I also started judo lessons, and couldn’t get enough of them. At first, for a couple of months, I was taught by a Japanese man who practised a pure form of the ancient martial art. Then I moved to an instructor in Newcastle, an ex-Olympic champion, who taught me to fight dirty. I became so keen that I’d go into town almost every night, and I started winning competitions. But I gave up judo when, in a fight with a bigger boy, my clavicle became detached from my rib cage. Although I finished the fight, I lost on points — and afterwards the injury caused me so many problems that I thought I’d better stop. But I found judo good for getting rid of aggression.
As I lay there in the Iraqi desert, I remembered the sick fear I once felt when I was a kid of about thirteen. We were playing Knocking Nine Doors, and a big guy rushed out and chased us down the street. He was known as a really hard man, and when we belted on his door, he was waiting behind it. He flew out, and we went hurtling down the road. He chased us for a couple of hours, and the terror I’d felt then was exactly the same as that I experienced during the contact in the wadi.
That wasn’t the only time I’d been on the run. Once, Keith and I had been playing football with some other boys. I must have hurt one of them in a tackle, and he went off in a rage. Later, Keith and I set out with our cousin to get conkers. I’d just climbed the tree and started hitting the conkers down, when Keith gave a hoarse cry: ‘Chris, look!’ Peering down through the leaves, I saw a gang of ten or twelve kids from the village, all armed with sticks, heading for us at a run.
‘There they are!’ the raiders shouted as they spotted us. ‘There they are!’
I jumped down from the tree. ‘You run back up home that way,’ I told Keith, and I took off in the other direction. The pack came after me — and it was like hare and hounds for the rest of the day, four hours at least. I ran until I thought I was going to die. I ran through the forest, waded the river, ran up onto the moors — and still they were after me. In the end I spotted a neighbour of my aunt’s, a man who worked as a gamekeeper. I came tearing down the road with the hunters close behind and threw myself into his arms, unable to speak.
I hated school work. I was all right at maths and technical drawing, but never much good at basics like reading and writing, and I took little interest in most of my lessons. Afterwards, I bitterly regretted not trying harder at school, especially when I found, as an adult, that I had a perfectly good brain. As a boy, though, I was more interested in making a camp in the woods or racing about with the other kids on the estate than in going to school.
By the time I was sixteen, all I wanted was to join the army. At the local recruiting office I did the first tests to become a boy soldier, and passed them fine. For the final tests I was due to travel to Sutton Coldfield, but I went down with jaundice and missed the interviews. I was really upset, but I remember lying in bed, feeling lousy, and seeing two men in uniform come to the house. They told my parents I should join up as a man when I was seventeen or eighteen.
Luckily for me, my cousin Billy was in 23 SAS, the Territorials unit made up of part-time volunteers. One day he said, ‘Why not come up, and we’ll get you out on a couple of weekends? Then you’ll see what it’s like to be in the army.’
So I went up to Prudhoe, in Northumberland, where ‘C’ Squadron of 23 SAS had its base. At that time — the late 1970s, before the famous siege of the Iranian Embassy — the SAS was nothing like as well known as it later became. I was just a naive lad of sixteen, and as I walked through the doors of the drill hall, I saw all these guys who looked really old. No doubt I looked a bit of a twerp to them. But nothing could damp down my excitement; when the SQMS took me into the stores and gave me a camouflage suit, a set of webbing pouches, a poncho and a bergen, I was over the moon.
A bunch of recruits had assembled for a weekend’s training — some were civilians, others from regular army units. Their average age must have been about twenty-five. As I arrived, they were about to have a map-reading lesson, so I sat down with them and did that. Next, we all scrambled onto trucks and drove up to Otterburn, where we walked out onto the moors. ‘Right,’ somebody said. ‘Tonight we’re going to sleep against this wall, under ponchos.’
I thought it was terrific — to spend the night outdoors. I was so excited that I couldn’t go to sleep, and I lay for ages gazing up at the stars.
Next morning, after no more than a couple of hours’ sleep, I was up early, and we spent the day walking. We’d walk for a while, have something to eat, get another lesson in map-reading, then go on again. The exercise ended with a long hike, which left me exhausted.
Back at Prudhoe, I thought, Well — that was great. But that’s it. I imagined that after my introduction to the army, I wouldn’t be asked again. But luckily for me the OC happened to be there. He was a scary-looking guy, with ginger hair and little glasses, and looked a right hard nut. He came over to speak to me and said, ‘You’re Billy’s cousin, aren’t you? Would you like to come back up?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Great.’
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘But you must understand that you won’t be on the books. You shouldn’t be here, really, because we’re breaking the law. If anything happens, you won’t be able to blame the army.’
That didn’t worry me one bit, and from then on I went up to Prudhoe every weekend.
The selection course took place over a period of three months, with the recruits assembling only at weekends. At first the group had consisted of sixty people, and every week a few of them decided they’d had enough and gave up. But for me things became more and more exciting, because we went from being in a big group to working in pairs, and in the end I was on my own. It was a big thrill when someone told me to walk alone from Point A to Point B. I had become confident with my map-reading, and between Friday night and Sunday morning we’d cover up to sixty kilometres, carrying a bergen. On the last weekend of the course, there were only four of us left, and I was the only one who finished the march.
Normally, anyone who finished that march would be tested for two weeks on the Brecon Beacons. But I was too young to go, and they told me that I wouldn’t be ready to take selection for 23 SAS until two more Territorials selection courses had gone through. In other words, I was going to have to wait a whole year.
That was disappointing, but I was so keen that I volunteered to keep going on the Territorials weekends when the next course started. By that time I knew all the routes, and I could run from one checkpoint to another without a map. I’d also learned how to cut corners and cheat a bit. At the end of that course only one man passed: he and I were the sole survivors.
By then I’d become a bit of a joke in the squadron, but on the third course I was so fit, and knew the ground so well, that I finished each leg before the other guys were halfway.
Now at last I was old enough to go down to Wales for the Test Week. After two weeks on the hills, based at Sennybridge, I passed out and at last became a member of ‘C’ Squadron.
I was a member of the SAS!
My aim, of course, was to join 22, the regular SAS. Normally, to do that, you have to enrol in another regiment first, as the regular SAS is a specialized regiment within the British army. My best course seemed to be to join the Parachute Regiment, but all the guys said, ‘Don’t bother with that. Once you’ve served here in 23 for a bit, you can go straight on to selection for 22.’ Apart from that, 22 were holding a lot of courses and exercises down at Hereford, and there were often spare places — so I was going south a good deal.
By this time I was extremely fit. Every day I’d do a six-kilometre run, followed by a ten-kilometre bike ride, and then swim two kilometres, and run the four kilometres home.