Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon Read Online Free PDF

Selection together, ‘Balance, rhythm and stride, Doc. Balance, rhythm and stride.’ He was right. You need a well-balanced, steady, even pace and any of the walks becomes possible. I was fortunate to work in a large London teaching hospital with a huge tower block as part of it. Training for me involved filling a rucksack with bricks and running up and down the building’s many steps as often as I could. Patients and colleagues alike thought I was mad. I am reminded of it to this day, but it did the trick. That, and my regular sport of karate, prepared me for the Selection camp at Sennybridge.
    The two-week Sennybridge Camp was split in half. The first week was a sequence of walks, culminating in the infamous endurance march, ‘Long Drag’. The second was what the SAS called Continuation training, where those who survive Long Drag are introduced to the basics of SAS soldiering. By the end of the Continuation week you become ‘badged’. You are eligible to wear the winged dagger on a beige SAS beret. To be precise, it is not a winged dagger at all, but a winged sword. Nevertheless, the term ‘dagger’ has become so commonplace when talking of the SAS that I will continue with it. If you walk round the average SAS establishment you will find the minority of soldiers wearing the winged dagger. Most are attached personnel - signallers, cooks, medics, mechanics. They, too, will wear the beige beret, but their own cap badge is attached. It is the badge, not the beret, that separates them from the real thing. To be badged, whether Territorial or Regular, is the ultimate in military achievement. By the time you reach Sennybridge therefore, you can almost smell the badge. It has already become an obsession.
    Predictably, the walks become increasingly arduous as the first week progresses. Total organization is the only way to succeed. I strapped my feet, back and shoulders with adhesive moleskin dressing before the week began. A Bergen rucksack is just as capable of creating blisters as an ill-fitting pair of boots. I was early for everything, ate like a horse, did not drink and slept whenever I could. Sex was non-existent. Finally, I did not stop walking for any reason. But the temptation to give in was sometimes enormous.
    Halfway through the week we were tasked to make a twenty- kilometre night march. This took place across open country, the use of tracks not being permitted (on live operations tracks are easily ambushed). A typical march involves a series of checkpoints (or ‘RVs’ - rendezvous) at approximately five-kilometre intervals. We were sent off individually, every three minutes. It was eleven at night, pitch black and pouring with rain. The usual insistence that no lights should be seen, and no tracks used, was given. That did not mean I was going to avoid using a torch; I had to be sure I was not seen doing so. Who Dares Wins is the SAS motto after all. A red or green filter over the lens preserves night vision admirably and cannot be seen more than a few feet away.
    For the first three hours I had no trouble. I was soaked, but happy to be so and confident I knew my location at all times to within fifty metres. I was headed towards the penultimate RV and lying either first or second in a field of several dozen trainees. This was good, I thought. At such a rate I would be on the first transport back to Sennybridge Camp and in bed before the stragglers had finished. That meant more sleep and a better chance of doing well the next day.
    As I walked confidently up the side of yet another windswept mountain, my mind was on other things. I cannot explain why. It never pays to be overconfident. Suddenly I began to fall. I could not see where, or into what. Then an ice-cold hand clamped around my chest as I realized I had fallen from a rocky outcrop into a peat bog below. Peat bogs are dangerous enough by day. At night I knew they could be fatal. I was slowly sinking, the weight of a forty-pound Bergen dragging me