried that somebody might launch Ross off the boat. But quickly we processed our emotions and resigned ourselves to the fact that there was nothing to drink but cold water for the next seven weeks (if we finished on time). Our combined military training had kicked in: don’t complain; find a solution. And it was then accepted among the lads that we were all going to make at least one fuck-up each on the expedition, so it was for the best if we forgot about Ross’s blunder and focused on working as a team – for now, at least. We could rinse him for it later.

  That restraint was an instinct borne from combat. I don’t remember ever feeling angry in a gunfight because there was zero room for negative emotion. I knew that to lose control would have resulted in me getting killed by the enemy. Acting irrationally was the fastest route to death. Instead of expressing anger, I became aggressive but in a controlled way. For example, if I’d helped to capture an enemy target in a raid, I usually worked to keep the captive under control. Then I advised my teammates to stay switched on.

  ‘Right, keep the prisoner segregated. If he fucks around, sit him down hard, cuff him and let him know where he’s at.’

  I wasn’t being a bully. The stress and adrenaline had risen within everybody, as it usually did in a situation of that nature. But if anything, controlled aggression helped to maintain a sense of calm because it convinced any detainees that the fight was over while ensuring that they didn’t do anything stupid. Self-awareness turned our emotions into an asset.

  But how do these theories work away from the theatre of combat or extreme adventure? Well, one way of gaining an increased sense of self-awareness is to recall a situation or two when our emotions have spiralled out of control, causing us to make a mistake in the fallout. Wouldn’t it have been great if there had been an opportunity to acknowledge those feelings first, through self-awareness? The truth is that we can: we’re the peacekeepers for our reactions. There will always be events that take place beyond our own influence. People will say things that upset us. Our best-laid plans will come under attack from an unexpected situational hand grenade. Usually there’s nothing we can do to prevent those flashpoints from kicking off, but we can manage our responses in the aftermath. It just takes a little understanding, using the following three steps:

  Step One: Thinking back to the ‘Honesty About Self’ first described in Phase Six, engage in some serious self-analysis regarding your strengths and weaknesses. Questions to ask yourself could include:

  Where are you most effective
?

  Where do you tend to slip up?

  How do you react when under pressure?

  In what situations can others rely upon you?

  How do you behave in a time of crisis?

  When do you get angry, fearful, upset or feel emotionally out of control?

  Step Two: Give these questions to your friends and colleagues, rewriting them so the questions are focused on you. Then steel yourself for some unpleasant responses. (To encourage a real beasting, ask your assessors to fill out the questions anonymously on a printout, rather than in a handwritten reply you might identify.)

  Once those first two steps are completed, you’ll have a clear picture of where to locate your emotional strengths as well as the events that can cause you to struggle.

  Step Three: After any challenging event, gather your thoughts in a debrief session. Note how you reacted and list your actions, dividing them up into successes and mistakes. This process will give you an opportunity to understand the tactics that worked for you in certain scenarios and the ones that didn’t. You’ll soon receive a deeper understanding of your behaviour in scenarios such as flashpoints, moments of criticism, tests of self-confidence and high-pressure situations. A greater sense of self-awareness will follow. Equipped with that knowledge, you’ll find it easy to understand the emotional chaos that can break out during difficult moments. Through understanding comes an acceptance that will lead to calmer thought. And with calmer thought, effective action is more easily achieved.