Life Under Fire

by Jason Fox

  Emotionally, I was often scared of failure during my time in the military; I didn’t want people to think I couldn’t handle my job. It stressed me out at times during Selection and my biggest mistake when passing out was to believe that all the hard work was over with. The reality was very different. I was thrown into an environment where responsibility was dumped upon me almost immediately; the training felt relentless, too, and I seemed to lurch out of my comfort zone with everything we did. I abseiled out of helicopters and fast-roped down buildings. I climbed on to mocked-up enemy ships and kicked in doors on pretend raids. It was the all-action stuff I’d imagined doing when I first signed up for Selection. But every now and then I’d wobble a little bit, worried that I was fucking up in a big way, when in reality I was coping pretty well.

  My biggest problem, though, was my discomfort when operating at heights – I became a little nervous whenever I was abseiling down the face of a dam or out of a helicopter. As a kid, I can remember the phobia threatening to reduce me to tears. I was eight or nine years old, on a school trip, and I’d been offered the chance to abseil down a small cliff with some mates. I peered over the edge. It probably wasn’t that much of a drop, but it felt like Mount Everest to me. My bottom lip trembled.

  ‘It’s OK, Jason,’ said the instructor, noticing the building waterworks. ‘You can walk away if you don’t want to do it.’

  But I didn’t want to walk away because to do so made me feel like a failure. There was a pause. The drop below was far scarier than anything I’d seen before at the time and in the end I caved in to my apprehension.

  No way, I thought. I’m not going down there.

  That fear has stuck with me ever since, but I have no idea where it started. Mum hadn’t warned me away from heights when I was little. However, my dad had often taken my brother and me on holiday to Cornwall, and though he always liked us to roam free, if ever we were running close to a cliff edge he’d always tied a rope around us, with the other end attached to his waist. I’d often think, Why am I being held to this? It wasn’t that Dad was being an overly cautious or nervous parent. He was mainly making sure we were being safe at all times, but perhaps his tactic impacted upon me in a negative way, like some childhood experiences do. I never really got over it. Today, when I’m working up high, I often feel a shiver of adrenaline and get a little edgy.

  I see that happen in a lot of kids now. Most of our phobias arrive with experience. If you don’t believe me, compare the reaction of toddlers and adults in a pub garden at the end of summer. When a wasp inevitably arrives, the grown-ups tend to flap at the table; they freak out at anything buzzing around them. But the toddlers don’t care. They’ll happily allow a wasp to land in their buggy, unaware of the sting they might receive if they grab at it. Once they’re a bit older, those kids will probably share the same fear as their parents, either because they’ve been stung or because they’ve watched Mum and Dad acting irrationally every time they’ve opened a bottle of wine in wasp weather.

  But those phobias – water, heights, wasps, and the fear of failure – can be managed, as most demons can.

  Yes, it takes some serious work. Having trained in the jungle, for example, I understood that recognizing my fears was another step in the self-awareness process (as detailed in Phase Seven). I hated the bugs in there, they were a nightmare, but I used the three rules of basic psychological admin to overcome any associated stress. Firstly, I accepted my dislike of insects and I decided the related stress was rational because scorpion stings bloody hurt. I then used that fear to sharpen my resolve. Finally, I focused on changing my mindset and figured, Well, I can either spend a shitload of time running around and freaking out at every spider here, or I can sort my shit out.

  Through persistence, I was also able to overcome my nervousness around heights. I had to because there was no hiding from my anxieties. One of the many specialist courses I completed was jump training, where I parachuted out of planes day after day. On the first morning, my nerves jangled and I was pretty quiet with the other lads as they joked around and readied their kit. Wanting to tackle my problem head-on, I’d decided that listening to some of the other operators around me – the ones claiming they couldn’t have cared less about the work ahead – wasn’t helping in any way. Instead, I thought about how hard I’d already worked and about the adventures ahead. Did I really want a fear of heights to stop me from doing a job I loved?

  Not a chance.

  I focused and reset my thinking. Rather than crumbling under the pressure, I turned my nervousness on its head by looking beyond the jumps. I saw the bigger rewards and told myself that overcoming my phobia was a means to an end. I was finally doing my dream job in the military. By digging deep and applying the idea of making small steps towards success, I took each jump as a self-contained event, rather than picturing seven days of nerve-shredding leaps from a plane. Immediately, the challenge seemed so much more manageable. Jump by jump, I became a little more impervious to the fear; the doubting chit-chat in my head quietened a little. And every time I experienced a minor wobble, I reminded myself of my purpose and stepped out confidently. The surge of adrenaline every time my feet hit the ground was incredible.

  A highlight of my training schedule was a course nicknamed the ‘Pepsi Max Week’, a series of insertion techniques that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Mission: Impossible film or a soft-drink commercial. I jumped out of planes, set off explosives and rode in speeding boats. I then pushed myself even further. To improve my confidence with heights, I went on holiday with a mate in San Diego, where we spent a lot of time skydiving. For several days the pair of us got up early and drove to the nearby naval base, where we trained on camp, even though we were on leave, before doing jumps at 15,000 feet.

  At first it was beautiful. I saw the Tijuana Mountains, and if I turned myself around, mid-air, it was possible to make out downtown San Diego and the Pacific Ocean, but after a number of jumps I realized two things: 1) For me, being in the military had ruined a lot of the events some people (not me) might consider fun, like parachuting or diving, because after a while the adrenaline rush wasn’t there any more (but that was good because the fear wasn’t as intense, either) and 2) I was on bloody holiday. And so I spent the next week of our break on the piss, confident that when it came to heights, knowledge, or in this case the experience of repeated parachute jumps, had dispelled any nerves I might have had – for a while, at least.

  Fear management is a useful tool and any resilient individual should be able to recognize their anxieties and work with them. In a business setting, it might be that a team leader hates negotiating deals but their position requires them to haggle with a client over a new contract. Events like this can strike fear into a person. Luckily, there are tactics to cope, using the negotiating process as an example:

  1) Switch on: use the pressure as focus; concentrate the mind on those smaller practices that will affect the bigger picture, such as your body language, or maintaining a steady and calm breath.

  2) Practice: take on your own version of jump training. Build up to the Big Event by closing smaller deals with less influential clients.

  3) Remember your purpose: do you really want your nervousness to stand in the way of your career or future goals?

  4) If the worst comes to the worst: delegate the task to a senior member of staff who feels more comfortable when negotiating under pressure. It might feel like a cop-out, but one of the core values of leadership is the understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses. In an operational setting, the military often uses a similar technique. The team leader controls the mission and delegates the point man to go in first; the comms guy to focus on the radio; the medic to patch up the injured. Square pegs go into square holes and if even the most senior figure isn’t suitable for a specialized job, it gets passed on to the relevant operator. If you’re unsure whether you’re the right person to debate the deal, encourage your team to complete the brutal assessment exercis
e detailed in Phase Seven.

  THE POWER OF PATIENCE

  In grim situations, it’s common to watch individuals rushing towards their own death without thinking. The natural emotional response is to move quickly to get to the finishing line so that the pain, whatever that might be, can come to an end. But in war, patience is everything. To panic or to act hastily can be a self-destructive action, and on SAS: Who Dares Wins I’ve watched many people fall victim to their own rash thinking when forced into an uncomfortable position. Rather than sucking in a settling breath and taking some time to consider their next move, they allow pain, stress or fatigue to overcome them. Then they make a rash move.

  One example of this was Kim Ngo on Series Five. Kim was strong, mentally and physically, despite her diminutive size, and she’d shown resilience all the way through to the final four. Having negotiated the ‘Interrogation Phase’, the group was then shoved through another day of endurance tests, which was where Kim broke down. She was exhausted. Lasting the course seemed beyond her, even though she was giving it her best shot. Sadly, she lost concentration for a couple of minutes when the recruits were taken to a lake and ordered to submerge in a drown-proofing test, as mentioned in Phase Five. She was unable to control her movements and breathing in the strong undercurrents and couldn’t drop to the bottom as instructed.

  The lake was freezing and Kim admitted to us as she stepped in that she wasn’t a strong swimmer. The water swallowed her up; in her moment of weakness, she was unable to finish the task and we had to take her armband away. It was a shame. A lot of the lads were secretly willing her on to the end. But had she taken a moment to think, there’s a chance she could have progressed.

  Patience and rational thought were instilled in me from the minute I joined the Royal Marines. Their importance was later amplified in the military elite because corner-cutting and rushed action were often detrimental to a mission. Nowhere was this more evident than in ambush training, where operators were ordered to wait for hours on end until a target walked into their trap, to then be shot at. My first experience of ambush training took place in the jungle and it was horrific: hot and extremely humid, our location was a disgusting area of undergrowth inhabited by all manner of creepy-crawlies. Bugs slithered and crawled over me for twelve hours, but I couldn’t shift my position or shake them off me because it might alert our mock enemy if they were moving nearby.

  Caution was everything. As everybody moved into position, the commander would announce over the comms that the ambush was set. At once, all the operators involved turned off the safety catches on their weapons. (For the group to do it at a later moment, when the targets might be walking past, ran the risk of alerting those hostile forces to our presence.) With most ambushes there were usually men placed in two early-warning positions, or ‘cut-offs’, on the left- and right-hand side of the waiting operators. It was their job to alert the rest of the group to any approaching target, and they did so by tugging at a cord that was attached to every individual’s finger within the killer group. (Sometimes it was quite easy to fall asleep, and before you knew it your finger was being yanked as everyone else moved into action.) Once our targets had stepped into a suitable position, it was the killer group’s role to let rip; when the shooting stopped, the operators working as cut-offs then became a search party, checking the ‘dead’ mock enemy for ammo, weapons and intelligence.

  A lot of patience and discipline was required for a successful ambush set-up, as it was for so many aspects of jungle training. Everything moved slowly. Our movements were usually restricted by the vegetation around us (as I’ve mentioned before, to wriggle quickly out of the razor-sharp grip of a Bastard Tree could result in some nasty injuries), navigation was hard and ambush actions involved a mega-long set of orders that could be quite easy to screw up if you rushed through them. Elsewhere, war involved long periods of waiting around which were interspersed by flashpoints of hardcore violence. Observation posts could be mind-numbingly dull, too: two or three weeks of hiding out, with our eyes trained on an enemy outpost or a suspected terrorist base, was a grind. Meanwhile, the comings and goings of people and vehicles had to be logged meticulously. To skip a few details or take your eye off the ball might result in some valuable intel slipping by, and the consequences of that were sometimes disastrous. Observation posts were uncomfortable and boring, but patience and precision were imperative.

  How this work translates to real life is really quite interesting. At certain times, all of us are exposed to long, drawn-out episodes of negative emotion: sadness, anxiety, grief, shame, fear and stress are all examples of discomfort that can cause us to struggle. But often, rushing through those periods in an attempt to get past them can cause greater problems down the line. People numb their pain with alcohol; they pretend they’re OK when really they’re not; and they ignore the warning signs telling them that they’re steering into trouble. Grief is an excellent example because people handle it in so many different ways. Some bottle it up, ignoring the pain until it festers, becoming a traumatic, emotional cancer; others shut out the hurt with booze, drugs or some other vice; or anger becomes the release. But I’ve learned that, outside of war, the only way to deal with grief healthily is to accept its value as a healing process and work through it with time and understanding.

  In war it was a different story. I had to temporarily shut out pain in order to do the job I needed to do. But when I was at home, I gave my emotions the respect and the time they deserved – dealing with negative feelings can be a protracted process and it takes patience to work through it thoroughly. That allowed me to manage myself effectively; being honest and patient about what I was feeling prevented me from reacting in a way that could have been negative. So far, I’ve not had to deal with too many familial losses. Thankfully, both my parents are still around, but I’ve lost grandparents and, while I was pained by their deaths, I was always truthful about how I was feeling in the moment. That meant I could bounce back relatively quickly. When friends died during war, I often felt sad once I’d returned home. I’d grieve and there were moments when I cried for people, but I was always fairly robust. Handling my emotions with respect and due process allowed me to function. The same went for fear, stress, anxiety and all manner of negative emotions. Patience and considered thought were the only ways to manage those stressful episodes effectively.

  OPERATIONAL DEBRIEF

  ❱❱ Unlearn your fears. Take an honest look at what frightens you most and work towards overcoming those anxieties. Remember: knowledge dispels fear. A tactical approach to dealing with a phobia is to use the step-by-step mentality. For example, the team leader with a dislike of negotiating can move forward in increments by first taking on small contractual discussions before building up to that career-defining boardroom deal.

  ❱❱ Patience is everything in war. Don’t rush to your own death during uncomfortable situations by trying to force through a negative emotion or situation too quickly. Instead, acknowledge the discomfort, give it the respect it deserves and manage your way through the pain accordingly. Quick fixes rarely work when the stakes are high.

  ❱❱ Remember your why. Don’t let a phobia or hang-up stand in the way of your long-term goals.

  SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

  SLOWING LIFE DOWN: THE CIGAR MOMENT

  There are some terrifying moments that can’t be prepared for. No amount of training can ready you for an unexpected accident, such as a car crash, or for a personal disaster – perhaps serious illness hits out of nowhere (did anyone see the Covid-19 crisis coming?). Incidents like these, along with freak financial events, unexpected outbreaks of violence or injuries to loved ones, can cause us to spin out emotionally.

  Those moments were all too frequent in war, when even the basic procedure of commuting to work could be fraught with mortal risk. During one operation, I was part of a squadron flying out to a Tactical Landing Zone (TLZ) from where we were expected to launch a series of missions, but even the very basic step
of getting to the TLZ nearly killed us. Our method of transport was a Hercules Mk 5 plane and the pilot was an individual who was known to be pretty cocksure. As we came in to land, I noticed the TLZ was so makeshift that the area hadn’t been marked out in any way. We were being guided in by a couple of blokes waving their arms about on the ground. And that’s when the trouble started.

  Our pilot, for no apparent reason, decided to bank sharply as we descended – too sharply. I looked out of the window and crapped myself when I noticed how close to the ground we were. It seemed as if the wingtips were about to hit the dirt. Everybody started shouting and yelling angrily. Mate, what the fuck are you doing? When the plane straightened out seconds later, we were only metres above the so-called runway, and the wheels touched down with a loud bang. The plane pitched upwards and everybody on board seemed to become weightless for a split second before we bounced off the desert floor several times. The group was unnerved; having come to a stop, a lot of the lads went looking for the pilot, hoping to bang him out. We’d nearly been killed before the fighting had even kicked off.

  I sat by the plane afterwards, rattled by what had happened. A lot of people would have gone into shock, having been nearly ended in a crash, but I leaned on a technique that had always settled my nervous system during a gunfight. I sucked in a deep, settling breath then puffed the air out slowly. I then repeated the process again in an act sometimes referred to as the ‘Cigar Moment’.

  The Cigar Moment was named after the famous Hamlet Cigars television adverts from the 1980s, in which a hapless individual would screw up in embarrassing fashion before calming themselves down by sparking up a cigar. They’d take in a deep draw of tobacco and then slowly blow away a plume of smoke. It was a calming moment, the inference being that everything was going to be cool, regardless of whatever disaster had just occurred.