Free Eye of the Storm by Peter Ratcliffe Page A

saw them again. They were immediately ‘RTU-ed’ (returned to unit), catching the next train out from the now famous Platform 2 at Hereford station.
    When we started Selection there were twenty men in each squad. The instructors make bets with each other as to how many men they can get rid of in three days. They stick with you, trying to rattle you, telling you that you have no chance of passing the course. Why not pack it in now, they say, because they are going to see to it that you fail.
    Once they have cracked a man and he’s quit trying and shuffled off to the truck, the first stage of his ignominious departure back to his unit, they move on to their next target and start work on him. One of them told me, ‘Right, Ratcliffe, you’re next to fail.’ To some candidates, however, the instructors don’t even have to say a word. These just quit of their own accord. Whatever they may have thought Selection was going to be like, it has turned out to be immeasurably worse. They don’t want to know any more, with the result that they come to view the initials ‘RTU’ with something approaching relief.
    So the thinning-out process continued relentlessly. On one occasion our instructors deliberately deprived us of sleep for three days and nights. They had us pitch our bivouac tents at the base of the great concrete spillways of a huge dam in the remote Elan Valley in mid-Wales, some 45 miles north-west of Hereford. Water thundered incessantly down the channels, and it was nearly impossible to sleep because of the constant roar of the torrent. As exhausted and battered as we were from all the frigging around during the day, we eventually dozed off, only to be awakened in the middle of the night. Over the roar of the dam run-off, the instructors shouted, ‘OK! Get your kit on. Let’s go, let’s go!’ And we were off on a fast march over the hill and back again, returning wearily to our bivouac area. Then, when they decided that we’d settled down, they woke us again and sent us out on a march like the one we’d just finished.
    By first light we were up again and marching over more hills. The SAS does not run, except when there is good reason to hurry – we march. And we march fast. So, to see if we had it in us, if we had the stamina and the willpower needed to make it through Selection, we marched and marched and marched, over or through any obstacle. We slithered through mud and stumbled over ankle-breaking rocks, climbed treacherous stone walls and risked tetanus, or worse, on rusty barbed wire. We waded, chest deep, through icy water. In the Brecon Beacons, where much of the course takes place, even August suns rarely last long enough to take the chill from the lakes and reservoirs. The water always seemed to be freezing to me. But I was damned if I was going to give in.
    Sometimes we’d finish a march and find the trucks waiting for us. They looked incredibly inviting, with their big canvas canopies to keep out the wind and the almost constantly pouring rain. We would be told to get in and everybody would breathe a secret sigh of relief. The torture was over. We were getting a ride, back to camp, with luck – to warmth and light and hot food and, best of all, sleep.
    But sometimes, too, an instructor would blow away our hopes. Once, just after we’d settled gratefully in the truck, one of the DS bellowed, ‘Right, everybody. Get back off the trucks. We’re going to march across the mountain for another twenty clicks [kilometres].’
    Without a murmur, because you dared not let them see that they were getting to you, we shouldered our bergens. Then, grabbing our weapons, we climbed off the tailgate and back out into the pouring rain. We had only marched about two hundred yards when one of the guys said, ‘Shit to this. I’ve had enough.’ There and then he packed it in. Leaving him behind, we marched another couple of hundred yards. Then the instructor shouted, ‘OK, lads. Stop. You’ve finished. You can