by Geoff Wolak
‘First, let’s look at that stomach wound.’ I pinched his lose skin. ‘On the abdomen, front and back, the skin is lose, not attached, and it moves when you do sit-ups. Under the skin is muscle in a sheath, and it moves as well. Under the muscle are the intestines, and they’re not bolted down, and they move, but there’s no air inside and so it’s all pressurised.
‘If you stick a needle under the skin and blow, the skin comes away and you blow up like a balloon. Get shot, and the blood moves into that space. So you see a wound to the stomach, get a pad on and – what the fuck – the guy dies quickly.
‘That’s because you can’t see the blood pooling around the intestine. Don’t put a pad on, put a pad in – inside. Ram it in. Put a cloth around your finger and shove it in, deep, leave it there. Use a tampon, they’re perfect.
‘What you’re trying to do is block the gap around the broken artery with something. Just putting a pad on top stops the blood leaving the body, but it doesn’t stop the flow. Shove a tampon in and you help to stop the flow.
‘Now, write this down - shirt on for a minute please,’ I told my helper. ‘How long it takes to die from different wounds, how long to lose brain capacity and coherence, organ failure.’
I wrote across the white board a grid, and filled them in.
‘OK, let’s take the slowest quadrant. Minor wound, blood loss is unstoppable. First, victim loses internal heat integrity whilst maintaining coherence. Second, a slow reduction in coherence being an outside indicator as to what’s going in inside, i.e, less oxygen to the brain.
‘Third, loss of capacity, and then he’s asleep. And this process could take hours. Fourth, minor organ failure due to prolonged low blood pressure, including his eyesight should he regain consciousness.
‘Fourth, heart beat affected, and now it gets serious. Lung’s try to compensate, rapid shallow breathing. Five, major organ failure after a prolonged period of shock, hypovolemic shock – blood loss.
‘Organ failure is serious, but secondary to the heartbeat. In the old days you would raise the legs to get more blood into the chest. Can’t help to try.
‘Finally, heart interruption, and artificial means to keep it going, such as CPR. What we have is a timeline, and that timeline could be ten hours or ten minutes depending on where you’re shot. What you need to do ... when a man is shot, is figure the timeline and the stages.
‘Maybe you’re a long way from an ambulance with a moderate wound. A stomach wound that is flowing, I’d say three hours tops to heart interruption. Now, one thing to consider here is ... what if he lives? If you have someone slowly bleeding out over many hours, and they survive, damage has been done to the organs, and he’ll be off sick for three months or more.
‘The reason we study that ... is to emphasis the speed needed to get him to hospital, but also to get access to oxygen. As blood loss causes organ failure, oxygen through a mask reverses that organ failure. If you’re shot, oxygen is your best friend. What we learn ... is that a man that gets oxygen quickly leaves hospital three days later, off work for a month. A man that has a delay is in hospital for six weeks, and takes a year to fully recover.
‘Gentlemen, any delay whist blood pressure is down is a problem for recovery. One hour’s delay adds on a month’s recovery. If you want to be clever, have a small oxygen cylinder in the boot of the car. Your buddy is shot, drive towards the hospital, meet the ambulance, push the fucking paramedic out the way, turn on the oxygen and get your buddy breathing it.
‘Just twenty minutes difference could mean a return to duty or ... being sluggish for the rest of your life. People think about the first aid, they don’t think about the recovery times.’
The sergeant put in, ‘Mate of mine was shot, about three hours to get to hospital, three fucking months to get back on his feet, and no oxygen from the paramedic, he just had a bag ready.’
‘Dickhead of a paramedic,’ I said. ‘Grab the oxygen next time, punch the paramedic if he’s in your way. Be insistent.’
‘I fucking will,’ he threatened.
After lunch we moved on to diagnosis, an unconscious man – but why?
At 4pm the captain stepped in. ‘Well, Sergeant, how’s he doing?’
‘Knows more than anyone else around here, sir. I’ve learnt a few knew things.’
‘Good. You can add them in to the next course.’
The next day was theory, the basics of body-guarding, what to do and what not to do, and what you should never do. At the end he asked about questions.
I raised my hand. ‘I was driving a Group Captain, stuck in traffic in London, suddenly a girl’s head impacts his window, the woman then stabbed by some guy. Do you get out the car or not?’
‘Good question, and a very difficult question. Your first priority is the principal, and his safety. If ... his safety is not in doubt, and you witness a serious crime or accident, then it’s a judgement call as to what to do. Best policy is to call the police and drive off, even if you feel like a cunt for doing so.
‘I’ve been in situations just like that, and they’re hard to call, because if you get out the car and deal with some idiot then someone might walk up and shoot the principal. The answer is – never go far, call the police, and never forget that if you’re driving down a country lane, car accident ahead, maybe that accident was staged. Maybe it’s an ambush.
‘If they know the route you take it’s easy to set an ambush, so you need to be wary. Best stay inside the vehicle, ready to reverse out of there, and the windscreen will help against a 9mm being fired. Your first priority is the VIP, so you won’t get prosecuted for not stopping, but there was a case where a driver failed to offer first aid, and was bollocked for it by the press, so ... it’s a fine line.
‘If you see some kid knocked over, and you drive off, the newspapers will go after you, and the poor fucking politician in the back will be telling you to stop and give first aid because he knows that if you drive off he’ll be torn apart by the fucking press. Any more questions?’
I raised my hand again.
‘Another difficult question?’ he asked with a sigh, the captain having returned.
‘Easy one, Sarge. You’re on foot, outside a hotel, man pulls a gun, you shoot once, he goes down, you’re waiting the car. The assailant is not quite so dead, starts to reach for his pistol, street full of witnesses.’
‘You are being a bit of cunt to me today, aren’t you.’ They laughed. ‘OK, he’s shot, you’re cowering in corner, principal behind you, vehicle soon to arrive, the assailant reaches for his pistol. What the rules say is that you fire again. What the British press say is that they’ll crucify you if you do. You run over, kick away the pistol, run back.
‘But, that leaves the principal exposed, and there could be more assailants on the street. So, it’s a tricky one. You are ordered to, and authorised to, fire again, but you can expect a very nasty enquiry and some smart civil rights lawyer arguing for you to be prosecuted.’
I raised a hand. ‘Say you fired three times at the start.’
‘Right, excessive force or good practice? SAS tactics are two shoots high in the chest, just to be sure. Two is standard. Three is one more than two, but could someone argue excessive force, a shoot to kill policy – as they do in Northern Ireland?
‘Simple answer is - when the enquiry comes around you say you panicked, and you were not quite sure how many times you fired, and no one can argue with that. Do you have any ... simple questions, Wilco?’
‘Yes. You shot the man, he lays still, vehicle arrives five minutes later. As you move the principal forwards the body reaches for his pistol, you shoot him in the head as you pass.’
‘OK, in such a circumstance you end up in prison, even though you did the right thing, because the post mortem is not going to show when he died, or if he was capable of moving. If there’s CCTV, you might be lucky, but to a bystander on the road you just executed a wounded man, and you’re fucked.’
A loud debate broke ou
t, many questions fired.
The captain walked to the front and called for quiet. ‘If you’re a policeman with a gun then you have responsibilities, and we don’t let just any fucker carry a pistol – point in question. Every time you take your pistol out the holster it’s an enquiry, shoot someone and it’s a lengthy enquiry. If you have a problem with that – fuck off now and do something else.’
He took in the faces. ‘Wilco is right to ask the questions and try and get some answers, because it’s a fucking minefield of red tape and legislation for you to take out a pistol and shoot someone on a British street. Do it without due care, you go to prison, something for all of you to think about.
‘One MP used his service pistol to shoot his neighbour’s dog after that dog jumped the fence and bit his young son. He got six months in prison and kicked out the service.
‘One MP pulled his pistol on a lady that had shouted threats at a Minister, and she won the court case and he was dismissed from the service; reckless endangerment.
‘You will be taught to think fast and move fast, but in a blink of an eye you can make a mistake. My personal policy is ... let them fire first as I body block the principal. Might get me wounded or killed, but not in a prison cell for the rest of my life.
‘But British streets are very different to say Bogota, Colombia. If you draw and shoot there you won’t be called to account so much, so long as there was a clear threat. In Africa you’re unlikely to be prosecuted. In London, if you look at someone the wrong way they launch a complaint against us.
‘A friend of mine had his career wrecked because he refused to drive home a prostitute for a senior figure. Gentlemen, what you’re being asked to do is tough, so you better be very sure about what it is you think you’ve let yourselves in for.’
It was food for thought, and the thought of prison scared the hell out of me.
The next day was spent getting an explanation of the Foreign Office risk analysis reports, and liaising with local embassies about the current threat levels in a given country or area, and the rest of the week was briefings on threat level assessments.
I hung around on the weekend, a few remaining since they lived a long way off, and Frost and Calder helped me with police standard blocks and holds in the base gym, a curry Saturday night – my arms sore.
The following week was all scenarios and theories, threat levels, route planning, the week after being counter surveillance, tricks and traps to test if you’re being observed or followed.
That led to an exam, four men kicked out for low scores, a surprise to me as we moved onto defensive driving followed by what looked like stock car racing. Helmets on, we raced around and rammed each other, rear-ended each other and pulled away, and tried a few handbrake turns.
At the end of the day, the captain gathered us all in the briefing room. ‘You all drive, hopefully you drive well, but few of you will have been bumped and rammed on a British street, so this is about getting used to it and not being surprised when it happens. You drive nice cars for senior men so you take care of those cars, not expecting to use them like dodgems.’
The next day was theory about chase cars, blocking, losing a tail, and we put it into practise that evening on local roads, radios used.
‘Suspicious car ... confirmed firearm seen ... lead car halt ready to block, principal car go, go, go ... block now!’
It was all great fun, and I was learning something new, and we took over an old airfield for a day, old bangers of cars used, pistols issued but with no ammo – or firing pins in them. Holsters on, pistol in – but told not to draw them, we practised manoeuvres, three car teams, one car blocking someone following.
That led to a roadblock situation, front car defending the principal car as it turned around and sped off. Tactics were taught for two-lane highways, so that an attacker’s car could not pull alongside the principal’s car.
After a day on pistol work, pulling quickly and firing blanks, moving and firing, stance, forward rolls, I was enjoying it greatly. I was running in the mornings, and in the evenings I was studying, or practising hand to hand with Calder and Frost.
We moved onto car bombs, many movies watched about car bombs around the world, a day spent on devices and what to look out for, but we were never allowed to try and defuse a device.
A guy from Northern Ireland then spent the day with us, going through all types of car bomb, as well as roadside devices, many films shown.
That led to another exam, a lengthy exam, four more kicked out. With no scores given to the rest of us, I asked about the scores.
‘You’re either good enough or not, pointless giving out the scores.’
I argued, ‘If there’s stuff I got wrong, I want to go back over it.’
‘Fair enough, ask the captain if you like.’
I did ask later. ‘You got just about 100%, so don’t worry, nothing to fix. Most of this lot are 60%. You study each night?’
I explained my diminishing list study aid, impressing him.
We moved onto team work, radios used, code words used, and with the colonel acting as principal we moved as a coordinated team, the colonel liking to fuck us about and leave his briefcase behind and have to go back, then stop and ask about toilets just as we brought the cars around.
Then next day, our “VIP” colonel faked a heart attack just to screw up our well-laid plans, and with a local hotel closed for renovation we had a twenty-eight hour assignment, rotas set-up, an eight man team, our colonel moving in and out the closed bar, up to his room at random, back down again, or out to the local shop.
Someone let down the tyres on a car, a fake device was found after a routine search, and someone put a dog in the hotel, the mad animal barking at everyone – no one sure what to do with it. I eventually hit it with a fire extinguisher blast when no one was looking, and let the white-powdered dog out.
At the post mortem, the captain began, ‘Who killed the fucking dog?’
‘Dog, sir?’ men asked, all playing dumb.
‘Yes, we put a dog in there and someone choked it to death with white powder!’
‘What type of dog was it, sir?’ I asked, the men laughing.
‘One that barked! What’d you mean, what type of dog?’
‘What breed, in case I saw it, sir.’
‘How many fucking dogs did you see inside the hotel?’
‘Well, none, sir.’
‘So what does the breed matter?’
‘If I see it again I’ll know to look out for it, sir.’
The guys laughed.
‘Are you taking the piss!’
‘Oh no, sir. So what was the dog called?’
He gave me a pointed finger as the lads snickered. ‘Anyhow, good work on neutralising the dog. You spotted the bomb, you kept to the rota, you stayed alert, but you all missed the bomb under the table in the bar. Search properly. You also failed to check if the establishment’s fire alarm work, carbon monoxide alarms in place. We are responsible to ask, even if it’s a big posh hotel.’
The next task was pistol work, a great deal of pistol work, a variety of types, and I was tasked with helping to clean and maintain them. When firing blanks, one kept jamming, a “fail to load”. Stripped down, I showed the captain.
‘Wrong spring, sir.’
‘Yeah? Them someone is in trouble in the armoury. What would happen with live ammo?’
‘Be fine, sir, better than otherwise, but with blanks you don’t get the kick back, so it fails to reload.’
‘Had lots of trouble with blanks, they never work well.’
We moved onto a nearby range, a great deal of practise followed by more and more elaborate techniques. A few lads fired by mistake as they drew the weapon, one even got a scrape on his arm – and got shouted at, now off the course.
It was a toss-up between speed and safety, and we kept at it with blanks, drawing a hundred times a day, safety on and off. That progressed onto work with the old bangers, screeching around the old airfi
eld, pulling up, jumping out, drawing and firing, back inside and away, then in teams, covering fire in withdrawal as the principal – now wearing body armour and a helmet - was protected.
Four days in the cars, and we had each fired three hundred rounds, and now I was enjoying this, feeling like a bodyguard in some movie.
But the good times were about to end, a simple mistake, an accidental discharge by an RAF MP, and a man was hit, inside of the thigh of all places. I rushed in, did my best, and we drove him to the hospital as I tried to stop the bleeding, but his heart stopped, CPR on the back seat ineffective.
I was driven back by the captain, my clothes covered in blood, and he made me a cuppa after I washed my hands.
‘You OK?’
‘I couldn’t save him, sir,’ I said without lifting my eyes.
‘Did you do anything wrong?’
‘No, sir, but maybe if I had a full medical kit with me, haemostat...’
‘Carry one if you like, but it’s not your fault. The man could have got a round through the heart, or the neck. Be a big stink of an enquiry now, coroner’s report, you’ll have to state what you did.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
The mood was off, everyone given a day off, and on the following Monday we returned to lectures about global terrorism, the various geo-political groups, followed by a visit from an American, an ex-Secret Service guy, a long list of funny tails and screw-ups described.
Back on weapons, we moved onto the MP5 - the open-bolt automatic favourite of the SAS. We moved as teams, fired as teams, a great many rounds used up, time spent stripping and cleaning, and we were soon back onto pistols with blanks, drawing quickly, drawing as we ran, firing as we ran, in and out the cars.
The exercise that had been interrupted was repeated, live ammo, and no one got shot, but an MP shot out his own tyre by mistake – making the fast getaway damn hard.
We repeated the same scenario four times, a more complicated scenario in the afternoon repeated four times. That led us a nearby base, many new faces in civvy clothes, women and old men, ladies with prams. The aim of the exercise was simple: walk your principal down the street, spot the assassin, draw and fire blanks, get the principal out of there.
