Seven Troop Read online

  'Fuck, have a look!' I pushed my cock towards Frank. The other two lads were rolling up.

  'Shame on you, Vicar.' Nish grinned from ear to ear. 'We turn our backs for ten minutes and you're having your evil way with the new choir boy.'

  The leech was very proud of himself, and rightly so. I kept him to one side for ten minutes or so while I tried to decide what to do with him. Eventually I gave him a burst of mozzie rep, which really pissed him off.

  By then the other two lads had their brew kit out and Nish was lying down having a fag. 'Well, Father Frank, what's going to happen now? Is this dearly departed leech going to heaven, and is this sick murderer going to hell?'

  11

  The next four or five days were spent in much the same way as the first few: two-man contact drills, four-man contact drills, always with live ammunition, white phosphorus grenades and high explosive (HE). Live firing had one great spin-off. The more HE and rounds thrown about, the more collateral damage there was for our cooking pots. Al's snake had been first in. It was gritty and tasted bitter, but half a bottle of Tabasco and some garlic soon sorted that out. Stan, who I finally discovered was a giant scorpion, didn't like it, though.

  We practised being attacked from the front, behind, left, right, then with a man wounded, so we'd have to move him out of the contact area, and when we were halfway through crossing a river, with two of the patrol already on one bank, two on the other – how did we deal with that under fire? On and on, drill after drill, day after day. I loved it.

  Then we moved on to ambushes: as we patrolled, we'd carry out the anti-ambush drills I'd learnt on Selection. We'd loop our track so we'd come off at an angle and back on to lay an ambush for anyone following. I learnt to lay Claymores at each end of the killing area as cut-offs, with others facing into the killing area to make it more 'kinetic' – a great military understatement.

  Again, it was always with live ammo. What's the point in training with blank ammunition? It means you're training for training. Live ammunition focuses the mind wonderfully. Or, as Nish said, leaves a fucking big hole in it.

  It was true. If you fuck up with live ammo, there's no going back. All you can do is keep the body alive until a helicopter arrives.

  The benefits outweigh the downsides. You gain more confidence in yourself and in your weapon and, most important of all, in the people around you. That's why the Regiment is the best there is at what it does. There have been plenty of casualties, even on Selection. But if the squadrons were wrapped up in cotton wool or had to listen to the health-and-safety brigade, there would be even more deaths – not in training but on operations. Then there would be even more hand-wringing.

  People tend to forget that the SAS are paid to fight, kill and perhaps be killed themselves. To make sure that the last doesn't happen too often, training has to be realistic and therefore dangerous. I felt very comfortable with it. I was a volunteer; no one had forced me to catch the sand-coloured beret.

  Life here was very clear. 'This is what we do, this is the way we do it. If you don't like it, get out. There are thousands wanting to take your place.'

  Every night, we'd brew up and waffle in the dark and the rain. By now I had some hair growing on my face, my kit was in shit state like everyone else's, I stank, I had zits like the others, and was starting to get into the routine of the kerfuddle and communal cooking. I'd brought a frying-pan that fitted nicely in the back of my Bergen, and everything I cooked I shared.

  I was joining in bits of conversations as I began to feel more comfortable around the guys. I liked them all. Nobody was being horrible to the new boy, trying to make him fall flat on his face. That stuff didn't happen in the Regiment. Everyone was a professional soldier getting on with his job. And, besides, I was on probation for a year; plenty of time to do my own falling.

  The only thing I didn't join in with was the piss-taking. I was so happy being in the squadron there was no way I was going to jeopardize my chances by getting on the wrong side of anyone.

  Frank was the friendliest to me and I always seemed to land up sitting next to him round the fire as he got a hard time from one or other of the troop. Maybe he saw me as moral support, or a good target for conversion.

  One particular night everybody was doing his own thing, brewing up and eating. Frank slapped me on the back as he added the rum to the punch. 'I can see the Regiment's occupying the number-one spot in your life, isn't it? You're ambitious, you want to go on and get all your skills. It's everything to you, isn't it?'

  'Course. Not much else matters.' I looked at him, surprised. I couldn't understand why he was even saying it. I thought everybody here would think the same way. Surely the only reason you joined the Regiment was to become the best soldier you possibly could be.

  Chris had just come back from prayers with Saddlebags. He fed the fire with wet wood. Nish lay on his pole-bed, moaning that the fresh clouds of smoke were interfering with his own.

  'OK, listen in. Boss L is pissed off with the honks. He knows it's Snapper starting them off. It has to stop right now.'

  On cue, a 'Hoooonk' rang out in the darkness.

  Everyone laughed, including Chris.

  Nish took a deep breath but Chris was waiting for it. 'Don't even think about it. We'll all be in the shit.'

  'Wasn't going to, mate. Just about to say Snapper must be deaf as well as mad.'

  The general waffle now was about Frank leaving for a few weeks to do some hearts-and-minds stuff alongside medics from other troops.

  Tiny was on the other side of the fire, once more reading The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Al sat next to him, on his rice sack, poring over a Bible like a detective at a crime scene. They were in their own little world, occasionally swapping notes and conferring.

  All of a sudden there was a frenzy of noise, voices and torchlight heading our way.

  A slow northern accent rang out from behind the torch. 'Mason hunt! Snapper and the anti-lodge approaching. Where's the new boy?'

  12

  Nish rolled out of his pole-bed as five guys came into the firelight.

  'Here he is – Andy.'

  Snapper went down on his haunches the other side of the smoke. He was very tall, with a flat face and a nose broken so badly it headed east when he was facing north. His accent was dramatic Lancashire, and he stretched the last word of each sentence until it broke. 'Andy, you a fookin' masoooon?'

  'What?'

  'Lodge, Andy. You a fookin' apron-wearer?'

  The other four were waffling with Nish about the new suntrap and passing round a mug of punch.

  'No, mate.'

  He stared at me. I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not. An apron-wearer? What the fuck was he on about?

  He stood and took the alloy mug that Saddlebags offered. Nish introduced me to the other four, who weren't as madlooking.

  Des Doom had thick dark curly hair and a face that said, 'Come and try it, if you think you're hard enough.' He was wearing a green vest that exposed arms and a chest that were meaty rather than muscle-toned. Every square inch of exposed skin was covered with Para Regiment tattoos and what looked like a Chinese takeaway menu without the English translation. He grinned as I took in the art gallery. 'If you don't want to talk to me, read me.'

  Harry was a Royal Marine and it stood out a mile. His looks could have sold toothpaste and there wasn't a zit in sight. Thankfully, he wasn't the full Adonis: he had more blond hair on his face than he had left on his head.

  Hillbilly looked like Chuck Connors's shorter and less successful brother. His nose was more squashed than Chuck's and his chin was a bit more bent out of shape. Miraculously for someone who was obviously no stranger to a fracas, all his teeth looked intact.

  Schwepsy also had blond hair, but his was thick and wild. His face was acne-scarred, but unlined. He clearly wasn't a man prone to worry.

  Snapper's manic eyes, still staring at me over the mug, told me all I needed to know about him. He finished the brew. 'OK, no
masons here. One more new boy to check.' He took a deep breath as they moved back into the darkness. 'Hoooonk!'

  Chris sniffed and shook his head as the rest pissed themselves with laughter. I felt I could join in on this one.

  The general waffle for the rest of the night was about the anti-masons. Snapper was obsessed: he was sure that freemasons were infiltrating the Regiment and it was his mission to expose and kick them out. He'd even set up a covert observation post (OP) opposite the Lodge in Hereford and filmed whoever turned up.

  Nish grinned. 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one's out to get you!'

  Des Doom, Hillbilly and Harry had all passed Selection with Nish in 1980.

  Hillbilly claimed to have a background in the Merchant Navy. In fact, he'd been a croupier aboard a cruise ship. The navy wouldn't let him apply for the SAS so he'd had to leave and become a civilian. He'd been on the dole in Hereford while training for Selection.

  Schwepsy had been an instructor at Depot Para in a past life, and looked perfect for the role. There was a frustrated RSM inside him.

  Snapper? Well, the conversation went on and on about him. He was a regimental institution. Mirbat, Kubat – all the Aden battles – and back again. He'd also been in the Falklands and on the embassy job. He'd had 'B Squadron Smoke Embassy' emblazoned on his T-shirt.

  Snapper had been sent to Hong Kong once to train the Gurkhas in unarmed combat. He'd had a punch-up in a pub and become the last British soldier to be publicly flogged. He said he didn't think it'd hurt much – but then the biggest Chinese he'd ever seen in his life came out with the longest cane in history. He got six strokes, and for months he claimed to be the only sergeant with twelve stripes: 'Three on each arm and six on my arrrrse!'

  Snapper knew he was sane and had a bit of paper to prove it. Al voiced what the new boy could only think: 'That means he really is mad, doesn't it?'

  The thought of having a bit of paper to show you're OK in the head sounded great to me. I wanted one.

  Things started to die down around the fire as we had a mug of punch and sorted our shit out, but the tranquillity didn't last long. Behind his mozzie net, Nish used a box of ration-pack matches to get another No. 6 on the go. He propped himself on one elbow and shouted into an imaginary mike, 'Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. My name is Nish Bruce, and I'm your Red Devils commentator for this afternoon's display. About three minutes from now, the aircraft will appear overhead. I'll just see where they are now . . .' He rolled over and stuck his head out from his mozzie net, peering up at the canopy. 'Today we have eight jumpers in the aircraft, including His Holiness Frank, Certifiable Snapper – What happens when a paranoid has low self-esteem? He thinks that nobody important is out to get him, ba-boom – and the newest member of the team, young Trooper Andy from Sarrrf London, and this is his first display . . .'

  Al had had enough and threw a log at him. Nish fell out of his pole-bed trying to avoid getting hit.

  Frank leant over to me. 'Nish knows about freefall. He was in the Red Devils. Got about three thousand jumps in his log book.'

  Tiny muttered, 'Here we go, two crap hats talking about the airborne.' He didn't even look up.

  Frank wasn't Para Reg, but a scaley (signaller) attached to Hereford before he did Selection, because that was the only way they could apply.

  Nish brushed himself down and came over to join us. 'Oi, Father Frank, tell him who's the daddy . . . Who got wet in the Falklands, eh?'

  13

  The interrogation phase of Nish's Selection had ended on a Saturday night in May 1982. 'By first thing Sunday morning, me and the other four dickheads you just met were badged and screaming round the Lines (the camp in Hereford) getting issued with kit and zeroing weapons.'

  An Exocet missile fired by a Super Étendard had taken out HMS Sheffield, with the loss of twenty crew. Downing Street were shitting themselves: if the same thing happened to an aircraft-carrier, it could mean the end of the war before the islands had been reclaimed.

  The head shed (command) started to look at ways of destroying Étendards and Exocets on the ground. While Nish had been pissing around on Combat Survival, Frank and the rest of this lot had been training for an assault on Argentina.

  One option was for a pair of C-130s (Hercules transport aircraft) to fly from Ascension Island into Argentina and deliver them directly on target. The two airfields were Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos, either side of the Strait of Magellan, at the very tip of South America. B Squadron practised flying under radar at Heathrow and doing mock assaults on airfields all over the UK.

  B Squadron patrols were already on mainland Argentina, setting up OPs. They started sending information back to Hereford and a plan of attack was formulated. The aircraft would be circling out at sea. When they got the all-clear from the OPs, they would fly in below the radar and land in the airfield. As soon as the ramp dropped, out would stream the motorbikes and cut-down Land Rovers. They carried machineguns and M202s, American-made, multi-barrelled white phosphorus grenade-launchers. Air Troop would bomb-burst into small groups to take out the control tower, blow the fuel tanks and attack the accommodation blocks to kill the pilots.

  But time was tight. A military base two miles away housed a couple of thousand Argentine marines. Escape options were limited. The nearest British Task Force ship would be five hundred miles away, and helicopters had the fuel capacity to reach the mainland but not get home again so there would be no pick-up after the job. That only left the border, forty miles away, in vehicles or tabbing. They'd have to get there and give themselves up to the Chileans.

  But that wasn't the only plan the head shed was considering. The troop left Brize Norton. Nish got chosen for the advance party because of his freefall experience, even though he was so new he didn't have any patrol skills. Seven Troop would jump into the attack and be first on the ground, taking out the pilots and control tower as the rest of the squadron flew in, landed and destroyed the aircraft.

  The winds in the area averaged about forty m.p.h. at that time of year so there were six guys in each patrol instead of the normal four – they didn't expect everyone to get down in one piece.

  They reached Ascension Island. They wanted to close down the airfield so they could practise the drop. A C-130 was going to fly in low, climb again to 600 feet, its maximum height for the radar, and they'd jump off the tailgate.

  Nish didn't know it yet, but nobody in any Air Troop had ever jumped from so low. Even he wondered if he'd stay stable enough on exit to pull the handle immediately, but he kept his mouth shut. He thought the head sheds must know what they were talking about.

  He had kept his doubts to himself right up until the point where Ken, the troop sergeant, whom I was yet to meet, asked if they should do the dummy run with or without the chainsaws needed to cut through chain-link fences.

  Frank said the OC (officer commanding a squadron) had already been binned because he'd said it was a suicide mission.

  Tiny gave a jerk of his wrist. 'That's because he was a crap hat.'

  Nish smiled. 'Yeah. Anyway, what's the point of practising something you can only fuck up once?' He gassed a bunch of mozzies with a lungful of smoke. 'We got the warning order: leave in twelve hours. I was jumping with just a chainsaw, no other kit. The rest of my gear was in one of the Land Rovers.

  'Then we were told there was a delay. Then that it had been put on hold. Then it was on again, but changed. Fuck me, it went on like that all week. Apparently Thatcher wasn't happy about the predicted sixty per cent casualty rate. The crabs (RAF) weren't too thrilled either about having to dump the aircraft and have the crew tab to Chile with us.'