SAS The Soldier's Story - Training and Selection

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsF2MQCKXB8"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]the selection phase a nightmare world of physical pain and mental torture disorientated continually soaked no decent meals a way of getting rid of all the weaklings i'll have to crack the strongest man i can show you you could call it rejection not selection the role of the ss in fact is many roles depends on the war it depends on who the enemy is depends on what the job is in malaya and borneo the regiment was fighting jungle fighters in dofa we were fighting communist inspired desert fighters basically a totally different form of warfare we can fight in built-up areas as in northern ireland siege at princesses gate the role is so varied and covers so many fields of warfare you could call us universal soldiers the sas is the best trained regiment in the world soldiers are chosen for the toughest collection process there is very few men are able to survive this test much of what we do is secret and cannot be shown what you will see are the things that make us different that makes us the best but ultimately sets us apart from the race someone once said to me are ser soldiers better than any other soldiers what we have to realize firstly about the sas is this one soldiers are drawn from all of her majesty's forces navy raf raw marines parachute regiment and each one of them that joins a squadron is actually an ambassador of his regiment what you're looking for is first of all physical fitness determination the will to carry on when he wants to give in to be able to go through a pain barrier if you like got some determination and professionalism this is what the ss are looking for the first phase selection is a series of forced marches across the brecon beacons you have to achieve a distance four kilometers an hour carrying heavy weights the times for the marches are set by the directing staff abbreviated ds when he is scrutinized by a training wing instructor he will be able to tell in a short period of time because of the severe stress you put under what kind of a character what kind of a personality um you possess and selection is very good at identifying that area of a person's build-up the weight in the bergen is initially made up by essential equipment this is foul weather gear sleeping bags medical equipment distressed flares the food carried is your rations for the day which consists of two or three bread rolls probably a couple of mars bars some crisps a normal army issue have a bag basically plus a 24-hour ration pack which is only to be opened in emergency well coming from the royal engineers i wasn't particularly good at tabbing so i found a hell of a strain the first week four british army boots of that time they just give you blisters and i immediately ended up with feet covered in blisters and that was the worst part of selection every morning having to pull your socks and your boots on over these seeping septic throbbing blisters agony and then you're expected then to do a 15 20k tub every through injury all being withdrawn by the directing staff for failing to make marches that day increasing weights increasing distances you eventually progress to the ultimate march the ultimate physical test which is the endurance march this is a march of a distance of 65 kilometers cutting 55 pounds of weight and a rifle the timing you have to complete this it's approximately in 22 hours anybody can run around get fit they can spend weeks training but if they've got underlying character defects which come out in a stress situation what are they going to be like when they first come under fire i mean that's extreme stress and pressure and this is what these exercises are designed for to bring this sort of stuff out before it's too late before people's lives are in danger once you've passed the first four weeks physical selection there's a great deal of euphoria felt by the students themselves because they've achieved a great deal you'll start off with perhaps anything up to 200 students from that perhaps you're left with 30 or so students you then go on to up to a four week training phase during which time you do various foreign weapons range work etc see if you're on the g3 rifle jamming cut the weapon look inside make sure there are no rounds in the chamber let your working parts go forward take a safety catch off squeeze your trigger apply the safety catch again and that is your weapon clear you're constantly assessed constantly loosely great deal of pressure on you because you're being taught new skills you have to assimilate those skills very rapidly and the producer goods in front of the eyes of the instructors who are there to assess you what we're going to run through now is the load the unloading the make safe stand by down dave apply your safety catch come on come on come on make safe it's extremely important that you can film like yourself and effectively use all foreign weapon systems when operating worldwide operating with indigenous forces you must have the ability to pick up that weapon and use it effectively apply a safety catch okay now watch okay driving is extremely important skill within the regimen you have to have the ability to use a car as a means of getting out hazardous situations when you're involved in vip protection escort drills we are certainly confronted with an attempt on your life or someone who's your duty to protect and you have to carry out various maneuvers to enable you to escape from that incident a bit sharp on us but he got the card around took back off and he made a good getaway there back again but he's in reverse he's changing the initial during the continuation we'll do demolition skills medical skills patrol skills and how to react on redmi fire then you'll go to the jungle but all these drills and skills will be enhanced upon practice tested it's a hard month a very difficult month and again a test of your personality and character because if you suffer from claustrophobia it soon starts to show in the jungle because because of the the close quarters of the vegetation the jungle canopy all you can just see is sort of green a sea of green all around you and we've had guys um fail because it brought brought out claustrophobia and they just couldn't stand being cooped up in the jungle and of course sickness fails a few because you can soon catch some weird and wonderful tropical diseases in the jungle there are plenty of them around and many guys have failed because they've got all that way and then some insect has bitten them and um that the health has deteriorated and they've been medivacked out of the jungle never to be seen again and out of potential 30 to 40 extremely motivated candidates you will lose another 50 during this phase but the final test is still to come the whole idea about the manhunt in the escape and evasion phase of selection and training is to give the guys some idea what it's like to evade an enemy force to be on the run to have to live off the land to try and escape from dogs helicopter searches troops on the ground moving in extended line through wooded areas it's to give the guy that feeling of self-sufficiency you are set loose and old build fitting on the great coat held together by a piece of string a pair of old baggy trousers pair of boots tied together with a bit of string and set up into the night in the short head start you have a button compass and a sketch map you're not allowed to use roads when you're allowed to use tracks you're not allowed to use 20 buildings and you're constantly pursued by hunter force using all the modern technology available to them it's designed to put you under severe stress depending on when you get caught depends how much stress that you have to go through for example they do a seven day exercise and if you got caught on day one then you've got six days of stress and interrogation if you are captured by a combat formation that's just been in action and they're taking a lot of casualties some of those guys um may have lost their mates they're not going to treat you kindly they're going to be thinking these bastards have done my mates let's do them we know it's only an exercise but if this person is of a weak mind and he's going to crack on an exercise he's not going to last five minutes in enemy hands when captured you're mentally and physically drained you're under no illusion but that was the easy bit for the next 36 hours the screws will be turned the reason why um when you captured you are in fact strung up in a stressed position this is to find if the mind can survive the boredom and the stress of being suspended in that position for long periods of time it also very much weakens the will to refuse to answer questions to refuse to sign documents yeah if you're a weak person you're looking at that document and thinking i don't want to go back in that stress position i'm going to sign this document get me out of here you are pushed to the absolute limit that an exercise would allow this again is an attempt to simulate rough handling by an enemy force because if you're gonna crack on an exercise you're sure as hell are gonna crack in the hands of some bent and twisted third world country do you ever see any other candidates if you'd ever attempt to remove your sandbag immediately result in failure there was one particular exercise that um used to be carried out where you were put into a little hut that was no bigger than a dog kennel and locked in it they had a corrugated iron roof and the guards would beat the roof with chains the sound was horrendous now if you're a person that suffers from claustrophobia that brings it on very quickly and this rapidly becomes a mental condition it's a play on phobias all this stuff is constantly gone around you you're extremely knackered you haven't slept you have eaten you haven't drank you're physically knackered you're mentally knackered what you must do is always always keep your mind focused this is classic um disorientation an old favorite used to be uh handcuffing you to the um the railway line and then you'd hear the rolling stop coming down the line humbling on to you because you hooded of course unbeknown to you there was a set of points a few feet away from your body where the rolling stock would would miss you but you didn't notice um and all you could hear is a rolling stop rumbling down the rail just another attempt to completely stress you out weaken your will frighten you to death basically it has been known for hard men people who perceive themselves as hard men to physically and mentally break down to sobbing wrecks during this process this is a test of your mental capacity to face up to an interrogator and basically put your wits against a bit warmer him here son isn't it okay what's your number two four six three seven eight if you come through that you could say that all facets of your character personality uh physical build-up has been tested what's your first name do you know your first name your name's wayne is that correct is your name wayne what i know your name's wayne why don't you tell me what's your name son don't you know your own [ __ ] name okay i'll tell you what i've got here most selections loose people who've been fit they've gone over the breaking beacons good timings they've been in the jungle good map reading and then when they're pitted against an interrogator who's putting him on the mental torture he just proved too much they blow a fuse can't hack it and all that they did before waste of time they're out of it i'm there okay didn't you go to school do you want to go back to the control line do you want to get back to the cold mode i'm trying to send you back to the computer in any team i would show you noise [ __ ] bombs god get that piece of [ __ ] out of [ __ ] balls can you write it say your poems shame god get that [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] back to the compound get him out get him out of here it's very difficult to gauge the length of time that you've been enduring questioning at some stage you'll be taken out and you think to yourself there we go another one get yourself geared up for it only be taken into a different room your hood being removed and there's the ds directed staff that you recognize and know there'll be food there to your copy there you'll have a big smile on his face he'll hold out his hand shake your hand and say for you the war is over and even when you're finished you don't know whether you've passed because you wait outside the selection troop office and you're called in individually and i went in and i'd passed and it was great what satisfaction and it's brilliant to get that wing dagger brilliant in january 91 the iraqis began launching skud missiles on israel if israel had retaliated it would have been politically impossible for the coalition arab forces to remain in the wall the western alliance against iraq would have disintegrated the sas were tasked to go deep behind enemy lines locate the scuds and take them out failure might have given victory to southern hussein they would cross the border in strength fully armed fully tooled up maximum ammunition they would then search until they located a mobile scud position they would drive in guns blazing destroy it drive off into the night this film is about two successful missions deep behind enemy lines young trooper matt's story the first mission is about the first shot fighting anger on the ground in the gulf war the first kill white eyed up close initially they talked about us doing some form of hostage release because of all the ostriches that have been taken in kuwait and then moved up towards baghdad and then taskings changed throughout as the theater actually built up this started looking at us going into western iraq deep behind enemy lines and doing some form of search and destroy basically as a disruption force to draw the attention away from kuwait there was very limited information on the enemy that was going to bump into even though they said that it could be substantial we just went out there basically and just seeing we'd come across we knew that we were better than anybody that we could have come across so i think that's where our professionalism then clicked in it was a mixture of terrains i don't think i can't ever remember coming across any sort of desert environment like sand like you saw people saw on the tvs very very rugged terrain we'd been driving all night at that stage we've been across the border in the region of about four to five days we've been in this layout point as lup for most of the day and what we tried to do is get into dead ground into a depression in the ground if we could to keep concealed especially at a great distance we put centuries out on the eye ground which could then identify anything coming towards us and came the vehicles up put big cabinets over the vehicles and basically just got on with administration cleaning weapons sorting yourselves out getting some food down you and then get eventually getting some sleep the weather was in everybody's opinion horrific you know guys that have been to norway said that they'd never ever been so cold we didn't have the equipment and the clothing to to keep us warm i started to have a a lot of cold uh injuries to my fingers and because the gloves that were we had weren't uh good enough they were only very thin leather gloves and your hands became very very hard and very cold as the time progressed my finger the skins around me fingernails start to crack um on all my fingers and both thumbs uh which caused a lot of pain um especially as he got colder in the night and so what we were having to do was wrap socks around cut holes in socks and put socks over his hands because it was that cold you were gritting your teeth a lot more and i i cracked quite a few of my teeth at the back of my mouth um because of just pure gritting my teeth clothing was initially very limited we was under the impression and i was intelligence had stated that it was um was it was quite warm out there and most of us went out with jungle combats or desert combats at the time um which turned out to be quite poor and as normal sas smokes which are slightly wind resistant but in the temperatures that were going to come across they weren't that good at about three o'clock that afternoon one of the centuries that was on high ground pointed across to down the the wadi there was a vehicle coming towards us a small jeep type vehicle and all of a sudden it just drove straight towards us and we didn't know the hell it was we obviously knew it was iraqi and so you know you can only take it that it's obviously enemy because the immediate shock that jesus said there's a vehicle coming towards us it did cause a bit of an initial flap once we identified who they were the [ __ ] is coming it drove right up towards our vehicle and stopped within about 30 meters of it the driver got out the commander got out and two guys stayed in the back and we was all under the cam net getting ready to let these guys have it and as he came towards us i thought jesus i'm gonna kill this bloke and you know the first kill and as he came towards us one of our guys walked out with his weapon behind his back our lad lifted his weapon up at that point he had a stoppage but at the exact same point i dropped the guy this all happened in an instance but it seemed to take a great deal of time at the same time and i'm talking literally over seconds i got up with another guy and started moving towards the vehicle as we got there one lad was pulling the body out of the back and there was a big jet of blood just spurted out which stuck in my mind you know because that's the graphic detail of it should mag him up get him over to the vehicle quick as you can see move it the other iraqi was massively traumatized in a great shock because all of a sudden he had he was on a normal reconnaissance for the area and next thing he knows everybody that's been killed they were the reconnaissance group the command group for a very large artillery division and the information that they had on them gave the allies a massive amount of information of what was going on in iraq basically we was told afterwards when we eventually got back across the border there was somewhere in the region of 30 000 troops coming into our immediate area where we was and at that point we was actually surrounded by them already the immediate shock of everything died down very very quickly we realized we've got three bodies we've got a prisoner of war we've got a vehicle deniable operation what the hell do we do with it initially we was going to bury the bodies there and then but it would have been ludicrous because their forces would have come to that location anyway and seen them because we could only dig very shallow graves so we got the prisoner threw him on the msv and the bodies we threw him back in their own vehicle and one of our lads volunteered to drive the vehicle and he had an ulterior motive in doing so because this was a covered vehicle he had a roof but it also had a heater and the intention was that we would take the vehicle with us we then bugged out as we called it and moved away from the location but heading the opposite direction to what they came from i think we were in the region of about 75 to maybe 100 miles behind enemy lines at this stage throughout that night was quite a nightmare because we were surrounded by a massive force and the intention was that a helicopter would come in that night take the bodies the vehicle and the prisoner of war at that stage when we stopped and the guy got out of the vehicle that been driving the uh the bodies around all night he uh he smelled quite badly because obviously these bodies were starting to decompose in the back of the vehicle but he was totally unaware of that because he'd been nice and warm all night in his uh in his little vehicle uh which was uh slightly amusing and it you know even though it was a horrific what had happened and but he wrote you know brought a few smiles on on people's faces that he was nice and warm but he stumped to our heaven the helicopter came in and when it was dark and that they would fly ultra low level literally 10 or 15.<br><!-- wp:image {"id":1776,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none"} -->rn<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img class="wp-image-1776" src="https://en.videoencontexto.com/2021/01/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SAS_The_Soldiers_Story__Training_and_Selection_qsF2MQCKXB8.jpg" alt="SAS The Soldier\'s Story - Training and Selection" /></figure>rn<!-- /wp:image -->[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]