Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon Read online

  ‘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.

  Bored with our now established diet, I felt it was time for a change so went searching beside the small freshwater lake our island haven supplied. To one end of the water were some light green, rushlike plants. I have no idea what they were. By then I had already found several dozen new ideas to take back to my companions. None of my earlier finds had been any trouble, so I took a large handful of light green plant and ate everything. I would have done credit to a cow. For a brief moment all was fine, but then the agony hit me. A furious, sharp, searing pain shot down my gullet. I could hardly breathe. I broke into a ferocious sweat and then the most intense stomach cramps overwhelmed me. I retched and vomited everywhere. Nature has a strange way of protecting us and vomiting is an excellent method of eliminating poison. I had broken the rules and had paid for it. I do not know what it was I ate. However, if you are tempted to live off the land, do avoid those tall, thin, rush-like things at the end of a freshwater lake. They will make you sick.

  It is all very well finding food, but your catch has to be cooked. The books say you should find a metal container washed up on the beach and use that. Something akin to an old oil drum would do, once suitably cleaned. Real life is not so helpful. Have you ever tried to find a metal container on a beach these days? Everything is plastic and plastic melts when you heat it. We were saved by the policeman. Somehow he had managed to smuggle past our captors a complete mess tin and a packet of rice. I have no idea how he did it and he was not letting on. For sure these are not items that would fit easily into a cigar tube.

  We made it in the end, a week later, somewhat lighter and significantly unkempt. The SBS did send out helicopters to look for us while we tried to survive. They are another factor you can do without. The secret is not to look up when one flies over you. They make a loud noise and should give you reasonable warning to lie face down, camouflaged against Mother Earth. Its pilot, navigator or loadmaster will nevertheless be looking for you. Not only do they look forwards and sideways, they also look backwards. Consequently, if you look upwards once it has flown over, your white face will be perfectly contrasted against the green vegetation. You will be seen. It is essential to keep your head down until they have flown well past.

  You are not allowed to rest on your laurels in the SAS. A special skill, preferably more than one, is mandatory. The typical, traditional, SAS patrol comprises four men: demolitions, signals, language and medical. The medical man is usually called the patrol or SAS medic. In practice, each operative needs a grasp of every skill, but you need one who is in overall charge of each specialty. My first shot, being a medical student, was to become a patrol medic. I thought it would be easy. After all, I was dealing with medical problems every day in my civilian life. I was wrong. I had not realized the level of sophistication of SAS medical training delivered by its various medical courses. Needless to say, the teaching given by the UK’s medical schools to their students is no use whatsoever to the SAS medic operating behind enemy lines. The medical student learns to deal with patients on a hospital ward. The SAS operative may be working under a hedge somewhere, without the trappings of modern medical care. I failed my SAS medical course, I am ashamed to say. It was a failing I was happy not to advertise at the time. It was due to no other reason than my cockiness. I felt certain a medical student was bound to know all the answers. In the event, I failed as I did not know the dosage of certain commonly used medicines. Aspirin was one of them. I felt suitably chastened and did not attempt the course again.

  For the first time I began to have doubts as to whether my ambitions were viable. The vagotomy operation had highlighted how difficult it was to develop the skills a surgeon requires. If I were a patient, I would go for a manually adept surgeon for my operation, not necessarily a clever, hamfisted one. Intellect and manual ability do not always go together. It was difficult enough to become a surgeon, without the added complication of developing SAS skills as well. A small voice, Satanic this time spoke in my ear. I worried if I would ever make it. At times I even wondered whether I should forsake surgery altogether and take up soldiering full time. The SAS was certainly demonstrating there was an excellent, challenging life outside medicine. I would feel this way most often when I returned from SAS activities around the land. The moment I re-entered my hospital, however, I knew I could not turn my back on medicine. The Third World still beckoned and also orthopaedic surgery. I would simply have to find a way of doing them all.

>   Having failed the SAS medical course, I decided instead to become a signaller. It was a skill I thoroughly enjoyed. An SAS patrol is no use to anyone if it cannot report its findings to headquarters. I learned everything I could and was soon fortunate to win the Regimental signals prize. Morse code was vital. It is impossible. Dah, dah, dah, dit, dit, dit. The various combinations of dahs and dits are enormous. Eventually, I learned it from the back of my motorbike. To and from work every morning I would transpose the number plate of the car in front into Morse. Dit-dah, dah-dit-dit-dit, dah-dit-dah-dit, it might go. There I would be, ditting and dahing furiously at traffic-light stops all over London. Whatever my fellow commuters felt, it was an excellent way of learning the code.

  The aim of the signaller is to send his message in the shortest possible time. Out there are people who want to know what you are up to. Spending too long on the air allows them to work out both your location and who you are. The way a signaller handles his Morse key is as unique as a fingerprint. Everyone uses the same dits and dahs, but the way they can be sent over the air is variable. A trained operator, working for the other side, will pick this up and specifically identify location, signaller and unit from the nature of the dits and dahs. This is direction finding, or ‘DFing’ for short. Being DF’d is not a good idea. It is difficult to imagine, when you are in the back of beyond, that anyone can be listening at all, but they are. On one occasion I was asked to test a new military radio. It was big and bulky, but had all manner of knobs and buttons that allowed you to change frequencies as often as you liked. The earlier SAS radio, the PRC-316, had only a limited frequency choice. As a result it was easier to DF, despite being a lovely machine to use. The new design was meant to avoid such troubles.

  I took it to some woods near London and started sending fully encoded messages to our radio base. I do mean fully encoded. Fast, efficient message keying in numerical format, using destructible one-time pads, held by me and the radio base only. Security was as foolproof as it gets. And yet it wasn’t. Within five minutes of keying my first message, an unidentifiable but strong Morse message came over my set. Dit-dit-dit, dit-dah, dit-dit-dit. Dit-dit-dit, dit-dah, dit-dit-dit. Those are the Morse symbols of the letters ‘S.A.S.’ Someone, somewhere, had identified me on this new, marvellous, supposedly undetectable radio. Not only had they isolated my frequency, but they had established my unit, something a trained signaller would never transmit uncoded. I had been DF’d well and true. A very spooky feeling when stuck in gloomy woods near south London. Furthermore, it was impossible to say who had DF’d me. Russians, Americans, Chinese? I had no idea.