Shaun Clarke - Secret War in Arabia

Sa’id wept tears of blood.

‘Badged!’ Trooper Phil Ricketts said, proudly holding up his beige beret to re-examine the SAS winged-dagger badge stitched to it the previous day by his wife, Maggie. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

‘Believe it, you bleedin’ probationer,’ said Trooper ‘Gumboot’ Gillis, who was wearing his own brand-new badged beret. ‘You earned it, mate. We all did!’

‘I’m surprised I actually made it,’ said Andrew Winston, a huge black Barbadian, glancing around the crowded Paludrine Club and clearly proud to be allowed into it at last, ‘particularly as I almost gave up once or twice.’

‘We probably all thought about it,’ said Tom Purvis, ‘but that’s all we did. Otherwise we wouldn’t be drinking in here.’ He glanced around the noisy, smoky recreation room of 22 SAS Regiment. ‘We’re here because, although we may have thought about it, we didn’t actually give up.’

‘I thought about it once,’ Ricketts said. ‘I’ll have to admit that. Once – only once.’

He had done so during that final, awful night on the summit of Pen-y-fan. At other times during the 26 weeks of relentless physical and mental testing, he had wondered what he was doing there and if it was all worth it. But only that once had the thought of actually giving up crossed his mind – in the middle of that dark, stormy night in the Brecon Beacons, where, for one brief, despairing moment, he thought he had reached the end of his tether.

Even now, he could only look back on the rigours of Initial Selection, ‘Sickeners One and Two’, Continuation Training, Combat Training and, finally, the parachute course, with a feeling of disbelief that he had actually undergone it and lived to tell the tale. He had arrived at the SAS camp of Bradbury Lines, in the Hereford suburb of Redhill, in the full expectation that he was in for a rough time, but nothing had quite prepared him for just how rough it actually turned out to be.

‘What you are about to undergo,’ the Squadron Commander, Major Greenaway, had informed over a hundred recruits that first morning as they sat before him on rows of hard seats in the training wing theatre, or Blue Room, of Bradbury Lines, ‘is the most rigorous form of testing ever devised for healthy men. No matter how good you believe yourselves to be as soldiers – and if you didn’t think you were good, you wouldn’t be here now – you will find yourselves tested to the very limits of your endurance. Our selection process offers no mercy. You can fail at any point over the 26 weeks. Some will fail on the first day, some on the very last. If you are failed, you will find yourselves standing on Platform Four of Redhill Station, being RTU’d.’ A few of the listening men glanced at each other, but no one dared say a word. ‘There is no appeal,’ Greenaway continued. ‘Only a small number of you will manage to complete the course successfully – a very small number. Let that simple, brutal truth be your bible from this moment on.’

It was indeed a brutal truth, as Ricketts was to discover from the moment the briefing ended and the men were rushed from the Blue Room – passing under a sign reading ‘For many are called but few are chosen’ – to the Quartermaster’s stores to be kitted out with a bergen backpack, sleeping bag, webbed belts, a wet-weather poncho, water bottles, a heavy prismatic compass, a brew kit, three 24-hour ration packs and Ordnance Survey maps of the Brecon Beacons and Elan Valley, where the first three-day trial, known as Sickener One, would take place.

Once kitted out, they hurried from the QM’s stores to the armoury, where they were supplied with primitive Lee Enfield 303 rifles. Allocated their beds, or ‘bashas’, in the barracks of the training wing, they were allowed to drop their kit off in the ‘spider’ – an eight-legged dormitory area – and have a good lunch in the cookhouse. Immediately after that, the harsh selection process began.

‘Christ,’ Gumboot said, placing his pint glass on the table and licking his wet lips, ‘it seems a lot longer than it was. Only six months! It seems like six years.’

Ricketts remembered it only too well. The few days leading up to Sickener One were filled with rigorous weapons training and arduous runs, fully kitted, across the deceptively gentle hills of the Herefordshire countryside, each one longer and tougher than the one before, and all of them leading to a final slog up an ever-steeper gradient that tortured lungs and muscles.

The first of the crap-hats, or failures, were weeded out during those runs and humiliatingly RTU’d, or returned to their original unit. Those remaining, now fully aware of just how many failures there would be, instinctively drew into themselves, not wanting to become too friendly with those likely to soon suffer the same fate.

‘And to think,’ Tom Purvis said, shaking his head from side to side in wonder, ‘that at the time we thought nothing could be worse than Sickener One!’

‘It’s helpful not to know too much,’ Jock McGregor said.

‘It sure is, man,’ big Andrew added, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘If we’d known that Sickener One was just kids’ stuff compared to what was coming, we’d never have stuck it out for the rest.’

It was a greatly reduced number of SAS aspirants from various British Army regiments who had awakened in the early hours of a Saturday morning, showered, shaved, pulled on their olive-green uniforms, or OGs, picked up their rifles and dauntingly heavy bergens, then hurried out to the waiting four-ton Bedford trucks. After being driven north along the A470, they were eventually dropped off in the Elan Valley, in the Cambrian Mountains of mid-Wales. An area of murderously steep hills and towering ridges, it had been chosen for its difficult, dangerous terrain and harsh weather as the perfect testing ground for Sickener One. This gruelling three-day endurance test is based on hiking and climbing while humping a heavily packed bergen and weapons, then repeatedly ‘cross-graining the bukits’.

Derived from the Malay – Malaysia was where the exercise was first practised – this last expression means going from one summit or trig point to another by hiking up and down the steep, sometimes sheer hills rather than taking the easy route around them. It takes place in the most rugged terrain and the foulest weather imaginable, including fierce wind, rain or blinding fog. Each conquered summit is followed by another, and the slightest sign of reluctance on the part of the climber is met by a shower of abuse from a member of the directing staff (DS), or – a psychological killer – by the softly spoken suggestion that the candidate might find it more sensible to give up and return to the waiting Bedfords.

Those taking this advice seriously were instantly failed and placed on RTU, never to be given the chance to try again. This happened to many during the three days of Sickener One.

Those who survived the first day, even though exhausted and disorientated, then had to basha down at the most recent RV, or rendezvous, no matter how hostile the terrain. Invariably, when they did so, they were frozen and wet, often with swollen feet and shoulders blistered by the bergen. They were then forced to spend the night in the same appalling weather, eating 24-hour rations heated on portable hexamine stoves, drinking tea boiled on the same, before bedding down in sleeping bags protected from the elements only by waterproof ponchos.

Given the filthy, windy weather – for which that time of the year had been deliberately chosen – few of the men got much sleep and the next day, even wearier than before, they not only cross-grained more bukits, but were faced with the dreaded entrail ditch, filled with stagnant water and rotting sheep’s innards, standing in for the blood and bone of butchered humans. The candidates had to crawl through this vile mess on their bellies, face down, holding their rifles horizontally – it was known as the ‘leopard crawl’ – ignoring the stench, trying not to swallow any of the mess, though certainly swallowing their own bile when they brought it up. Failure to get through the entrail ditch was an RTU offence which further reduced the number of aspirants.