Posted on 05/08/2004 10:02:14 PM PDT by ijcr
One of the most testing and controversial elements of con-tinuation training is a three-week, combat-survival course at Exmoor, in which candidates are stretched psychologically as well as physically. The point of such training is to prepare men to fight a guerrilla war behind enemy lines.
Much of the course is run by a Joint Services Interrogation Unit staffed by SAS and other personnel. It is preceded by a special period of training at the regiment's Hereford base. Both courses are a mixture of tuition in living off the land -- identifying edible seaweed and fungus, learning trapping techniques to procure game or fish -- followed by a realistic application of these lessons, in which the student spends several days and nights on the moor, being hunted by soldiers from other regiments.
Cunning candidates have been known to pass some of this time comfortably as unofficial guests of people living on or near the moor. The Exmoor course contains the usual 'sickener' element. Devices include a variant of the numbered brick, a five-gallon jerrycan of water to be carried over long distances. To eliminate the possibility of cheating, the water is dyed and the Jerrycan checked by instructors.
At the regiment's Hereford base and, subsequently, on the Exmoor course, SAS candidates are also subjected to interro- gation of a kind that, to judge from the testimony of those who have passed the course, does not differ from the treatment about which terrorist suspects complained in Ulster in 1971, and which was studied by the Compton Commission. Already-exhausted soldiers have been subjected to physical hardship and sensory deprivation, including the use of a hood placed over the head for many hours, white noise and psychological torture. The object of these techniques is to force the combat-survival students to reveal the names of their regiments and details of the operations on which they are nominally engaged. Not all those participating are SAS candidates; Royal Marine Commandos and Parachute Regiment soldiers also take part. The difference is that for the SAS nominee to break is more than a chastening experience: it means he has failed to win a place in the regiment.
Those who fail at this stage are often the men who seemed best fitted to the physical rigours of the earlier selection process on the Brecon Beacons.
The experience of one successful candidate in recent years is that three periods of hooded interrogation occur during the two interrogation-resistance courses: a half-hour 'nasty'; an eight-hour period and finally, during the Joint Services' Exmoor Course, one of twenty-four hours interrupted only for periods of exposure to bright electric light while facing the interrogation itself.
In one instance, hooded SAS candidates were hurled from the back of a stationary lorry by their over-enthusiastic captors, members of an infantry regiment, on to a concrete road as part of the pre-interrogation, softening-up process. One man suffered a broken arm as a result.
A successful candidate on that course, who was still intact, recalls that he then spent eight hours sitting manacled in a puddle as a preliminary to questioning. During another period of interrogation, he was hooded and shackled to a strong-point in a room in which white noise and coloured, flashing lights were used. After some time, guessing that he was alone, he contrived to remove the hood and regain a sense of reality. 'I looked around and there were all these flashing lights', he said later. 'It suddenly seemed ridiculous to me. But until then it was a bit unnerving. Some people get frantic in there. I think there is a limit to how long you can stand it. After 24 hours you begin to wonder if they are on your side. At the time, while it was happening, I was told that the `treatment` would go on much longer and I was almost cracking.'
At Hereford, as both victim and interrogator, he took part in more refined psychological brutality during a preliminary combat-survival course run exclusively for the SAS. Candidates were tied to a wooden board and immersed in a pond for up to twenty seconds before being recovered to face the same questions: 'What did you say your regiment was? What did you say you were doing?' One who survived this test later told his interrogators that he realised no one intended him to drown, but he did fear the possibility of a miscalculation, or that things would simply get out of hand.
An SAS interrogator with 'a Machiavellian turn of mind' so arranged matters that hooded captives thought they were about to be attacked by 'a perfectly lovable Labrador'. In an adjoining room, meanwhile, they could hear a beating taking place followed by the sound of vomiting and running water. The victim of the beating was an old mattress; the groans and vomiting were simulated by the interrogation team. An even more elaborate charade involved the use of a railway truck in an old siding, part of a disused ordnance depot. 'We had these guys handcuffed to the rails. By this time they were disoriented and tired. What they heard was a voice shouting from a distance, "Get those men off the line!" The other guards then went through a pantomine. "Bloody hell, there's a train coming. Get the keys!" The prisoners could feel the vibration of the truck approaching. As it got closer one of the guards shouted, "It's too late. Jump!" In fact, the wagon went past them quite harmlessly on an adjoining line into the siding. Among the prisoners, reactions differed. Some positioned their hands so that the wagon wheels would cut the shackles and set them free. Some got themselves into a position where they would have lost an arm.
Others went berserk and ended up lying across the rails. But every one of them thought that this was a real emergency and that we had made a monumental cock-up.'
The perception of another, older SAS veteran is that the account given above places undue emphasis on physical bru- tality. According to this source, the interrogation experts (who include at least one former captive of the Chinese) regard such brutality as counter-productive in breaking a prisoner's will. Furthermore, he adds, candidates are carefully briefed beforehand about what to expect from the interrogators. 'My experience was that the Exmoor course emphasised psycho- logical vulnerability,' he said. In practice, in his case, this 'psychological' approach meant his being left naked in the snow for several hours before interrogation by a panel which included a woman. The size of his penis, much reduced because of the cold, was the object of sarcastic comment.
This veteran, a particularly hard man, added: 'I wasn't always certain who was being trained: us or the interrogators. I think it was a bit of both, really.' What is undoubtedly true is that, in action, account given above places undue emphasis on physical bru- tality. According to this source, the interrogation experts (who include at least one former captive of the Chinese) regard such brutality as counter-productive in breaking a prisoner's will. Furthermore, he adds, candidates are carefully briefed beforehand about what to expect from the interrogators.
'My experience was that the Exmoor course emphasised psycho- logical vulnerability,' he said. In practice, in his case, this 'psychological' approach meant his being left naked in the snow for several hours before interrogation by a panel which included a woman. The size of his penis, much reduced because of the cold, was the object of sarcastic comment. This veteran, a particularly hard man, added: 'I wasn't always certain who was being trained: us or the interrogators. I think it was a bit of both, really.`
The two combat-survival periods -- the preliminary SAS course at Hereford and the Joint Services course at Exmoor -- end with a solemn, all-ranks dinner representing tastes acquired during this time, including seaweed, frog, hedgehog and rat. On one occasion, following total failure to obtain sufficient hedgehog in the wild, rats were collected for the feast from an Army veterinary establishment. 'What do you want these for, then?' the SAS messenger was asked when he arrived to pick them up.
'To eat, of course,' was the reply. As well as resisting interrogation -- or at least, coming to terms with the grim reality of it -- combat-survival training also teaches escape and evasion. In winter exercises it is a long-standing military joke that the SAS man may be identified as the one who walks backwards across a patch of snow. The Joint Services Escape and Evasion course devotes a short time to lectures and demonstrations by police dog-handlers on eluding the dog by wading in water or through a farmyard where the scent will mingle with that of more pungent animals.
SAS men are also taught how to kill a war dog, a skill some of the regiment's soldiers used to remarkable effect during an exercise in friendly Denmark several years ago, to the outrage of the dog-handlers concerned.
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