Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon (6 page)

The stress position is not without medical hazard. Inside the human body, immediately behind the collar bones, lie the major nerves to the arms and hands. When you stretch out your arms, these nerves also stretch. They do not like being pulled and are very sensitive to such things. Normally the human body would not stand for hours on end, arms outstretched against a wall. Should it do so, the prolonged pull on the nerves can damage them, albeit to a minor degree. On a number of occasions, after interrogation, I had tingling in my fingers and hands for several days before the nerves recovered. A worrying time for a future surgeon who relies on his hands to make a living.

Fortunately, not all your time is spent in the stress position. Occasionally, your guards will sit or kneel you on the floor, hands clasped behind your head, elbows and shoulders braced firmly backwards. The floor is normally concrete or gravel and extremely uncomfortable. Thus it continues for at least twenty-four hours, limited bread and water the only food provided. During this period you can expect to be interrogated five or six times.

Interrogation is carried out by the JSIW — Joint Services Interrogation Wing. These people come in all shapes, sizes and sexes and are not the most loved individuals from an SAS viewpoint. They can be aggressive, they can be peaceful. They can be nasty, they can be nice. You never know what they are going to be like until you are left alone with them. Sometimes you are blindfolded, at others you are allowed to see the questioner. It is easier, from a soldier’s viewpoint, if you remain blindfolded. That way you can remain in your own little world and allow no one to drag you from it. As with all SAS techniques, the secret is concentration, persistence and bloody-mindedness. Your captors, by fair means or foul, will attempt to drag from you details beyond the vital four. You, as their prisoner, must thwart such attempts.

‘What is your name?’

‘Villar, sir.’

‘What is your number?’

‘2419843, sir.’

‘What is your rank?’

‘Trooper, sir.’

‘What is your unit?’

‘I cannot answer that question, sir.’

‘What is your date of birth?’

‘28 April 1958, sir.’

‘What is your unit?’

‘I cannot answer that question, sir.’

‘Come on man. What is your goddam unit?’

‘I cannot answer that question, sir.’

So it goes on. To any question concerning anything other than the vital four, the reply is ‘I cannot answer that question, sir.’ It is important not to be drawn into long discussions with the interrogator. These people are highly trained for the job and can tie you in knots given half a chance. They are looking for that tiny chink in your armour to work on, so as to open it up into a huge chasm.

That first weekend I nearly gave the interrogators their chance. It was entirely my fault. The interrogator had been going at me with rapid-fire questions for ten continuous minutes. All he asked was the vital four, nothing else. It felt as if I was entering the spirit of competition, trying to answer his questions as fast as he put them to me. I was verbally stumbling to keep up. Then, unexpectedly, he asked ‘What is your unit?, just as if it was one of the vital four. Immediately, I replied ‘Twenty…’ and then stopped instantly. I had been a fraction away from saying 21 SAS. My military career would have been over if I had.

Overconfidence is your worst enemy. Years later it got me again, in yet another remote farm building, though this time in northern Scotland. Like a fool, I had allowed a guard dog to catch me trying to break into an ammunition storage depot. I should have killed it, but could not separate it from its handler. I thought I knew it all at that stage. I had already been through interrogation several times and felt I had seen anything JSIW could throw at me. I was wrong.

It was a routine interrogation. The questioner was being moderately unfriendly, thumping the side of what I thought was a riding boot with his swagger stick. I could only judge by sound as I was wallstanding and blindfolded. I was sure we were alone. Just the two of us. You put up a wall around you during interrogation - an invisible skin that you make as impermeable as possible. Gradually, the interrogator’s thumping lessened and his voice quietened. He began to sound almost reasonable, his questions again on the vital four. He even started to joke.

‘You’re a hitman for the Brownies, Villar, aren’t you?’ he asked, whispering into my right ear.

I laughed openly, hesitating before giving the standard, obstructive reply. I was totally relaxed, particularly as I was sure we were both alone. Then, suddenly, a loud voice shouted into my left ear ‘Answer!’ I jumped. It was an enormous shock. We had not been alone at all. Someone had broken my impermeable skin. I shut up immediately at that stage and put up the barriers. I had learned, however tempting it might appear, never to lower them again.

Interrogation appears a one-sided affair. All advantage seems to be with the questioner. Your only consolation is knowing it has to end sometime. It is not pleasant and there is no point in pretending that it is. You can make life difficult for your interrogator, however. Beyond firmly, but politely, refusing to answer anything other than the vital four, you can make yourself a very unpleasant specimen with which to deal. Peeing in your pants, and all down your trousers, is a good way. It makes you stink and puts the interrogator’s mind on other things. An alternative is to stay silent. Answer nothing at all, not even the vital four. Pretending to be ill, or inducing yourself to vomit, is another way. Again, it makes you smell and you are entitled to see a doctor at any time. This can offer a brief reprieve. However, the JSIW interrogators may not be SAS-trained, but are very shrewd. They have seen most of it before, but are also human and can have their own weaknesses exploited. Unfortunately, it is particularly uncomfortable standing for hours in the stress position with urine-soaked trousers. I have tried it. If you get it wrong and attempt to upset an interrogator who may be devoid of emotion, then you stand there feeling very silly indeed. Be careful when peeing in your pants. It does not always work.

Despite the enormous mental strain to which a soldier is subjected during interrogation, injuries are fortunately few. Apart from nerve damage, the main worry is psychological. For the SAS trainee or operative there is much at stake if he talks under pressure. It is the end of a Special Forces career.

Nothing emphasizes the loneliness of SAS service more than survival training. This is the art of staying alive, for indefinite periods, away from the normal lines of resupply. In the normal, ‘big’ army you will, or should, receive a regular supply of food and essentials. For an SAS operative, inside enemy territory, the situation is different. Resupply may not be physically possible. Even if it is, the act of resupplying may highlight the presence of an SAS patrol. The same applies should an operative escape after capture, with little more than the clothes in which he stands. Knowing how to live off the land that surrounds him is vital. This is the skill known as ‘combat survival’. Courses are run in various locations throughout the world. To be totally realistic, survival training should take place under hostile conditions. Not only should you survive, but you must not be caught doing so.

I learned my survival on a tiny Scottish island, when working alongside the Special Boat Squadron, or SBS. I cannot remember the exact mechanics, but one September the SBS engineered that four of us should be captured. We were unceremoniously tied and locked into a gents’ lavatory somewhere on the mainland coast and held prisoner for several hours. Then, at dead of night, we were manhandled on to a motorized fishing vessel, an MFV, and taken out to sea. It was very dark. We were made to strip, all clothes being taken from us, including underwear. This was a tragedy. The well-prepared SAS operative should have items of survival equipment littered over him. If surprised when behind enemy lines, the first thing to be ejected is the heavy Bergen rucksack. With it go the normal comforts of SAS covert life. To compensate for its loss, the operative should at all times wear his belt escape kit, with his slingless rifle never more than one arm’s length away. Within the escape kit should be sufficient equipment to survive for as long as required without resupply. Lightweight ponchos, minicompasses, flints, razor blades, fishing-hooks and line. The list is long. You can spend months tinkering with your escape kit, trying to squeeze as much as possible into the tiny spaces a military webbing belt will allow. Sometimes you would talk for hours with SAS colleagues on the best type of fish-hook or gill net, or the ideal form of windproof match. Escape kits are very personal things. Everyone has his own idea on the perfect design. Finally, in the unlikely event an operative should ever be separated from his escape kit, various items should be sewn into his clothes, boots and pockets.

Anything is fair game as far as survival is concerned. Even when fully stripped, it is your task to smuggle through as much as you can. You still have the inner folds of your cheeks, your anus, and your vagina should you be female, left to play with. The less squeamish spare not even a second thought when inserting a cigar tube laden with survival equipment up their tail end. It is probably my medical training, but I have always balked at the idea. Public school education perhaps. You must be careful when placing items up your anus. Having once spent six months of my civilian life working for a tail-end surgeon, I have seen all manner of things put in that never make it out again. Not without help from a doctor that is. Screwdrivers, spoons, whole vibrators, broom handles. Diversity in human taste never ceases to amaze me. The female vagina is effectively a blind-ended tube. Most items that go in will come out again easily enough. The anus is different. It is the bottom of a very long, open tube, starting with the mouth at the top. Should you pop something up it, it can keep going upwards rather than stay where it is. Lost forever, until a surgeon opens your belly to retrieve it. You have been warned.

That night we were cast ashore on an unidentifiable Scottish island. There was me, a policeman, a doctor and one other. In exchange for our nakedness, we were each given a pair of laceless, ill-fitting army boots, some coarse army trousers and a buttonless shirt. That was it, though we were also told not to swim to the neighbouring island. Gruinard Island, the SBS advised, had been used for anthrax experiments in the last war. It was still uninhabitable. The anthrax bacillus can survive for decades in soil. It is a particularly nasty way to die, causing large pustules and damage to your skin and other vital systems. There has never been anything fair about germ warfare.

Your first reaction, when cast ashore in the middle of nowhere, is to become obsessed by hunting for food. It is the wrong approach. Your priority, particularly in Scotland, must be shelter. You can easily survive for a couple of days on water alone. Exposure can kill you.

Near our landing we found a tiny cave, well sheltered from the wind in its small cove. My mistake was to build a fire at the back of the cave, rather than its entrance. Within seconds I had smoked the place out. The four of us coughed and choked for hours. I had managed to smuggle a small book of matches past our earlier search. The match supply was not limitless, so once lit, a fire had to be kept burning. The survival books are full of many different ways to light fires in the wild. Flints and tinder, bowstring and stick, and many more. In practice, anything other than a match is a challenge.

By the afternoon of our first day, the cave was well organized. We had arranged a somewhat flexible rota for keeping the fire ablaze and could then start looking for food. My first thought was to kill one of the few wild sheep I could see wandering the hills. I had no weapon, but if I could get close enough I did not think it would take much to break its neck. Two of us set about trying to catch the animal. Fortunately, no one else was there to see us.

I had always thought sheep were dumb, daft creatures whose sole contribution to life was to leave slimy droppings over Nature’s mountainsides and to give good company to mint sauce. Scottish specimens are different - and extremely tough. We had decided the best approach would be to corner it at one end of a small peninsula and drive it over the edge to its death on the rocks below. We forced it to the peninsula easily enough, but no sooner did it reach the edge, it turned. It had small horns and very dark eyes. It looked first at me, then at my companion, then back to me. I was obviously the chosen one. With a loud ‘Baaa!’ it charged, going full tilt. I could not stop it and was knocked flat, winded for the umpteenth time that year. My companion could not restrain himself and rolled around in uncontrollable mirth for ages. We decided at that stage a diet of seagulls’ eggs, limpets and dead cormorants was a safer, wiser choice.

The doctor was a problem. A charming man, he was qualified, unlike me at that point, and tried to apply logic and common sense to the situation. Sometimes it does not pay to think too much about the merits and disadvantages of SAS service. Sitting in the cave, tending the fire, he claimed searching for food used up more calories than were actually found. There was therefore no point, he argued, in looking for food at all. You would die quicker if you looked for it than if you sat and did nothing all day. He had a point, though none of us wanted to admit it. Sit he did, helping himself to the food the rest of us brought in. If you had spent eight hours bringing in a dozen limpets, two dandelion leaves and a cormorant’s egg, only to have them eaten by someone else, I assure you it would drive you over the edge. I nearly cracked. Likewise the policeman. To this day I do not know if the doctor was right in his analysis.

In this vegetarian era, shops are full of books on what can be eaten from the land. Buried at the bottom of my Bergen was a copy of Richard Mabey’s
Food For Free,
but the rucksack had long ago been confiscated. When that happens, you have to experiment. As I found to my cost, overconfidence does not pay. When faced with an unfamiliar food, you should first place it in the space between your lower lip and teeth. Keep it there for at least a minute. If it tastes reasonable then swallow a very small amount. Wait and see what happens. If you are still alive five minutes later, then swallow the lot.