My time in the SAS

I only did 3 years in the SAS, but they were the proudest years of my life, which I will explain later.

It is a strange structure in the SAS in that it usually breeds its own. I was an import and they only give us a 3 year tenure. There is always the hope of an extension, or being recalled, but that requires exceptional skills. I was a 26 year soldier and I thought I was good, but there are people out there looking after our interests whom I will tell you are fucking exceptional. I wasn't exceptional enough to rise above the rank of Captain, but I passed the SAS assessment that everyone else has to do. I have a lot of things to say about that assessment, still to this day 15 years later, I have flash backs. Back then we were still in the dark ages of kit, and it was pretty shit. The course is physically hard, but for any fit soldier it shouldn't be a big problem, I was in 2 Para and I swear we worked harder and got more blisters, but it was the mental aspect. Not just pushing through the pain barrier, that's easy, adrenaline, fear, need to succeed, it is the unexpected shit just when you should be close to the going ahead/giving up nexium. I cannot say what goes on, but let me tell you, any ounce of decency you have will be bled from you. I found that particularly hard. A load of the guys I went through with, and the majority I worked with came from really shit backgrounds, guys who to be frank would be armed robbers or the like in civvy street, but they came good and managed to balance what they could have been with the good people they were. I say good people, a strange concept really, killing people is something which should be alien to most, but when it becomes more than a job, more like a requirement to function, and you can do it without emotion, then you may be described differently. I go back to and paraphrase from Who Dares Wins when Skellan is court martialled. Tony Doyle describes the role of the SAS like a surgeon cutting out a cancer, a dirty and horrible job, but someone has to do it. It is. I have to say probably most of the people I killed in the SAS wouldn't even know they were about to be killed, such was the nature of what we did. 

OK enough for now, next how I joined the army.