The only things you have to watch out for with snakes is surprising one in the latrine, in a thatched roof or in your sleeping bag. If cornered a lot of snakes will go for you and many will kill you. They are surprisingly fast. Take no chances. Assume the snake is poisonous unless you are an expert.
A friend of mine, the author Yves Debay from the Belgian Congo, came across a highly poisonous adder in his sleeping bag. Being of that frame of mind he killed it with his knife, skinned it and ate it raw. Snake tastes like chicken, better if you are hungry. Some Africans have a big issue with snakes, considering them to be taboo or evil spirits or some such thing. Yves was held in awe by many Africans. Some Europeans too come to think of it.
Big critters
Of all the big cats, leopards eat by far the most people and even come into town to eat dogs left outside at night. They won’t approach a bunch of men, and neither will lions. Tigers, however, will occasionally creep up behind and take a man from the back. Where there are tiger, the locals often wear a mask on the back of the head as they allegedly won’t attack someone facing them.
Elephant are smart and don’t look for trouble unless they are males and it is breeding season – when they go a bit crazy like some Airborne types I know. If you bump into them they will generally walk off after a bit of a song and dance. Hippos can be very nasty in the water as they protect their territory. But out of the water they are about the same as rhino – bad tempered but hassling you is too much trouble unless you really piss them off.
Water buffalo are no trouble but African plains buffalo are the most dangerous creature on earth. If you shoot one or two they will keep coming until they overwhelm you. If you climb a tree they will wait around the bottom until you fall out of it. Leave them well alone. Many years ago a civilian friend of mine was working in finance in East Africa. He was out on some sort of safari and a buffalo attacked him. It managed to hook one of its horns in his arse-hole and swing him about a bit like a balloon on a stick. Did him no good at all.
FITNESS FOR BATTLE
Many people think, because there is such an emphasis on fitness in the training of soldiers, that fitness and athletic performance are all-important components of a soldier’s efficiency.
The truth, as is so often the case, is a little more complicated than that.
Keeping a clear head
As you will gather from elsewhere in this book, and personal experience when you get it, soldiering is mostly about endless walking carrying heavy kit. Perhaps less so with the increasing use of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) for infantry but when you have to patrol in town or country, and especially as Special Forces, your soldiering has to be done on foot at least some of the time.
It doesn’t take a great deal of fitness to do a four-hour patrol on a spring day but it does in the desert sun. And the thing is, any insurgent worth the name will know to hit you when you are on the last half hour of your patrol. Just like they try to hit you in the last days of a tour. If you are not fit by the end of a patrol your concentration will be ebbing and your reactions will be slow. This will get you or your mates killed.
So, the purpose of general fitness in a combat soldier is not just the ability to make the occasional mad dash to engage the enemy or the skirmish forward that happens in conventional warfare now and again, it is the ability to keep a clear head and rapid reaction time after hard work – ready for anything exciting that happens wherever you happen to be.
Training
The last thing you want in a soldier is to be over weight. A fat soldier cannot do his job; firstly because he probably can’t carry his body plus his kit the necessary miles but also because part way through the patrol he will become dizzy with exhaustion and switch off. This inability to stay alert and spot potential trouble makes him a liability to himself and to his mates.
The next worst thing is a bulked-up, muscle-bound soldier. Yes, really, despite what you see on the TV! This is because muscle is great for looking tough in movies and lifting heavy weights but it is a real drag on the heart when you have to run or walk long distances. You don’t get any benefit from big biceps when you are running but they constitute extra weight to carry and, worst of all, your heart has to feed them with oxygenated blood which detracts from what is available to power your legs. What you want is to be slim and fast. A soldier should look like a marathon runner; and all long distance runners are thin.
Test of willpower
Elite units and Special Forces often have a selection procedure which involves either extreme standards of fitness or, and this is slightly different, the requirement to cover great distances on foot, carrying weight in a pack.
TOP TIP!
Training gets boring after a while so I suggest you play football, basketball or similar for fitness and do long marches several times a week for stamina. I personally used to box as an incentive to fitness. This is a great motivator as if you are not fit in the ring you get hit a lot.
Very high standards of fitness tend to be one of the factors which increase aggression in young men. This is just what is wanted in a force like the British Parachute Regiment or the US Airborne and the leadership has to put up with a certain amount of exuberance. Fighting in bars and so forth.
Covering great distances on foot day after day while carrying a heavy pack does require fitness but not extremely so. What it does call for in large amounts is will power – the mindset that keeps a man going when he is tired and blistered. Through experience it has been found in the British Army, and the SAS in particular, that a man who will keep himself going when his body has had enough is the sort of man who, without the support of comrades or an officer to tell him what to do, will keep going and accomplish his mission.
To give you an idea of what is required, consecutive daily SAS selection marches are in the 20+ mile range, testing marches are 30 to 40 miles and we once did a march of 65 miles, over mountains at night and carrying 65lb packs in 14 hours and 20 minutes.
Tom doing the ‘Fan Dance’ carrying a GPMG: all British Special Forces soldiers climb Pen Y Fan as part of an endurance march. For decades the Fan Dance has been a crucial part of SAS selection. Part of the Brecon Beacons and the highest mountain in South Wales, Pen Y Fan feels higher than it actually is when you are carrying a 44lb Bergen and rifle. As recently as 2011 a recruit died just 700m from the finish line during the selection process. (Photo courtesy Tom Blakey)
Shin splints
Some soldiers are more prone to ‘shin splints’ or ‘stress fractures’ in the lower leg than others. What happens is that continual running over months or years, in boots particularly, and on hard surfaces such as concrete or asphalt causes a crack to appear in the shin bone by the constant shock of the heel hitting the ground.
The Author – way too heavy for an infantry soldier. (Author’s Collection)
I used to get this as a recurring problem and the medics experimented on me with heat induction to speed healing. Maybe there is something clever they can do nowadays but the best thing is not to get a splint in the first place. In the ‘old days’ we always had to run in boots. And there was no ‘give’ or spring in the heel. What you want is to run in trainers with cushioned heels and march in boots. Don’t worry too much about shin splints – I had to run 12 miles and Tab 12 miles every day for years to get them. In any event, it’s only pain.