Immediate Action (18 page)

    I felt quite subdued and started to get my head down.

    One of the DS, a fellow called Dave, was in the seat in front of me. The four drug smugglers got out of their seats and gave him a cuff on the head. I was just wondering what I was supposed to do about it when Dave turned around and grinned, "All right, mate?"

    It was four blokes coming back from a team job, routed through Hong Kong.

    "Good shirts!" Dave said. "Good job?"

    Yep.

    They'd obviously done their job somewhere in the Far East, and now they were settling down with their gin and tonics for a nice flight home. I thought again, I really hope I get in. I need to be here!

    "Any chance of a lift back?" they asked the DS. "You got your wagon there?"

    "Yeah, we can sort that out."

    Then they chatted away to us, which was wonderful. it was my first real contact with strangers from the squadrons.

    "How did you find it?"

    "Oh, it was good." I didn't know what to say. I just sat there smiling, not wanting to commit myself.

    "Have they told you if you've passed yet or not? Go on, Dave, tell them, don't be a wanker!"

    But he didn't.

    We arrived back in Hereford on a Friday morning and were given the rest of the day off.

    "Be back in the training wing eight o'clock tomorrow morning," the training wing sergeant major said That night everybody went out on the piss and had a really good night. Again, for all any of us knew, it might be the last time we'd ever be there. We turned up on Saturday morning with bad heads, stinking of beer and curries.

    The sergeant major said, "Right, combat survival, Monday morning, half eight. All the details are on the board. However… the following people, go and see the training major."

    We were sitting in the training wing lecture room, in three rows.

    I was at the end of one of them.

    He started reading out the names. He called out Mal's first. I couldn't believe it. Mal was good; as far as I was concerned, he was really switched on. I had to stand up to let him pass, and we exchanged a knowing glance. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. While I was still standing, the sergeant major called Raymond's name.

    Then Tom's. That was that then. Everybody from my patrol was getting binned. I just stayed standing up.

    There didn't seem much point in sitting down.

    My name wasn't called. Then I realized-maybe these were the people that had passed. Maybe it was the knobbers like me left behind that were going to be binned.

    Out of twenty-four who went to the jungle, there were eight of us left on the benches. The sergeant major made eye contact with each of us, then said, "Well done, That's another bit over with. Next is combat survival.

    Monday morning, half eight. Anybody got any medical problems?

    No, okay. Remember, you're not in yet."

    I thought: I've passed! There was no way I was going to fail combat survival.

    "Right then, fuck off. Everybody except McNab and Forbes. The training major wants you to stay behind."

    What was this about) Everybody-else left, a'nd the training major spoke to Forbes, the rupert, about officers' responsibilities and the extra duties he'd have to do.

    Then he said, "Right, McNab, do you know why I've got you here?"

    "No, I haven't got a clue."

    "You've passed. The only problem is, you've got to fucking watch yourself."

    "Why's that?"

    "We've got you down as gabby. just listen to what people have got to say and take it in. Don't gab off."

    As I walked from the lecture room, I couldn't work it out; I'd tried so hard to be the gray man. Then I remembered the incident with the explosives. I should have just shut up and taken the bollocking and let it go. But like an idiot, I hadn't. Luckily the training team had obviously made the decision that although I was a gabby git, I'd got what they wanted and just needed to be told to wind my neck in.

    Which I did. Fucking right I did. telephoned Debbie as soon as I found out I'd passed.

    She was excited; I was excited. The only obstacle now, I said, was three weeks of combat survival, and there was no way I was going to fail that.

    The feelings and thoughts I'd had about her in the jungle had evaporated as soon as I was back in the UK; I was firmly back in selfish mode.

    She'd kept her job because if I failed, I'd be going back to Germany for a while, but I didn't ask her how she was getting on; it was all me, me, me.

    By now there were eight of us left: myself, George, the Royal Engineer, a Household Cavalry officer, a para, two signalers, a gunner from the Royal Artillery, and jake, a member of the U.S Special Forces.

    He had come over with a colleague on a three-year secondment, but they still had to pass Selection first. Jake did; the other fellow failed the first month.

    All prone-to-capture units, from all three services, send their people on the combat survival course-aircrew, helicopter crew, Pathfinders from the Parachute Regiment, elements of the Royal Marines, and elements of the Royal Artillery, which has forward observation officers.

    After the jungle it was more like a holiday for the first couple of weeks, but we were warned that we could still be failed. An external agency, JSIW (joint Services Interrogation Wing), had the power to bin us. As the training wing sergeant major never stopped telling us, "You ain't in yet!"

    I was starting to talk to Johnny Two-Combs, who was already in.

    He was telling us about his Selection, for which he had done the winter combat survival course.

    "Two of the blokes landed up in hospital with trench foot," he said. "I got frost nip around my fingers and toes. You'll crack it in the good weather, it's a piece of piss. just keep your head down, find the biggest bush to hide in, and you'll be all right."

    It was the Regiment's responsibility to teach the survival phases.

    We learned how to tell the time by the sun, gather water, and forage for food-the most important aspect, I reckoned, being the equation between the energy spent finding something to eat and the energy to be got from eating it. We went to one of the training areas and learned how to build shelters. There was a permanent stand with shelters made out of leaves, branches, turf, and bin liners. It looked as though Wimpey's had won the contract. With my experience of making an A-frame, I knew there was no way I'd be making anything that looked remotely as professional.

    This stuff was all very interesting, but as far as I was concerned, I wanted to learn it only so I could pass. I looked at it as an embuggerance.

    Then people who had been prisoners came and spoke to us about their experiences, ranging from those who were in Colditz during the Second World War and prisoner of war camps in the Far East to the Korean and Vietnam wars and the indoctrination of Allied soldiers by the Communists. It was a humbling experience to hear about some of the women from S.O.E (Special Operations Executive) who were parachuted into Holland and France after minimal training, captured, and subjected to horrendous and prolonged torture. jaws dropped all around the room.

    I couldn't believe the outrageous inhumanity. "When I got captured," one woman said, "they took out a lot of frustrations on me.

    I was raped and burned." She had been kept in solitary confinement in freezing cold conditions and was continually abused, yet she was speaking as if she was talking about a shopping trip to Tesco's. I supposed it showed that the human body and mind could put up with a lot more than might be expected, but I couldn't help wondering how I would bear up under the hammer.

    We listened to an American pilot who had got shot down near the Choisin reservoir. He was still very much the all-American boy, dressed in a green bomber jacket with missing in action memorial badges and various flashes. It was easy to imagine his freckly face and light blond hair as a young man. He had landed up in a model prison that was used for propaganda purposes.

    He was held in a cell, but at least he was fed. He went through the mental problems of being incarcerated but survived and came back to his family, going straight back into the air force. The biggest problem he'd had, he said, was guilt. "I walked around with my head down for a long time," he said. "I couldn't handle being treated so well when so many others had suffered."

    The next speaker, a British infantry corporal in his late fifties, jumped to his feet. "There's no way you should feel guilty," he said.

    "I positively wish I'd been in your camp!" A soldier in the Glorious Glosters, he had been through a fearsome amount of indoctrination, on starvation rations. He caught dysentery and had to bung himself up with charcoal from the fire. Eventually he had been force-marched across North Korea in winter, without shoes. He saw many of his friends die on the march. He came home in shit state, having been beaten continually and lost all his teeth. He was so psychologically damaged by it all that he alienated himself from his family and ended up alone. "I've got over it all now," he said, "but I still don't buy anything Korean."

    That struck a chord with me; my dad's brother had been killed by the Japanese in a prisoner of war camp, and even forty years later Dad wouldn't buy anything made in japan.

    "How did you cope?" somebody asked.

    "I don't know. All I knew was that I didn't want to die."

    "Would you have signed all the confessions and so on if they'd asked you?"

    "Bloody right I would have. If it had meant getting food or getting shoes, I'd have confessed to being jack the Ripper. We sat there getting indoctrinated, and we nodded and agreed. Of course we did; it meant we got food."

    One speaker told us what a large part religion now played in his life, having found God during his time of capture. Another fellow had been a risoner of the Vietp cong for four years; when we asked him, "Did God play a part in your life?" he replied, "Yeah, it played a big part.

    Because when we had dysentery and I was shitting myself, the Bible was something that I could clean my arse with."

    We started going out on trips and visits. We went to see an old woman near Ross-on-Wye, a country person all her life, who knew every plant in creation. She had a beautiful garden and had tables covered with trays and trays of different flora. It was a funny scene, this frail old lady running around the fields and forests with a bunch of big boys towering over her and hanging on her every word.

    We were sent out on two- or three-day exercises to make our shelters, light a fire, forage about, put a few snares out. The non-Regiment characters were well into it; for some of them it was the biggest course they'd ever be on. Once they had passed they'd be qualified as combat survival instructors and could go back to their own units and train people in the techniques. All I wanted to do was get through it.

    One of the instructors, a massive old country boy with big red cheeks and hands the size of shovels, had been on the training team for years.

    He did the firefighting demonstrations and got to the one where he was rubbing two bits of wood together to start the fire. It was,quite a big thing for him; he obviously prided himself on his skill. So he's there and he's rubbing away, and nothing is happening.

    "Any minute now, lads, just you wait."

    Nothing.

    "Right, we'll give it another five minutes."

    He rubbed furiously, but still he couldn't do it. We had to move off to the next lecture, but about ten minutes into it he came running down the field, shouting, "It's started! Come and see!" We all had to troop back up the hill to save his pride.

    During these periods when we'd be going out and building shelters and living in them for two or three days at a time, we started roducing the stuff that we were p going to use on the last week of combat survival.

    They'd taught us how to make clothes out of animal skins, and weapons out of sticks and stones. People were spending hours making jackets out of bin liners and rabbit fur hats that would have passed muster at Ascot. I did the minimum I thought I needed to pass.

    On one of the exercises a large crate turned up.

    "Right lads," the sergeant major said. "Chicken time.

    The only problem is, there's only one chicken between every six of you.

    If you don't get one, you'll have to go to somebody who has one and hope he'll share it."

    We were sent to the bottom of the hill, the chickens were released, and on the command it was every man for himself. The Worzel Gummidge convention raced up the hill; I pulled off my combat jacket as I ran and threw it over the first hen within range. That night it was cooked in the fire and shared with three others.

    The old poachers came in and gabbed off about how to catch a salmon. We had one weird lecturer who worked for the Water Board, in charge of all the lakes.

    He was a real Herefordshire boy with a craggy old face and greasy blue nylon parka and a checked cap that was probably older than he was.

    He was in a world of his own as he passed on his expertise.

    "When you put your net out here, don't 'ee worry about that," he'd say mystifyingly, chuckling to himself on the riverbank as he seemed to remember old stories that he then didn't share with us. Then suddenly he was telling us, 'When you go into a pub, lads, make sure you've got your back to the wall." We were rolling up.

    The DS said to us afterward, "We let him get on with it because we don't want to upset him. He's, so good at what he does."

    After the first two weeks we'd had all the theory, we'd had all the practice, it was time to go and do it for real.