by Geoff Wolak
Sat on their crappy sofa, they opened cans of lager. I faced Bob. ‘Do any of the guys think it odd that I never did selection?’
He made a face. ‘After what you did on the Three Peaks no fucker wants to put you to the test. Tabby was on that run, in gym kit, and you showed him up something rotten. Well pissed off he was, but he respects you loads.’
Smurf began, ‘Anyone who don’t respect you will get a right hook.’
‘I’m going to try and be a good boy,’ I made clear. ‘At least for a week or two. So, who’s the squadron arsehole?’
‘Rizzo,’ they said, the guy who had stomped on Foster. That figured.
Smurf said, ‘He’s really good at everything, best there is, but ... he’s a pain, very competitive, a bit sneaky.’
‘Sergeant Crab is an old timer, but he’s OK, a bit cranky now and then,’ Bob informed me. ‘But Snipe – we call him Gutter Snipe behind his back – he’d slit your throat for ten quid. Watch him.’
‘And the SSM?’ I asked.
‘Coalridge. He doesn’t have a nickname,’ Bob informed me. ‘Nice chap all round, never a problem, always keen to help.’
Back at the base, I unloaded the shopping I had bought, cans and biscuits for a midnight snack. Wash-bag in hand, my top off, shoes and socks off, I headed for the toilet, finding it signposted.
Someone flushed and exited a stall, a guy as short as Smurf.
‘Alright,’ I offered as I faced the mirror.
He stopped dead. ‘Fuck me.’
‘That’s not something I want to hear in the toilets, mate.’
‘What? Oh, yeah. Right.’ He smiled. Washing his hands, he said, ‘Thought it was just the three of us in this block.’
‘Newbies?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, you?’
‘Just got here, three month loan from the RAF.’
‘Loan, from the RAF?’ he puzzled.
‘Yep. They have to give me back afterwards.’
He headed off, but came back with another guy, taller and thicker set. The second guy said, ‘Are you him?’
‘Depends,’ I said as I washed.
‘You Wilco?’
I faced him. ‘Ever seen anyone built like this?’
‘Only on the telly. And you have the gunshot wounds.’
I carried on washing. ‘What are your nicknames?’
‘I’m Smudger,’ the guy I had first met informed me, ‘He’s Tarrant.’
‘And Tarrant is ...?’
‘Not my real name, no.’
‘What is it with the Army, eh,’ I said, sighing at my reflection in the mirror. ‘What Regiment did you come from?’
‘Paras,’ Smudger informed me.
‘Engineers,’ Tarrant said.
I faced Smudger. ‘You know Smurf?’
‘Yeah, he was two years ahead of me when I finished basic training. Ain’t spoken to him yet, not had the chance.’
‘I just had a bag of chips with him. He was with me at a medical research facility in Gloucester.’
‘Medical research?’ they queried.
‘They stick you on a treadmill all day with a tube down your throat.’
‘Ah,’ they realised.
‘Extra fifteen hundred quid a month.’
‘Fuck.’ They exchanged looks.
‘What squadron are you heading for?’ I asked.
‘Both ‘D’ Squadron,’ Smudger answered. ‘You?’
‘Same. So, we’ll be doing the basics together. You can help me out.’
They laughed. Smudger said, ‘They gave us the QMAR book last week, been reading up, got the forms.’
I nodded. ‘It helps.’
‘You get any money from that?’ Smudger asked.
‘At the time, extra fifteen hundred a month and four grand at the end, and ... good sex with the lady doctors.’
‘Yeah? Fuck! Where do we sign for that?’
‘Best be a bit more keen to stay here, these fuckers would use any excuse to bin you.’
‘Forty were with us six weeks ago, now just three of us.’
‘Sounds about right, but a lot of good men slip through the net, and some idiots get in – not you lads. I’ve met some real arseholes.’
‘Sergeant Tabby is difficult,’ they complained. ‘Binned one guy for leaning against a wall.’
‘I wouldn’t have. Sometimes, you need time to develop, and when I first joined up I was crap. It took time to get it right.’
At 7.30am we found the small – and very dated - canteen, just six people in it, but the food was OK, the three of us thick as thieves, the other guy missing since yesterday. Going back up for seconds, a guy told me get out of the way, and called me a wannabe.
I turned my head. ‘Talk to me like that again, tosser, and I’ll rip your fucking head off and shit down the fucking hole!’
He was surprised as much as stunned, the serving ladies freezing, the other guys staring up, and just as puzzled. They were ‘senior’ and I had just arrived.
‘What’s your fucking name?’ he finally asked, as if he might report me.
‘They call me Wilco,’ I said in a loud voice.
He took a step back. ‘Oh, you’re here then.’
‘Yes, and you ... you get out of my face.’ I took my tray and sat back down.
‘You looking to get binned on your first day?’ Smudger whispered.
‘I won’t take any crap,’ I quietly informed him, now being stared at.
After 8.45am we ambled to the Admin offices, but I was in civvys and they were in uniform. The SSM welcomed me with a warm smile, and pointed me towards stores after I had filled in a dozen forms, one form for the guy in stores.
The guy in stores was not SAS, he was regular Army, a clerk. He accepted the form. ‘So, you’re him then.’
‘I am, I’m afraid.’
‘Got boots?’
‘Three pairs already broken in.’
‘I can let you have two that were part broken in, a few weeks, someone who failed.’
‘I’ll try them.’
I made three trips back and forth with all the kit, got into uniform whilst using my old boots, and put a green cap on, no beret yet. Back in HQ Building, Admin Section, the numerous clerks had forms for me to fill in, sheets to read and to take away, a new ID card, and that took me up to lunch. I was not that hungry, but sat with my two new buddies, no sign of Smurf or Bob, few people around.
After lunch we headed to the squadron interest room, a bunch of people sat around and waiting, the SSM present and welcoming me. And I was being carefully observed by a guy with a black bushy moustache.
Sitting, the nearest guy said hello and shook my hand, then Major Bradley walked in with a captain. I stood, along with the two new guys, the rest did not bother.
‘Around here, Wilco, you’re not required to stand,’ the Major pointed out as he organised a file.
‘Am I allowed to stand, sir?’
‘Allowed to?’ he queried.
‘If I stand, and they don’t, then it separates my discipline and intent from theirs.’ That comment seemed to interest the captain.
The Major puzzled that, and made a face. ‘Stand if you wish. Oh, this is Captain Marks, the troop officer.’
I nodded at him, a polite smile offered, and we sat.
‘Right, for those who don’t know, we have with us today the legendary Wilco, who I understand has only threatened to punch out one person since breakfast.’ I resisted a smirk as they focused on me; the gossip travelled fast around here. ‘He’s here, he’s dangerous, so get used to the idea. We also have two new lads...’
‘I’m Smudger, and he’s Tarrant.’
‘Smudger and Tarrant, Paras and Engineers I believe. Right, you two with Sergeant Crab for basics. Wilco, who do you want for basics?’
‘Who has the most experience, sir?’
‘That would be the Sergeant Davies, known as Taffy Senior, because we have another Taffy here.’
‘I’d like him then,
sir.’
‘He’ll be pleased, he’s been desk bound for a while. He’ll give you the tour then start on the basics, then all weapons, and then we tick the boxes on courses. You settled in?’
‘Yes, sir, but I’ll get a flat as soon as I can.’
‘Why the hurry?’
‘Loud sex with lady friends, sir.’
They laughed. ‘Yeah, right,’ the man with the Village People moustache said.
I faced him with a dangerous expression on my face. ‘There’s only one thing to remember about me, and that is ... I’m better at pulling the birds than I am at running.’
‘It’s a small town, won’t take you long then to get around them then,’ the SSM offered. ‘Walking or running.’
The major opened his case and tossed me a beret, the guy with the moustache not looking pleased; I had not done selection.
Sergeant Davies was indeed pleased that I had asked for him, and there seemed to be no formal programme for training other than making it up as we went along, and ticking the boxes. He showed me around the base, a peak into the Killing House, the indoor range and then the classrooms, Intel and Admin, the Boat House, the apron and the big helicopter shed, Signals and Intel, and the medical bay. It was not a big base.
We then drove out to a nearby hill. He was now thirty six, married with four kids, and had served fifteen years with the SAS. He was 5’11’ tall, greying, slender, and instantly likeable and easy going.
We pulled up and jumped out. ‘Right,’ he began. ‘You asked about experience, so I’ll give you the benefit of mine. I served two tours in Aden when I first joined and I’ve completed more tours of North Ireland than I can remember, Falklands and Gulf, a few places in North Africa.
‘OK, see those woods. If someone is shooting at you, or you’re hiding because someone is about to shoot at you, trees are a bad idea.’
‘They are?’ I puzzled.
‘I have the scars to prove it,’ he said with a smile. ‘If you’re lying down behind those trees, and someone opens up with a machinegun, the trees are hit, and the trees splinter and you get splinters in your arse and legs, back of the head – I know, I had some removed by the medics. And if you’re in a tropical climate such splinters get infected quickly and ... you die three days later.’
I nodded as we ambled along.
‘See that open field. If I’m being shot at, I want a shell scrape out there, in the long grass, not in the woods. First place the bad guys will look for you is in the woods, so we teach our lads to find a good hiding hole out in the open, someplace that’s not so obvious.
‘And the best bullet stop there is are sandbags, because the sand dissipates the kinetic energy of the round best, solid objects don’t. Dirt is good, sand is better. And as with a tree, don’t lie down next to a brick wall. Someone hits the wall with automatic fire you get peppered in the arse with bits of brick, and it’s an important lesson – always think about the ricochet. We’ve lost more people to ricochet than we ever did to direct fire.
‘In Aden, we dug holes into the rocks and thought that they were great, solid rock around us. Then the rounds came in, down at an angle, hit the rocks behind us and peppered our legs with shrapnel. We took to putting sandbags inside the rock walls.
‘If you dig a foxhole in the soil then great, no ricochet. A round goes over you or misses, or it sinks into the soft mud. Another thing, and that’s webbing. Mate of mine, while I was in Northern Ireland, was shot in the shoulder, but he survived. Then they found many small bits of his webbing, which is basically like asbestos, through his body.
‘He died in agony years later. So if a bullet hits you, having passed through something, you get that inside you. Clothing, all clothing, creates an infection, unless its nylon or something like that. Stuff made from plastics doesn’t react inside the body.
‘Some of the lads, they would wear webbing around the belt, not over the shoulders, just in case. If you’re wearing a Bergen on your back, and a round goes through it and hits you, then you have small bits of your underwear in your lungs, and yesterday’s dinner leftovers.’
We stopped near the woods. ‘What would you say was a good fire position?’ he asked.
‘What am I expecting to come my way, and from what angle?’
‘An enemy patrol, coming up the valley.’
‘Edge of the woods would be my traditional military thinking.’
‘I’d be off to the side of the woods, with a good escape route behind me. Always have a way out before you get in. I’d want to know that if suddenly there are twenty of them, that I can crawl out and leg it without getting shot in the arse.’
He pointed. ‘Here, it seems like a good fire position, but if it gets hairy then I have to cross this road, and there’s no cover, so I’d want to be back up here, with a ridgeline to duck behind and escape along.’
‘Were you ever shot?’ I asked.
‘Directly no, ricochets - by the dozen, but I saw many men shot, gave first aid. It’s not like the movies, and when you’re shot you go down and stay down. In the movies they put on a handkerchief and get back up, keep fighting. Fact is, the body shuts down and you flop around like a fish, even from a wound to your lower arm. Get it in the shoulder and the lights go out pretty quickly.
‘In the movies they get back up, soon feeling better after a cup of tea. I saw a lad hit in the shoulder in Aden, and he had a hole like a ten pence piece on the front, but on the back you could see his bones and ribs, and they amputated his arm and shoulder and his lung and he was left looking like he had been sliced down the middle. Get hit with 7.62mm in the elbow and your arm comes off.’
I nodded as we walked.
‘Of course, there are the exceptions, and the human body is a strange thing. One of our lads in Aden was hit three times, each shoulder and in the head. He stood up, said “I think I might have been hit, Sarge”. We saw the blood, but thought it was ricochet from the rocks because no one believed the rounds had passed through him. And he survived. Rounds went through and missed everything important or solid, a fluke,’ he said with a smile as he remembered back.
‘9mm is a different case, and we use the Browning as you know, which they say is high power. It’s not, it was originally called “high capacity” because of the magazine, but was translated wrongly into English. It’s not that much more powerful than any other 9mm. Power is kinetic energy, which is the weight of the round multiplied by the speed. The weights are all the same, the speeds similar.
‘What makes a difference is the weight of the pistol and the strength of the spring, and a good grip. When the round is fired the pistol moves back, and that lowers the momentum of the round fired. If the pistol is firm and heavy, more momentum is transferred to the bullet. Simple really.’
‘I did the armourers course in the RAF.’
‘You did? Oh, well that helps then. Here they favour the M16, but I don’t like it. It’s light to carry, high speed round with a high spin - so accurate, but an AK47 with its 7.62mm will punch through a car door better. More reliable as well. Still, the metal on the M16 is good for cleaning, better than the old SLRs we had, they were always a pain to clean in Aden, and they jammed a lot with the sand.’
We had lunch in a pub in uniform, which was apparently not allowed but often ignored, much talk of Aden, then wandered through the woods looking at fire positions, and how to spot if someone had used the woods. He found a few footprints.
‘So, when did it rain last?’ he asked.
‘Not for a couple of days,’ I said.
‘If the depression has water, then you ask yourself when it rained. If it rained last night, and the depression has not got water, then maybe the impression was left today, recently. If it has small bits of leaves in it, then it’s been standing for a few days, and as time goes on the sharp edges get rounder, so ... I’d say that impression was from last weekend’s hill walkers.’ He pointed. ‘That was from yesterday.’
I knelt down and had a good look at
it, getting an appreciation for what to look out for. He taught me exactly what to look for, tracks to and from the nearest water source, finding an enemy’s toilet and having a peek – working out how many of them there were, and how they were eating. If there were indentations from sleeping bags, how to count them up and gauge their numbers.
He gave me the talk about denying who I was, keeping things hidden, talking in code around civilians, then agreed that it was all a loud of crap because everyone local knew, and the ex-members sat in the bars and blabbed all day and blabbed all night. Still, he cautioned against being too obvious because the IRA might come calling.
‘How many of your lads have ever been assassinated on the UK mainland, off-duty or ex-members?’
‘Well ... none,’ he agreed.
‘Exactly,’ I said.
Walking along through the woods, he hinted at things. ‘There are ... layers to every organisation, especially this one, and there are ... good people, great people, and people who mouth off down the pub.
‘There are operations that go on that most people here don’t know about, and we keep it that way. There are operations that we lend lads out to, and even we don’t know what happened. The test ... is if the detail gets known. If it does, then that person gets no more operations of that kind.’
‘And Rizzo?’
‘Likes to blab. He’s very good, great in Northern Ireland – he has six confirmed kills, but he likes to tell stories of his heroic deeds. I don’t think he has done anything ... special. Whereas...’
‘Whereas ... what?’ I asked without looking around.
‘Rumours have you down as having done a few.’
‘Must just be rumours, because as an RAF Regiment grunt guarding the main gate I’d not be asked to do anything like you’re suggesting. And, if I did, I’d not tell anyone ... because I don’t trust any fucker. Does ... the average lad here think I may have undertaken such assignments?’
‘No, just those of us that read between the lines, and before Major Bradley came to see you, he had a visit – about you.’
‘Ah. The penny just dropped,’ I said with a smile.
‘Here, men go on courses all the time, so ... no one asks where they’ve been for a week.’
