First Man In

by Ant Middleton

  I decided to get straight in there and push his buttons. The ‘mirror room’ is what we called the converted shipping container where we carried out our interrogations. Contestants would be called in without warning. A black bag and goggles would be put over their heads and they’d be manhandled through a complex series of turns to completely disorientate them. The next thing they’d know, they’d be sitting in front of a table, on the other side of which would be me and another member of the directing staff.

  On that very first evening I sent the order for him to see us. I was joined by a gifted former SAS operative, Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham.

  ‘There’s something quite unsettling about you,’ I told Geoff. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it. You seem like quite an unpredictable character. I know a loose cannon when I see one. There’s a switch in you. And when it goes you can’t control it.’

  Billy began probing into his past. It soon emerged that Geoff had been a drug dealer.

  ‘Did you have fucking conscience?’ he asked him.

  ‘No,’ replied Geoff defiantly. ‘I didn’t give a shit.’

  Now we were getting somewhere. Here was the real Geoff. It hadn’t taken long. Billy increased the pressure.

  ‘Did you ever calculate in your fucking stupid mind how many families’ lives you fucked up?’

  Geoff took a sharp breath, dipped his head and ran his hand slowly over the top of it. This was it. He was breaking.

  ‘Er, yeah, no,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You’ve got a daughter,’ I said. ‘How old’s your daughter?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Does she do drugs?’

  Billy was going for the jugular. Geoff tried not to rise.

  ‘Does she do drugs?’ Billy said. ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘I know you asked me a question but it’s a stupid fucking question.’

  This guy was a hand grenade and he was seconds away from going off. The situation would need careful control. I knew from his size and his past – and from the masculine power that was tasing off him – that if he kicked off he was going to be a handful. I had to assert a bit of dominance. I rose from my seat and stood over him, quickly sending him a message: It’s probably best not to start anything because, if that happens, it’s not going to end nicely for you.

  ‘Relax,’ I told him. ‘Relax yourself. Why do you think we’re pushing your buttons? Calm it down. If you were caught in a hostile environment and you reacted the way you’ve just reacted, do you know what would happen to you? You’d get a bullet in the back of your head.’

  What he didn’t realise was that none of this was necessarily an issue for me. It didn’t matter to me that he was a problem child. I didn’t even mind the attitude. I can work on these problems and even take great pleasure in rectifying them. What I didn’t know was whether he could help himself.

  The fact is that the Special Forces are looking for men who are on that razor edge. A lot of us were – and are – just like Geoff. For many men of the SAS and SBS, if they’d taken one step to the left at a certain point in life they’d have ended up in prison. A lot of us were constantly teetering on the point of self-destruction. We could either control that self-destructive urge or just press the button – and often our finger was hovering just a millimetre above it. That was definitely true of me. The people in charge know full well that this dynamic exists within us. It’s the reason they want us, the reason we get results. It’s how we’ve passed Special Forces Selection. But they take you with their fingers crossed behind their backs, just hoping and praying that the button doesn’t get pressed.

  We left Geoff to stew overnight on what had happened. The next morning he was late to the parade ground. The contestants were given a strict timing for breakfast, between 6 and 6.30, and they all had to go together. As they were eating, I inspected their accommodation. Someone had left their toothbrush and toothpaste on their bed, while everyone else had packed all their kit properly away. As soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be Geoff. He’d left me a gift. And I capitalised on it straight away.

  When they filed back from breakfast, I stood outside their accommodation, blocking their way. Once they’d all gathered, I told them, ‘I want you to walk around in there and I don’t want you to touch anything. I just want you to inspect the accommodation and point at the bed that’s not right.’ They all saw it.

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Geoff’s.’

  I knew he’d been raging all night and that this was going to tip him over the cliff.

  ‘You’ve just fucked up there, haven’t you?’ I told him. ‘What makes you so special? You think you’re special, do you? Right, everyone out on the parade ground.’

  I got hold of a foam roll mat, of the type you use for camping, and instructed everyone to stand round it.

  ‘I want you all in the press-up position,’ I said. I pointed Geoff to the mat. ‘Come and lie down,’ I said. ‘Relax. Chill.’ But that he couldn’t deal with it.

  ‘Fuck you. You’re pissing me off now, fucking prick,’ he said, tearing his armband off and thus instantly ordering his plane ticket back to the UK.

  The thing is, I’d only have made him lie on that mat for five minutes. And if he’d been man enough, I’d have decided that he was getting it and that I could work on him. I genuinely wanted to bring him back into the fold, but now I couldn’t. I decided to have a chat with him in the medical room as he was being checked over before his flight home. I could see he was still raging. I braced myself for a physical fight, sitting down lightly on the edge of a medical bed, my arms and legs tensed, primed and ready to spring into action.

  ‘You’ve got so much potential, but you’re a fucking hand grenade,’ I said. ‘You’re unpredictable, and that makes you unreliable. What frustrates me is that you’ve turned your life around. But you can turn it right back upside down again with the flick of a switch. You love your daughter. But you won’t be any good to her when you’re in the fucking nick.’

  ‘What it all boils down to is weakness,’ he admitted. ‘You know as well as I do. I thought if I can get through this I might actually be able to trust myself. But I don’t.’

  He broke down in tears. I’d been Geoff’s enemy that morning. It was my gift to him. He should have used me. He should have shown me. But rather than draw energy from me, he’d allowed me to eat him up.

  There’s one other situation in which I’ve learned that it’s useful to build yourself through confrontation, and that’s in conditions of extreme pain. You have to learn to cope with pain on the battlefield, where you may well find yourself having to walk on a broken ankle or with a leg that’s got a bullet in it – or be killed. I’ve learned that it’s useful to make your own body the enemy, to focus on what’s causing you grief and fire fury back at it. I’ll have a voice going around my head: ‘You fucking think you hurt, do you? I’ll fucking show you.’

  Not long ago I was invited to a team-building event with 30 Commando, down at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth. As part of the day I’d agreed to take part in a morning of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But the week before I’d broken the big toe on my right foot. There was no way I was going to pull out of my commitment, but twenty minutes after I started grappling on the mat I felt my toe break again. It was agony. And I knew I was going to be rolling around for another two hours. So I separated myself from it. I turned my toe into my enemy and went into battle with it. ‘You want fucking pain do you? You don’t know what fucking pain is. Try this.’ At the end of every round I’d surreptitiously smash it into the ground or walk up to the wall and, when no one was looking, kick it. ‘I’ve got a job to do and you fucking think you can stop me doing my job, do you? Right, have some of this.’ Pain is an aggressive feeling and, to be on top of it, you have to get aggressive with it right back.

  Most people have never been to their limits, so they don’t know what lies there. I’ve been to my limits and beyond, so I know my body. I know what it can do. I know I can get
to a point where my mind and body are screaming, ‘Fucking stop!’ and I’ll reply, ‘Fucking stop, you cunt? Watch this.’ Pain isn’t telling you what to do. Pain is asking you a question. All you have to do is say no.

  The most surprising thing about the three-week P Company course in Catterick was that, after the misery of Pre-Para, it was a breeze. It was three weeks of races, assault courses and trainasium height training, which involved things like walking across the tops of thirty-foot poles. I loved it. But I wasn’t quite a paratrooper yet. Because I’d not yet done my ‘jumps course’, I was what they called a ‘penguin’ – a bird that can’t fly. But the jumps course wouldn’t be a challenge in the way that Pre-Para was. It wasn’t something that people ever really failed. On the contrary, I couldn’t wait to get on it.

  So I returned to Aldershot from Catterick feeling as if I’d truly earned my maroon beret. Perhaps because my struggle had been so great – it was the first time I’d really been tested – I’d never had more confidence. But I was spending my days with some of the same people who’d watched me struggling so badly. People like Cranston. He’d classed me as a loser when I’d been there before. I hoped that now I’d returned, and I’d proved him and everyone else wrong, it would be a new start. I, for one, wouldn’t hold the past against him.

  On that first day back we went on an eight-mile troop run. I was comfortably at the front when two of the lads sped up behind me, a lance corporal and Cranston. ‘What are you doing at the front?’ said the lance corporal. I pushed on, trying to put some distance back between us, but Cranston threw his foot out, kicking my leg right behind the knee. I tumbled forward, falling into a ditch, the left side of my face taking the brunt.

  ‘You think you’re the fucking man, but you’ve just come back from P Company,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he sped down the track. ‘Fucking sprog.’

  I pushed myself back on my feet and spent the rest of the run in the centre of the pack. I was fuming. Be at the back, and they single you out. Be at the front, and they single you out. I’d joined the army to excel. I’d imagined I was going to be surrounded by like-minded people. But it was beginning to seem as if the only place you could really get on was right here in the middle.

  And so that’s what I did. I sat back. What was the point in pushing myself when I wasn’t even going to be allowed to get there? All that mattered to them was that I was a sprog. That was the be-all and end-all. There was an iron hierarchy in place that had nothing to do with skill and everything do to with gang-law and favouritism. The people at the top were the ones who’d been there for longer or who had the right friends. They were ‘the boys’. They’d go down the pub and drink and fight, and that’s how it was all decided. It was all stitched up.

  So what else could I do? I knew their game. And I had no choice but to play it.

  LEADERSHIP LESSONS

  Make your enemy your energy. The fact of the matter is, becoming a leader often means creating enemies. It’s a fight to get to that top spot, and not everyone is going to be happy that you’ve beaten them. They’re going to turn their resentment into negativity that they’ll fire at you in an attempt to bring you down. You have a choice. Allow that negativity in, and let it obsess you and eventually poison you. Or turn it around. If you’re smart, these enemies become a gift – a battery that never runs out.

  A lesson is a lesson. No matter how it comes to you, even if it’s in an apparently negative package, take that lesson as a positive. Of course I didn’t enjoy having to pour freezing water over my head over and over again that morning. And I was unhappy when I realised none of the lads had told me the correct procedure for filling the bottle. But I’ve never forgotten the lesson I was taught: attention to detail. If you get the small things wrong, big problems will find you.

  These lessons never stop. If you’re paying attention, you’ll have a learning moment every day. Make a habit of spending two minutes before turning your lights out, every night, working out what the lesson of the day has been. Go to sleep with the satisfaction that, having now learned it, you’ll wake up as a better version of yourself than you’ve been the previous day.

  There’s always a route around your weakness. We all have things about us that we can’t change. A part of the reason I struggled at Pre-Para was the length of my legs. Rather than throw my hands up, which I very nearly did, I realised I could compensate in another area. We all have reasons to make excuses for failure. Most people use them. Be the exceptional person – find the route around.

  LESSON 3

  LEADERS STAND APART FROM CROWDS

  My next task was to kill the penguin. That would happen over the course of four weeks at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where I’d learn to jump out of aeroplanes and, by doing so, earn my wings. Even before I arrived I’d vowed to put Cranston and the others behind me. Any negativity that might have been lingering in my head vanished completely as I was driven through those gates on a Monday morning, proudly wearing my maroon beret.

  It was a thrill just to be there. RAF Brize Norton is a huge air base in Oxfordshire that has over six thousand people living and working on it. It’s also a place that’s redolent with history. And it was from here that essential parachute and glider operations commenced later in the Second World War. On D-Day, brave fighters took off from Brize Norton to land in northern France to successfully capture bridges and German battery installations. Many of the men who set off from this base to kill Nazis and to free Europe were members of the Parachute Regiment. And now I was a member of the Airborne family too. Pretty much.

  One of the many little visual cues that marks the elite regiments like the Paras or the Commandos from the others is that we’d wear a peak in our berets. On my second day I found myself happily strolling from the accommodation over to the NAAFI, where there were a few shops and a bar, when I saw a young guy approaching with a decidedly cocky walk. He was wearing a blue beret – with a peak in it. The feeling hit me sooner than the thought: who the fuck did this kid think he was? This was a serious breach of protocol. How was he getting away with it? Why had nobody bollocked him? In reality, the only real difference between me and this young man was that I’d done a three-week course. But those three weeks mattered. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ I thought, as I approached him. ‘Fucking craphat.’

  It wasn’t in my nature to say anything, but as I got nearer to the delusional craphat I found myself aggressively staring at him. As he got closer I realised he looked familiar. It was hard to see, with the sun in my eyes, so I had to slow down to a near stop. I couldn’t believe it. Was it really possible? It couldn’t be. The craphat with the peak was my elder brother Michael.

  ‘Fucking hell, Mike!’ I cried, immediately forgetting about his beret. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What am I doing here?’ he said. ‘I’m in the fucking RAF, you knobhead. What are you doing here?’

  Of course, I knew my elder brother had just joined the Forces. It just hadn’t occurred to me that he’d be here, at Brize Norton.

  It was amazing to have someone who felt like an ally by my side at last. But it felt even better to have someone I cared about see me in my maroon beret and the Pegasus insignia that showed I belonged to the Paras. The last time I’d seen Mike I’d been a nobody. Now I was a member of 9 Para – the Engineers. Whereas it was the duty of 1, 2 and 3 Para to fight, ours was to build bridges and clear mines and demolish infrastructure. This is why we were known for being physically strong and for breaking stuff. With that, we developed a reputation for being the rogues of the army. We brought an impressive level of destruction and madness everywhere we went. So what else could I do? If destruction and madness was the rule of my new tribe, then destruction and madness was what I would have to bring. I was determined to uphold the traditions of my badge. I wasn’t going to let the legend of 9 Para down, especially in the eyes of my elder brother.

  And so began the most brilliant and raucous four weeks I’d ever had. From
that moment on, Mike and I were inseparable, and we went around the base being total menaces. We’d steal bicycles and pedal them around camp, we’d smash windows, we’d ride off on people’s motorbikes and chuck them over walls. I started having fun with the women, having several on the go at once. I’d creep out of one door in the women’s accommodation and nip four doors down to see someone else. One night, I was running out of one bedroom when I saw Mike emerging from the room next to me. But despite the pandemonium I found myself at the centre of, when it came to dealing with people one on one I remained my old polite and respectful self. It was partly because of this that we never really got into proper trouble. But it was also because our particular brand of misbehaviour, over that period, was relatively harmless.

  After receiving my wings at Brize Norton I was sent on my first deployment. I’d be going to Northern Ireland. It was exciting to finally be leaving the country and heading into the world as a member of 9 Parachute Squadron. As we boarded the Boeing C-17 plane for take-off, it all suddenly felt real. My excitement didn’t last long. Although we went on street patrols now and then, this was 1999 and things were a lot quieter than they had been ten or twenty years previously. There simply wasn’t much happening out there. Most of my time was taken up assisting in the demolition of the notorious Maze Prison in County Antrim. Because I’d only had my wings for a couple of months, I was still seen as a sprog. This meant I wasn’t given any of the more responsible or interesting jobs. I wasn’t up in any of the big machines, knocking down walls. Instead I was down in the ditches, lugging rubble and hardcore, caked in sweat and dust, and covered in blisters and cuts. It was genuine, old-fashioned man work. At the end of every shift I felt like I was emerging from a long day deep in a coal mine, filthy, knackered and sore.